GRANDFEY, NEAR F., IN SWITZERLAND.
May 15, 1822.
Having reached an age when the morrow is more than uncertain, and knowing how soon all verbal tradition becomes blurred and distorted, I, Sophia Penelope, daughter of Jacques de Morat, a cadet of the Counts of that name, sometime a captain in the service of King Louis XV., and of Sophia Hamilton, his wife; and furthermore, widow of the late Sir Eustace Brandling, ninth baronet, of St. Salvat's Castle, in the county of Glamorgan, have yielded to the wishes of my dear surviving sons, and am preparing to consign to paper, for the benefit of their children and grandchildren, some account of those circumstances in my life which decided that the lot of this family should so long have been cast in foreign parts and remote colonies, instead of in its ancestral and legitimate home.
I can the better fulfil this last duty to my dear ones, living and dead, that I have by me a journal which, as it chanced, I was in the habit of keeping at that period; and require to draw upon my memory only for such details as happen to be missing in that casual record of my daily life some fifty years ago. And first of all let me explain to my children's children that I began to keep this journal two years after my marriage with their grandfather, with the idea of sending it regularly to my dearest mother, from whom, for the first time in my young life, I was separated by my husband's unexpected succession and our removal from Switzerland to his newly-inherited estates in Wales. Let me also explain that before this event, which took place in the spring of seventeen hundred and seventy-two, Sir Eustace Brandling was merely a young Englishman of handsome person, gentlemanly bearing, an uncommon knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and a most blameless and amiable temper, but with no expectations of fortune in the future, and only a modest competence in the present. So that it was regarded in our Canton and among our relations as a proof of my dear mother's high-flown and romantic temper, and of the unpractical influence of the writings of Rousseau and other philosophers, that she should have allowed her only child to contract such a marriage. And at the time of its celebration it did indeed appear improbable that we should ever cease residing with my dearest mother on her little domain of Grandfey; still more that our existence of pastoral and philosophic happiness should ever be exchanged for the nightmare of dishonour and misery which followed it.
The beginning of our calamities was, as I said, on the death of Sir Thomas Brandling, my husband's only brother. I have preserved a most vivid recollection of the day which brought us that news, perhaps because, looked back upon ever after, it seemed the definite boundary of a whole part of our life, left so quickly and utterly behind, as the shore is left even with the first few strokes of the oars. My dear mother and I were in the laundry, where the maids were busy putting by the freshly ironed linen. My mother, who was ever more skilful with her hands, as she was nimbler in her thoughts, than I, had put aside all the most delicate pieces and the lace to dress and iron herself; while I, who had made a number of large bundles of lavender (our garden had never produced it in so great profusion), was standing on a chair and placing them in the shelves of the presses, between each bale of sheets and table linen which the maids had lifted up to me. When, looking through the open glass door, I saw Vincent, the farm servant, hurrying along the lime walk, and across the kitchen garden, and waving a packet at us. He had been to the city to buy sugar, I remember, for the raspberry jam, which my mother, an excellent cook, had decided to sweeten a second time, for fear of its turning.
"He seems very excited," said my mother, looking out. "I declare he has a book or packet, perhaps it is the Journal des Savants for Eustace, or that opera by Monsieur Gluck, which your uncle promised you. I hope he has not forgotten the nutmegs." I write down these childish details because I cherished them for years, as one might cherish a blade of grass or a leaf, carelessly put as a marker in a book, and belonging to a country one will never revisit.
"It is a letter for Eustace," said my mother, "and very heavy too. I am glad Vincent had more money than necessary, for it must have cost a lot at the post." And going under my husband's laboratory window she asked whether he wanted the letter at once, or would wait to open it at dinner time. "I am only cleaning my instruments," he answered, "let me have the letter now." His voice, as I hear it through all those years, sounds so happy and boyish. It was altered, and it seemed at the time naturally enough, when he presently came down to the laundry and said very briefly, "My brother is dead ... it is supposed a stab from a drunken sailor at Bristol. A shocking business. It is my Uncle Hubert who writes." He had sat down by the ironing table and spoke in short, dry sentences.
There was something extraordinary about his voice, not grief, but agitation, which somehow made it utterly impossible for me to do what would have been natural under the circumstances, to put my arms round his neck and tell him I shared his trouble. Instead of which every word he uttered seemed to ward me off as with the sword's point, and to cover himself, as a fencer covers his vitals.
"Get some brandy for him, Penelope. He is feeling faint," said my mother, tossing me her keys. I obeyed, feeling that she understood and I did not, as often happened between us. I was a few minutes away, for I had to cross the yard to the dwelling house, and then I found that my mother had given me the wrong keys. I filled a glass from a jar of cherries we had just put up, and returned to the laundry. My husband was white, but did not look at all faint. He was leaning his elbow on the deal table covered with blanket, and nervously folding and stretching a ruffle which lay by the bowl of starch. When I came in he suddenly stopped speaking, and my mother saw that I noticed it.
"Eustace was saying, my dear," she said, "that he will have to go—almost immediately—to England, on account of the property. He wanted to go on alone, and fetch you later, when things should be a little to rights. But I was telling him, Penelope, that I felt sure you would recognise it as your duty to go with him from the very first, and help him through any difficulties."
My dear mother had resumed her ironing; and as she said these last words, her voice trembled a little, and she stooped very attentively over the cap she was smoothing.
Eustace was sitting there, so unlike himself suddenly, and muttered nervously, "I really can see no occasion, Maman, for anything of the sort."
I cannot say what possessed me; I verily think a presentiment of the future. But I put down the plate and glass, looked from my mother to my husband, and burst into a childish flood of tears. I heard my husband give a little peevish "Ah!" rise, leave the room, and then bang the door of his laboratory upstairs behind him. And then I felt my dear mother's arms about me, and her kiss on my cheek. I mopped my eyes with my apron, but at first I could not see properly for the tears. When I was able to see again what struck me was the scene through the long window, open down to the ground.
It was a lovely evening, and the air full of the sweetness of lime blossom. The low sunlight made the plaster of our big old house a pale golden, and the old woodwork of its wooden eaves, wide and shaped like an inverted boat, as is the Swiss fashion, of a beautiful rosy purple. The dogs were lying on the house steps, by the great tubs of hydrangeas and flowering pomegranates; and beyond the sanded yard I could see the bent back of Vincent stooping among the hives in the kitchen garden. The grass beyond was brilliant green, all powdered with hemlock flower; and the sun made a deep track in the avenue, along which the cows were trotting home to be milked. I felt my heart break, as once or twice I had foolishly done as a child, and in a manner in which I have never felt it again despite all my later miseries. I suppose it was that I was only then really ceasing to be a child, though I had been married two years. It was evidently in my mother's thoughts, for she followed my glance with hers, and then said very solemnly, and kissing me again (she had not let go of me all this while), "My poor little Penelope! you must learn to be a woman. You will want all your strength and all your courage to help your husband."
That was really the end, or the beginning. There were some weeks of plan-making and preparations, a bad dream which has faded away from my memory. And then, at the beginning of August of that year—1772—my husband and I started from Grandfey for St. Salvat's.
September 29, 1772.
This is my first night in what, henceforward, is going to be my home. The thought should be a happy and a solemn one; but it merely goes on and on in my head like the words of a song in some unknown language. Eustace has gone below to his uncles; and I am alone in this great room, and also, I imagine, in the whole wing of this great house. The wax lights on the dressing-table, and the unsnuffed dip with which the old housekeeper lit us through endless passages, leave all the corners dark. But the moonlight pours in through the vast, cage-like window. The moon is shining on a strip of sea above the tree-tops, and the noise of the sea is quite close; a noise quite unlike that of any running water, and methinks very melancholy and hopeless in expression. I tried to enjoy it like a play, or a romance which one reads; and indeed, the whole impression of this castle is marvellously romantic.
When Eustace had unstrapped my packages, and in his tender manner placed all my little properties in order, he took me in his arms, meaning thereby to welcome me to my new home and the house of his fathers. We were standing by the window, and I tried, foolishly it seems, to hide my weakness of spirit (for I confess to having felt a great longing to cry) by pointing to that piece of moonlit sea, and repeating a line of Ossian, at the beginning of the description of the pirates crossing the sea to the house of Erved. Foolishly, for although that passage is a favourite with Eustace, indeed one we often read during our courtship, he was annoyed at my thinking of such matters, I suppose, at such a moment; and answered with that kind of irritated deprecation that is so new to me; embracing me indeed once more, but leaving me immediately to go to his uncles.
Foolish Penelope! It is this no doubt which makes me feel lonely just now; and I can hear you, dearest mother, chiding me laughingly, for giving so much weight to such an incident. Eustace will return presently, as gentle and sympathising as ever, and all will be right with me. Meanwhile, I will note down the events of this day, so memorable in my life.