Chapter 8 - Page 2

eye of man lest he should read my father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I
must be silent lest my faltering voice should betray unimagined
horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I must heap an impenetrable
heap of false smiles and words: cunning frauds, treacherous laughter
and a mixture of all light deceits would form a mist to blind others
and be as the poisonous simoon to me.[44] I, the offspring of love,
the child of the woods, the nursling of Nature's bright self was to
submit to this? I dared not.

How must I escape? I was rich and young, and had a guardian appointed
for me; and all about me would act as if I were one of their great
society, while I must keep the secret that I really was cut off from
them for ever. If I fled I should be pursued; in life there was no
escape for me: why then I must die. I shuddered; I dared not die even
though the cold grave held all I loved; although I might say with Job

Where is now my hope? For my hope who shall see it?

They shall go down together to the bars of the pit, when our
rest together is in the dust--[45]

Yes my hope was corruption and dust and all to which death brings
us.--Or after life--No, no, I will not persuade myself to die, I may
not, dare not. And then I wept; yes, warm tears once more struggled
into my eyes soothing yet bitter; and after I had wept much and called
with unavailing anguish, with outstretched arms, for my cruel father;
after my weak frame was exhausted by all variety of plaint I sank once
more into reverie, and once more reflected on how I might find that
which I most desired; dear to me if aught were dear, a death-like
solitude.

I dared not die, but I might feign death, and thus escape from my
comforters: they will believe me united to my father, and so indeed I
shall be. For alone, when no voice can disturb my dream, and no cold
eye meet mine to check its fire, then I may commune with his spirit;
on a lone heath, at noon or at midnight, still I should be near him.
His last injunction to me was that I should be happy; perhaps he did
not mean the shadowy happiness that I promised myself, yet it was that
alone which I could taste. He did not conceive that ever [qu.
_never_?] again I could make one of the smiling hunters that go
coursing after bubles that break to nothing when caught, and then
after a new one with brighter colours; my hope also had proved a
buble, but it had been so lovely, so adorned that I saw none that
could attract me after it; besides I was wearied with the pursuit,
nearly dead with weariness.

I would feign to die; my contented heirs would seize upon my wealth,
and I should purchase freedom. But then my plan must be laid with art;
I would not be left destitute, I must secure