Portent and Other Stories, The | Page 2

rejoiced in being alone. The sense of room about
me had been one of my greatest delights. Hence, when my thoughts go
back to those old years, it is not the house, nor the family room, nor
that in which I slept, that first of all rises before my inward vision, but
that desolate hill, the top of which was only a wide expanse of
moorland, rugged with height and hollow, and dangerous with deep,
dark pools, but in many portions purple with large-belled heather, and
crowded with cranberry and blaeberry plants. Most of all, I loved it in
the still autumn morning, outstretched in stillness, high uplifted
towards the heaven. On every stalk hung the dew in tiny drops, which,
while the rising sun was low, sparkled and burned with the hues of all

the gems. Here and there a bird gave a cry; no other sound awoke the
silence. I never see the statue of the Roman youth, praying with
outstretched arms, and open, empty, level palms, as waiting to receive
and hold the blessing of the gods, but that outstretched barren heath
rises before me, as if it meant the same thing as the statue--or were, at
least, the fit room in the middle space of which to set the praying and
expectant youth.
There was one spot upon the hill, half-way between the valley and the
moorland, which was my favourite haunt. This part of the hill was
covered with great blocks of stone, of all shapes and sizes--here
crowded together, like the slain where the battle had been fiercest; there
parting asunder from spaces of delicate green--of softest grass. In the
centre of one of these green spots, on a steep part of the hill, were three
huge rocks--two projecting out of the hill, rather than standing up from
it, and one, likewise projecting from the hill, but lying across the tops
of the two, so as to form a little cave, the back of which was the side of
the hill. This was my refuge, my home within a home, my study--and,
in the hot noons, often my sleeping chamber, and my house of dreams.
If the wind blew cold on the hillside, a hollow of lulling warmth was
there, scooped as it were out of the body of the blast, which, sweeping
around, whistled keen and thin through the cracks and crannies of the
rocky chaos that lay all about; in which confusion of rocks the wind
plunged, and flowed, and eddied, and withdrew, as the sea-waves on
the cliffy shores or the unknown rugged bottoms. Here I would often
lie, as the sun went down, and watch the silent growth of another sea,
which the stormy ocean of the wind could not disturb--the sea of the
darkness. First it would begin to gather in the bottom of hollow places.
Deep valleys, and all little pits on the hill-sides, were well-springs
where it gathered, and whence it seemed to overflow, till it had buried
the earth beneath its mass, and, rising high into the heavens, swept over
the faces of the stars, washed the blinding day from them, and let them
shine, down through the waters of the dark, to the eyes of men below. I
would lie till nothing but the stars and the dim outlines of hills against
the sky was to be seen, and then rise and go home, as sure of my path
as if I had been descending a dark staircase in my father's house.

On the opposite side the valley, another hill lay parallel to mine; and
behind it, at some miles' distance, a great mountain. As often as, in my
hermit's cave, I lifted my eyes from the volume I was reading, I saw
this mountain before me. Very different was its character from that of
the hill on which I was seated. It was a mighty thing, a chieftain of the
race, seamed and scarred, featured with chasms and precipices and
over-leaning rocks, themselves huge as hills; here blackened with shade,
there overspread with glory; interlaced with the silvery lines of falling
streams, which, hurrying from heaven to earth, cared not how they
went, so it were downwards. Fearful stories were told of the gulfs,
sullen waters, and dizzy heights upon that terror-haunted mountain. In
storms the wind roared like thunder in its caverns and along the jagged
sides of its cliffs, but at other times that uplifted land-uplifted, yet
secret and full of dismay--lay silent as a cloud on the horizon.
I had a certain peculiarity of constitution, which I have some reason to
believe I inherit. It seems to have its root in an unusual delicacy of
hearing, which often conveys to me sounds inaudible to those about me.
This I have had many opportunities