The Last Man | Page 6

never to
submit.
Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on myself. My mother, when
dying, had, in addition to her other half-forgotten and misapplied lessons, committed,
with solemn exhortation, her other child to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty I
performed to the best of my ability, with all the zeal and affection of which my nature
was capable. My sister was three years younger than myself; I had nursed her as an infant,
and when the difference of our sexes, by giving us various occupations, in a great
measure divided us, yet she continued to be the object of my careful love. Orphans, in the
fullest sense of the term, we were poorest among the poor, and despised among the
unhonoured. If my daring and courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her
youth and sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be weak, were the
causes of numberless mortifications to her; and her own disposition was not so
constituted as to diminish the evil effects of her lowly station.
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiar disposition of our
father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark, but impenetrably
deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that
the soul which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken. She was
pale and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples, contrasting its rich hue with
the living marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, little consonant apparently with the
refinement of feeling which her face expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with it.
She was like one of Guido's saints, with heaven in her heart and in her look, so that when
you saw her you only thought of that within, and costume and even feature were
secondary to the mind that beamed in her countenance.
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this was the fanciful
name my sister had received from her dying parent), was not altogether saintly in her
disposition. Her manners were cold and repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those who
had regarded her with affection, she might have been different; but unloved and neglected,
she repaid want of kindness with distrust and silence. She was submissive to those who
held authority over her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if she
expected enmity from every one who approached her, and her actions were instigated by
the same feeling. All the time she could command she spent in solitude. She would
ramble to the most unfrequented places, and scale dangerous heights, that in those
unvisited spots she might wrap herself in loneliness. Often she passed whole hours
walking up and down the paths of the woods; she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or
watched the flickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat

beside a stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into the waters,
watching how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloat boats formed of bark of
trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, and intensely watch the navigation of her craft
among the rapids and shallows of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a
thousand combinations; she dreamt "of moving accidents by flood and field"--she lost
herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwilling spirit to
the dull detail of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all
that was good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of affection. She
had not even the same advantage as I in the recollection of her parents; she clung to me,
her brother, as her only friend, but her alliance with me completed the distaste that her
protectors felt for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes. If she had
been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the delicate framework of her
mind and person was adapted, she would have been the object almost of adoration, for
her virtues were as eminent as her defects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her
father illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness,
were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when enlightened by amiable
feeling, might have belonged to a queen of nations; her eyes were bright; her look
fearless.
Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut off from the usual
forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong contrast to each other. I always required