Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/50

38 permission to return to England, ultimately proceeding to Cambridge, where I obtained the distinction of Chancellor's Medallist and Second Classic, terms doubtless familiar to you, a member of a school in which, I believe, the old classical tradition is still handed down unsullied by the barbaric bar-sinister of either Science or, what they call, a 'Modern Side!' Shortly after my matriculation I had heard that my father's health was a little shaken by a severe chill caught at some festal gathering, but the evil effects were, apparently, eradicated by care and a good doctor, and I had given up any anxious thought about the matter. Indeed, the account I had of him for the next few years was encouraging in the extreme. You may, then, imagine my consternation and grief when, shortly after my last University success, I received intelligence of his sudden death and of my sister's desire to come to England as soon as possible, in order that she might take up her residence with an aunt of ours at that time residing near Manchester. This voyage was actually performed, and I myself stayed for a few days at my aunt's house, from the experience of which few days I formed that estimate of, what appeared to me to be, your mother's natural disposition, which, despite all subsequent events, I have seen no proper reason to cease to hold as being, in the main, a correct one. I can say with the most absolute sincerity, that I believe that the greatest of her faults was thoughtlessness, and that I have so far considered, and shall in all probability continue to consider to the end of my life, that all attempts to make her out as, either naturally or by her early training, depraved are as unfounded as they are ungenerous and unjust. I make no doubt that you already know at any rate the general outline of your unhappy mother's subsequent career, and I shall, therefore, make no further allusion to it than that which I have already made.

'You will I think easily perceive, that her marriage with your father and their instantaneous departure for Cork, where his regiment was then quartered, and my scholastic labours and ultimately my own marriage, to say nothing of our most opposed spheres of life, made any close intimacy between the two families all but impossible. After a short, too short! period of happiness I was left to face life with the motherless pledge of mutual affection and a frame shattered by an, alas useless, attendance on the sick bed of my beloved wife and companion. I felt that change of scene and change of climate were absolutely necessary to me. I left England therefore; and so it came about that, unhonoured by the confidence of my sister, I remained for long in ignorance of anything more than the general facts of her history. It was only through inquiries, instituted by me shortly after I had