She was of a temperament which in many ways was
more open to the assaults of fear than any which could well be
devised. She was frail and delicate, liable to acute nervous
depression, intensely shy and sensitive, and susceptible as well;
that is to say that her shyness did not isolate her from her kind;
she wanted to be loved, respected, even admired. When she did love,
she loved with fire and passion and desperate loyalty.
Her life was from beginning to end full of sharp and tragic
experiences. She was born and brought up in a bleak moorland
village, climbing steeply and grimly to the edge of heathery
uplands. The bare parsonage, with its little dark rooms, looks out
on a churchyard paved with graves. Her father was a kindly man, but
essentially moody and solitary. He took all his meals alone, walked
alone, sate alone. Her mother died of cancer, when she was but a
child. Then she was sent to an ill-managed austere school, and here
when she was nine years old her two elder sisters died. She took
service two or three times as a governess, and endured agonies of
misunderstanding, suspicious of her employers, afraid of her
pupils, longing for home with an intense yearning.
Pages:
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138