And it was curious to find, as Mr.
Traveller found by stopping for a new direction at this farm-house or at
that cottage as he went along, with how much accuracy the morbid Mopes
had counted on the weakness of his neighbours to embellish him. A mist
of home-brewed marvel and romance surrounded Mopes, in which (as in all
fogs) the real proportions of the real object were extravagantly
heightened. He had murdered his beautiful beloved in a fit of jealousy
and was doing penance; he had made a vow under the influence of grief; he
had made a vow under the influence of a fatal accident; he had made a vow
under the influence of religion; he had made a vow under the influence of
drink; he had made a vow under the influence of disappointment; he had
never made any vow, but "had got led into it" by the possession of a
mighty and most awful secret; he was enormously rich, he was stupendously
charitable, he was profoundly learned, he saw spectres, he knew and could
do all kinds of wonders. Some said he went out every night, and was met
by terrified wayfarers stalking along dark roads, others said he never
went out, some knew his penance to be nearly expired, others had positive
information that his seclusion was not a penance at all, and would never
expire but with himself. Even, as to the easy facts of how old he was,
or how long he had held verminous occupation of his blanket and skewer,
no consistent information was to be got, from those who must know if they
would. He was represented as being all the ages between five-and-twenty
and sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, twelve, twenty,
thirty,--though twenty, on the whole, appeared the favourite term.
"Well, well!" said Mr. Traveller. "At any rate, let us see what a real
live Hermit looks like."
So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he came to Tom Tiddler's
Ground.
It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid
waste as completely, as if he had been born an Emperor and a Conqueror.
Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently substantial, all the
window-glass of which had been long ago abolished by the surprising
genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were barred across with
rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the outside. A rickyard,
hip-high in vegetable rankness and ruin, contained outbuildings from
which the thatch had lightly fluttered away, on all the winds of all the
seasons of the year, and from which the planks and beams had heavily
dropped and rotted. The frosts and damps of winter, and the heats of
summer, had warped what wreck remained, so that not a post or a board
retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted
from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this
homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away
among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments
of certain ricks: which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they
looked like mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler's
ground could even show its ruined water; for, there was a slimy pond into
which a tree or two had fallen--one soppy trunk and branches lay across
it then--which in its accumulation of stagnant weed, and in its black
decomposition, and in all its foulness and filth, was almost comforting,
regarded as the only water that could have reflected the shameful place
without seeming polluted by that low office.
Mr.
