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Words: 119574 in 17 pages
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Part the First. THE CHILD.
As in a theatre, after the overture is played, the first thing shown to the audience is the scene in which the action of the drama commences, so let our first words be devoted to the locality in which the story opens.
I doubt whether the pretty shrub from which Rosemary Lane derived its name was ever seen in the locality, or whether, being seen, it would have been recognised as a familiar sign. Rosemary has a peculiarly sweet odour; Rosemary Lane had not. In one sense there was fitness in the name; for as the flower of rosemary has frequently been used as an emblem of constancy and fidelity, so in Rosemary Lane, poor and humble as it was, might be found living proofs of the existence of those qualities.
It was in this locality that our heroine was reared.
Where she came from, whether she had a relative in the world, and what was her real name, were sealed mysteries to the inhabitants of Rosemary Lane.
As to where she came from, the hazard of a kind gossip, who said that the child dropped as it might be from heaven among them, was accepted, in lieu of a hazard more reasonable.
She must have had at some time, a mother, but whether that mother was alive or dead, was not known, and there were no means of ascertaining. Her father, we will, for the present, leave out of the question--as fathers are frequently willing, and occasionally grateful, to be left.
As to her real name, it mattered little. One was found for her in Rosemary Lane.
What little else was known concerning her shall be briefly told.
In the year 1848, Europe was convulsed with civil war. Firebrands were abundant, but not more abundant than the hands ready to use them. Red was the favourite colour, and blood and fire supplied it freely. The gutters ran with the stream of the one, and the heavens reflected the glare of the other.
It was a time of solemn awful tragedies. And because the gutters were not purified when the blood was cleared away, men despaired who had grasped at shadows. And because the heavens were bright and fair when the dreadful glare had died out of them, milder theorists still hoped that the day would come when their dreams should be realised.
There was to be a monster meeting at Bonner's Fields, and the inhabitants of Rosemary Lane and the surrounding neighbourhood flocked to the spot made historically famous by the bishop who played his ruthless part in the reign of bloody Mary.
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