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Автор Аня Сетон

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Author's Note

THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I lov'd, I loved alone.

Then— in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev'ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that 'round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass'd me flying by—

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

'Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

Author's Note

THIS STORY WAS SUGGESTED BY A NEWS ITEM IN THE New York Herald, 1849, but the main characters are entirely fictional. The historical framework—manor system, anti-rent wars, Astor Place massacre, and steamboat race—is, however, founded on fact, and I have tried to be accurate in presenting it and all background detail.

There was, on the Hudson, a way of life such as this, and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck. All Gothic magnificence and eerie manifestations were not at that time inevitably confined to English castles or Southern plantations!

I want to thank the patient and helpful librarians at the Greenwich Library, and many kind people who facilitated my research in Hudson, Albany, Kinderhook, Cornwall, and other towns along the river.

I am particularly grateful to Mr. Carl Carmer, not only for his book 'The Hudson,' to which I am very much indebted, but for his personal help and interest.

IT WAS ON AN AFTERNOON IN MAY OF 1844 THAT the letter came from Dragonwyck.

One of the Mead boys had seen it lying in the Horseneck post office, and had thoughtfully carried it with him three miles up the Stanwich road to deliver it at the Wells farmhouse.

When the letter came, Miranda was, most regrettably, doing not one of the tasks which should have occupied the hour from two to three.

She was not in the springhouse churning butter, she was not weeding the vegetable patch, nor even keeping more than half an absent-minded eye on Charity, the baby, who had kicked off her blanket and was chewing on a blade of sweet meadow grass, delighted with her freedom.

Miranda had hidden behind the stone wall in the quiet little family burying-ground on the north side of the apple orchard as far from the house as possible. It was her favorite retreat. The seven tombstones which marked graves of her father's family were no more than seven peaceful friends. Even the tiny stone in the corner beneath the giant elm had no tragic significance though it was marked, 'Daniel Wells, son of Ephraim and Abigail Wells, who departed this life April 7th, 1836, aged one year,' and covered the body of her baby brother. Miranda had been ten during little Danny's short life, and he was now nothing but a gently poignant memory.