T H E D A Y S O F M Y L I F E.

THE FIRST DAY.

I WAS going home from the village, and it was an autumn evening, just after sunset, when every crop was cut and housed in our level country, and when the fields of stubble and browned grass had nothing on them, except here and there, a tree. They say our bare flats, in Cambridgeshire, are neither picturesque, nor beautiful. I cannot say for that—but I know no landscape has ever caught my eye like the long line of sunburnt, wiry grass, and the great, wide arch above, with all its shades of beautiful color. There were no hedgerows to skirt the path on which I was, and I saw nothing between me and the sky, save a solitary figure stalking along the highway, and in the other direction the clump of trees which surrounded Cottiswoode; the sky, in the west, was still full of the colors of the sunset, and from the horizon it rose upward in a multitude of tints and shades, the orange and red melting into a rosy flush which contrasted for a while, and then fell into the sweet, calm, peaceful tone of the full blue. In the time of the year, and the look of the night, there was alike that indescribable composure and satisfaction which are in the sunny evenings after harvest; the work was done, the day was fading, everything was going home; the rooks sailed over the sky, and the laborer trudged across the moor. Labor was over, and provision made, and the evening and the night, peace and refreshment, and rest were coming for every man. I do not suppose I noticed this at the time, but I have the strongest impression of it all in my remembrance now.

And I was passing along, as I always did, quickly and, perhaps, with a firmer and a steadier step than was usual to girls of my years, swinging in my hand a bit of briony, which, for the sake of its beautiful berries, I was carrying home, but which stood a good chance of being destroyed before we got there—not taking leisure to look much about me, thinking of nothing particular, with a little air of the superior, the lady of the manor, in my independent carriage—a little pride of proprietorship in my firm footstep.

I was going home—when there suddenly appeared two figures before me, advancing on my way. I say two figures, because in our country everything stands out so clear upon the great universal background of sky, that I could not so truly say it was a man and a boy, as two dark outlines, clearly marked and separated from the low, broad level of the country, and the arch of heaven, which now approached upon me. I cannot help an unconscious estimate of character from the tricks of gesture and carriage, which, perhaps, could not have been so visible anywhere else, as here, upon this flat, unbroken road. One of these figures was a stooping and pliant one, with a sort of sinuous twisting motion, noiseless and sidelong, as if his habit was to twist and glide through ways too narrow to admit the passage of a man; the other form was that of a boy—a slight figure, which, to my perfect health and girlish courage, looked timid and hesitating; the brightness of the sky behind cast the faces of the strangers into shadow—but my eye was caught by the unfamiliar outlines; they were strangers, that was sure.

We gradually approached nearer, for I was walking quickly, though their pace was slow; but before we met my thoughts had wandered off from them, and I was greatly astonished by the sudden address which brought me to an abrupt pause before them. “Young lady,” the man said, with an awkward bow, “what is your name?”

I was a country girl, and utterly beyond the reach of fear from impertinence. I was my father’s daughter, moreover, and loftily persuaded that nothing disrespectful could approach me. I answered immediately with a little scorn of the question—for to be unknown in my own country was a new sensation—“I am Hester Southcote, of Cottiswoode,” and having said so, was about to pass on.

“Ah, indeed! it is just as I thought, then,” said the stranger, wheeling his young companion round, so as to place him side by side with me. “We are going back to Cottiswoode—we will have the pleasure of your company; I am quite happy we have met.”

But my girlish disdain did not annihilate the bold intruder; it only brought a disagreeable smile to his mouth which made him look still more like some dangerous unknown animal to me. I was not very well versed in society, nor much acquainted with the world, but I knew by intuition that this person, though quite as well dressed as any one I had ever seen, was not a gentleman; he was one of those nondescripts whom you could not respect either for wealth or poverty—one of those few people you could be disrespectful to, without blushing for yourself.

“Do you want any thing at Cottiswoode?” I asked accordingly, not at all endeavoring to conceal that I thought my new companion a very unsuitable visitor at my father’s house.

“Yes! we want a great deal at Cottiswoode,” said the stranger, significantly; and as I raised my head in wonder and indignation, I could not but observe how the boy lagged behind, and how his companion constantly attempted to drag him forward close to me.

With an impatient impulse, I gathered up the folds of my dress in my hand and drew another step apart. I was the only child of a haughty gentleman. I did not know what it was to be addressed in the tone of a superior, and I was fully more annoyed than angry—but with a young girl’s grand and innocent assumption, I held my head higher. “You are not aware whom you are speaking to,” I said, proudly; but I was very much confused and disconcerted when the stranger answered me by a laugh—and the laugh was still less pleasant than the smile, for there was irritation mingled with its sneer.

“I am perfectly aware whom I am speaking to, Miss,” he said, rather more coarsely than he had yet spoken; “better aware than the young lady is who tells me so, or than my lord himself among the trees yonder,” and he pointed at Cottiswoode, to which we were drawing near. “But you will find it best to be friends,” he continued, after a moment, in a tone intended to be light and easy, “look what I have brought you—here’s this pretty young gentleman is your cousin.”

“My cousin!” I said, with great astonishment, “I have no cousin.”

“Oh, no! I dare say!” said the man, with such a sneer of insinuation, that in my childish passion I could have struck him, almost. “I’d disown him, out and out, if I were you.”

“What do you mean, sir?” I said, stopping short and turning round upon him; then my eye caught the face of the boy, which was naturally pale, but now greatly flushed with shame and anger, as I thought; he looked shrinking, and timid, and weak, with his delicate blue-veined temples, his long, fair hair, and refined mild face. I felt myself so strong, so sunburnt, so ruddy, and with such a strength and wealth of life, in presence of this delicate and hesitating boy. “What does he mean,” I repeated, addressing him, “does he mean that I say what is not true?”

“I will tell you what I mean, my dear young lady,” said the man, suddenly changing his tone, “I mean what I have just been to tell your amiable father; though, of course, both yourself and the good gentleman have your own reasons for doubting me—I mean that this is your cousin, Mr. Edgar Southcote, the son of your father’s elder brother, Brian Southcote, who died in India ten years ago—that’s what I mean!”

The man had his eyes fixed upon me with a broad full gaze, as if he expected a contradiction; but, of course, after hearing this, I did not care in the least how the man looked, or what he had to do with it—I turned very eagerly to look at the boy.

“Are you really my cousin?” said I, “have you just come from India? why did we never know before? and your name is Edgar?—a great many of the Southcotes have been called Edgar—how old are you?—I never knew I had a cousin, or any near friends, and neither did papa; but I have heard every body talk of uncle Brian. Poor boy! you have no father—you are not so happy as I—”

But to my great amazement, and just at the moment I was holding out my hand to him, and was about to say that my father would love him as he did me—my new cousin, a boy, a man—he ought to have had more spirit!—suddenly burst into a great fit of tears, and in the strangest passionate manner, cried out to the man, “I cannot bear it, Saville—Saville, take me away!”

I had no longer any curiosity or care about the man; but I was very much surprised at this, and could not understand it—and I was a little ashamed and indignant besides to see a boy cry.

“What is the matter?” I asked again, with some of my natural imperiousness, “why do you cry—is anything wrong? Is your name Edgar Southcote, and yet you cry like a child? Do you not know we are called the proudest house in the country; and what is this man doing, or what does he want here? why should he take you away? you ought to be at Cottiswoode if you are Edgar Southcote—what do you mean?”

“Cheer up, Master Edgar—your cousin is quite right, you ought to be at Cottiswoode, and nowhere else, my boy,” said the man, giving him such a blow on the shoulders, in encouragement, that the delicate boy trembled under it. “Why, where is your spirit! come, come, since the young lady’s owned you, we’ll go straight to the old gentleman again; and you’ll see what papa will say to you, Miss, when he sees what you bring him home.”

I did not answer, but turned away my head from this person, who filled me with disgust and annoyance: then their slow pace roused me to impatience. I was always a few steps before them, for Saville’s gliding pace was uniformly slow, and the pale boy, who was called my cousin, lingered still more than his companion. He never answered me—not a word, though I put so many questions to him, and he seemed so downcast and sad, so unlike a boy going home—so very, very unlike me, that I could not understand him. I was so very eager to return to tell my father, and to ask him if this was truly an Edgar Southcote, that our slow progress chafed me the more.

We were now drawing very near to Cottiswoode; every dark leaf of the trees was engraved on the flush of many colors which still showed in the sky the road where the sun had gone down—and among them rose my father’s house, the home of our race, with its turrets rising gray upon the sky like an old chateau of France or Scotland, without a hill in sight to harmonize that picturesque architecture: nothing but the elm trees and the olive shade of the great walnut, with the flat moors and sunburnt grass, running away in vast level lines into the sky. Cottiswoode, the house of all our ancestors, where every room was a chapter in the history of our name, and every Southcote of renown still lived upon the ancient walls—I could not fancy one of us approaching, without a flush and tremor, the family dwelling-place. But Edgar Southcote’s pale cheek was not warmed by the faintest color—I thought he looked as if he must faint or die—he no longer glanced at me or at his companion; and when I turned to him, I saw only the pale eyelids with their long lashes, the drooping head, and foot that faltered now at every step—a strange boy! could he be of our blood after all?

The front of Cottiswoode was somewhat gloomy, for there was only a carriage-road sweeping through the trees, and a small shrubbery thickly planted with evergreens before the great door. When we were near enough, I saw my father pacing up and down hurriedly through the avenue of elms which reaches up to the shrubbery. When I saw him, I became still more perplexed than before—my father was reserved, and never betrayed himself or his emotions to the common eye; I could not comprehend why he was here, showing an evident agitation, and disturbed entirely out of his usual calm.

And as quickly as I did, the stranger noticed him. This man fixed his eye upon my father with a sneer, which roused once more to the utmost, my girlish passion. I could not tell what it meant, but there was an insinuation in it, which stung me beyond bearing, especially when I saw the trouble on my father’s face, which was generally so calm. I hurried forward anxious to be first, yet involuntarily waiting for my strange companions. The man too quickened his pace a little, but the boy lagged behind so drearily, and drooped his head with such a pertinacious sadness—though the very elm trees of Cottiswoode were rustling their leaves above him—that in my heat, and haste, and eagerness, I knew not what to do.

“Papa!” I said anxiously; my father heard me, and turned round with a sudden eager start, as though he was glad of my coming; but when he met my glance, and saw how I was accompanied, I cannot describe the flash of resentment, of haughty inquiry, and bitterness that shone from my father’s eye—I saw it, but was too much excited to ask for an explanation. “Papa,” I cried, again springing forward upon his arm, “this is Edgar Southcote, my cousin—did they tell you? I am sorry he does not seem to care for coming home, but he has been all his life in India, I suppose—Uncle Brian’s son, papa—and his name is Edgar! did you send him to meet me? tell him you are glad that he has come home; look at Cottiswoode, Edgar—dear Cottiswoode, where all the Southcotes lived and died. What ails him? I believe he will faint. Papa—papa, let the boy know he is welcome home!”

“Hester!” said my father in an ominous cold tone, “restrain your feelings—I have no reason to believe there is an Edgar Southcote in existence. I do not believe my brother Brian left a son—I cannot receive this boy as Edgar Southcote—he may be this man’s son for aught I know.”

The boy’s wan face woke up at these words; he shook his long hair slightly back upon the faint wind, and raised his eyes full of sudden light and courage. I understood nothing of my father’s reluctance to acknowledge the stranger. I pleaded his cause with all my heart.

“He is not this man’s son,” I exclaimed eagerly, “papa, he is a gentleman! Look, he has been so sad and downcast till now, but he wakes when you accuse him—he is an orphan, poor boy, poor boy! say he is welcome home.”

“You had best,” said Saville, and the contrast between my own voice of excitement, and these significant tones with their constant sneer and insinuation of evil, struck me very strangely, “the young lady is wise—it is your best policy, I can tell you, to receive him well in his own house.”

My father’s haughty face flushed with an intolerable sense of insult, and I saw Edgar shrink as if something had stung him. “Hester, my love, leave me!” said my father, “I will deal with this fellow alone. Go, keep your kind heart for your friends. I tell you these pretensions are false—do you hear me, child?”

I never doubted my father before; when I looked from his face which was full of passion, yet clouded with an indescribable shadow of doubt, to the insolent mocking of the man beside him, I grew bewildered and uncertain; did my father believe himself? Yet I neither could nor would put faith in the elder stranger. I had been so constantly with my father, and had so much licence given me, that I could not obey him; and I did what I have always done—I suddenly obeyed my own sudden impulse, and turned to the boy.

“I do not believe what he will say,” I said rapidly, “but I will trust you; are you Edgar Southcote? are you my cousin? you will not tell a lie.”

The boy paused, hesitated; but he had raised his eyes to mine, and he did not withdraw them. His face crimsoned over with a delicate yet deep flush, like a girl’s—then he grew pale—and then he said slowly—

“I cannot tell a lie—my father’s name was Brian Southcote, I am Edgar; I will not deny my name.”

I cried out triumphantly, “Now, papa!” but my father made an impatient gesture commanding me away; it was so distinctly a command now, that I was awed and dared not disobey him. I turned away very slowly through the thick evergreens, looking back and lingering as I went. I was just about to turn round by the great Portugal laurel, which would have hid from me these three figures standing together among the elm trees and against the sky, when my father called me to him again. I returned towards him gladly, for I had been very reluctant to go away.

“Hester, these gentlemen will accompany you,” he said, with a contemptuous emphasis, “show them to my library, and I will come to you.”

I cannot tell to what a pitch my anxiety and excitement had risen—it was so high, at least, that without question or remark, only very quickly and silently, I conducted my companions to the house, and introduced them to my father’s favorite room, the library. It was a very long, large room, rather gloomy in the greater part of it, but with one recessed and windowed corner as bright as day. My life had known no studies and few pleasures, that were not associated with this un-bright corner, with its cushioned window-seat and beautiful oriel. When we entered, it was almost twilight by my father’s writing-table, behind which was the great window with the fragrant walnut foliage overshadowing it like a miniature forest—but a clear, pale light, the evening blessing—light, as sweet and calm as heaven itself, shone in upon my little vase of faint, sweet roses—roses gathered from a tree that blossomed all the year through, but all the year through was sad and faint, and never came to the flush of June. Edgar Southcote sank wearily into a chair almost by the door of the library, but Saville, whom I almost began to hate, bustled about at once from one window to another, looking at everything.

“Fine old room—I’d make two of it,” said this fellow; “have down a modern architect, my boy, and make the place something like. Eh, Edgar! what, tired? you had better pluck up a spirit, or how am I to manage this worthy, disinterested uncle of yours?”

I could not let the man think I had heard him, but left the room to seek my father—what could he mean? I met my father at the door, and with a slight wave of his hand bidding me follow him, he went on before me to the dining parlor, the only other room we used; my excitement had deepened into painful anxiety—something was wrong—it was a new thought and a new emotion to me.

“What is the matter, papa?” I said, anxiously, “what is wrong? what has happened? do you think this is not my cousin, or are you angry that he has come? Father, you loved my uncle Brian, do you not love his son?”

“Hester!” said my father, turning away his troubled face from my gaze and the light, “I will not believe that this boy is my brother Brian’s son.”

“But he says he is, papa,” I answered, with eagerness; I did not believe in lying, and Edgar Southcote’s pale face was beyond the possibility of untruth.

“It is worth his while to say it,” my father exclaimed hurriedly; then a strange spasm of agitation crossed his face—he turned to me again as if with an irrestrainable impulse to confide his trouble to me. “Hester! Brian was my elder brother,” he said in a low, quick whisper, and almost stealthily. I did not comprehend him. I was only a child—the real cause of his distress never occurred to me.

“I know it would be very hard to take him home to Cottiswoode for a Southcote, and then to find out he was not uncle Brian’s son,” I said, looking up anxiously at my father, “and you know better than I, and remember my uncle; but papa—I believe him—see! I knew it—he is like that picture there!”

My father turned to the picture with a start of terror; it was an Edgar Southcote I was pointing to—a philosopher; one of the few of our house, who loved wisdom better than houses or lands, one who had died early after a sad short life. My father’s face burned as he looked at the picture; the refined visionary head drooping over a book, and the large delicate eyelids with their long lashes were so like, so very like!—it struck him in a moment. “Papa, I believe him,” I repeated very earnestly. My father started from me, and paced about the room in angry agitation.

“I have trained you to be mistress of Cottiswoode, Hester,” he said, when he returned to me. “I have taught you from your cradle to esteem above all things your name and your race—and now, and now, child, do you not understand me? if this boy is Brian’s son, Cottiswoode is his!”

It was like a flash of sudden lightning in the dark, revealing for an instant everything around, so terribly clear and visible—I could not speak at first. I felt as if the withering light had struck me, and I shivered and put forth all my strength to stand erect and still; then I felt my face burn as if my veins were bursting. “This was what he meant!”

“What, who meant? Who?” cried my father.

“You believe he is Edgar Southcote, papa?” said I, “you believe him as I do; I see it in your face—and the man sneers at you—you, father! because it is your interest to deny the boy. Let us go away, and leave him Cottiswoode if it is his; you would not do him wrong, you would not deny him his right—father, father, come away!”

And I saw him, a man whose calm was never broken by the usual excitements of life, a man so haughty and reserved that he never showed his emotions even to me—I saw him dash his clenched hand into the air with a fury and agony terrible to see. I could not move nor speak, I only stood and gazed at him, following his rapid movements as he went and came in his passion of excitement, pacing about the room; the every day good order and arrangement of every thing around us; the calm light of evening, which began to darken; the quiet house where there was no sound of disturbance, but only the softened hum of tranquil life—the trees rustling without, the grass growing, and night coming softly down out of the skies; nothing sympathized with his fiery passion, except his daughter who stood gazing at him, half a woman, half a child—and nothing at all in all the world sympathized with me.

Very gradually he calmed, and the paroxysm was over; then my father came to me, and put his hands on my shoulders, and looked into my strained eyes; I could not bear his gaze, though I had been gazing at him so long, and thick and heavy, my tears began to fall; then he stooped over me and kissed my brow. “My disinherited child!” that was all he said—and he left me and went away.

Then I sat down on the carpet by the low window, and cried—cried “as if my heart were breaking,” but hearts do not break that get relief in such a flood of child’s tears. I felt something in my hand as I put it up to my wet eyes. It was the bit of briony which I had carried unwittingly a long, long way, through all my first shock of trouble. Yes! there were the beautiful tinted berries in their clusters uninjured even by my hand—but the stem was crushed and broken, and could support them no longer; the sight of it roused me out of my vague but bitter distress—I spread it out upon my hand listlessly, and thought of the low hedge from which I had pulled it, a bank of flowers the whole summer through. It was our own land—our own land—was it ours no longer now?

In a very short time, I was disturbed by steps and voices, and my father came into the room with Edgar and his disagreeable companion; then came Whitehead, bringing in the urn and tea-tray, and I had to make tea for them. I did not speak at all, neither did my new cousin; and my father was polite, but very lofty and reserved, and behaved to Saville with such a grand courtesy, as a prince might have shown to a peasant; the man was overpowered and silenced by it, I saw, and could no longer be insolent, though he tried. My father took his cup of tea very slowly and deliberately, and then he rose and said, “I am quite at your service,” and Saville followed him out of the room.

We two were left together; my new cousin was about my own age I thought—though indeed he was older—but while I had the courage of health and high spirits, of an unreproved and almost uncontrolled childhood, the boy was timid as a weak frame, a susceptible temper, and a lonely orphanhood could make him. We sat far apart from each other, in the large dark room, and did not speak a word; a strange sudden bitterness and resentment against this intruder had come to my heart. I looked with contempt and dislike at his slight form and pallid face. I raised my own head with a double pride and haughtiness—this was the heir of Cottiswoode and of the Southcotes, this lad whose eye never kindled at sight of the old house—and I was disinherited!

It grew gradually dark, but I sat brooding in my bitterness and anger, and never thought of getting lights. The trees were stirring without, in the faint night wind which sighed about Cottiswoode, and I could see the pensive stars coming out one by one on the vast breadth of sky—but nothing stirred within. Edgar was at one end of the room, I at the other—he did not disturb me, and I never spoke to him, but involuntarily all this time, I was watching him—he could not raise his hand to his head but I saw it; he could not move upon his chair without my instant observation; for all so dark as the room was, and so absorbed in my own thoughts as was I.

At length my heart beat to see him rise and approach towards me. I was tempted to spring up, to denounce and defy the intruder, and leave him so—but I did not—I only rose and waited for him, leaning against the window. He came up with his soft step stealing through the darkness. “Cousin,” he said, in a low voice, which sounded very youthful, yet had a ring of manhood in it, too, “cousin, it is not Edgar Southcote who has come to Cottiswoode, but a great misfortune—what am I to do?—you took part with me, you believed me, Hester: tell me what I am to do to make myself something else than a calamity to my Uncle and to you?”

He spoke very earnestly, but his voice did not touch my heart, it only quickened my resentment. “Do nothing except justice,” said I, in my girlish, passionate way. “We are Southcotes, do you think we cannot bear a misfortune? but you do not know your race, nor what it is. If you are the heir of Cottiswoode do you think anything you could do, would make my father keep what is not his? No, you can do nothing except justice. My father is not a man to be pitied.”

“Nor do I mean to pity him,” said the boy, gently, “I respect my father’s brother, though my father’s brother doubts me. Will you throw me off then? you judge of me, perhaps, by my companion. Ah! that would be just; I do not care for justice, cousin Hester; I want that which you reject so bitterly—pity, compassion, love!”

“Pity is a cheat,” said I, quoting words which my father had often said, “and when you have justice you will not need pity.”

He stood looking at me for a moment, and though my pride would not give way, my heart relented. “When I have justice—is that when I have my father’s inheritance?” said Edgar, slowly, “that will not give me a father, or a mother, or a friend. I will need pity more, and not less, than now.”

He did not speak again, and I could not answer him; no, I could not answer his gentle words, nor open my heart to him again. A stranger, an unknown boy; and he was to take from my father his ancestral house, his lands, his very rank and degree! I clasped my hands and hardened my heart; let him have justice, I said within myself—justice—we would await it proudly, and obey it without a murmur; but we rejected the sympathy of our supplanter; let him, as we did, stand alone.

But I could not help a wistful look after him as Edgar went away with his most unsuitable companion along the level, dark, long road to the village inn. My father stood with me at the door gazing after them, with a strange, fascinated eye, and when they passed into the distance out of our sight, he drew a long breath of relief, and, in a faint voice, bade me come in. I followed him to the library where lights were burning. The large, dim room looked chill and desolate as we entered it, and I saw a chair thrust aside from the table, where Saville had been sitting opposite my father. I stood beside him now, for he held my hand and would not let me go. He had been quite dignified and self-possessed when we parted with the strangers, but now his face relaxed into a strange ease and weariness. We were alone in the world, my father and I, but his thoughts were not often such as could be told to a girl like me; and I think I had never felt such a thrill of affectionate delight as now, when I saw him yield before me to his new trouble—when he took his child into his confidence, and suffered no veil of appearance to interpose between us.

“Hester,” he said, holding my hand lightly in his own; “I have heard all this story; the man is a relation, he tells me, of Brian’s wife; and though I cannot understand how my brother should so have demeaned himself, yet the story, I cannot dispute, has much appearance of truth. I like to be prepared for the worst—Hester! I wish you to think of it. Do you understand at all what will happen to us if this be true?”

“Scarcely, papa,” said I.

“Cottiswoode will be ours no longer; the rank and consideration we have been accustomed to, will be ours no longer,” said my father, with a slight shudder. “Hester, do you hear what I say?”

“Yes, I am thinking, papa,” said I, “poverty, want—I know the words; but I do not know what they mean.”

“We shall not have poverty or want to undergo,” said my father quickly, with a little impatience, “we will have to endure downfall, Hester—overthrow, exile and banishment—worse things than want or poverty. We shall have to endure—child, child, go to your child’s rest, and close those bright, questioning eyes of yours! You do not understand what this grievous calamity is to me!”

I withdrew from him a little, pained and cast down, while he rose once more, and paced the room with measured steps. I watched his lofty figure retiring into the darkness and returning to the light with reverence and awe. He was not a country gentleman dispossessed of his property to my overstrained imagination, but a king compelled to abdicate, a sovereign prince banished from his dominions; and his own feelings were as romantic, as exalted, I might say as exaggerated as mine.

After a little while he returned to me, restored to his usual composure.

“It is time to go to rest, Hester—good-night. In the morning I will know better what this is; and to-morrow—to-morrow,” he drew a long breath as he stooped over me, “to-morrow we will gird ourselves for our overthrow. Good-night!”

And this was now the night-fall on the first day which I can detach and separate from all the childhood and youthful years before it—the beginning of the days of my life.

THE SECOND DAY.

IT was late in October, and winter was coming fast; in all the paths about Cottiswoode the fallen leaves lay thick, and every breath of air brought them down in showers. But though these breezes were so melancholy at night when they moaned about the house, as if in lamentation for us, who were going away, in the morning when the sun was out the chilled gale was only bracing and full of wild pleasure, as it blew full over the level of our moors, with nothing to break its force for miles.

My own pale monthly rose had its few faint blossoms always; but I do not like the flowers of autumn, those ragged dull chrysanthemums and grand dahlias which are more like shrubs than flowers. The jessamine that waved into my window was always wet, and constantly dropping a little dark melancholy leaflet upon the window-ledge—and darker than ever were the evergreens—those gloomy lifeless trees which have no sympathy with nature. Before this, every change of the seasons brought only a varied interest to me; but this year, I could see nothing but melancholy and discouragement in the waning autumn, the lengthening nights and the chilled days. I still took long rambles on the flat high roads, and through the dry stubble fields and sun-burnt moors—but I was restless and disconsolate; this morning I returned from a long walk, tired, as it is so unnatural to feel in the morning—impatient at the wind that caught my dress, and at the leaves that dropped down upon me as I came up the avenue—wondering where all the light and color had gone which used to flush with such a splendid animation the great world of sky, where everything now was cold blue and watery white—looking up at Cottiswoode, where all the upper windows were open, admitting a damp unfriendly breeze. Cottiswoode itself, for the first time, looked deserted and dreary; oh, these opened windows! how comfortless they looked, and how well I could perceive the air of weary excitement about the whole house—for we were to leave it to-day.

The table was spread for breakfast in the dining-parlor; but already a few things were away, an old-fashioned cabinet which had been my mother’s and the little book-case where were all the books in their faded pretty bindings which had been given to her when she was a young lady and a bride—these were mine, and had always been called mine, and the wall looked very blank where they had stood; and my chair, with the embroidered cover of my mother’s own working; I missed it whenever I came into the room. There were other things gone too, everything which was my father’s own, and did not belong to Cottiswoode, and everybody knows how desolate a room looks which has nothing but the barely necessary furniture—the table and the chairs. To make it a little less miserable, a fire had been lighted; but it was only raw, and half kindled, and, I think, if possible, made this bare room look even less like home. My tears almost choked me when I came into it; but I was very haughty and proud in my downfall and would not cry, though I longed to do it. My father was still in the library, and I went to seek him there. He was sitting by his own table doing nothing, though he had writing materials by him, and a book at his hand. He was leaning his head upon both his hands, and looking full before him into the vacant air, with the fixed gaze of thought—I saw, that from his still and composed countenance, his proud will had banished every trace of emotion—yet I saw, nevertheless, how underneath this calm exterior, his heart was running over with the troubles and remembrances of his subdued and passionate life.

For I knew my father was passionate in everything, despite his habitual restraint and quietness—passionate in his few deep-seated and unchanging loves—and passionate in the strong, but always suppressed resentment which he kept under as a Christian, but never subdued as a man. I stood back as I looked, in reverence for the suffering it must have cost him to retrace, as I saw he was doing, all his life at Cottiswoode; but he heard the rustle of my dress, and, starting with an impatient exclamation, called me to him. “Breakfast, papa,” said I, hesitating, and with humility—a strange smile broke on his face.

“Surely, Hester, let us go to breakfast,” he said, rising slowly as if his very movements required deliberation to preserve their poise and balance—and then he took me by the hand, as he had done when I was a child, and we went from the one room to the other, and sat down at a corner of the long dining-table—for our pleasant round table at which we usually breakfasted, had, like the other things, been taken away.

My father made a poor pretence to eat—and kept up a wavering conversation with me about books and study. I tried to answer him as well as I was able; but it was strange to be talking of indifferent things the day we were to leave Cottiswoode, and my heart seemed to flutter at my throat and choked me, when I ventured a glance round the room. More than a month had passed since that visit of misfortune had brought a new claimant upon our undisturbed possession, and Edgar Southcote’s rights had been very clearly made out, and this was why we were to leave to-day.

We were still sitting at the breakfast-table, when the letters were brought in. My father opened one of them, glanced over it, and then tossed it to me. It was a letter from my cousin, such a one as he had several times received before, entreating him with the most urgent supplications to remain in Cottiswoode. It was a very simple boyish letter, but earnest and sincere enough to have merited better treatment at our hands—I have it still, and had almost cried over it, when I saw it the last time—though I read it with resentment this morning, and lifted my head haughtily, and exclaimed at the boy’s presumption: “I suppose he would like to give us permission to stay in Cottiswoode,” I said bitterly, and my father smiled at me as he rose and went back to the library—I knew him better than to disturb him again, so I hurried out of the room which was so miserable to look at, and went to my own chamber up-stairs.

My pretty room with its bright chintz hangings, and its muslin draperies which I did not care for, and yet loved! for I was not a young lady at this time, but only a courageous independent girl, brought up by a man, and more accustomed to a library than a boudoir; and feminine tastes were scarcely awakened in me. I was more a copy of my father than anything else; but still with a natural love of the beautiful, I liked my pretty curtains, and snowy festoons of muslin—I liked the delicacy and grace they gave—I liked the inferred reverence for my youth and womanhood which claimed these innocent adornments; and more than all I loved Alice, who provided them for me. Alice was my own attendant, my friend and guide and counsellor; she was a servant, yet she was the only woman whom I held in perfect respect, and trusted with all my heart. After my father, I loved Alice best of all the world; but with a very different love. In my intercourse with my father, he was the actor and I the looker-on, proud when he permitted me to sympathize with him, doubly proud when he opened his mind, and showed me what he felt and thought. To bring my little troubles and annoyances, my girlish outbreaks of indignation or of pleasure to disturb his calm, would have been desecration—but I poured them all in the fullest detail into the ear of Alice, and with every one of the constant claims I made upon her sympathy, I think Alice loved me better. When I was ill, I would rather have leaned upon her kind shoulder than on any pillow, and nothing ever happened to me or in my presence, but I was restless till Alice knew of it. I think, even, her inferior position gave a greater charm to our intercourse—I think an old attached and respected servant is the most delightful of confidants to a child; but, however that may be, Alice was my audience, my chorus, everything to me.

Alice was about forty at this time, I suppose; she had been my mother’s maid, and my nurse, always an important person in the house; she was tall, with rather a large face, and a sweet bright complexion, which always looked fresh and clear like a summer morning; she was not very remarkable for her taste in dress—her caps were always snow-white, her large white aprons so soft and spotless, that I liked to lay my cheek on them, and go to sleep there, as I did when I was a child; but the gown she usually wore was of dark green stuff, very cold and gloomy like the evergreens, and the little printed cashmere shawl on her shoulders would have been almost dingy, but for the white, white muslin kerchief that pressed out of it at the throat and breast. She had large hands, brown and wrinkled, but with such a soft silken touch of kindness;—and this was my Alice as she stood folding up the pretty chintz curtains in my dismantled room.

“Oh, Alice! isn’t it miserable?” I cried while I stood by her side, looking round upon the gradual destruction—I did not want to cry; but it cost me a great effort to keep down the gathering tears.

“Sad enough, Miss Hester,” said Alice, “but, do you know, if you had been brought up in a town, you would not have minded a removal; and you shall soon see such a pretty room in Cambridge that you will not think of Cottiswoode—”

“No place in the world can ever be like Cottiswoode to me,” said I with a little indignation that my great self-control should be so little appreciated. “Of course, I should not wish to stay here when it is not ours,” I went on, rubbing my eyes to get the tears away, “but I will always think Cottiswoode home—no other place will ever be home to me.”

“You are very young, my dear,” said Alice quietly. I was almost angry with Alice, and it provoked me so much to hear her treating my first grief so composedly that the tears which I had restrained, came fast and thick with anger and petulance in them.

“Indeed, it is very cruel of you, Alice!” I said as well as I was able, “do you think I do not mean it?—do you think I do not know what I say?”

“I only think you are very young, poor dear!” said Alice, looking down upon me under her arm, as she stretched up her hands to unfasten the last bit of curtain, “and I am an old woman, Miss Hester. I saw your poor mamma come away from her home to find a new one here; it was a great change to her, for all so much as her child likes Cottiswoode—she liked her own home very dearly, Miss Hester, and did not think this great house was to be compared to it—but she came away here of her own will after all—”

“But that was because she was married, Alice,” said I hastily.

“Yes! it was because she was married, and because it is the common way of life,” said Alice; “but, the like of me, Miss Hester, that has parted with many a one dear to me, never to see them again, thinks little, darling, of parting with dead walls.”

“Alice, have you had a great deal of grief,” said I reverently; my attention was already diverted from the main subjects of my morning’s thoughts—for I was very young, as she said, and had a mind open to every interest, that grand privilege of youth.

“I have lost husband and children, father and mother, Miss Hester,” said Alice quietly; she had her back turned to me, but it was not to hide her weeping, for Alice had borne her griefs with her for many, many years. I knew very well that it was as she had said, for she had often told me of them all, and of her babies whom she never could be quite calm about—but she very seldom alluded to them in this way, and never dwelt upon her loss, but always upon themselves. I did not say anything, but I felt ashamed of my passion of grief for Cottiswoode. If I should lose Alice—or, still more frightful misfortune, lose my father, what would Cottiswoode be to me.

“But, my dear young lady was pity herself,” said Alice, after a short pause, “I think I can see her now, when I could not cry myself, how she cried for me; and I parted with her too, Miss Hester. I think she had the sweetest heart in the world; she could not see trouble, but she pitied it, and did her best to help.”

“Alice,” said I hastily, connecting these things by a sudden and involuntary conviction, “why is it that papa says: ‘pity is a cheat.’”

“It is a hard saying, Miss Hester,” said Alice, pausing to look at me; and then she went on with her work, as if this was all she had to say.

“He must have reason for it,” said I, “and when I think of that Edgar Southcote presuming to pity us, I confess it makes me very angry—I cannot bear to be pitied, Alice!”

But Alice went on with her work, and answered nothing; I was left to myself, and received no sympathy in my haughty dislike of anything which acknowledged the superiority of another. I was piqued for the moment. I would a great deal rather that Alice had said, “no one can pity you”—but Alice said nothing of the kind, and after a very little interval my youthful curiosity conquered my pride.

“You have not answered me, but I am sure you know,” said I, “Alice, what does papa mean?”

Alice looked at me earnestly for a moment. “I am only a servant,” she said, as if she consulted with herself, “I have no right to meddle in their secrets—but I care for nothing in the world but them, and I have served her all her days. Yes, Miss Hester, I will tell you,” she concluded suddenly, “because you’ll be a woman soon, and should know what evil spirits there are in this weary, weary life.”

But though she said this, she was slow to begin an explanation—she put away the curtains first, carefully smoothed down and folded into a great chest which stood open beside us, and then she began to lift up my few books, and the simple furniture of my toilette-table, and packed them away for the removal. It was while she was thus engaged, softly coming and going, and wiping off specks of dust in a noiseless, deliberate way, that she told me the story of my father and mother.

“My young lady was an only child, like you, Miss Hester,” said Alice, “but her father’s land was all entailed, and it has passed to a distant cousin now, as you know. I think she was only about eighteen when the two young gentlemen from Cottiswoode began to visit at our house. Mr. Brian came as often as your father—they were always together, and I remember very well how I used to wonder if both of the brothers were in love with Miss Helen, or if the one only came for the other’s sake. Mr. Brian was a very different man from your papa, my dear—there was not such a charitable man in the whole country, and he never seemed to care for himself—but somehow, just because he was so good, he never seemed in earnest about anything he wished—you could not believe he cared for anything so much, but he would give it up if another asked it from him. It’s a very fine thing to be kind and generous, Miss Hester, but that was carrying it too far, you know. If I had been a lady I never would have married Mr. Brian Southcote, for I think he never would have loved me half so much as he would have loved the pleasure of giving me away.

“But you know how different your papa was; I used to think it would be a pleasure to trust anything to Mr. Howard, because whatever he had and cared for, he held as fast as life; and my young lady thought so too, Miss Hester. They were both in love with Miss Helen, and very glad her papa would have been had she chosen Mr. Brian, who was the heir of all. It used to be a strange sight to see them all, poor Mr. Brian so pleasant to everybody, and Mr. Howard so dark and passionate and miserable, and my sweet young lady terrified and unhappy—glad to be good friends with Mr. Brian, because she did not care for him; and so anxious about Mr. Howard, though she scarcely dared to be kind to him, because she thought so much of him in her heart. Your papa was very jealous, Miss Hester, it is his temper, and I am not sure, my dear, that it is not yours; and he knew Mr. Brian was pleasanter spoken than he was, and that everybody liked him—so, to be sure, he thought his brother was certain to be more favored than he—which only showed how little your papa knows, for all so learned a man as he is,” said Alice, shifting her position, and turning her face to me to place a parcel of books in the great chest; “for Mr. Brian was a man to like, and not to love.”

She was blaming my father, and, perhaps, she had more blame to say; but her blame inferred more than praise, I thought, and I listened eagerly. Yes! my father was a man to love and not to like.

“They say courting time is a happy time,” said Alice with a sigh, “it was not so then, Miss Hester. However, they all came to an explanation at last. I cannot tell you how it came about, but we heard one day that Mr. Brian was going abroad, and that Mr. Howard was betrothed to Miss Helen. I knew it before any one else, for my young lady trusted me; and when I saw your papa the next day, his face was glorious to behold, Miss Hester. I think he must have had as much joy in that day as most men have in all their lives, for I don’t think I ever saw him look quite happy again.”

“Alice!”

“My dear, it is quite true,” said Alice quietly, and with another sigh: “I could not tell for a long time what it was that made him so overcast and moody, and neither could my young lady. It could not be Mr. Brian, for Mr. Brian gave her up in the kindest and quietest way; you could not have believed how glad he was to sacrifice himself to his brother—and went away to the West Indies where your grandmamma had an estate, to look after the poor people there; so then the marriage was over very soon, and your grandpapa Southcote took the young people home to live with him at Cottiswoode, and any one that knew how fond he was of Miss Helen, would have thought Mr. Howard had got all the desire of his heart. But he had not, Miss Hester! The heart of man is never satisfied, the Bible says—and I have often seen your papa’s face look as black and miserable after he was married, as when he used to sit watching Mr. Brian and my poor dear young lady. Your mamma did not know what to think of it, but she always hung about him with loving ways and was patient, and drooped, and pined away till my heart was broken to look at her. Then she revived all at once, and there was more life in the house for a little while—she had found out what ailed him: but oh! Miss Hester, a poor woman may set her life on the stake to change a perverse fancy, and never shake it till she dies. Your papa had got it into his head that my young lady had married him out of pity; and all her pretty ways, and her love, and kindnesses, he thought them all an imposition, my dear—and that is the reason why he says that hard, cruel saying, ‘Pity is a cheat!’”

“And then, Alice?” said I, eagerly.

“And then? there was very little more, Miss Hester—she was hurried out of this world when you were born; she had never time to say a word to him, and went away with that bitterness in her heart, that the man she had left father and mother for, never understood her. Death tries faith, my dear, though you know nothing of it! think how I stood looking at her white face in her last rest! Thinking of her life and her youth, and that this was the end of all; so carefully as she had been trained and guarded from a child, and all her education and her books, and such hopes as there were of what she would be when she grew up a woman; but soon I saw that she grew up only to die—God never changes, Miss Hester—he tries a poor woman like me very like the way he tried Abraham—and that was what I call a fiery passage for faith!”

“And my mother, Alice? and poor, poor papa! oh! how did he ever live after it?” cried I, through my tears.

“He lived because it was the will of God—as we all do,” said Alice, “a sad man, and a lonely he is to this day: and will never get comfort in his heart for the wrong he did my dear young lady—never till he meets her in heaven.”

At that moment Alice was called and went away. Poor, poor papa! he was wrong; but how my heart entered into his sufferings. I did not think of the bitterness of love disbelieved and disturbed, of my mother’s silent martyrdom—I thought only of my father, my first of men! He loved her, and he thought she pitied him. I started from my seat at the touch of this intolerable thought. I realized in the most overwhelming fulness, what he meant when he said, “Pity is a cheat!” Pity! it was dreadful to think of it—though it was but a mistake, a fancy—what a terrible cloud it was!

I will not say that this story filled my mind so much, that I do not recollect the other events of that day; on the contrary, I recollect them perfectly, down to the most minute detail; but they are all connected in my mind with my grief for my father—with the strange, powerful compassion I had for him, and some involuntary prescience of my own fate. For it was him I thought of, and never my mother, whom I had never seen, and whose gentle, patient temper was not so attractive to my disposition. No—I never thought he was to blame! I never paused to consider if it was himself who had brought this abiding shadow over his life. I only echoed his words in my heart, and clung to him, in secret, with a profound and passionate sympathy. Pity! I shuddered at the word. I no longer wondered at his haughty rejection of the slightest approach to it—for did not I myself share—exaggerate this very pride.

This mournful tedious day went on, and its dreary business was accomplished: all our belongings were taken away from Cottiswoode, and Alice and another servant accompanied them to set our new house in order before we came. Just before she went away, at noon, when the autumn day was at its brightest, I found Alice cutting the roses from my favorite tree. I stood looking at her, as she took the pale faint flowers one by one, but neither of us spoke at first: at last I asked her, “why do you take them, Alice?” and I spoke so low, and felt so reverential that I think I must have anticipated her reply.

I had to bend forward to her, to hear what she said. “They were your mother’s,” said Alice, “I decked her bride chamber with them, and her last bed. They are like what she was when trouble came.”

She had only left one rose upon the tree, a half blown rose, with dew still lying under its folded leaves, and she went away, leaving me looking at it. I felt reproved, I know not why, as if my young mother was crying to me for sympathy, and I would not give it. No! I went back hastily to the dreary half-emptied library where my father sat. My place was by him—this solitary man, who all his life had felt it rankling in his heart, that he was pitied where he should have been loved.

In the evening, just before sunset, I heard wheels approaching, and on looking out, saw the post-chaise which was to take us to Cambridge coming down the avenue. My father saw it also; we neither of us said anything, but I went away at once to put on my bonnet. It was dreadful to go into these desolate rooms, which were all the more desolate because they were not entirely dismantled, but still had pieces of very old furniture here and there, looking like remains of a wreck. After I had left my own room—a vague dusty wilderness now, with the damp air sighing in at the open lattice, and the loose jessamine bough beating against it, and dropping its dreary little leaves—I stole into the dining parlor for a moment to look at that picture which was like Edgar Southcote. I looked up at it with my warm human feelings, my young, young exaggerated emotions, full of resentful dislike and prejudice; it looked down on me, calm, beautiful, melancholy, like a face out of the skies. Pity, pity, yes! I hurried away stung by the thought. Edgar Southcote had the presumption to pity my father and me.

With a last compunctious recollection of my poor young mother, I went to the garden and tenderly brought away that last rose. I could cry over it, without feeling that I wept because Cottiswoode was my cousin’s and not mine. “I will always keep it!” I said to myself, as I wrapped some of the fragrant olive-colored leaves of the walnut round its stalk; and then I went in to my father to say I was ready. He had left the library, and was walking through the house—I could hear his slow heavy footsteps above me as I listened breathlessly in the hall. Whitehead, and the other servants, had collected there to say good-bye. Whitehead, who was an old man, was to remain in charge of the house; but all the others, except his niece Amy, were to go away this very night. While I stood trying to speak to them, and trying very hard not to break down again, my father came down stairs, went into the dining-parlor, and passed through the window into the garden. I thought he wished to escape the farewell of the servants, so I said good-bye hurriedly and followed him; but he was only walking up and down, looking at the house. He took my hand mechanically, as I came up to him, and led me along the walk in silence; then I was very much startled to find that he took hold of my arm, and leaned on it as if he wanted a support. I looked up at him wistfully when he paused at last—he was looking up at a window above; but he must have felt how anxiously my eyes sought his face, for he said slowly, as if he were answering a question, “Hester, I have lived here.” I did not dare to say anything, but I held very close to my heart my mother’s rose; he was thinking of her then, he was not thinking of pity nor of any bitterness.

In a few minutes he was quite himself once more, and drew my hand upon his arm, and went in with me to say farewell to the servants; he did so with grace and dignity like an old knight of romance—for he was never haughty to his inferiors, and they all loved him. They were crying and sobbing, every one of them—even old Whitehead—and I cried too, I could not help it; but my father was quite unmoved. He put me into the chaise, took his seat beside me, waved his hand out of the window, smiling as he did so—and then he closed the blinds rapidly on that side, and the carriage drove away. It was all over like a dream. I dared not and could not, look back upon the home which had been the centre of my thoughts all my life; and with the cold night wind blowing in our faces, we were hurrying to a new life, altogether severed from our old existence, and from Cottiswoode.

Yes! the wind was in our faces, fresh and cold—and I never feel it so now without an instant recollection of that long silent drive to Cambridge, through the darkening October night. The long dark levels of the fields rushed past us so swiftly, and with such a desolate quietness; and the long luminous line of the horizon, and the dull clouds of night kept us company with such a ghost-like constancy, travelling at as quick a pace as ours. I was soon tired of weeping under my veil, for I had all the restlessness of my years; and I can see now how the darkness brooded upon the flat meadows, how there seemed no human divisions of fence or hedge upon them, but only one blank line of grass from which the night had taken all color, and of ploughed land stretching back its lessening furrows over many acres, which the eye ached to see. Sometimes miles away, a pollard willow bristled up upon the sky, showing its every twig with a strange exaggeration as it stood guarding some dreary point of road—and the solitary haystack which belonged to some one of those poor stray cottages belated among the fields, threw up its bulk like a goblin against that clear universal background—that pale line of sky which brought out every outline with such a ghostly distinction. Distance, space, the wild idea of an unending and unreposing journey, are the very spirit and sentiment of this country—I think sometimes its dull unfeatured outline is half sublime; there are no mountain heights to attain to, no sweet valleys charming you to rest; only the long lines converging into the infinite sky—the fresh breeze in your face—and the rushing of your own footsteps through the silence, crying—on—on!

There was not a word exchanged between us all the way—my father sat quite still, looking out from one window, engaged I know not how, while I looked from the other, feeling a strange enjoyment in the mere motion and progress, and in the silence and dreamy dreariness of all those flat, unvarying lines, that glided past us in the twilight and the night.

There were neither moon nor stars, yet it was not very dark, even when we reached Cambridge—I had been in the town before, but I knew little of it, and I had no knowledge of where we were, when we stopped beside the old church of St. Benet, and my father assisted me to alight. I was surprised, for there were only some mean houses and a shop before us—but he drew my hand within his arm, and led me along a paved and narrow lane, on one side of which was the churchyard. The light seemed quite shut out here—it was like descending a well to go boldly into that darkness; but we went on, past the little new houses on the one hand, and the old conventual buildings, which loomed on us so strangely from the other, till we paused at a door where some one stood with a lantern. As the man raised his lantern and the light flashed up, I saw that we were to enter under this arched doorway, which had a coat of arms in the keystone. There were two or three steps to descend, and then the door was closed, and we went along a narrow path, where there was a blank wall covered with ivy on one side, and the house on the other. The light of the lantern gleamed in those dark glistening ivy leaves, and in the square projecting windows of this new home of ours. I was glad to see how different from the massy glories of Cottiswoode, was this strange house, with its two projections, one supported on dark oaken beams, and the other built up from the ground. The building was only wood, and lath and plaster, except the heavy and unlighted ground story, which was grey and aged stone; and the broad square windows on the upper floor which filled the whole front of each projecting part, were formed of small diamond panes. But I saw no mode of entrance, nothing but tall ungainly rose bushes, and withered creepers nestling up against the walls, till we turned a corner and came to a door in the end of the house, where Alice was standing to receive us. We had to make our way in here through a ragged regiment of tall straggling hollyhocks—I have hated them ever since that night.

But my father had not once addressed me yet, and my own mind was so full, that I had never observed his silence. He spoke now when we were on the threshold, and I started at the sound of his voice. He only said, “Hester, this is your new home!” but I think there was the most wonderful mixture of emotions in his voice that I had ever heard—determined composure, and yet highly excited feeling—disdain of this poor place he brought me to, yet a fixed resolution to show content in it, and stronger and greater pride than ever. My heart echoed the resolution and the pride, as I sprang in—but my heart was young and full of the pleased excitement of novelty and change. I knew nothing of what he felt as he followed me with his slow and stately step—nothing, for I was impatient to see all these rooms that we were to live in, and to make acquaintance with my new home.

So I ran on, leaving him to follow me—I could not have done better, had I been laboring to find something which would comfort and cheer him. My eagerness gave a certain interest to the poor house. I remember that he held me back for a moment, and looked into my face with a slow smile gradually breaking upon his own. Mine, I know, was full of light and animation—I remember how my cheeks glowed from the wind, and how the warmth and the lights had brought water into my eyes; and, I suppose, I looked quite as bright and eager as if I had never known the girlish heroical despair for leaving Cottiswoode which possessed me an hour ago. I ran from one apartment to another, exclaiming at everything, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with astonishment. The two broad windows which I had seen outside, represented two large apartments, occupying the whole breadth of the house, and each with a window at the other end, looking out upon a great dim silent garden, fenced in by other gardens, and on one side by a dark mass of building, along which a light twinkled here and there. These rooms were not fully furnished, but they were already in a habitable state, and in one of them a bright fire blazed pleasantly, sparkling in the old silver kettle and tea-pot, and antique china, which we always used at home—at home! The words meant these strange rooms, and had no other reference now for my father and me.

But when I went to lay aside my bonnet, I found a room prepared for me, prettier, if that were possible, than the pretty chamber at Cottiswoode, where Alice had tended me all my life. The white draperies were so white, and full, and soft—the pretty chintz hangings were so fresh with their new bands of ribbons, and there was so much care and tenderness in the hands which had restored my old room perfect and unbroken, yet made it brighter than ever, that I clung to Alice with an April face where the tears had somehow lost their bitterness, and the smile its pride. Now and then in my life, I have found out suddenly, in a moment, of how little importance external things were to me. The conviction came upon my mind at this instant, like a sunbeam. What did it matter to me standing here in my triumphant youthfulness, with my father to be loved and cared for, and Alice to love and care for me—what did it matter who lost or who won such outside and external matters as houses and lands? I threw off my mantle upon the kind arm of Alice, and danced away to make tea for my father. In proportion to the depth of my sadness at leaving Cottiswoode, was the height of my exhilaration now to find another home. We had expected this to be a very dreary evening—instead of that I had seldom been so happy, so vivacious, so daring, in my girl’s talk; and there sat my father, his face brightening in the firelight, smiling at my boldness, my enthusiasms, my denunciations, my girlish superlative emotion. When tea was over, he fell into a fit of musing, and was not to be disturbed, I knew—and then I examined the room with its wainscot pannels, its carved mantel-shelf, and its pannel pictures, hard flat portraits, which had no pretension to the roundness or the breadth of life, but were as level as the Cambridgeshire flats, and almost as much like each other. And then I went to the further window, and coiled myself up upon the bench within the curtains, to solace myself with my own thoughts. The garden lay dark beneath, with shadowy bare trees here and there, lifting up their branches to the sky, and some fantastic little green-house, or summer-house, half way down, showing a dull glimmer of glass under the boughs. But insensibly my eyes turned from the garden and the darkness, to count the scattered lights in the windows of this dark building, which marked its embrasures upon the sky at my right hand. A light in a window is a strange lure to imagination—I watched them with interest and pleasure—they were unknown, yet they were neighbors—and it was pleasant from hearing the wind without, and seeing the dark, to turn upon the glimmering tapers with a certain friendly warmth and satisfaction, as though some one had said good-night.

And so we were settled to our new beginning, and our new home.

THE THIRD DAY.

I WAS in the garden, where I almost lived in the sweet summer days in those times of my youth; it was June, and I did not fear the windows of Corpus, which looked out upon the trees with their numberless leaves, the trees which were quite shelter enough for me. If I had begun to have visions of the universal romance of youth, my thoughts were much too exalted to think of vulgar fallings in love, and though I constantly hailed as neighbors these kindly lights in the windows of the collegiate buildings, I was troubled by no thought of the young gownsmen, the possible possessors of the same; and so it came about that I went as freely to the garden of our quaint old house, overlooked by the windows of Corpus Christi College as I had been used to go in the garden of Cottiswoode, which was not overlooked by anything within a dozen miles, save the fruit trees in the orchard, and the great walnut by the house.

This was now the second summer since we came to Cambridge, and this garden was no longer the wilderness which it was when I saw it first. My father had a peculiar fancy in gardening—everything in this sunny strip of land was enclosed in a soft frame of greensward—where a path was indispensable, it was a hard, yellow sandy path that glistened in the sun, and threw off the moisture; but instead of geometrical divisions and cross-roads through our garden, you could scarcely see either gravel or soil for the velvet turf that pressed over the roots of the trees, and round the flower-beds; and for the thick and close luxuriance of the flowers that grew within. The one or two Cambridge ladies who came to see me sometimes, shook their heads at our grassy garden, and hoped I took care never to go out when the turf was damp; but, indeed, I took no such care, and was very proud of our full and verdant enclosure in comparison with other people’s flower-beds, where nothing grew so well as ours, though everything had more room to grow. On this day of which I am now speaking, the sweet greensward was warm with sunshine in every corner. It was afternoon, and the streets were sultry, the wayfarers flushed and weary, the fields parched and dry; but the sun was playing in the leaves about me, and making playful figures with his light and shadow on the grass under my feet—figures which changed and varied with sweet caprice as the wind swayed the leaves about, and as the sun stole by invisible degrees towards the west—and everything was fresh and sweet and full of fragrance in this charmed country of mine. I was within the little fanciful greenhouse which was no less a bower for me, than a shelter for the rarer flowers, and I was busy about some of my favorites, which I used to care for with great devotion by fits, making up for it by such negligence at other times, that this pretty place would soon have been a very woeful one had it been left to me. Just on the threshold of this green-house door, was the stool on which I had been sitting, with a piece of embroidery at which I had been working thrown down upon it, and beyond that, on the grass, was a book which I had not been reading; for it was not in my girlish, impatient nature to dally with anything readable—I either devoured it, or I let it alone. I was busy among the plants, and so enclosed by them that I was not visible from the garden—but at this moment I was not aware of that.

I did not hear their footsteps upon the soft grass, but I heard the voices of my father and his friend, Mr. Osborne, a fellow of Corpus, who visited us constantly, and always seemed in my father’s confidence. They came to the green-house door and lingered there, and Mr. Osborne stood before the door, with his gown streaming and rustling behind him, effectually concealing me if I had not been concealed already. I had no reason to suppose that their talk concerned me; nor was I much interested to listen to it. I went on with my occupation, plunging some slips of favorite plants into little pots of rich vegetable mould, and singing to myself half under my breath. I was quite unsuspicious and so were they.

“No,” said my father, “Hester does not know of it. Hester is a girl, Osborne—I have no desire to make a woman of her before her time.”

“Yet girls find out for themselves what interest they have in these matters,” said Mr. Osborne, in his quiet, half sarcastic tone, “and have speculations in those quiet eyes of theirs, whether we will or no, my friend.”

“There are few girls like Hester,” said my father, proudly; “pardon me, Osborne, but you have no child—I want to preserve her as she is—why should I bring a disturbing element into our peaceful life?”

“Why? do you think your little girl is safely through her probation, when she has had the measles and the hooping-cough?” said Mr. Osborne, laughing. “Nonsense, man—d’ye think ye save her from the epidemic of youth by shutting her up in this garden here? Take my word for it, these obnoxious things that you call the world and society, are much better preventives than this leisure and solitude. Why look at these windows, and be a sensible man, Southcote; d’ye think nobody in Corpus but an old fellow like me has seen your Proserpine among the flowers? How old is the child? tell me that, and I will tell you how soon there will be moonlight meditations, and breaking hearts, disturbing your peaceful life for you. Hester is a very good girl—of course, she is—but what is that to the question, I should be glad to know?”

I was very indignant by this time. I had very nearly caught his streaming gown, and shaken it with vehement displeasure, but, withal, I was very curious to know what was the origin of this conversation, and I subsided into a perfect guilty silence, and listened with all my might.

“You do not understand Hester, Osborne,” said my father.

“Granted,” said his friend, quickly, “and perhaps the young lady is not quite an orthodox subject of study, I allow you; but pray what do you intend to do with her? is she to live in this garden for ever, like that fantastic boy’s lady of Shalott?”

My father paused and I listened eagerly. It was some time before he answered, and there was hesitation in his usually firm tones.

“Life has deluded me,” he said, slowly. “I am at a loss to know how to guard Hester, that it may not delude her also.”

“Southcote,” said his companion, earnestly, “listen to me a moment. Life deludes no man. You are a self-devourer. You have deluded yourself; nay, take offence and, of course, I have done at once. I do not know the innocent mind of a young girl, very true; but I know that imagination is the very breath of youth—it must look forward, and it must dream—what is Hester to dream about, think you? not of the triumph of an examination, I suppose, nor of going in for honors; you have not even tried to kill the woman in her, and make her a scholar. The child is shamefully ignorant, Southcote. Why here’s this feminine rubbish lying under my very feet—look here!” and he pulled up my mangled embroidery. “I should not be surprised now if it pleased your fancy to see her bending her pretty head over this stuff—what’s she thinking of all this time, my friend? Nothing, eh? or only how to arrange the stitches, and make one little turn the same as another? I’ll trust Hester for that.”

There was another pause, and there he stood turning over my work, and I not able to rush forward and snatch it out of his hand. My cheeks burned with shame and anger—how dared any man discuss my thoughts and fancies so!

“Well, here is the real matter,” said my father, slowly; “Edgar Southcote, it appears, is eighteen—two years older than my Hester, and old enough, he thinks, as he tells me, to decide upon the most important event of his life for himself—so he sends me a formal proposal for the hand of his cousin. My difficulty is not whether to accept the proposal—you understand that, Osborne—but whether, before giving it a peremptory and decided negative, I ought to make it known to Hester?”

“I understand. Well now, waiving that principal difficulty, might one ask why this young man’s very reasonable proposal should have such a peremptory negative?” said Mr. Osborne; “for my own part I do not see that this is at all a necessary conclusion.”

“I am afraid it must suffice that I think it so,” said my father, in his firmest and coldest tone.

“On your high horse again, Southcote? Patience a little, now. Your brother Brian was not a strong-minded man—but a very good fellow for all that. What’s your objection now to his son?”

I almost trembled for this cool scrutinizing of my father’s motives and opinions, which he never revealed to any one—yet I too listened with interest for the answer. No answer came. My father spoke hurriedly and with irritation; but he did not reply.

“I presume you will permit us some little exercise of our own will as to the person whom we admit into our family,” he said; “but enough of this. Do you advise me to tell Hester, or to dispose of the affair on my own responsibility?”

Mr. Osborne seemed bent upon provoking my father’s slumbering resentment.

“Well,” he said with a pause of much consideration, “had the boy proposed to you, the answer would have lain with you of course—but I think it quite possible that some time or other in her life, Hester might remember that her old home in all its revenues, and, I have no doubt, a very worthy and generous youth along with them, had been laid at her feet, and her father, on his own responsibility, threw them away.”

“Osborne!” cried my father—I almost expected he would command him away, and bid him never more enter our house. I am sure I felt that I never could address him with ordinary civility again—but instead of that, after a moment’s pause, my father resumed, in vehement tones certainly, but not in tones of anger at the speaker. “Generous! and you think I would give my daughter to one who sought her from a generous impulse; you forget my life and you forget me.”

How my heart throbbed and resounded in its quick and painful beating!—I cannot tell how strangely I felt the possibility that I myself might one day or other realize in my own person the misfortune of my father’s life. Yes, Mr. Osborne was right thus far, I had not been thinking of nothing while I sat in the sunshine working at my embroidery. I had already seen dimly through the golden mists the hero, the prince, the red cross knight. I had already seen myself worshipped with the pure devotedness of chivalry. I had already, like a true girl and woman, imagined all manner of glories and honors won for me by my true knight, and prized because they made him nobler, and not because they exalted me. Yes! I had been dreaming innocent, beautiful, unworldly dreams—when lo! there fell upon me a vision of my cousin Edgar, and his generous impulse. I clenched my hands upon my little plant in a passion of indignation. The words stung me to the heart.

“Well—I am not astonished that you regard it in this light,” said Mr. Osborne, “but you must confess, at the same time, Southcote, that there is a more common sense way of looking at it. The boy is a good boy, and feels that he has been the means of injuring his cousin—what more natural than that the two branches of the family should unite their claims in this most satisfactory way—what is your objection to it? A punctilio? Come, don’t talk of it to Hester yet—let’s have a fight, old friend. I flatter myself you were none the worse in the old days of arguing out the matter with Frank Osborne. Now, then, for your arguments. Heigho! Howard, my boy, do you recollect the last time?”

There was so long a pause that I could not help stealing forward to look what was the reason. My father’s face was as black as night, and he stood opposite his friend in a rigid fixed attitude, vacantly looking at him—then he turned suddenly on his heel, “Excuse me—I am faint—I will return to you instantly,” he said, as he hurried in. Mr. Osborne shrugged his shoulders, gazed after him, shrugged again, began to whistle, and then suddenly turning round found himself face to face with me.

For the first moment I think I was the least disconcerted—for I was very angry and indignant beyond measure; but, as his face gradually brightened into its usual expression of shrewdness and good-humored sarcasm, my own courage fell. I had been eavesdropping, finding out my father’s secrets without his knowledge—playing a very shabby part—I who piqued myself upon my sense of honor.

“So!” said Mr. Osborne, “your father is right, young lady. I see I did not understand Hester; pray what may you be doing here?”

And I, who had intended to denounce his paltry views, and to pour out the full tide of my indignation upon him for thwarting and chafing my father—I was ready to cry with vexation and mortified pride. “I did not intend to listen—I was only here by chance—and, at first, I thought you knew I was here,” said I, making a pause between each sentence, swallowing down my ire and my humiliation. After all I had heard, to have to excuse myself to him!

“Well, your father’s run away,” said Mr. Osborne; “suppose we finish the argument, Hester. It is your concern after all; but I suppose such a thing as a sweetheart, or the dim possibility of being wooed and married never entered your guileless thoughts at all?”

I did not answer him—my girlish pride was on fire, and my cheeks burnt, but I could find nothing sufficiently annihilating to reply to Mr. Osborne.

We heard the noise of an opened door just then, and of a footstep in the passage which led to the garden. Mr. Osborne glanced hastily round him, and then bent forward to me.

“Hester, attend to me. You are very young, and have had a wild education; try, if you can think before you permit your father to decide on this. Do you mark me? I know this boy—he is a better boy than you are, and he has a fantastic fancy for you, as great as you could desire. Hester, here’s your father. I’ll keep your secret, and do you think of what I say.”

My father joined us immediately. If it surprised him to find me there, he took no notice of it, and I was glad to pick up my embroidery and hurry away. I was impressed with an uncomfortable necessity for thinking about it, from what Mr. Osborne had said, and I went to my own room to recollect myself. I could not deny either that I was a little excited and agitated about this new appearance of Edgar Southcote. It did not soften my heart to him, but it awoke my curiosity, and it made a step in my life. I said to myself with a beating heart—a heart disturbed with wonder, with anger, with surprise, and something like affright, that I was no longer a girl, but a woman now, standing upon the threshold of my life. I was sixteen. I thought I was rapidly maturing and growing old, for in this old house of ours, so quiet and withdrawn from common company, the days were peopled with fancies and imaginary scenes, and I did not know how very, very young and girlish were my secret conceptions of life and of the world.

Life! Here was my father, a man in whom I could see no blemish—what was his existence? Such as it was, he lived it in his library, among his books; talking with me now and then, and coming forth to take a long silent solitary walk, or a stroll in the garden in the evening, once or twice a week. Was this all? yes! and I said within myself in reverent explanation of it, that his life had been blighted and cast down by one wrong that always gnawed at his heart; he had married for love; but my mother had married him for pity. Was not this enough to account for the sombre shade in which he lived and walked? I said yes, yes! in eager youthful enthusiasm—yes, this was surely enough to decide for good or evil the whole tenor of a life.

And then there was Alice! Nothing in this house or about it, not even the sunshine, cheered my heart like the smile of Alice; yet she was not merry, and had little to be merry for. Alice was like one who had come out of a desert, leaving all her loves and treasures there behind her—she had lost everything, everything but her life—what had she to live for? I shuddered while I said so; for without Alice how dreary would my days be; and then I paused to recollect that on the borders of this grand and momentous existence, where my father had failed in his own enterprise for happiness, and in which Alice had lost all she loved, my own feet were standing now.

This was what I thought on the subject which Mr. Osborne recommended to my consideration; when I thought again of Edgar, it was with a renewed flush of anger and mortification. My cousin pitied me, who dreamed of inspiring some true knight with the loftiest ambitions, and rewarding him sufficiently with a smile. I was to be subjected to the humiliating proposals which Edgar Southcote’s “generous impulse” suggested to him! These were unfortunate words—how often they have clamored in my ear, and haunted me since then.

I did not go into the garden again that day; not even when it was twilight, and the dews were culling out the odors, and the murmur of hushed sounds and distant voices from the quiet town charmed the dim air into an enchanted calm. In my new-born consciousness, I walked up and down the dim close, at the other side of the house, where there were no windows overlooking the high walls and its glistening ivy. I would be no Proserpine among the flowers, to any foolish boy who dared spy upon my retirement from the college windows. Proserpine! if Mr. Osborne had known I heard him, he never would have called me by that name, nor supposed that any gownsman of Corpus could ever interest me! I had a great contempt for my next neighbors in my girlish loftiness and maturity. I could not have been more insulted than by such an insinuation as this.

And then I went to the drawing-room, and stationed myself at my usual place in the window; the long room was nearly dark, though the pale half-light streamed through it from window to window, and it was strange to look across the whole length of the room to the ivy leaves faintly quivering on the wall at the other side. My father and Mr. Osborne, who had dined with us, were walking in the garden, talking earnestly, and with some indignation I watched them, wondering if they still talked of me. Then there came out, one by one, these lights in the windows, some of them looking faint and steady like true students’ lamps, some suspiciously bright as though there was merry-making within. It pleased me to watch them, as window after window brightened on the night. I scorned the inmates; but I did not scorn these neighborly and kindly lights.

My father came in very soon, and Mr. Osborne called me to say good-night; I went down to him where he stood at the door, and he held my hand a moment, and looked into my face. “Now, Hester, good night—think of what I said,” he repeated. These words induced me to return very quickly upstairs, where my father had gone, following Alice with the lamp. When she had placed it on the table and left the room, I went to my father and stood beside him, till he lifted his eyes from the book. He looked at me with a kind loving look, as if he had pleasure in seeing me—a look not very usual to my father—and took my hand as he always used to do, when I stood at his knee, to ask anything of him as a child, and said, “Well, Hester?” I was full of excitement and resolution, and came to my subject at once, without remembering that I might be blamed for what I had to say first. “I was in the greenhouse, papa, when you were talking there with Mr. Osborne to-day,” I said, firmly—and then I paused with a sudden recollection that this was not quite consistent either with my father’s code of honor or my own.

“I did not intend to listen—it was very wrong—but I could not conceal it from you, now it is done,” I proceeded hurriedly, “and I have come to say, papa, that I heard what you told Mr. Osborne about Edgar Southcote. I wonder how he dares presume upon us so; I think a true gentleman would be sorry to let us see that he was able to be generous to us; and I hope you will write to him at once, papa, and if it is necessary to say anything from me, let it be that I hope there never will be any communication between us, nor any need for me to tell him what I think in plain words.”