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The Days of My Life: An Autobiography

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2017
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“No one else shall come near me, Alice; but think of it,” cried I in despair, “in three weeks – and it must be. I think it will kill me. My father used to care for me, Alice, but now he is only anxious to send me away.”

“Miss Hester, it is your father’s way; and he has his reasons,” said my kind comforter; “think of your own lot, how bright it is, and your young bridegroom that loves you dearly; think of him.”

“Yes, Alice,” I said very humbly, but I could not help starting at the name she gave him, it was so very sudden: every time I thought of it, it brought a pang to my heart.

But then she began to talk of what things we must get immediately – and I was not very old nor very wise – I was interested about these things very soon, and regarded this business of preparation with a good deal of pleasure; the white silk dress, and the veil, and the orange blossoms – it may be a very poor thing to tell of myself, but I had a flutter of pleasure thinking of them; and there we sat, full of business, Alice and I, and Alice went over my wardrobe in her imagination, and began to number so many things which I would require – and it was so great a pleasure to her, and I was so much softened and cheered myself, that when I rose, after she had left me, to wave my hand in the darkness, at the light in his window, I had almost returned to the deep satisfaction of my first joy.

But when I returned to the drawing-room – returned out of my own young blossoming life, with all its tumult of hopes, to my father, sitting alone at his book, all by himself, abstracted and solitary, like one whom life had parted from and passed by – I could not resist the sudden revulsion which threw me down once more. But now I was very quiet. I bent down my head into my hands where he could not see me weeping. I forgot he had wounded or injured me – I said, “My father! my dear father!” softly to myself; and then I began to dream how Harry would steal into his affections – how we would woo him out of his solitude; how his forsaken desolate life would grow bright in our young house; and I began to be very glad in my heart, though I did not dry my tears.

When we were parting for the night, my father came slowly up to me, and with a gesture of fondness put his hands on my head. “Hester,” he said, in a low steady voice, “you are my only child” – that was all – but the words implied everything to me. I leaned upon his arm to hide my full eyes, and he passed his hand softly over my hair – “My only child! my only child!” he repeated once or twice, and then he kissed my cheek, and “God bless you, my love!” and sent me away.

I was very sad, yet I was very happy when I lay down to rest. The blind was drawn up, and I could see the light still shining in Harry’s window; and I was not afraid now to put his name beside my father’s when I said my prayers. It was very little more than saying my prayers with me. I had known no instruction, and in many things I was still a child. Just when I was going to sleep, some strong associations brought into my mind what Alice had told me of my father; how rejoiced he looked on the day of his betrothal, and how she never saw him look happy again – it was a painful thought, and it came to me as a ghost might have come at my bedside; I could not get far from it. I had no fear for myself, yet this haunted me. Ah, my dear father, how unhappy he had been!

THE NINTH DAY

IT was the first of September, a brilliant sunshiny autumn day. The light streamed fall into my chamber window, and upon the figure of Alice standing before it, with her white apron and her white cap, so intensely white under the sunshine. She was drawing out rolls of white ribbon, and holding them suspended in the light for me to see them. They were dazzling in their silken snowy lustre. It was difficult to make a choice while this bright day glorified them all.

The room was not in disorder, yet it was littered everywhere with articles of dress. On my dining-table was a little open jewel-case with the bit of gold chain and the little diamond pendant which I had worn the first time I saw Harry – and the jewels were sparkling quietly, to themselves, in the shade. There were other ornaments, presents from him, lying beside this; and they made a subdued glow in the comparative dimness of that corner of the room. On my bed, catching a glance of sunshine, lay my bridal dress, its rich full folds and white brocaded flowers glistening in the light. On the little couch near the window were all the pretty things of lace which graced my trousseau– the veil arranged by Alice’s own hand over a heap of rich purple silk which lay there for my approval, and which brought out to perfection the delicate pattern of the lace. And this was not all, for every chair held something – boxes of artificial flowers, so beautifully made, that it was impossible not to like them, exquisite counterfeits of nature – boxes of gloves, in delicate pale colors, fit for a bride – and last of all, this box of snowy-white ribbons, from which we found it so difficult to choose.

People speak of the vanity of all these bridal preparations. I have heard often how foolish was all this display and bustle about a marriage. I do not think it. It is the one day in a woman’s life when everything and every one should do her honor. As I stood with Alice in my bright room, half blinded with the intense light upon the white ribbons, I was pleased with all the things about me. I had license to like everything, and to be interested with all the additions to my wardrobe. Only once in one’s life can one be a bride. And all these white, fine, shining dresses – all these flowers and draperies of lace and pretty ornaments – they are not minutes of vanity always, but expressions of a natural sentiment – and they were very pleasant to me.

“I’ll come out of the light, Miss Hester – here, dear, you can see them better now: though I like to see them shining in the sunshine. There is a beauty! will this one do?”

“Do you think that is the best?” said I, “then I will take it, Alice; and some for your cap now; here is a satin one, and here is gauze, but I must choose them myself; and you are to have your silk gown made and wear it – you are not to put it away in your drawer.”

Alice looked down at her dark green stuff gown, hanging quite dead and unbrightened even in that fervid sunshine, and shook her head with a smile of odd distress. “It is much too fine for me, I was never meant to be a lady,” said Alice, “but I’d wear white like a girl, sooner than cross you, my darling; and that is for me – bless your dear heart! that is a ribbon fit for a queen!”

“But the queen is not to be here,” said I, “so you must wear it, Alice; and I do not want you to be without your apron. I like that great white apron. I wonder if I will like to lay down my head upon it, Alice, when I am old?”

“When you are old, Alice will not be here, Miss Hester,” she said, with a smile; “you are like other young things, you think you will not be a young lady when you are married; but my darling, married or not married, the years take their full time to come.”

“Ah, I will never be a girl again,” said I, sighing with one of the half mock, half real sentimentalities of youth. “Alice, do you think, after all, my father is pleased?”

“I think,” she began, but she stopped and paused, and evidently took a second thought; “yes, Miss Hester, I think he is pleased,” she said, “he has every reason – yes, dear, don’t fear for your papa; it is all good – all better than anybody could have planned it – I know it is.”

“Do you know that you speak very oddly sometimes, Alice,” said I; “you speak as if you were a prophet, and knew something about us, that we did not ourselves know.”

“Don’t you think such things, Miss Hester,” said Alice, hurriedly, and her face reddened, “as I am no gipsy nor fortune-teller either, not a bit.”

“Are you angry?” said I, “angry at me, Alice?” I was a little surprised, and it was quite true that two or three times I had been at a loss to know what she meant.

“Angry at you– no, darling, nor never was all your life,” said Alice, “for all you have your own proud temper, Miss Hester – for I never was one to flatter. Will I send the box away? look, dear, if you have got all.”

I had got all that we wanted, and when she went away, I drew my chair to the window, and began a labor of love. Alice never changed the fashion of her garments, and while she labored night and day for me, I was making a cap for her, and braiding a great muslin apron, which she was to wear on the day. I was very busy with the apron, doing it after a fashion of my own, and in a pattern which Alice would think all the more of because it was my own design, though I am not very sure that it gained much in effect by that circumstance. I drew my seat near to the open window, into the sunshine, and began to work, singing to myself very quietly but very gladly, as the pattern grew under my fingers. My heart rejoiced in the beautiful day, and in its own gladness; and I do not know that this joy was less pleasant for the tremor of expectation, and the flutter of fear, which my strange new circumstances brought me. I glanced from the window, hearing a step in the garden, and there was Harry, wandering about looking up at me.

When he caught my eye, he began to beckon with all his might, and try to get me to come down to him. I had seen him already this morning, so I knew it was not because he had anything to say to me, and I shook my head, and returned to my work. Then he began to telegraph to me his despair, his impatience, his particular wish to talk to me – and kept me so occupied smiling at him, and answering his signals, that the apron did not make much more progress than if I had gone down. At last, however, Alice came back, and I looked from the window no more, but went on soberly with my occupation. I had no young friends to come to see my pretty things, so Alice began to put them away.

A fortnight was gone, since that day when we were engaged, as Alice called it; and in a week, only a week now, the other day was to come.

“You have never told me yet, Miss Hester,” said Alice, as she passed behind me, “where you are going, after – ”

I interrupted her hurriedly. I was frightened for a mention of this dreadful ceremony, in so many words; and the idea of going away was enough to overset my composure at any time – I who had never left home before, and such a going away as this!

“We are to go abroad,” I answered hurriedly; “but only for a few weeks, and then to have a house in Cambridgeshire, if we can find one very near at hand, Alice.”

“Yes,” answered Alice.

There was so much implied in this “yes,” it seemed so full of information and consciousness, as if she could tell me more than I told her, that I was annoyed and almost irritated. In the displeasure of the moment I could not continue the conversation; it was very strange what Alice could mean by these inferences, and then to look so much offended when I spoke to her about them. I saw that Harry was still in the garden, looking up, and beckoning to me again, when he saw me look out – so I put away my work, and went down to hear what he had to say.

He had not anything very particular to say; but it was not disagreeable, though there was little originality in it, and I had heard most of it before; and he helped me with some flowers in the green-house which had been sadly neglected, and we cut some of the finest of them in the garden, for the vase upon my little table upstairs; and he told me I ought to wear flowers in my hair, and he said he would bring me a wreath of briony. “I should like to bind the beautiful clustered berries over those brown locks of yours, Hester,” he said. “I will tell you some day how I came to know the briony first, and fell in love with it – it was one of the first incidents in my life.”

“Tell me now then,” said I.

But he shook his head and smiled. “Not now – wait till I can get a wreath of it fresh from a Cambridgeshire hedgerow, and then I will tell you my tale.”

“I shall think it is a tale about a lady, if you speak of it so mysteriously,” said I, and when I turned to him I saw he blushed. “It was so then,” I said, with the slightest pique possible. I was not quite pleased.

“There never was but one in the world to me, Hester,” he said, and I very soon cast down my eyes, “so it could not be about a lady, unless it happened in a dream, and the lady was you.”

I looked at him with a strange perplexity, he was almost as hard to understand as Alice was – but he suddenly changed the conversation, and made me quite helpless for any further controversy by talking about what we were to do next week, after – I was always silenced in a moment by a reference to that.

Then my father looked out from the library window and called to us. My father had been a good deal occupied with Harry, and I pleased myself with thinking that he began to like him already. They seemed very good friends, and Harry showed him so much deference and was so anxious to follow his wishes in everything, that I was very grateful to him; and all the more because I thought it was from his own natural goodness he did this, fully more than from a wish to please me.

We went in together to the library. My father was reading papers, some of those long straggling papers tied together at the top, which always look so ominous, and are so long-winded. His book was put away, and instead he had pen and ink and his great blotting-book before him. My father had been writing much and reading little, during these two weeks; the occupation of his life was rudely broken in upon by these arrangements, and though I could not understand how it was that he had so much business thrown upon him, the fact seemed to be certain. There was more life even in the room, it was less orderly, and there was a litter of papers upon the table. My father looked well, pale, and self-possessed, but not so deadly calm, and he called Harry to him with a kind and familiar gesture. I had not yet overcome the embarrassment which I always felt when I was with them both; and when I saw that my father was pointing out sundry things in the papers to Harry, that they were consulting about them, and that I was not a necessary spectator, I turned over some books for a few minutes, and then I turned to go away. When he saw me moving towards the door, my father looked up. “Wait a little, Hester, I may want you by and by,” he said. I was obedient and came back, but I did not like being here with Harry. I did not feel that our young life and our bright prospects were fit to intrude into this hermit’s room, and I wondered if it would look drearier or more solitary – if my father would feel any want of me in my familiar place, when I went away.

But I had very little reason to flatter myself that he would miss me. He conducted all these matters with a certain satisfaction, I thought. He was glad to have me “settled;” and though I think he had been kinder than usual ever since that night, he had never said that it would grieve him to part with me, or that the house would be sad when I was gone.

There was a pause in their consultation. I heard, for I did not see, because I had turned to the window, and they were behind me, and then my father said – “Come here, Hester, we have now talked together of these arrangements – sit down by me, here, and see if it will not distress you too much to hear the programme of the drama in which you are to be a principal actor – here is a chair, sit down.”

I turned, and went slowly to the seat he pointed out to me. I was very reluctant, but I could not disobey him, not even though I saw Harry’s face bending forward eagerly to know if this was disagreeable to me.

“In the first place,” said my father with a smile, “it is perhaps well that Hester is no heiress, as she once was supposed to be. Had my daughter inherited the family estate, her husband must have taken her name, and that is a harder condition than the one I stipulated for.”

As there was no answer for a moment, I glanced shyly under the hand which supported my head at Harry. To my great surprise, he seemed strangely and painfully agitated. There was a deep color on his face. He did not lift his eyes, but shifted uneasily, and almost with an air of guilt, upon his chair; and he began to speak abruptly with an emotion which the subject surely did not deserve.

“Hester is worth a greater sacrifice than that of a name like mine,” he said; “it would give me pleasure to show my sense of the honor you do me by admitting me into your family. I have no connexions whom I can gain by abandoning my own name, and I have no love for it, even though Hester has made it pleasanter to my ear. Let me be called Southcote. I would have proposed it myself had I thought it would be agreeable to you. You have no son. When you give Hester to me, make me altogether your representative. I will feel you do me a favor. Pray let us settle it so.”

My father looked at him with more scrutinizing eyes – “When I was your age, young man, not for all the bounties of life, would I have relinquished my name.”

Once more Harry blushed painfully. I too, for the moment, would rather that he had not made this proposal, yet how very kind it was of him! and I could not but appreciate the sacrifice which he made for me.

“Your name was the name of a venerable family, distinguished and dear to you,” he said, after a little pause. “I am an orphan, with no recollections that endear it to me. Nay, Mr. Southcote, do not fear, I have no antecedents which make me ashamed of it; but for Hester’s sake and yours, I will gladly relinquish this name of mine. If you do not wish it, that is another question.”

There was a suppressed eagerness in his tone which impressed me very strangely. I could understand how, in an impulse of generosity, he could make the proposal; but I could not tell why he should be so anxious about it. It was very strange.

“I have not sufficient self-denial to say that,” said my father. “I do wish it. It will gratify me more than anything else can, and I do not see indeed why, being satisfied on every other point, I should quarrel with you for proposing to do what I most desire; but regard for his own name is so universal in every man, I confess in other circumstances I should have been disposed to despise the man who accepted my heiress and her name with her. You, of course, are in an entirely different position. I can only accept your offer with gratitude. It is true, as you say, I have no son – you shall be my representative – yes, and I will be glad to think,” said my father, with a momentary softening, and in a slow and lingering tone, “that she is Hester Southcote still.”

Ah, those lingering touches of tenderness, how they overpowered me! I did not wish to let my father see me cry, like a weak girl; but I put my hands on my eyes to conceal my tears. He did care for me, though he expressed it so little; and when he said that, I was glad too, that I was still to bear my father’s name – glad of this one proof of Harry’s regard, and proud of the self-relinquishment – the devotion he showed to me.

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