The Days of My Life: An Autobiography

“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.’”