The Days of My Life: An Autobiography

“I thought we were to call each other by our Christian names?” said I; “but you must wait for me till I get my bonnet.”

“Let me fetch it – is not that your room?” said Flora, following; “oh! who is that with such a kind face? Is that your maid, Mrs. – cousin?”

“Come and you shall see her, Miss – cousin,” said I, unable to arrest the happy and playful fascination of this girl; “she is my maid and my nurse, and my dearest friend, too, Flora – my very dearest friend – Alice, this is Miss Ennerdale, my cousin.”

Alice started to her feet very hurriedly, made a confused curtsey, and looked at the young girl. It was too much for the self-control of Alice. I believe she had become nervous and unsettled, like the rest of us; and now she turned suddenly away, her lips quivered, her eyes filled. Flora gazed at her shyly, and kept apart, knowing nothing of the cause of her emotion.

“Is she very like, Alice?” said I, in an under tone.

“Very like, dear! God bless her! it’s like herself again. Miss Hester, is her name Helen?” asked Alice with a sob.

“No.”

The glance of disappointment on Alice’s face was only momentary.

“It ought not to have been, either; I’m glad it is not, dear – ah, Miss Hester! if she had but been your sister!”

“No, Alice, you would have loved her best; and I could not have borne that,” said I, still in a whisper; “but she is to stay with me. I will not let her go away again, till she is weary of Cottiswoode.”

And Alice, dear, kind, faithful Alice, who had no thought but for me, was grateful to me for seeking my own pleasure thus. I felt as if I had done her a favor, when I heard her “bless you, my darling!” Ah, this humble love was very consolatory; but I am not sure that it was very good for me.

I was not very strong nor able to walk as I had been used to do. But I felt the sweet exhilaration of the wind upon my face, and looked with pleasure along the level road, to see the thatched houses of Cottisbourne clustering as if for a gossip under the sunshine, and the great sky descending in its vast cloudy parallels to the very edge of these boundless featureless fields. The hum in the air so different from the hum in summer; the sharp, far-away bark of that dog, which always does bark somewhere within your range of hearing in a winter landscape; the shriller harping of the leafless elms, a sound so distinct from the soft rustling of their summer foliage – everything had a clear, ringing, cheering sound – and Flora went on by my side, the embodiment and concentration of all the lesser happiness, with a gay light tripping pace like a bird’s, and all her heart and mind in sweet harmonious motion with her young graceful frame. I had always, myself, been the youngest in our little household – it was a new pleasure to me, and yet a strange, unusual sensation, to find myself thrown into the elder, graver, superior place, and this young creature with me, whom I could not help but treat like a child, a younger sister, rich in possession of youth, which I had never known.

At fifteen, I think, I must have felt old beside Flora, and now at one-and-twenty – no great age, heaven knows! – I was struck with wonder and admiration at the beautiful youthfulness which was in every motion and every word of this simple pretty girl. My marriage, and my unhappiness, had increased the natural distance between us. I did not envy Flora; but I had a sort of reflective, half melancholy delight in looking at her – such as old people have, I fancy – which was strange enough at my years.

“Do you not like walking, cousin?” said Flora – “I think the fresh air is so sweet – I do not care whether it is summer or winter. I think I should like always to be out of doors. I always could dance when I feel the wind on my face like this.”

“But I am older than you, Flora,” said I.

Flora laughed, her sweet, low, ringing laugh – “I am sure you are not so much older than me, as I am older than Gus,” she said; “but mamma says when they are all at home, that I am the wildest boy among them. Do you like riding, cousin?”

“I never ride,” said I.

“Never ride? – oh! I am fond of horses!” cried Flora, “and a gallop along a delightful long road like this – why, it’s almost as good as flying. Will you try? – I am quite sure you are not timid, cousin. Oh, do let Mr. Southcote find a horse for you and try to-morrow. But, oh, I forgot!” she said with a sudden blush, which brought a still deeper color to my cheek, as she glanced at me, “perhaps it would not be right for you.”

There was a pause of momentary embarrassment, and Flora greatly distressed I could perceive, thinking she had annoyed me. At that moment, some children from the school at Cottisbourne passed us, going home, and made their clumsy bows and curtseys, which I only acknowledged very slightly as we went on. Flora, for her part, cast a wistful glance after the little rustics. “Will you not speak to them, cousin?” she asked with a little surprise – “have they not been good children? – I should so like you to see our school at Ennerdale. I always go there every day, and I am very fond of them. They are tidy pleasant children; and I believe, though it looks so vain to say it,” said Flora, breaking off with a laugh, “that they all like me.”

“I should not fancy that was so very extraordinary either,” said I; “other people do that, I suppose, besides the children at Ennerdale.”

“Yes, everybody is very good to me,” said Flora, with a quiet seriousness; “but then, you know, cousin, I have sometimes to punish the children as well as to praise them. How do you do here? I am sure you know a great deal better how to manage than I do. Do you forgive them when they seem sorry, or do you keep up looking displeased at them? Mamma says I spoil them, because I only look angry for a moment; but you know I never am really angry, I only pretend, because it’s right.”

“Indeed, Flora, I do not know. I never visit the school; I have had so little to do with children,” I answered hastily.

Once more Flora cast an annoyed glance at me. This was more wonderful still than never riding – I began to grow quite a puzzler to Flora.

“Mamma has so many things to do, she seldom gets any time to help me,” continued the girl, rallying a little after a pause. “Do you know, cousin, mamma is a perfect Lady Bountiful; she is always busy about something – and when people tell her of it, she only laughs and says it is no credit to her – for she does it all for pleasure. Don’t you think it is very silly for people to praise ladies like mamma, or to find fault with them either? She is only kind to the village people because she likes to see them pleased and getting on well; and we all like company, cousin Hester, and we know the village people best and longest, and they are our nearest neighbors; and don’t you think it is right to be kind to them? But the Miss Oldhams, at Stockport House, say we are undermining their independence, and condescending to the poor.”

“I am sure your mamma must be quite right, Flora – but here comes some rain – I think we must go home,” said I.

Flora held up her fresh pretty face to it, and caught the first drops upon her cheeks.

“It is rather too cold,” she said, shaking them off with a pretty graceful motion, and beginning to run like a young fawn. “I like to be caught in a spring shower; but oh, cousin Hester, what shall I do if I get my dress wet, I haven’t another one till they send; and then, I am running and forgetting you. Don’t run —I don’t care for being wet, if I may come down stairs in this frock after all. Oh! there is Mr. Southcote with a mantle for you, and an umbrella, and now I’ll run all the way home.”

She passed him with a laughing exclamation as he came up. She could not guess that this brief walk alone would be irksome to the young husband and wife, not four months married. I suffered him to wrap the mantle around me. I wondered almost to feel with what undiminished care he did it; and then we walked on side by side, in dreary silence, looking at the flying figure before us, with her mantle streaming behind her, and her fair curls escaping from the edge of her bonnet, as she turned round her laughing, glowing, pretty face to call and nod to us as she ran on. We did not speak to each other; we only looked at her, and plodded on slowly, side by side; and again the thought came upon me – and now, with a gush of pity for both of us, which overpowered me so that I could have thrown myself down there on the rainy roadside and cried. What a happy man he would have been had he brought Flora Ennerdale, instead of Hester Southcote, to Cottiswoode, as his bride.

I suppose the sight of her, and her innocence and happiness had moved him, too; for just when he left me, after our silent walk, he leaned over me for a moment, taking off my mantle, and whispering in a tremulous tone – “Dear Hester! I hope you will have pleasure in this good little girl’s society.” As he spoke, I caught his eye; there were tears in it, and a tender anxious look, as if he was very solicitous about me. I had great difficulty at the moment in restraining a great burst of tears. I was shaken almost beyond my own power of control. If I had waited another moment, I think I must have gone to him; clung to him, forgetting everything but one thing, and wept out all the tears in my heart. I fled to save reply. I am sure he heard me sob as I ran up stairs; but he did not know how I was almost overpowered – how a new love and tenderness, almost too much for me, was swelling like a sea in my heart. I fled to my own room, and shut myself in, and sank down upon the floor and cried. Alice had been speaking to him: I read it in his eye – but I – I could say nothing. I could not go, as his wife should have gone, to share with him the delight, and awe, and wonder, of this approaching future. I lay down upon the floor prostrate, with my face buried in my hands. I tried to restrain my sobs, but I could not. Long afterwards, I knew that he was watching, longing without the door, while I went through this moment of agony within – afraid to enter. If he had entered, perhaps – yet, why should I say perhaps? when I know it is quite as likely that my perverse heart would have started up in indignant anger at his intrusion, as that my pride and revenge would have given way before my better feelings; it was best as it was. I see all now; and how every event was related to its neighbor. I see I could not have done without the long probation, and the hard lessons which remained for me still.

When I recovered myself, it is strange how soon I hardened down once more into my former state. I had no longer any fear of meeting him, or of yielding to my own weakness. I rose and bathed my face, though I could not take away the signs of tears entirely from my eyes, and then I remembered how I had neglected Flora, and went to seek her. I found her sitting on a stool before the fire in her own room, spreading out her dress round her to dry, and looking up in the face of Alice who stood beside her. What a pretty picture the two would have made! Flora’s wide dress spread out around her upon the soft varicolored hearthrug; her hair hanging half out of curl, and slightly wetted; her pretty hand held up before her to shield her cheek from the fire, so that you could trace every delicate little vein in the pink, half-transparent fingers, and her sweet face turned towards Alice, looking up at her; while Alice, on her part, looked down, with her kind motherly looks and fresh complexion; her snowy cap, kerchief, and apron, basking in the firelight. I was reluctant to break in upon them with my red eyes and heavy face.

“Oh, cousin! what will you think of me!” said Flora, starting as I entered. “I ought to have come to see how you were after being so hurried; but Alice began to talk to me, and we forgot. It is so comfortable here, and there is such a delightful easy-chair. Dear cousin Hester! sit down and stay with me here a little, till my dress is quite dry. You were not angry with me for running away?”

She had drawn her delightful easy-chair to the fire, and coaxed me into it before I was aware. Once more I felt an involuntary relaxation and warming of my heart. This feminine and youthful pleasure – this pleasant gossiping over the fire, so natural and pleasant and unconstrained, was almost quite new to me. I did not know, indeed, what female society was. I had lived in ignorance of a hundred innocent and sweet delights which were very health and existence to Flora. My heart melted to my own mother when I looked at my new friend. I began to understand how hard it would be for such a creature to live at all under the shadow of a silent, passionate, uncommunicative man like my father, even if he had not distrusted her.

“I am afraid I was crying,” said Flora, wiping something from her cheek, “for Alice was speaking of your mamma; and, cousin, Alice too thinks I am like her. I am so very glad to be like her; but papa said you were a little too, cousin Hester.”

“No, I do not think it,” said I. “I am not like her, I am like the gloomy Southcotes, Flora. I have missed the sweeter blood of your side of the house.”

“Dear cousin Hester! I think you are very melancholy,” said Flora, looking up at me affectionately. “Pray don’t speak of the gloomy Southcotes, you are only sad, you are not gloomy; and I do not wonder – I am sure if it were I,” the tears gathered heavily into her sweet blue eyes. No – Flora, like myself, six months ago, knew nothing of the course of time and nature. Flora could understand any degree of mourning for such a grief as mine.

Alice had met my eye with an inquiring and slightly troubled glance, and now she went away – we were left alone. Flora and I – for some time we sat in silence together, my eyes bent upon the fire, and hers on me. This sweet simple girl seemed to fancy that she had a sort of charge of me – to amuse and cheer me. After a short interval, she spoke again.

“I saw some beautiful flowers down stairs, are they from your green-house, cousin? Some one told me there was such a beautiful conservatory at Cottiswoode; do your plants thrive? Do you spend much time there? Are you fond of flowers, cousin Hester?”

“I used to like them very well,” I said; “but I do not think I have been in the conservatory here more than half-a-dozen times. Would you like to go now, Flora?”

“Oh, yes – so much! if it would not tire you,” said Flora, starting up; “we have only such a little shabby one at Ennerdale. Mamma used to say the nursery was her conservatory; but I am very fond of flowers. Oh, what a beautiful place! Did you use to have this when you were at Cottiswoode before? I think I could live here if this were mine!”

And she flew about, light-hearted and light-footed, through the pretty conservatory, which indeed looked a very suitable place for her. As I followed her languidly, Flora found flower after flower which she did not know, and came darting back to me to know the names, reckoning upon my knowledge, as it seemed, with the most perfect confidence. I did not know – I did not know – I had never observed it before. Her young bright face grew blank as she received always the same answer; and by-and-by she restrained her natural exuberance, and came and walked beside me soberly, and ceased to assail me with questions. I was not much satisfied with the change, but I caught Flora’s grave, anxious, wondering look at me, and knew that this and everything else was laid to the source of my sorrow, and that the sincerest pity and affectionate anxiety for me had risen in this young girl’s simple heart.

She brightened again into great but subdued delight, when I said that some of the flowers she admired most, should be put aside to go to Ennerdale, and when I plucked a few pretty blossoms for her to put in her hair – they were too good for that, she said, and received them in her hands with a renewal of her first pleasure. Then we went into the drawing-room, and sat down once more, looking at each other. “Do you work much, cousin Hester?” asked Flora, timidly, “for, of course, not thinking that you would wish me to stay, I brought nothing with me to do. Will you let me have something? I am sure you think so much, that you like working; but for me, I am always with mamma, and when we are busy, she says I do get through so much talk. Let me work, please, cousin Hester, it is so pleasant for two people to work together.”

“I have got no work, Flora,” said I, faltering a little. It was true enough, yet I had some little bits of embroideries in progress, which I did not like to show to her, or to any one, but only worked at in solitude and retirement, in my own room up-stairs.

This time Flora sighed as she looked at me, and then looked round the room in quest of something else. “Do you play, cousin Hester? are you fond of music? I know great musicians have to practise such a great deal,” she said, looking at me interrogatively, as if perhaps this might be a sufficient reason for my unaccountable disregard of village schools, and hot-house flowers and embroidery. For the moment, with her simple eye upon me, I felt almost ashamed for myself.

“No, Flora, I never touch the piano,” said I.

Flora rose and drew softly towards me with humility and boldness. “Dear cousin Hester,” said the innocent young girl, kneeling down upon a footstool beside me, and putting her pretty arm around my waist, “you are grieving very much and breaking your heart – oh! I am so very sorry for you! and I am not surprised indeed at all, for it is dreadful to think what such a loss must be; and no mamma to comfort you. But, cousin, dear, won’t you try and take comfort? Mamma says it will do you harm to be so very sad – though I know,” said Flora, leaning back upon my knee to look up into my face, and blushing all over her own as she spoke, “that something will make you very happy when the summer comes, for Alice told me so.”

This simple and unpremeditated appeal overpowered me. I leaned down my cheek upon hers, and put my arms round her, and no longer tried to control myself. She was alarmed at this outbreak, which was almost as violent as the former one in my own room, and when she had soothed me a little, she ran upstairs and came down breathless with some eau-de-cologne and water in a little china basin, and bathed my forehead with a dainty little handkerchief, and put back my hair and smoothed it as if she had been my nurse, and I a child. Then she wanted me to lie down, and conducted me tenderly upstairs for that purpose – when, however, I only put my dress in order for dinner, and went down again.

My husband encouraged her happy talk while we sat at table, and she told him, “Cousin Hester had been a little nervous, and was so very sad, and could he tell her what to do, to amuse her cousin?” For my own part, I did not dare to meet his eye. Not only my own agitation, but the natural and happy life interposed between us in the person of this simple girl, made it a very great struggle for me to maintain my composure and self-control.

When we returned to the drawing-room, Flora drew her footstool to the fireside again, and sat down at my feet and told me of all her pleasant ways and life at home. Then she rose suddenly. “Would you like me to sing, cousin Hester? I cannot sing very well, you know; but only simple songs, and papa likes to hear me, at this time, before the lights come. Shall I sing? would it amuse you, cousin Hester?”

“Yes, Flora,” I said; she asked no more, but went away in her simplicity to the piano. Then while the evening darkened I sat by the fire which burned red and warm, but sent only a fitful variable glow into the corners of the room, listening to the young voice, as sweet and clear as a bird’s, singing song after song for my pleasure. They went to my heart, these simple words, these simple melodies, the pure affectionate sincerity of the singer, who never once thought of herself. I bowed myself down by the fire and hid my face in my hands, and in perfect silence, and strangely subdued and softened, wept quiet tears out of a full heart. She was still going on, when I became aware in an instant of another step beside me, and some one stooped over me, and kissed the hands which hid my face, and kissed my hair. My heart leaped with a violent start and throb; I looked up and raised myself on my chair. My husband had joined us! Flora perceived him, and I had but time to dry my wet eyes, when lights were shining in the cheerful room; and the music, and the charm, and this touch which once more had nearly startled me back into the natural woman, had vanished like the wintry twilight, and I was once more calm, grave, languid, the resentful, cloudy, reserved Mrs. Southcote, such a one as I had been ever since the first night when I was brought to Cottiswoode.

THE NINTH DAY