IT was winter again, a gloomy November day, ungenial and cold. The rain was beating on the dark buildings of the college, and saturating the dreary greensward in our garden, till it sunk under the foot like a treacherous bog. There was not a leaf on the trees, and the ivy on the high wall of the close at the other side, glistened and fluttered under the rain. There was nothing very cheerful to be seen out of doors. I was alone in our drawing-room, and it was still early, and nothing had occurred to break the morning torpor of this unbrightened day. I was sitting at the table, working with great assiduity, with scraps of my materials lying round me on every side. My occupation was not a very serious one, though I pursued it with devotion. I was only dressing a doll for a little girl, who was niece to Alice, and named after me; but as it did not consist with my ambitious desires to have a doll of my dressing arrayed like a doll which could be bought by any one, I was attiring this one in elaborate historical costume, like a lady of the age of Elizabeth, or even—so stiff and so grand was she—like that grim and glorious sovereign herself.
The fire burned with a deep red glow, so full that it warmed and reddened the very color of the room; and though it was a very subdued and gloomy light which came through the rain, from those heavy leaden skies, there was a warmth and comfort in the stillness here, which was rather increased than diminished by the dreary prospect without. It was very still—the great old clock ticking on the stair, the rain pattering upon the gravel and on the broad flag-stones at the kitchen door below, the faint rustle of the ivy leaves upon the wall, and sometimes the footsteps of Alice, or of Mary, as they went up and down about their household work, were all the sounds I could hear; and as the excitement of my enterprise subsided, and my occupation itself was almost done, I began to be restless in the extreme quietness. It is true, I was very well used to it, and made up to myself largely by dreams and by visions; but I am not sure that I was much of a dreamer by nature. I had a strong spirit of action and adventure stirring within me. I was moved by the swiftest and most uncontrollable impulses, and had such a yearning upon me to do something now and then, that there was about the house a score of things begun, which it was impossible I could ever finish, and which, indeed, I never tried to finish, except under a momentary inspiration. If any one had tried to direct me, I might have applied to better purpose my superfluous energy—but no one did—so I wasted it in wild fancies, and turbulent attempts at doing something, and sometimes got so restless with the pressure of my own active thoughts and unemployed faculties, that I could rest nowhere, but wandered about as perverse and unreasonable as it was possible for a lonely girl to be, and generally ended by quarrelling with Alice, and finding myself to be in the wrong, and miserable to my heart’s content.
This stillness! it began to get intolerable now—to sit and look at these ivy leaves, and at the rain soaking into the spongy grass—to feel the warm full glow of the fire actually make me sleepy in the vacancy of my life—I started up in high disdain, and threw down the doll which caricatured Queen Elizabeth. I wanted something to do—something to do—I was sixteen and a half, high spirited, warm tempered, a Southcote! and I had nothing better to do with my youth and my strength, than to fall asleep over the fire, before it was noon in the day! I rushed down stairs immediately, with one of my sudden impulses to make some sort of attack upon Alice. I would have been glad to think that it was somebody’s fault that my life was of so little use; and I ran along the passage leading to the kitchen with an impatient step; on the same floor was my father’s study, and a little odd parlor where we now and then sat; but I did not disturb my father with my perverse thoughts.
The kitchen was not very large, but looked so cheerful, that it always reminded me of Alice. The walls of the ground floor of the house were founded on some tiers of massy stonework, and I suppose that gave it a look of warmth and stability—and in the side of the room, which was of this same old masonry almost to the roof, there was a little high window with an arched top, which threw a strange stream of sunlight into the room, and constantly annoyed Alice, in the summer, by putting out her fire. There was no sun to put out anybody’s fire to-day, but the rain beat against the panes instead, and the high straggling head of a withered hollyhock nodded at the window-sill, with the dreariest impertinence. In the breadth of the kitchen, however, looking out on the garden, was a broad low lattice, quite uncurtained, which gave the fullest light of which the day was capable to this cheerful apartment; and at the great table which stood by it, Alice was standing making some delicate cakes, in the manufacture of which she excelled. I came up to her hastily, and threw myself upon the wooden chair beside her. I was full of those endless metaphysical inquiries which youth—and especially youth that has nothing to do, abounds in—what was life for—what was it—what was the good of me, my particular self, and for what purpose did I come into the world? Before now, I had poured my questionings into the ears of Alice, but Alice was very little moved by them, I am constrained to say.
“Have you done, Miss Hester?” said Alice, for I had taken her into my counsels to discuss the momentous question of the doll’s costume, and of what period it was to be.
“Oh, yes! I am done,” said I; “only think, Alice, nothing better to do all this morning than dress a doll; and now I have nothing at all to do.”
“Dear Miss Hester, you never can want plenty of things to amuse you,” said Alice; “don’t speak to me so—it’s unkind to your papa.”
“I don’t want things to amuse me,” said I, “I want something to do, Alice. What is the use of me—it is very well for you—you are always busy—but I want to know what’s the good of me!”
“You must not say that, dear! don’t now,” said Alice, “you’re but a child—you’re only coming to your life—”
“I don’t think life is much better, Alice,” said I. “Mr. Osborne and my father dispute for hours about passages in Greek books; are books life? I don’t think there’s any satisfaction in them, more than in dressing a doll.”
“You did not think so on Tuesday night, my dear,” said Alice quietly, “when the light was in your window half through the night, and I know you were sitting up reading one.”
“Ah! but that was a novel,” I cried, starting up, “that is the very thing! May I send Mary to the library? I will have one to-day.”
So I ran up stairs to make a list of certain desirable volumes, and sent off Mary forthwith; then I returned to the table, where Alice made her cakes, and to my wooden chair.
“No, there is no satisfaction in them,” said I, “even a novel has an end, Alice; but do you think that reading pages of printed paper is all that people need to care for—do you think that is life?”
“Life is not one thing, but a many things, Miss Hester,” said Alice. “Dear, you’re a-coming to it now.”
“What am I coming to—only to breakfast, and dinner, and supper, over and over again, Alice,” said I. “I don’t think it was so at Cottiswoode, but it is so here, I know—then you have to work all day to cook for us, and we have to eat what you cook—and that is our life.”
“Don’t speak so, Miss Hester,” entreated Alice once more, “it is not a poor woman like me that can tell you what life is; there were ten years or more in my life that were full of great things happening to me; but little happened to me before or after—you would think it was not worth my while living after these years.”
I confessed to my thought. “Yes, Alice! I am afraid I did think so; though I would be a very desolate girl, I am sure, without you.”
It seemed to move her a little, this that I said. Her cheeks reddened, and she paused in her work.
“If you were older, you would know better,” said Alice. “After the last of them were gone, it was a dreary, dreary time. I rose to do my work, Miss Hester, and laid me down to sleep and forget what a lonesome woman I was. What was it you said this morning about the new day cheering you, and the fresh spirit you had when you woke, howsoever you had been at night? I know what that is—but after my troubles, when I opened my eyes, and saw the daylight, it made me sick—I used to turn my face to the wall, and wish and wish that I might sleep on, and never wake to think about what had befallen me; but still I lived, and still I lived, and the breakfast and the dinner and the common ways were what God had appointed me. If I said life was trouble and sorrow, would you like it better than when its only comfort was quiet, and reading books as it is with you?”
“But it was not all trouble and sorrow, Alice, in these ten years?”
Her face changed again a little. I knew I was urging her to a painful subject, yet I did not pause; and I do not think my questions grieved her, even though they revived her grief.
“When joy turns to sorrow, it’s the sorest grief of all, Miss Hester,” said Alice; “no, I was happy beyond the common lot of women, but one by one everything I rejoiced in was taken away. Yes, that was life—I had babies in my arms, and plans for them in my heart; I was working and contriving for their schooling and their clothing, and laying by for them and considering in my mind how to train them up. We were walking together, striving for them, using all our strength, my husband and me; ay, that was life!”
I was a little awed by the words and said nothing. All this had ceased for Alice—absolutely ceased—yet left a far sorer blank than if it had never been. As I looked at her, going on very hurriedly with her work, something I had been reading came to my mind. I said it aloud, watching her, and wondering if it was true—
“I hold it true whate’er befall,
I feel it when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
Alice turned round to me eagerly with a tear shining in her eye.
“Don’t you think I’d rather have been without them, Miss Hester; don’t you think it now! it’s hard to lose, but it’s blessed to have; that’s true—that’s true! I would not have been without one, though they’re all gone: I have read in books many a time, good books, books that were written on purpose to comfort the sorrowful,” said Alice, sinking to her usual quietness of tone, “that God did but lend our treasures to us, to take them back at His pleasure. No, Miss Hester, no!—as sure as they are His, my darling, His first and His always, so sure do I know that He’s keeping them for me.”
I was silenced again, and had nothing to say, for the name of God then was nothing but a sound of awe to me. I held it in the deepest reverence, this wonderful great name—but Him, the august and gracious Person to whom my poor Alice lived, her bereaved and pious life, was unknown to me.
And Alice, I believe, had reproached herself already, for bringing her real griefs, or the shadow of them, to eclipse my cherished discontent. She returned to me with her face lighting up again in its cheerful kind humility.
“Ay, Miss Hester, that’s life to a woman,” said Alice, “and, my dear, in a year or two, you will find it waiting for you.”
But this did not at all chime in with the current of my thoughts.
“Do you think, Alice, that a woman is fit for nothing but to be married?” I exclaimed, fiercely. Poor Alice was taken by surprise: she had not expected such a flush of sudden displeasure—she paused in her work, and looked at my crimsoned face with a glance of real apprehension. Alice was old-fashioned and held by many primitive notions—she did not understand what I could mean.
“Miss Hester, if it’s the nuns you’re thinking of, I’ll break my heart,” said Alice.
“I’m not thinking of the nuns,” cried I, indignantly, “why should a lady be married any more than Mr. Osborne? do you mean I could not be as well by myself as he is? I do not think you can have any woman-pride when you speak so, Alice.”
Alice smiled with her eyes when I made this speech, but kept her gravity otherwise. “To be like Mr. Osborne is nothing much to wish for, my dear,” said Alice, quietly, “but I can tell you, Miss Hester, it is not Mr. Osborne’s fault that he is living lone in his rooms, a college gentleman, instead of having his own house, and a happy family round him—if it had pleased God. Ah! if Mr. Osborne had been the man!”
“What do you mean?” said I, quickly; I had an instinctive suspicion as she spoke.
“Long days ago, before ever your papa knew my dear young lady, Mr. Osborne came a-courting to her,” said Alice, “and if you’d have told that merry young gentleman what he was to come to, he’d have laughed in your face then; he did not choose for himself in those days to be living all by himself as he does now.”
“Mamma again,” said I under my breath, with wonder and curiosity, “did she break his heart too?”
“To tell the truth I do not think she did, Miss Hester,” said Alice, with a smile, “it’s only a heart here and there, my dear, that breaks when it’s crossed in love.”
“Alice!” cried I, horror-stricken at her want of feeling—for I had a very poor opinion of any heart which would not break instantly for such a weighty reason.
“She did not break his heart, dear; she only disappointed him,” said Alice, “and I never heard how it was that he took so much to learning and settled down here; but he never had any grudge at Miss Helen, though I can see he likes you the better for it, that you sometimes have a look like her sweet face.”
“She was my mother,” said I doubtfully, “but it was cruel of her to marry papa, Alice. Why was it, I wonder, that so many people cared for her?”
“It was because she deserved better love than she ever got in this world,” said Alice, with a start; “why was it cruel of her to marry your papa, Miss Hester? It was cruel of him—she never gave him cause to doubt her, she waited on his will as if he had been a king; oh! my dear, your papa was hard upon my young lady, and all for a fancy of his own.”
“It has blighted his life, Alice,” said I.
“Your papa is my master, Miss Hester,” said Alice, with some pride, “and you and I can only speak of him as his servant and his daughter should—but I would have you think upon your mamma sometimes—your dear, sweet, innocent young mother; she never did harm to any living creature; she was always a delight to look upon till—”
“Till what, Alice?”
“My dear, till her heart broke.”
Alice moved away without saying another word; this was a perplexing new light upon my meditations, but I was very reluctant to receive it. If it should happen that my mother had been misconceived and misinterpreted—that she, after all, was the wronged person, and that my father was to blame, it might have made a great difference in the influences which just then were moulding my mind and life; but I rejected this unwelcome conclusion—I would not permit myself to be convinced of it. I clung over again to my father, and made my stand by him, and so went on, unconsciously determining and ripening for my fate.
“Don’t take it ill of me, Miss Hester,” said Alice, coming back, and I thought her voice trembled slightly, “but never distrust one that cares for you, dear—don’t do it—you can’t tell what ill comes of it in a house; and when any one speaks to you of a blighted life, be you sure it’s his own doing more or less, and not another’s. Take heed to your way, darling, there’s not a speck on your life yet; but the cloud rises like a man’s hand, Miss Hester. Pray that it may never come to you.”
“Alice, how can it come to me?” cried I, trying to smile at her earnestness, yet I was angry for her implied blame of my father, and at the moment Edgar Southcote’s rejected overtures flashed upon my mind. Yes! if by any chance these had been accepted, the curse of my father’s life would have come to me. I was silent, oppressed by a vague discomfort; it was foolish, but I could not overcome it, and Alice did not answer my question, but returned to her work once more.
When Mary came back with the novel I wanted, I confess that I ran up stairs with it, and that there ensued an immediate dispersion of my thoughts—nor did I recal them much till the evening when I had galloped through the three volumes, and was left sitting by the fire in the sudden reaction of excitement, to cogitate upon the disagreeable necessity common to stories, of coming to an end. My father, who, from habit and punctilio, never returned to the library in the evening, sat at the table as usual with his book, and after a little pause of impatience at the conclusion of my tale, I resumed the thread of my previous meditations. I had been a little startled and shaken to-day in my thoughts. To say that I was inclined to scoff at the youthful notion of a life determined once and for ever by the misfortune which Alice mentioned as being “crossed in love,” would be to say what was not true—for my ideal belief in this extraordinary and all-powerful unknown influence was as devout as that of any girl or boy of my years, and I had an equal admiration for that melancholy constant faithful lover, doomed to be unrequited, and never to overcome his disappointment, of whose existence many a romance had made me aware. But I was misanthropical to-night from the abrupt ending of my novel—and there was still the greater part of the evening left vacant with no new story to begin—so I speculated with a more sceptical mind than usual upon my great problem. Was it my mother, so many years ago—twenty years or more, a fabulous and unappreciable period, before I was born—whose rejection of him had fixed Mr. Osborne in his rooms at Corpus, and made the records of his life little better than a library catalogue? Was it my mother, and his disappointment in her, which had cast my father into his existence of aimless and sombre dignity? Was all this the single work of a young girl who died nearly seventeen years ago, and who was not much more than twenty when she died?
I was much perplexed to answer this question; though it flattered my pride as a woman shortly to enter upon the field myself, and perhaps make decisions of equally momentous result to somebody, it sadly bewildered my perceptions of right and wrong. I felt humbled rather than exalted in my own self-opinion by the idea, that anything I said or did could produce such consequences; and I could not understand about Mr. Osborne. He, with his shrewd merry eyes, his regard for all his own comforts and luxuries, his want of sentiment and melancholy—that he should be the disappointed lover, almost exceeded my powers of belief. I was glad to think that he must have “got over it,” but I was greatly puzzled to make the conclusion whether it could be this that decided the manner of his life.
My father was extremely absorbed in his book to-night—more than usually so I thought; and I am afraid that circumstance made me still more disposed to question him, unoccupied and idle as I was. I had disturbed him two or three times already by stirring the fire, and moving my seat, and had perceived his quick upward glance of impatience, but I was not deterred from beginning my investigations.
“Papa, have you known Mr. Osborne a very long time?” said I, looking at his face in the lamplight, and at the ray of reflection which came from the diamond on his finger. He looked up sharply as if not quite comprehending.
“Known Mr. Osborne?—yes, a long time, Hester—since I was a boy.”
“And do you know why he lives here—why he is not married, papa?” I continued quietly.
My father looked up with a smile. “He is not married because he did not choose it, I suppose; and because he is a fellow, and has his income on that condition. Osborne is a scholar, and not a family man.”
“I wonder now what is the good of being a scholar,” said I. “Is Mr. Osborne poor? Does he do it for the sake of his income? Yes! I know all these colleges are for making scholars—but then, what is the good of it, papa?”
“Hester, you speak like a child,” said my father with a little anger; “you might say in the same foolish words what is the good of anything—what is the good of life?”
“And so I do,” said I with a little terror, and in an undertone.
“So! I have a young misanthrope on my hands—have I?” said my father; “we will not enter on that question, but return to Mr. Osborne, if you please, for I am busy. Are you very sorry for Mr. Osborne, Hester?”
“No, papa,” said I.
“I am glad to hear it—there is no such prolific source of evil in the world,” said my father gradually becoming vehement, “as false and injudicious pity—take care you never let that fictitious principle sway your conduct, Hester. Justice—let every man have justice—and he who is not content with that deserves no more.”
He ceased abruptly, and returned to his book with a stern face. This was enough for me; all my questionings disappeared at once, in the greatness of my sympathy for my father. I thought again upon Edgar Southcote, and upon his “generous impulse.” I unconsciously associated myself with my father, and took his place, and tried to fancy the intolerable misery with which I should feel the substitution of pity and generosity in my own case, for that unknown love, that wonderful visionary influence which was in my favorite stories, and in my girlish dreams—and my heart returned to its former confidence in my father, and passionate feeling of his great wrong. His life had been blighted—who could deny it! he who was so well worthy of the loftiest affection, he had found nothing better than pity in its place.
It is not my wish to trace all we did hour by hour in our solitary house, or I might record many a day like this. This was not a day of very vital moment in my life—but it was one which confirmed into singular strength and obstinacy, the influences which have guided and led me through many a more momentous day.