The Days of My Life: An Autobiography

I know well she did not mean to grieve me, but even while she spoke my burden came back upon me; I looked after the ships with a wistful glance; yes, many a home had given its best blood to these frail gallant ships, to risk the storms and the sea. Why? for duty and necessity, for daily bread, for honest labor; but what pretence had I for making my home desolate, or launching my poor boat upon this unknown sea of life? I had no answer to make; I had no resource but to turn my back upon the question, and ignore it. I turned from the window suddenly, and laid my head down upon the hard, prickly, hair-cloth cushion, and said I would rest a little. I was not quite so miserable even now as I had been yesterday, but my thoughts had returned to the same channel again.

As I thus reclined, sometimes watching her, sometimes seeing visions of Cottiswoode, and of all the agitation and tumult which must be there, Alice came and went between this little room and the kitchen, and began to spread the table, and to prepare our early, humble dinner. It soothed me to see her making all those little simple arrangements; everything was so far removed from the more stately regulations of home, and there seemed to me such a comfort and privacy in thus being able to do without the intervention of servants, to do everything “for ourselves,” as I flattered myself. What a rest and deliverance to my constrained mind would be the constant occupation which I must have had, had I really been the daughter of Alice! I thought of Amy’s cheerful bustle, of our simple maid Mary, singing at her work in my father’s house at Cambridge, – with tangible and real things in their hands and their thoughts all day long, what leisure would they have for the broodings of the mind diseased? What time for unprofitable self-communion? Ah, now I thought of it, that sickening doubt of myself came over me again; I was shaken in my false position; and now, when I wanted the fullest confidence in myself and in my course of action, my perverse heart began to glance back with dreadful suspicions of every step I had ever taken. I could no longer rest when this most ingenious process of self-torment began again. I had to rise and walk about, hurrying, as if to escape from it; and I was glad and thankful when Alice came in again with our simple meal.

After we had dined, I went with her, glad to be kept in any way from my own sole company, to unpack our trunk upstairs. I took out the things I had been working at, and my materials, and when she was ready to go with me, I carried them down stairs. I would not go without Alice. I made her sit by me, and take her own work, and be constantly at my side. By this time we had drawn a little table to the window for our sewing-things, and Alice sat opposite to me in a hard mahogany arm-chair, while I, half reclining on my sofa, went on slowly with my occupation. I was still busy with those delicate bits of embroidery; and I think almost the only pleasure I recollect in that dark time of my life, was the progress I made with these. I was putting some of them together now – “making them up,” as we call it in our woman’s language. I had a great pride in my needlework, and I have always had a singular pleasure in construction – so I was almost comfortable once more, and sometimes had such a thrill of strange delight at my heart, that it almost was a pang mingled of pain and joy, to see the definite shape these fine delicate bits of cambric took under my fingers. All this while Alice sat by working at similar work, and telling me tales of young wives like myself, and of mothers and children, and of all the natural experiences of womanhood. Like myself! with a shudder I wondered within myself whether there was one other in the world like me.

After a while, when I wearied of this – as, indeed, in my present mood of mind and weakness of frame, I soon wearied of anything, I made Alice get her bonnet and come out with me. It was now getting towards evening, and the usual hum of play and of rest, which always is about a comfortable village after the day’s work is over, was pleasantly audible here. At some distance from our house, behind it, some lads were playing cricket in a field, and women were gossiping at the cottage doors, and men lounging about, many of them in their blue woollen shirts and glazed hats – sailors, as we fancied in our ignorance, though they were, in reality, only watermen, who went a fishing sometimes, after a somewhat ignoble fashion, to the mouth of the river, and managed these pleasure-boats when they were at home. We wandered down close to the river, where the water now came rustling up to our feet, creeping closer and closer in every wave. “It is the tide,” said I, with involuntary reverence. Alice did not know much about the tide, but her heart, like every other natural heart, was charmed by that liquid soft-ringing music, the ripple of the water, as it rose and fell upon the beach, and Alice was reverential too. I bent down myself like a child, to put my hand upon the pebbly wet line, and feel the soft water heaving up upon it higher and higher. Ships were still passing down the beautiful calm river, gliding away silently into the night and the sea – the soft hum of the village was behind us, the musical cadence of these gentle waves filled the quiet air, yet soothed it, and we stood together saying nothing, strangers and solitary, knowing Nature, only one of us knowing God, but strangers to all the human people here.

As we went back, many of the cottage doors were closed, and through some of the half-curtained windows we saw the humble little families gathered together for the night. From the church, as we passed, there came some sounds of music; the organist had been practising, I suppose, and the “linked sweetness long drawn out,” the “dying fall,” which commands the imagination more entirely than anything perfect and completed can, was stealing into the darkening twilight as we passed by the half-open door. I cannot tell why all those sweet influences make even the happy pensive; but I know they brought such heaviness to my heart, and such tears to my eyes, as I would not like to feel again. Alice did not say anything, perhaps she saw that I was crying; but I was very glad to get home, and lay myself down upon my bed, and seek the sleep which always mercifully came to me. How glad I was always to fall asleep; no other way could I get rid of myself and my troubles; they looked in upon me with my first waking in the unwelcome light of the morning, but I had oblivion in my sleep.

THE SECOND DAY

WE were now in complete possession of our little solitary house; our humble neighbors had become accustomed to us, and no longer clustered about their doors and talked in whispers when we came out for our daily walk. I have no doubt that there was still much gossip, and even some suspicion about Alice and me; but we were inoffensive, and were not without means, so we were annoyed by no great investigations into our history.

We had no one in the house with us. Alice did everything; and though I made a pretence of helping her, I did her little service. Sometimes I put my own bedchamber in order, with a childish satisfaction, but no small degree of fatigue; and with so small a house, and so little trouble necessary, there was not much to do. I could not bear Alice to be out of my presence; we ate together, sat together, walked together; I was quite dependent upon her; altogether a great change had come upon me. I never had been what people call intellectual, but now in the day of my weakness how I clung to the womanly occupations, the womanly society, aye, to such a poor thing as gossip, which was only redeemed from being the very vulgarest of amusements, because it was gossip of the past. When I sat at my sewing, with Alice talking to me; when I listened to tales of this one and the other one, whom she had known in her youth, – everything about them; their dress, their habits, their marriages, their children, their misfortunes; when I cut, and sewed, and contrived these pretty things I still was making, sometimes I was almost happy. Yes, if it was in reality a descent from more elevated and elevating occupations, I still must confess to it, a woman after all is but a woman, and there are times when the greatest book, or the grandest imaginations in the world, have no attractions compared with those of a piece of muslin, a needle and a thread. I felt it so, at least. I remember the little parlor gratefully, with its round table and overflowing work-basket, the beautiful river and the passing boats without, and Alice recalling the experiences of her youth within.

For all this time my only safeguard lay in trying to forget, or to turn my back upon the great question of my life. I no longer brooded over the injury my husband had done me; it seemed to have floated away from my sight, and become an imagination, a vision, a dream. I could not even recall our life at Cottiswoode; when I attempted to return to it a veil fell upon my eyes, and a dull remorse at my heart made the very attempt at recollection intolerable to me. Instead of that, the bright days before our marriage, the bright days after it, continually, and even against my will, came to my mind. I went over and over again the course of our happy journey; I recalled all our hopes, all our conversations, all our plans for the future; and this was all over, all gone, vanished like a tale that is told! It is not wonderful that I should try with all my might to keep myself from thinking. It was dreadful to fall into such a reverie as this, and then to awaken from it, and recollect how everything really was.

I had heard from my agent in Cambridge, and had received money from him. We were plentifully supplied, yet needed very little. We lived as simply as any peasant women could have lived; and though we had now a few flowers in the little fantastic flower-pots before the window, and had dismissed the shabby evergreens, and pruned the “traveller’s joy,” we had made no other alteration in the house. It was now May, nearly the middle of the month, and perfect summer, for, as I have said, everything was unusually early this year. No letters except the agent’s had come to me. I thought my husband was content that I should be lost, and have my own will. When I was quite alone, I sometimes thought that he was eased and relieved by my absence, and the thought cost me some bitter tears. I could not bear to be of no importance to him; and then I fretted myself with vain speculations. Why was he so angry when I spoke of Flora Ennerdale? If he had but married Flora Ennerdale, how happy she would have made him; and I – I would have pined and died in secret, and never done him wrong. So I thought in my fond, wretched, desolate musings. Fond! – yes, my heart had escaped from me, and flown back to him. I would not for the world have whispered it to any one – I refused to acknowledge it to myself, yet it was true.

I was alone in the house, and these thoughts had come strongly upon me. Alice was very reluctant to leave me alone, and only when she was compelled by some household necessity went out without me; but she had wanted something this afternoon before the time of our usual walk, and I was sitting by myself in the silent little house. Though I avoided solitude by every means in my power, I yet prized the moment when it came to me – and I had been indulging myself in dreary longings, in silent prayers, and weeping, when Alice returned. She came in to me very hastily, with a good deal of agitation in her face, and when she saw my eyes, where I suppose there were signs that I had been crying, she started, and cried, “Have you seen him? have you seen him already?”

“I seen him– whom?” I cried with a great shiver of excitement. What a useless question it was! as well as if I had seen him, I knew he must be him.

She came and took my hand and bent over me, soothing and caressing. “Darling, don’t be startled,” said Alice; “oh, how foolish I am! I thought you had seen him when I saw the water in your eyes. Dear Miss Hester, keep a good heart, and don’t tremble, there’s a dear. I’ve seen him indeed – he’s here, come to see you, looking wan and worn, and very anxious, poor young gentleman. Oh, take thought of what you will say to him, Miss Hester; every minute I expect to hear him at the door.”

It was a great shock to me; I felt that there was a deadly pallor on my face. I felt my heart beat with a stifled rapid pulsation. I could not think of anything. I could not fancy what I would say. I was about to see him, to hear his voice again. I felt a wild delight, a wild reluctance; I could have risen and fled from him – yet it seemed to lift me into a sudden Elysium, this hope of seeing him again. Strange, inconsistent, perverse – I could not be sure for a moment what impulse I would follow. I sat breathless, holding my hand upon my heart, listening with all my powers. I seemed for the instant to be capable of nothing but of listening for his footstep; my physical strength and my mental were alike engrossed. I could neither move nor think.

I do not know how long it was; I know there was a terrible interval during which Alice talked to me words which I paid no attention to, and did not know, and then it came – that well-known footstep; I heard the little gate swing behind him – I heard the gravel crushed beneath his quick step, and then Alice opened the door, and a sudden lull of intense emotion came over me. He was before me, standing there, yes, there – but a dizzy, blinding haze came over my eyes – after the first glimpse I did not see him, till I had recovered again.

And he was not more composed than I was; not so much so in appearance, I believe. He came up and held out his hand, and when I did not move, he took mine and held it tightly – tightly between his own, and gazed full into my face, with his own all quivering and eloquent with emotion. At this moment the impulse for which I had been waiting came to me, and steadied my tremulous expectation once more into resolve – once more the bitterness which had perished in his absence returned with double force – his own words began to ring in my ears, and my cheek tingled with the fiery flush of returning resentment. I had deceived him; he had married a sweet and tender woman, and when his eyes were opened, he had found by his side only me. I thought no longer of my bridegroom, my yearnings for affection were turned into a passionate desire for freedom; it was not Harry, but Edgar Southcote on whom I looked with steady eyes.

He, I am sure, did not and could not notice any change of expression; he saw my color vary, that was all, but his own feelings were sufficiently tumultuous to occupy him.

“Hester,” he said, “Hester, Hester!” He did not seem able to say any more, he only stood before me holding my hand very close, looking into my face with eyes in which everything else was veiled by his joy in seeing me again. I saw it was so – heaven help me – what a miserable torturer I was! my heart gave a bound of wild delight to feel my power over him still.

When I made no response, he forced me at last; already he was chilled, but he did not change his position – he held out both his hands, his arms rather, tears came to his eyes, and with a longing, wistful, entreating gaze he fixed them upon me. “Hester, Hester!” he said, “come, I have the only right to support you. In absence and solitude we have found out how it is that we are bound to each other, not by promise and vow alone, but by heart and soul. In strife or in peace we have but one existence. Hester, come back to me, come, let us not be sending our hearts over the world after each other; we cannot be separated, come back to me.”

How true it was, how true it was! but the heart that had been yearning for him, oh, so drearily, oh, so sadly, half an hour ago, was beating against my bosom now with miserable excitement, resisting him bitterly and to the death.

“Why should I come back?” I said; “has anything changed? are our circumstances different from what they were?”

“Yes,” he cried eagerly; “we have been apart, we have found out our true union, we have learned what it is to pine for a look, the very slightest, of the face most dear in the world to us. We have found how transitory, how poor all offences and resentments are, and how the original outlives and outlasts them. Hester, do I not speak the truth?”

I dared not contradict my own heart and say no, I dared not do it, everything he said was true.

“I do not mean you to suppose that it is self-denial on my part and a desire to test this, which has made me so slow of following you,” he continued, growing heated and breathless as he found that I did not answer; “I have but newly found out your retreat, Hester – found it out after long and diligent searching, which has given me many a sick heart for a month past. I need not describe the misery into which your flight plunged me; when you passed me on the road I was struck with a pang of fear, but I refused to entertain it. Think how I felt when I went home, and saw the pitying looks of the servants, and found your pitiless note upon my table. They told me you placed it there yourself Hester; and when I enter that fatal room, I sit idly thinking of you, trying to fancy where you stood, wondering, wondering if there was no truth nor mercy in your heart.”

The recollection of that moment rushed back on me as he spoke; he saw the convulsive trembling which came upon me; he heard the sob which I could not restrain; thus far I betrayed myself. I could not remember that unmoved; but when he bent over me with eager anxiety, I drew my hand away, and said I was quite well, quite well, I needed no support.

“Hester,” he said, in a tone of such tenderness that it almost overpowered me, “I know I am trying your strength severely, I know I am. I may be inexcusable, I may be hazarding your health with my vehemence; tell me if it is so, I will not speak another word, I will rather give up all my own hopes. God forbid that you should suffer for my violence; speak to me, say a word, Hester, tell me what I am to do.”

“I can bear to hear all you have to say to me,” I said, with a burning blush upon my cheek. The exertion I made to maintain my own calmness was exhausting me dreadfully, but I could bear it better when he spoke, and when my natural spirit of resistance was roused by his words, than when he went away or was silent, when I would be left to the consuming remorseful persecution of my own thoughts.

When I said this he looked at me steadily and sadly; – “Was it hopeless then? would I receive him in no fashion but this?” I met his gaze with the blank look of sullen resentment; he turned away from me with a heavy sigh, and wrung his hands with impatience and suffering; then he came back, took the chair which Alice had been using, and sat down opposite to me.

“Then it is to be so,” he said with suppressed bitterness; “neither time nor solitude, neither tenderness nor absence, says a gentle word for me in your heart; you are resolved that we shall be miserable, Hester; you will leave me to the pity of the servants, you will show none; you will condemn me to frightful anxiety, anxiety which I dare not venture to anticipate; you will shut me out from every right; I must not be near; I must not try to support you; is this what you quietly doom me to, Hester?”

“You use strange words; I doom you to nothing,” said I; “we were very wretched when we were together; you told me you were deceived in me, and I also was deceived in you; all that I have done is to come away, to free each of us from a galling and perpetual slavery. If I give no pity, I ask none; let justice be done between us, and it is justice surely to permit me to take care for myself when I do not encumber you. You have not more to suffer or to complain of than I have; we are on equal terms, and so long as we are apart we cannot drive each other mad, as you said I would do to you; I beseech you to be content, let us remain as we are; it will be best for us both.”

If I was agitated when I began to speak, I had become quite calm before I ended. He never withdrew his eye from me – he followed my motions, almost my breath – and when I moved my hands and clasped them together, as I did to support myself, his gaze turned to them – my hands were thin and worn, and very white – they looked like an invalid’s. Before I was aware, he bent over and kissed them, saying, “Poor Hester! poor Hester!” Ah, it was very hard for me to keep up to my resolution, reading his thoughts as I did with an instinctive certainty. He was not thinking of my unkind and bitter words – he was thinking only of me.

But when he spoke after this pause, I saw clearly enough that my words had not escaped him; he did not entreat any longer; he saw it was vain; but the kindness of his tone was undiminished. I fancied I could perceive the resolution he had taken now; that he had made up his mind not to strive with me, but to leave me to myself. I would rather he had persecuted me with the most violent and perpetual persecution; that I could have met with courage; but I knew what a longing, yearning, remorseful misery would come upon me when I was left to the sole company of my own heart.

“I will wait till you come to think of something else than justice,” he said kindly, but sadly. “To have my rights yielded to me only because they are rights, will never satisfy me, Hester. I warn you of this now; you are not doing justice. I know that you can have no doubt what are my feelings to you; you know what my love is, but not how much it can bear, and you treat me with cruel injustice, Hester. Enough of this. I will plead my own cause no more. I will leave everything to yourself. By-and-bye, I do not doubt you will see my rights in a different aspect; but I will not be content with my rights,” he continued, growing unconsciously vehement; “when you are willing to do me justice, I will still be dissatisfied. It is not justice I want from you, and the time of our reunion will never come till you reject justice as I do. I know that I am right.”

“It will never come,” said I, under my breath.

“The most wretched criminal has hope, Hester,” he said, rising with impatience which he could not control, and coming to the window, “and I am not so much wiser than my kind as to be able to live without it. I have read of humility and patience, I grant you, and these are difficult qualities; but I will quarrel no more on my own account, and it is hard to maintain a feud on one side only, Hester? Will you permit me to live near you, since you insist on leaving me? Will you let me see you now and then? will you let me be near at hand, if by any chance you should relent and wish for me? In your present circumstances, this is no great boon to yield to your husband, Hester?”

“What end would it answer?” I said, though my heart leaped with a strange mixture of joy and pain at his words; “I am sure we are better quite apart.”

“Be it so,” he said, and then he came forward to me very gravely; “I wait your time, Hester,” he said, taking my hand once more, with a face of serious and compassionate kindness, “we have, both of us, much grief to go through yet, but I will wait and be patient; I consent to what you say; I will not intrude into your presence again till you bid me come – you smile – you will never bid me come? that is in God’s hands, Hester, and so are you, my bride, my solitary suffering wife. I leave you to Him who will support you better than I could. Farewell. It is a bitter word to say, but I obey you. Hester – Hester – not a word for me! farewell.”

He stooped over me, kissed my forehead, wrung my hand, and then he was gone.

He was gone; – I gazed with aching eyes into the place where he had been; here this moment; gone perhaps for ever; I cried aloud in wild anguish; I thought my heart would burst; it required no long process, no time nor thought to change my mad rebellious heart again; I could struggle with him, resist him, use him cruelly while he was here before me; but when he was gone; oh, when he was gone!

When Alice came in I was sobbing aloud and convulsively; I had no power of self-restraint; all my pride and strength were broken down. “He is gone,” I repeated to myself; “he is gone!” I could think of nothing else. Alice spoke to me, but I did not hear; she tried to lift me from the sofa, where I lay burying my face in my hands, but I would not let her touch me; no one had ever seen such violence and such a wild outbreak of passion and misery in me before.