The Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Oliphant Margaret
– she put away the curtains first, carefully smoothed down and folded into a great chest which stood open beside us, and then she began to lift up my few books, and the simple furniture of my toilette-table, and packed them away for the removal. It was while she was thus engaged, softly coming and going, and wiping off specks of dust in a noiseless, deliberate way, that she told me the story of my father and mother.
“My young lady was an only child, like you, Miss Hester,” said Alice, “but her father’s land was all entailed, and it has passed to a distant cousin now, as you know. I think she was only about eighteen when the two young gentlemen from Cottiswoode began to visit at our house. Mr. Brian came as often as your father – they were always together, and I remember very well how I used to wonder if both of the brothers were in love with Miss Helen, or if the one only came for the other’s sake. Mr. Brian was a very different man from your papa, my dear – there was not such a charitable man in the whole country, and he never seemed to care for himself – but somehow, just because he was so good, he never seemed in earnest about anything he wished – you could not believe he cared for anything so much, but he would give it up if another asked it from him. It’s a very fine thing to be kind and generous, Miss Hester, but that was carrying it too far, you know. If I had been a lady I never would have married Mr. Brian Southcote, for I think he never would have loved me half so much as he would have loved the pleasure of giving me away.
“But you know how different your papa was; I used to think it would be a pleasure to trust anything to Mr. Howard, because whatever he had and cared for, he held as fast as life; and my young lady thought so too, Miss Hester. They were both in love with Miss Helen, and very glad her papa would have been had she chosen Mr. Brian, who was the heir of all. It used to be a strange sight to see them all, poor Mr. Brian so pleasant to everybody, and Mr. Howard so dark and passionate and miserable, and my sweet young lady terrified and unhappy – glad to be good friends with Mr. Brian, because she did not care for him; and so anxious about Mr. Howard, though she scarcely dared to be kind to him, because she thought so much of him in her heart. Your papa was very jealous, Miss Hester, it is his temper, and I am not sure, my dear, that it is not yours; and he knew Mr. Brian was pleasanter spoken than he was, and that everybody liked him – so, to be sure, he thought his brother was certain to be more favored than he – which only showed how little your papa knows, for all so learned a man as he is,” said Alice, shifting her position, and turning her face to me to place a parcel of books in the great chest; “for Mr. Brian was a man to like, and not to love.”
She was blaming my father, and, perhaps, she had more blame to say; but her blame inferred more than praise, I thought, and I listened eagerly. Yes! my father was a man to love and not to like.
“They say courting time is a happy time,” said Alice with a sigh, “it was not so then, Miss Hester. However, they all came to an explanation at last. I cannot tell you how it came about, but we heard one day that Mr. Brian was going abroad, and that Mr. Howard was betrothed to Miss Helen. I knew it before any one else, for my young lady trusted me; and when I saw your papa the next day, his face was glorious to behold, Miss Hester. I think he must have had as much joy in that day as most men have in all their lives, for I don’t think I ever saw him look quite happy again.”
“Alice!”
“My dear, it is quite true,” said Alice quietly, and with another sigh: “I could not tell for a long time what it was that made him so overcast and moody, and neither could my young lady. It could not be Mr. Brian, for Mr. Brian gave her up in the kindest and quietest way; you could not have believed how glad he was to sacrifice himself to his brother – and went away to the West Indies where your grandmamma had an estate, to look after the poor people there; so then the marriage was over very soon, and your grandpapa Southcote took the young people home to live with him at Cottiswoode, and any one that knew how fond he was of Miss Helen, would have thought Mr. Howard had got all the desire of his heart. But he had not, Miss Hester! The heart of man is never satisfied, the Bible says – and I have often seen your papa’s face look as black and miserable after he was married, as when he used to sit watching Mr. Brian and my poor dear young lady. Your mamma did not know what to think of it, but she always hung about him with loving ways and was patient, and drooped, and pined away till my heart was broken to look at her. Then she revived all at once, and there was more life in the house for a little while – she had found out what ailed him: but oh! Miss Hester, a poor woman may set her life on the stake to change a perverse fancy, and never shake it till she dies. Your papa had got it into his head that my young lady had married him out of pity; and all her pretty ways, and her love, and kindnesses, he thought them all an imposition, my dear – and that is the reason why he says that hard, cruel saying, ‘Pity is a cheat!’”
“And then, Alice?” said I, eagerly.
“And then? there was very little more, Miss Hester – she was hurried out of this world when you were born; she had never time to say a word to him, and went away with that bitterness in her heart, that the man she had left father and mother for, never understood her. Death tries faith, my dear, though you know nothing of it! think how I stood looking at her white face in her last rest! Thinking of her life and her youth, and that this was the end of all; so carefully as she had been trained and guarded from a child, and all her education and her books, and such hopes as there were of what she would be when she grew up a woman; but soon I saw that she grew up only to die – God never changes, Miss Hester – he tries a poor woman like me very like the way he tried Abraham – and that was what I call a fiery passage for faith!”
“And my mother, Alice? and poor, poor papa! oh! how did he ever live after it?” cried I, through my tears.
“He lived because it was the will of God – as we all do,” said Alice, “a sad man, and a lonely he is to this day: and will never get comfort in his heart for the wrong he did my dear young lady – never till he meets her in heaven.”
At that moment Alice was called and went away. Poor, poor papa! he was wrong; but how my heart entered into his sufferings. I did not think of the bitterness of love disbelieved and disturbed, of my mother’s silent martyrdom – I thought only of my father, my first of men! He loved her, and he thought she pitied him. I started from my seat at the touch of this intolerable thought. I realized in the most overwhelming fulness, what he meant when he said, “Pity is a cheat!” Pity! it was dreadful to think of it – though it was but a mistake, a fancy – what a terrible cloud it was!
I will not say that this story filled my mind so much, that I do not recollect the other events of that day; on the contrary, I recollect them perfectly, down to the most minute detail; but they are all connected in my mind with my grief for my father – with the strange, powerful compassion I had for him, and some involuntary prescience of my own fate. For it was him I thought of, and never my mother, whom I had never seen, and whose gentle, patient temper was not so attractive to my disposition. No – I never thought he was to blame! I never paused to consider if it was himself who had brought this abiding shadow over his life. I only echoed his words in my heart, and clung to him, in secret, with a profound and passionate sympathy. Pity! I shuddered at the word. I no longer wondered at his haughty rejection of the slightest approach to it – for did not I myself share – exaggerate this very pride.
This mournful tedious day went on, and its dreary business was accomplished: all our belongings were taken away from Cottiswoode, and Alice and another servant accompanied them to set our new house in order before we came. Just before she went away, at noon, when the autumn day was at its brightest, I found Alice cutting the roses from my favorite tree. I stood looking at her, as she took the pale faint flowers one by one, but neither of us spoke at first: at last I asked her, “why do you take them, Alice?” and I spoke so low, and felt so reverential that I think I must have anticipated her reply.
I had to bend forward to her, to hear what she said. “They were your mother’s,” said Alice, “I decked her bride chamber with them, and her last bed. They are like what she was when trouble came.”
She had only left one rose upon the tree, a half blown rose, with dew still lying under its folded leaves, and she went away, leaving me looking at it. I felt reproved, I know not why, as if my young mother was crying to me for sympathy, and I would not give it.