Margaret Oliphant - The Days of My Life - An Autobiography

In a few minutes he was quite himself once more, and drew my hand upon his arm, and went in with me to say farewell to the servants; he did so with grace and dignity like an old knight of romance – for he was never haughty to his inferiors, and they all loved him. They were crying and sobbing, every one of them – even old Whitehead – and I cried too, I could not help it; but my father was quite unmoved. He put me into the chaise, took his seat beside me, waved his hand out of the window, smiling as he did so – and then he closed the blinds rapidly on that side, and the carriage drove away. It was all over like a dream. I dared not and could not, look back upon the home which had been the centre of my thoughts all my life; and with the cold night wind blowing in our faces, we were hurrying to a new life, altogether severed from our old existence, and from Cottiswoode.

Yes! the wind was in our faces, fresh and cold – and I never feel it so now without an instant recollection of that long silent drive to Cambridge, through the darkening October night. The long dark levels of the fields rushed past us so swiftly, and with such a desolate quietness; and the long luminous line of the horizon, and the dull clouds of night kept us company with such a ghost-like constancy, travelling at as quick a pace as ours. I was soon tired of weeping under my veil, for I had all the restlessness of my years; and I can see now how the darkness brooded upon the flat meadows, how there seemed no human divisions of fence or hedge upon them, but only one blank line of grass from which the night had taken all color, and of ploughed land stretching back its lessening furrows over many acres, which the eye ached to see. Sometimes miles away, a pollard willow bristled up upon the sky, showing its every twig with a strange exaggeration as it stood guarding some dreary point of road – and the solitary haystack which belonged to some one of those poor stray cottages belated among the fields, threw up its bulk like a goblin against that clear universal background – that pale line of sky which brought out every outline with such a ghostly distinction. Distance, space, the wild idea of an unending and unreposing journey, are the very spirit and sentiment of this country – I think sometimes its dull unfeatured outline is half sublime; there are no mountain heights to attain to, no sweet valleys charming you to rest; only the long lines converging into the infinite sky – the fresh breeze in your face – and the rushing of your own footsteps through the silence, crying – on – on!

There was not a word exchanged between us all the way – my father sat quite still, looking out from one window, engaged I know not how, while I looked from the other, feeling a strange enjoyment in the mere motion and progress, and in the silence and dreamy dreariness of all those flat, unvarying lines, that glided past us in the twilight and the night.

There were neither moon nor stars, yet it was not very dark, even when we reached Cambridge – I had been in the town before, but I knew little of it, and I had no knowledge of where we were, when we stopped beside the old church of St. Benet, and my father assisted me to alight. I was surprised, for there were only some mean houses and a shop before us – but he drew my hand within his arm, and led me along a paved and narrow lane, on one side of which was the churchyard. The light seemed quite shut out here – it was like descending a well to go boldly into that darkness; but we went on, past the little new houses on the one hand, and the old conventual buildings, which loomed on us so strangely from the other, till we paused at a door where some one stood with a lantern. As the man raised his lantern and the light flashed up, I saw that we were to enter under this arched doorway, which had a coat of arms in the keystone. There were two or three steps to descend, and then the door was closed, and we went along a narrow path, where there was a blank wall covered with ivy on one side, and the house on the other. The light of the lantern gleamed in those dark glistening ivy leaves, and in the square projecting windows of this new home of ours. I was glad to see how different from the massy glories of Cottiswoode, was this strange house, with its two projections, one supported on dark oaken beams, and the other built up from the ground. The building was only wood, and lath and plaster, except the heavy and unlighted ground story, which was grey and aged stone; and the broad square windows on the upper floor which filled the whole front of each projecting part, were formed of small diamond panes. But I saw no mode of entrance, nothing but tall ungainly rose bushes, and withered creepers nestling up against the walls, till we turned a corner and came to a door in the end of the house, where Alice was standing to receive us. We had to make our way in here through a ragged regiment of tall straggling hollyhocks – I have hated them ever since that night.

But my father had not once addressed me yet, and my own mind was so full, that I had never observed his silence. He spoke now when we were on the threshold, and I started at the sound of his voice. He only said, “Hester, this is your new home!” but I think there was the most wonderful mixture of emotions in his voice that I had ever heard – determined composure, and yet highly excited feeling – disdain of this poor place he brought me to, yet a fixed resolution to show content in it, and stronger and greater pride than ever. My heart echoed the resolution and the pride, as I sprang in – but my heart was young and full of the pleased excitement of novelty and change. I knew nothing of what he felt as he followed me with his slow and stately step – nothing, for I was impatient to see all these rooms that we were to live in, and to make acquaintance with my new home.

So I ran on, leaving him to follow me – I could not have done better, had I been laboring to find something which would comfort and cheer him. My eagerness gave a certain interest to the poor house. I remember that he held me back for a moment, and looked into my face with a slow smile gradually breaking upon his own. Mine, I know, was full of light and animation – I remember how my cheeks glowed from the wind, and how the warmth and the lights had brought water into my eyes; and, I suppose, I looked quite as bright and eager as if I had never known the girlish heroical despair for leaving Cottiswoode which possessed me an hour ago. I ran from one apartment to another, exclaiming at everything, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with astonishment. The two broad windows which I had seen outside, represented two large apartments, occupying the whole breadth of the house, and each with a window at the other end, looking out upon a great dim silent garden, fenced in by other gardens, and on one side by a dark mass of building, along which a light twinkled here and there. These rooms were not fully furnished, but they were already in a habitable state, and in one of them a bright fire blazed pleasantly, sparkling in the old silver kettle and tea-pot, and antique china, which we always used at home – at home! The words meant these strange rooms, and had no other reference now for my father and me.

But when I went to lay aside my bonnet, I found a room prepared for me, prettier, if that were possible, than the pretty chamber at Cottiswoode, where Alice had tended me all my life. The white draperies were so white, and full, and soft – the pretty chintz hangings were so fresh with their new bands of ribbons, and there was so much care and tenderness in the hands which had restored my old room perfect and unbroken, yet made it brighter than ever, that I clung to Alice with an April face where the tears had somehow lost their bitterness, and the smile its pride. Now and then in my life, I have found out suddenly, in a moment, of how little importance external things were to me. The conviction came upon my mind at this instant, like a sunbeam. What did it matter to me standing here in my triumphant youthfulness, with my father to be loved and cared for, and Alice to love and care for me – what did it matter who lost or who won such outside and external matters as houses and lands? I threw off my mantle upon the kind arm of Alice, and danced away to make tea for my father. In proportion to the depth of my sadness at leaving Cottiswoode, was the height of my exhilaration now to find another home. We had expected this to be a very dreary evening – instead of that I had seldom been so happy, so vivacious, so daring, in my girl’s talk; and there sat my father, his face brightening in the firelight, smiling at my boldness, my enthusiasms, my denunciations, my girlish superlative emotion. When tea was over, he fell into a fit of musing, and was not to be disturbed, I knew – and then I examined the room with its wainscot pannels, its carved mantel-shelf, and its pannel pictures, hard flat portraits, which had no pretension to the roundness or the breadth of life, but were as level as the Cambridgeshire flats, and almost as much like each other. And then I went to the further window, and coiled myself up upon the bench within the curtains, to solace myself with my own thoughts. The garden lay dark beneath, with shadowy bare trees here and there, lifting up their branches to the sky, and some fantastic little green-house, or summer-house, half way down, showing a dull glimmer of glass under the boughs. But insensibly my eyes turned from the garden and the darkness, to count the scattered lights in the windows of this dark building, which marked its embrasures upon the sky at my right hand. A light in a window is a strange lure to imagination – I watched them with interest and pleasure – they were unknown, yet they were neighbors – and it was pleasant from hearing the wind without, and seeing the dark, to turn upon the glimmering tapers with a certain friendly warmth and satisfaction, as though some one had said good-night.