LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

star in them here and there, and the lights in the college windows glowing upon youth and untried strength like mine. Rest and calm, and the mild oblivion of the night enclosed us like the arms of angels, but did not silence the swell of the rising tide in my heart.

      THE FOURTH DAY

      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

Скачать книгу