The Days of My Life: An Autobiography

by Mrs. Oliphant

“There never was but one in the world to me, Hester,” he said, and I very soon cast down my eyes, “so it could not be about a lady, unless it happened in a dream, and the lady was you.”

I looked at him with a strange perplexity, he was almost as hard to understand as Alice was—but he suddenly changed the conversation, and made me quite helpless for any further controversy by talking about what we were to do next week, after—I was always silenced in a moment by a reference to that.

Then my father looked out from the library window and called to us. My father had been a good deal occupied with Harry, and I pleased myself with thinking that he began to like him already. They seemed very good friends, and Harry showed him so much deference and was so anxious to follow his wishes in everything, that I was very grateful to him; and all the more because I thought it was from his own natural goodness he did this, fully more than from a wish to please me.

We went in together to the library. My father was reading papers, some of those long straggling papers tied together at the top, which always look so ominous, and are so long-winded. His book was put away, and instead he had pen and ink and his great blotting-book before him. My father had been writing much and reading little, during these two weeks; the occupation of his life was rudely broken in upon by these arrangements, and though I could not understand how it was that he had so much business thrown upon him, the fact seemed to be certain. There was more life even in the room, it was less orderly, and there was a litter of papers upon the table. My father looked well, pale, and self-possessed, but not so deadly calm, and he called Harry to him with a kind and familiar gesture. I had not yet overcome the embarrassment which I always felt when I was with them both; and when I saw that my father was pointing out sundry things in the papers to Harry, that they were consulting about them, and that I was not a necessary spectator, I turned over some books for a few minutes, and then I turned to go away. When he saw me moving towards the door, my father looked up. “Wait a little, Hester, I may want you by and by,” he said. I was obedient and came back, but I did not like being here with Harry. I did not feel that our young life and our bright prospects were fit to intrude into this hermit’s room, and I wondered if it would look drearier or more solitary—if my father would feel any want of me in my familiar place, when I went away.

But I had very little reason to flatter myself that he would miss me. He conducted all these matters with a certain satisfaction, I thought. He was glad to have me “settled;” and though I think he had been kinder than usual ever since that night, he had never said that it would grieve him to part with me, or that the house would be sad when I was gone.

There was a pause in their consultation. I heard, for I did not see, because I had turned to the window, and they were behind me, and then my father said—“Come here, Hester, we have now talked together of these arrangements—sit down by me, here, and see if it will not distress you too much to hear the programme of the drama in which you are to be a principal actor—here is a chair, sit down.”

I turned, and went slowly to the seat he pointed out to me. I was very reluctant, but I could not disobey him, not even though I saw Harry’s face bending forward eagerly to know if this was disagreeable to me.

“In the first place,” said my father with a smile, “it is perhaps well that Hester is no heiress, as she once was supposed to be. Had my daughter inherited the family estate, her husband must have taken her name, and that is a harder condition than the one I stipulated for.”

As there was no answer for a moment, I glanced shyly under the hand which supported my head at Harry. To my great surprise, he seemed strangely and painfully agitated. There was a deep color on his face. He did not lift his eyes, but shifted uneasily, and almost with an air of guilt, upon his chair; and he began to speak abruptly with an emotion which the subject surely did not deserve.

“Hester is worth a greater sacrifice than that of a name like mine,” he said; “it would give me pleasure to show my sense of the honor you do me by admitting me into your family. I have no connexions whom I can gain by abandoning my own name, and I have no love for it, even though Hester has made it pleasanter to my ear. Let me be called Southcote. I would have proposed it myself had I thought it would be agreeable to you. You have no son. When you give Hester to me, make me altogether your representative. I will feel you do me a favor. Pray let us settle it so.”