CHAPTER XXXVI

Chesney Wold

Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into

Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of

me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn’s house, so he accompanied us,

and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and

every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every

passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful

to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my

illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of

delight for me.

My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our

way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter,

of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our

arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early

summer-time.

If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,

and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not

have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for

me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little

tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen

times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that,

however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley’s delight

calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Charley

had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as

tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to

be able to say to myself after tea, “Esther, my dear, I think you are

quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to

your host.” He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own

face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his

highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him

in London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were

looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the

honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how,

after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my

little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage,

but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and

sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and

arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time and told her I

should want her no more that night.

For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my

own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be

overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh

when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,

and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, “Esther, if you are

to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted,

you must keep your word, my dear.” I was quite resolved to keep it,

but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my

blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more.

My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than

once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and

went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little

muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment

looking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing

else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the

mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very

much changed—oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to

me that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back

but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more

familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better

than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I

had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would

have surprised me.

I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had

been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so

good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and

could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.

One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I

went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt’s flowers. When they were

withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.

Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right

to preserve what he had sent to one so different—whether it was

generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even

in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because

I could have loved him—could have been devoted to him. At last I

came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them

only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to

be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not

seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.

I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass

when Charley came in on tiptoe.

“Dear, dear, miss!” cried Charley, starting. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Charley,” said I, quietly putting up my hair. “And I am very

well indeed, and very happy.”

I saw it was a weight off Charley’s mind, but it was a greater weight

off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not

conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but

they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed

by me faithfully.

Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits

before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with

Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out

before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again

before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea,

and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and

explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to

restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn’s good

housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or

drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the

park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful

face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent

nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby

pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could

canter—when he would—so easily and quietly that he was a treasure.

In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called

him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such

a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and

rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and

said, “Stubbs, I am surprised you don’t canter when you know how much

I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting

stupid and going to sleep,” he would give his head a comical shake or

two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh

with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don’t know

who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as

naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and

drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but

all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take

it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of

tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his

ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped

to think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not

to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins

to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy

sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his

ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, “Now, Stubbs, I

feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride

a little while,” for the moment I left him, he stood stock still

again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in

this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village.

Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I

am sure, for in a week’s time the people were so glad to see us go

by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were

faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown

people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple

began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends

was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and

whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on

its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a

grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and

drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him

up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was

considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the

world, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in

which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way

to America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit

that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested

with the merit of the whole system.

Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many

children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so

many cottages, going on with Charley’s education, and writing long

letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that

little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of

it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it.

I felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said,

“Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?”

But when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft

hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch,

that soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which

suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle

hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of

these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little

church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had

to sign the register.

The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross

for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had

known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl

in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the

school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She

came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and

admiration stood in her bright eyes, “He’s a dear good fellow, miss;

but he can’t write yet—he’s going to learn of me—and I wouldn’t

shame him for the world!” Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when

there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man’s daughter!

The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown,

and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my

old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so

rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole

night.

There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold

where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had

been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the

bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at

least once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the

Ghost’s Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the

startling name, and the old legend in the Dedlock family which I had

heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and

gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real

charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for

violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley’s to gather wild

flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.

It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house

or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my

arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or

uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this

place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a

footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the

lonely Ghost’s Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock

had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the

house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure

were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they

repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no

reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my

story now arrives.

I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Charley

was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been

looking at the Ghost’s Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off

and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it

when I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The

perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of

the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye,

that at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and

little it revealed itself to be a woman’s—a lady’s—Lady Dedlock’s.

She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I

observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.

I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost

within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to

continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so

much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick

advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in

her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a

something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was

a little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I

had never seen in hers before.

A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady

Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I

had known her.

“Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you,” she said, now

advancing slowly. “You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very

ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it.”

I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could

have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and

its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of

her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot

say what was in my whirling thoughts.

“You are recovering again?” she asked kindly.

“I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock.”

“Is this your young attendant?”

“Yes.”

“Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?”

“Charley,” said I, “take your flowers home, and I will follow you

directly.”

Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went

her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside

me.

I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw

in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.

I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I

could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and

wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she

caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me,

and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and

cried to me, “Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy

mother! Oh, try to forgive me!”—when I saw her at my feet on the

bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult

of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was

so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of

likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her

and remotely think of any near tie between us.

I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before

me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent

words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her

at MY feet. I told her—or I tried to tell her—that if it were for

me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive

her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my

heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which

nothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for

me, then resting for the first time on my mother’s bosom, to take her

to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless

her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that

I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and

she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the

summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that

was not at peace.

“To bless and receive me,” groaned my mother, “it is far too late. I

must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will.

From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way

before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought

upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.”

Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of

proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off

again.

“I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly

for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that

I am!”

These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more

terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her

hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I

should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any

endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no,

no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful

everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only

natural moments of her life.

My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly

frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could

not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me

down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could

associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time

forth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands

a letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read

it and destroyed it—but not so much for her sake, since she asked

nothing, as for her husband’s and my own—I must evermore consider

her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in

which I saw her, with a mother’s love, she asked me to do that, for

then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she

suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help.

Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be

discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she

had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection

could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.

“But is the secret safe so far?” I asked. “Is it safe now, dearest

mother?”

“No,” replied my mother. “It has been very near discovery. It was

saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident—to-morrow,

any day.”

“Do you dread a particular person?”

“Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of

these tears,” said my mother, kissing my hands. “I dread one person

very much.”

“An enemy?”

“Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir

Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment,

and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being

master of the mysteries of great houses.”

“Has he any suspicions?”

“Many.”

“Not of you?” I said alarmed.

“Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a

standstill, but I can never shake him off.”

“Has he so little pity or compunction?”

“He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his

calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding

possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent

in it.”

“Could you trust in him?”

“I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years

will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the

end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,

nothing turns me.”

“Dear mother, are you so resolved?”

“I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with

pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived

many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie

it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these

woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course

through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one.”

“Mr. Jarndyce—” I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired,

“Does HE suspect?”

“No,” said I. “No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!” And I told

her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. “But he

is so good and sensible,” said I, “that perhaps if he knew—”

My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,

raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.

“Confide fully in him,” she said after a little while. “You have my

free consent—a small gift from such a mother to her injured

child!—but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet.”

I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now—for my

agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely

understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother’s

voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I

had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep

with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired

by, made an enduring impression on my memory—I say I explained, or

tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Jarndyce, who had been

the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and

support to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one

could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go

alone.

“My child, my child!” she said. “For the last time! These kisses for

the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall

meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have

been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady

Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched

mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the

reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering

within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And

then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which

it never can!”

We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that

she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with

a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me

into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun

and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which

there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw

it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of

my mother’s misery.

Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in

my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of

discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took

such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been

crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation

that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a

little while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of

grief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might

return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, whom I found at the

gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after

Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie

down. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from

it—and that was much then—that I had not been abandoned by my

mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood,

discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead,

had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I

should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my

mother’s face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I

hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had

never, to my own mother’s knowledge, breathed—had been buried—had

never been endowed with life—had never borne a name. When she had

first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of

what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on,

but that was all then.

What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has

its own times and places in my story.

My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume

even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me

that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.

That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for

many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of

myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and

of a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be

possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I

should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I

should be then alive.

These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and

when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world

with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened

of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the

owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old

words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, “Your

mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will

come—and soon enough—when you will understand this better, and will

feel it too, as no one save a woman can.” With them, those other

words returned, “Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited

upon your head.” I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I

felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation

had come down.

The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still

contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking

a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees

and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me,

was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not

have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it

was, I took the path that led close by it.

I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the

terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its

well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it

was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights

of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the

trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone

pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the

way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers

and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque

monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening

gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path

wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the

principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables

where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of

the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall,

or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of

the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering

presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I

turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there

above me were the balustrades of the Ghost’s Walk and one lighted

window that might be my mother’s.

The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps

from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping

to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing

quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted

window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind

that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost’s Walk,

that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and

that my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an

augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself

and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never

paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and

black behind me.

Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again

been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and

thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the

morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation

that I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my

guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden,

if I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most

pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and

ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in

and about the house declared it was not the same house and was

becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me

think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought

to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me,

as it ought to have done before, into a better condition.

For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I

should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved

for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked

together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were

sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I

had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my

birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should

not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had

experience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus

soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on

me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them,

pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling

that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my

sleep; and when the next day’s light awoke me, it was gone.

My dear girl was to arrive at five o’clock in the afternoon. How to

help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a

long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so

Charley and I and Stubbs—Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him

after the one great occasion—made a long expedition along that road

and back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and

garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and

had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment.

There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could

come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I

was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so

well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any

one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined—I am

quite certain I did not, that day—but, I thought, would she be

wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little

shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she

expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her?

Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?

I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl’s face so well, and

it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure

beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I

considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,

which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?

Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to

wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such

bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet

her.

So I said to Charley, “Charley, I will go by myself and walk along

the road until she comes.” Charley highly approving of anything that

pleased me, I went and left her at home.

But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many

palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was

not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back

and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the

coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would,

nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way

to avoid being overtaken.

Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice

thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it

instead of the best.

At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more

yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the

garden, “Here she comes, miss! Here she is!”

I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid

myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my

darling calling as she came upstairs, “Esther, my dear, my love,

where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!”

She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel

girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.

Nothing else in it—no, nothing, nothing!

Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful

girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely

cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a

child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and

pressing me to her faithful heart.