I got into the carriage, and bid Branston, who shut the door, good-bye, and kissed hands to Mrs. Rusk, who was smiling and drying her eyes and courtesying on the hall-door steps. The dogs, who had started gleefully with the carriage, were called back by Branston, and driven home, wondering and wistful, looking back with ears oddly cocked and tails dejected. My heart thanked them for their kindness, and I felt like a stranger, and very desolate34.

 

It was a bright, clear morning. I had been settled that it was not worth the trouble changing from the carriage to the railway for sake of five-and-twenty miles, and so the entire journey of sixty miles was to be made by the post road — the pleasantest travelling, if the mind were free. The grander and more distant features of the landscape we may see well enough from the window of the railway-carriage; but it is the foreground that interests and instructs us, like a pleasant gossiping history; and that we had, in old days, from the post-chaise window. It was more than travelling picquet. Something of all conditions of life — luxury and misery35 — high spirits and low; — all sorts of costume, livery, rags, millinery; faces buxom36, faces wrinkled, faces kind, faces wicked; — no end of interest and suggestion, passing in a procession silent and vivid, and all in their proper scenery. The golden corn-sheafs — the old dark-alleyed orchards37, and the high streets of antique towns. There were few dreams brighter, few books so pleasant.

 

We drove by the dark wood — it always looked dark to me — where the “mausoleum” stands — where my dear parents both lay now. I gazed on its sombre masses not with a softened38 feeling, but a peculiar39 sense of pain, and was glad when it was quite past.

 

All the morning I had not shed a tear. Good Mary Quince cried at leaving Knowl; Lady Knollys’ eyes were not dry as she kissed and blessed me, and promised an early visit; and the dark, lean, energetic face of the housekeeper40 was quivering, and her cheeks wet, as I drove away. But I, whose grief was sorest, never shed a tear. I only looked about from one familiar object to another, pale, excited, not quite apprehending41 my departure, and wondering at my own composure.

 

But when we reached the old bridge, with the tall osiers standing42 by the buttress43, and looked back at poor Knowl — the places we love and are leaving look so fairy-like and so sad in the clear distance, and this is the finest view of the gabled old house, with its slanting44 meadow-lands and noble timber reposing45 in solemn groups — I gazed at the receding46 vision, and the tears came at last, and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands.