The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

ecember 20th, 1825.—Another year is past; and I am weary of this life.
And yet I cannot wish to leave it: whatever afflictions assail me here,
I cannot wish to go and leave my darling in this dark and wicked world
alone, without a friend to guide him through its weary mazes, to warn
him of its thousand snares, and guard him from the perils that beset
him on every hand. I am not well fitted to be his only companion, I
know; but there is no other to supply my place. I am too grave to
minister to his amusements and enter into his infantile sports as a
nurse or a mother ought to do, and often his bursts of gleeful
merriment trouble and alarm me; I see in them his father’s spirit and
temperament, and I tremble for the consequences; and too often damp the
innocent mirth I ought to share. That father, on the contrary, has no
weight of sadness on his mind; is troubled with no fears, no scruples
concerning his son’s future welfare; and at evenings especially, the
times when the child sees him the most and the oftenest, he is always
particularly jocund and open-hearted: ready to laugh and to jest with
anything or anybody but me, and I am particularly silent and sad:
therefore, of course, the child dotes upon his seemingly joyous
amusing, ever-indulgent papa, and will at any time gladly exchange my
company for his. This disturbs me greatly; not so much for the sake of
my son’s affection (though I do prize that highly, and though I feel it
is my right, and know I have done much to earn it) as for that
influence over him which, for his own advantage, I would strive to
purchase and retain, and which for very spite his father delights to
rob me of, and, from motives of mere idle egotism, is pleased to win to
himself; making no use of it but to torment me and ruin the child. My
only consolation is, that he spends comparatively little of his time at
home, and, during the months he passes in London or elsewhere, I have a
chance of recovering the ground I had lost, and overcoming with good
the evil he has wrought by his wilful mismanagement. But then it is a
bitter trial to behold him, on his return, doing his utmost to subvert
my labours and transform my innocent, affectionate, tractable darling
into a selfish, disobedient, and mischievous boy; thereby preparing the
soil for those vices he has so successfully cultivated in his own
perverted nature.

Happily, there were none of Arthur’s “friends” invited to Grassdale
last autumn: he took himself off to visit some of them instead. I wish
he would always do so, and I wish his friends were numerous and loving
enough to keep him amongst them all the year round. Mr. Hargrave,
considerably to my annoyance, did not go with him; but I think I have
done with that gentleman at last.

For seven or eight months he behaved so remarkably well, and managed so
skilfully too, that I was almost completely off my guard, and was
really beginning to look upon him as a friend, and even to treat him as
such, with certain prudent restrictions (which I deemed scarcely
necessary); when, presuming upon my unsuspecting kindness, he thought
he might venture to overstep the bounds of decent moderation and
propriety that had so long restrained him. It was on a pleasant evening
at the close of May: I was wandering in the park, and he, on seeing me
there as he rode past, made bold to enter and approach me, dismounting
and leaving his horse at the gate. This was the first time he had
ventured to come within its inclosure since I had been left alone,
without the sanction of his mother’s or sister’s company, or at least
the excuse of a message from them. But he managed to appear so calm and
easy, so respectful and self-possessed in his friendliness, that,
though a little surprised, I was neither alarmed nor offended at the
unusual liberty, and he walked with me under the ash-trees and by the
water-side, and talked, with considerable animation, good taste, and
intelligence, on many subjects, before I began to think about getting
rid of him. Then, after a pause, during which we both stood gazing on
the calm, blue water—I revolving in my mind the best means of politely
dismissing my companion, he, no doubt, pondering other matters equally
alien to the sweet sights and sounds that alone were present to his
senses,—he suddenly electrified me by beginning, in a peculiar tone,
low, soft, but perfectly distinct, to pour forth the most unequivocal
expressions of earnest and passionate love; pleading his cause with all
the bold yet artful eloquence he could summon to his aid. But I cut
short his appeal, and repulsed him so determinately, so decidedly, and
with such a mixture of scornful indignation, tempered with cool,
dispassionate sorrow and pity for his benighted mind, that he withdrew,
astonished, mortified, and discomforted; and, a few days after, I heard
that he had departed for London. He returned, however, in eight or nine
weeks, and did not entirely keep aloof from me, but comported himself
in so remarkable a manner that his quick-sighted sister could not fail
to notice the change.

“What have you done to Walter, Mrs. Huntingdon?” said she one morning,
when I had called at the Grove, and he had just left the room after
exchanging a few words of the coldest civility. “He has been so
extremely ceremonious and stately of late, I can’t imagine what it is
all about, unless you have desperately offended him. Tell me what it
is, that I may be your mediator, and make you friends again.”

“I have done nothing willingly to offend him,” said I. “If he is
offended, he can best tell you himself what it is about.”

“I’ll ask him,” cried the giddy girl, springing up and putting her head
out of the window: “he’s only in the garden—Walter!”

“No, no, Esther! you will seriously displease me if you do; and I shall
leave you immediately, and not come again for months—perhaps years.”

“Did you call, Esther?” said her brother, approaching the window from
without.

“Yes; I wanted to ask you—”

“Good-morning, Esther,” said I, taking her hand and giving it a severe
squeeze.

“To ask you,” continued she, “to get me a rose for Mrs. Huntingdon.” He
departed. “Mrs. Huntingdon,” she exclaimed, turning to me and still
holding me fast by the hand, “I’m quite shocked at you—you’re just as
angry, and distant, and cold as he is: and I’m determined you shall be
as good friends as ever before you go.”

“Esther, how can you be so rude!” cried Mrs. Hargrave, who was seated
gravely knitting in her easy-chair. “Surely, you never will learn to
conduct yourself like a lady!”

“Well, mamma, you said yourself—” But the young lady was silenced by
the uplifted finger of her mamma, accompanied with a very stern shake
of the head.

“Isn’t she cross?” whispered she to me; but, before I could add my
share of reproof, Mr. Hargrave reappeared at the window with a
beautiful moss-rose in his hand.

“Here, Esther, I’ve brought you the rose,” said he, extending it
towards her.

“Give it her yourself, you blockhead!” cried she, recoiling with a
spring from between us.

“Mrs. Huntingdon would rather receive it from you,” replied he, in a
very serious tone, but lowering his voice that his mother might not
hear. His sister took the rose and gave it to me.

“My brother’s compliments, Mrs. Huntingdon, and he hopes you and he
will come to a better understanding by-and-by. Will that do, Walter?”
added the saucy girl, turning to him and putting her arm round his
neck, as he stood leaning upon the sill of the window—“or should I have
said that you are sorry you were so touchy? or that you hope she will
pardon your offence?”

“You silly girl! you don’t know what you are talking about,” replied he
gravely.

“Indeed I don’t: for I’m quite in the dark!”

“Now, Esther,” interposed Mrs. Hargrave, who, if equally benighted on
the subject of our estrangement, saw at least that her daughter was
behaving very improperly, “I must insist upon your leaving the room!”

“Pray don’t, Mrs. Hargrave, for I’m going to leave it myself,” said I,
and immediately made my adieux.

About a week after Mr. Hargrave brought his sister to see me. He
conducted himself, at first, with his usual cold, distant,
half-stately, half-melancholy, altogether injured air; but Esther made
no remark upon it this time: she had evidently been schooled into
better manners. She talked to me, and laughed and romped with little
Arthur, her loved and loving playmate. He, somewhat to my discomfort,
enticed her from the room to have a run in the hall, and thence into
the garden. I got up to stir the fire. Mr. Hargrave asked if I felt
cold, and shut the door—a very unseasonable piece of officiousness, for
I had meditated following the noisy playfellows if they did not
speedily return. He then took the liberty of walking up to the fire
himself, and asking me if I were aware that Mr. Huntingdon was now at
the seat of Lord Lowborough, and likely to continue there some time.

“No; but it’s no matter,” I answered carelessly; and if my cheek glowed
like fire, it was rather at the question than the information it
conveyed.

“You don’t object to it?” he said.

“Not at all, if Lord Lowborough likes his company.”

“You have no love left for him, then?”

“Not the least.”

“I knew that—I knew you were too high-minded and pure in your own
nature to continue to regard one so utterly false and polluted with any
feelings but those of indignation and scornful abhorrence!”

“Is he not your friend?” said I, turning my eyes from the fire to his
face, with perhaps a slight touch of those feelings he assigned to
another.

“He was,” replied he, with the same calm gravity as before; “but do
not wrong me by supposing that I could continue my friendship and
esteem to a man who could so infamously, so impiously forsake and
injure one so transcendently—well, I won’t speak of it. But tell me, do
you never think of revenge?”

“Revenge! No—what good would that do?—it would make him no better, and
me no happier.”

“I don’t know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon,” said he, smiling;
“you are only half a woman—your nature must be half human, half
angelic. Such goodness overawes me; I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Then, sir, I fear you must be very much worse than you should be, if
I, a mere ordinary mortal, am, by your own confession, so vastly your
superior; and since there exists so little sympathy between us, I think
we had better each look out for some more congenial companion.” And
forthwith moving to the window, I began to look out for my little son
and his gay young friend.

“No, I am the ordinary mortal, I maintain,” replied Mr. Hargrave. “I
will not allow myself to be worse than my fellows; but you, Madam—I
equally maintain there is nobody like you. But are you happy?” he asked
in a serious tone.

“As happy as some others, I suppose.”

“Are you as happy as you desire to be?”

“No one is so blest as that comes to on this side of eternity.”

“One thing I know,” returned he, with a deep sad sigh; “you are
immeasurably happier than I am.”

“I am very sorry for you, then,” I could not help replying.

“Are you, indeed? No, for if you were you would be glad to relieve
me.”

“And so I should if I could do so without injuring myself or any
other.”

“And can you suppose that I should wish you to injure yourself? No: on
the contrary, it is your own happiness I long for more than mine. You
are miserable now, Mrs. Huntingdon,” continued he, looking me boldly in
the face. “You do not complain, but I see—and feel—and know that you
are miserable—and must remain so as long as you keep those walls of
impenetrable ice about your still warm and palpitating heart; and I am
miserable, too. Deign to smile on me and I am happy: trust me, and you
shall be happy also, for if you are a woman I can make you so—and I
will do it in spite of yourself!” he muttered between his teeth; “and
as for others, the question is between ourselves alone: you cannot
injure your husband, you know, and no one else has any concern in the
matter.”

“I have a son, Mr. Hargrave, and you have a mother,” said I, retiring
from the window, whither he had followed me.

“They need not know,” he began; but before anything more could be said
on either side, Esther and Arthur re-entered the room. The former
glanced at Walter’s flushed, excited countenance, and then at mine—a
little flushed and excited too, I daresay, though from far different
causes. She must have thought we had been quarrelling desperately, and
was evidently perplexed and disturbed at the circumstance; but she was
too polite or too much afraid of her brother’s anger to refer to it.
She seated herself on the sofa, and putting back her bright, golden
ringlets, that were scattered in wild profusion over her face, she
immediately began to talk about the garden and her little playfellow,
and continued to chatter away in her usual strain till her brother
summoned her to depart.

“If I have spoken too warmly, forgive me,” he murmured on taking his
leave, “or I shall never forgive myself.” Esther smiled and glanced at
me: I merely bowed, and her countenance fell. She thought it a poor
return for Walter’s generous concession, and was disappointed in her
friend. Poor child, she little knows the world she lives in!

Mr. Hargrave had not an opportunity of meeting me again in private for
several weeks after this; but when he did meet me there was less of
pride and more of touching melancholy in his manner than before. Oh,
how he annoyed me! I was obliged at last almost entirely to remit my
visits to the Grove, at the expense of deeply offending Mrs. Hargrave
and seriously afflicting poor Esther, who really values my society for
want of better, and who ought not to suffer for the fault of her
brother. But that indefatigable foe was not yet vanquished: he seemed
to be always on the watch. I frequently saw him riding lingeringly past
the premises, looking searchingly round him as he went—or, if I did
not, Rachel did. That sharp-sighted woman soon guessed how matters
stood between us, and descrying the enemy’s movements from her
elevation at the nursery-window, she would give me a quiet intimation
if she saw me preparing for a walk when she had reason to believe he
was about, or to think it likely that he would meet or overtake me in
the way I meant to traverse. I would then defer my ramble, or confine
myself for that day to the park and gardens, or, if the proposed
excursion was a matter of importance, such as a visit to the sick or
afflicted, I would take Rachel with me, and then I was never molested.

But one mild, sunshiny day, early in November, I had ventured forth
alone to visit the village school and a few of the poor tenants, and on
my return I was alarmed at the clatter of a horse’s feet behind me,
approaching at a rapid, steady trot. There was no stile or gap at hand
by which I could escape into the fields, so I walked quietly on, saying
to myself, “It may not be he after all; and if it is, and if he do
annoy me, it shall be for the last time, I am determined, if there be
power in words and looks against cool impudence and mawkish
sentimentality so inexhaustible as his.”

The horse soon overtook me, and was reined up close beside me. It was
Mr. Hargrave. He greeted me with a smile intended to be soft and
melancholy, but his triumphant satisfaction at having caught me at last
so shone through that it was quite a failure. After briefly answering
his salutation and inquiring after the ladies at the Grove, I turned
away and walked on; but he followed and kept his horse at my side: it
was evident he intended to be my companion all the way.

“Well! I don’t much care. If you want another rebuff, take it—and
welcome,” was my inward remark. “Now, sir, what next?”

This question, though unspoken, was not long unanswered; after a few
passing observations upon indifferent subjects, he began in solemn
tones the following appeal to my humanity:—

“It will be four years next April since I first saw you, Mrs.
Huntingdon—you may have forgotten the circumstance, but I never
can. I admired you then most deeply, but I dared not love you. In the
following autumn I saw so much of your perfections that I could not
fail to love you, though I dared not show it. For upwards of three
years I have endured a perfect martyrdom. From the anguish of
suppressed emotions, intense and fruitless longings, silent sorrow,
crushed hopes, and trampled affections, I have suffered more than I can
tell, or you imagine—and you were the cause of it, and not altogether
the innocent cause. My youth is wasting away; my prospects are
darkened; my life is a desolate blank; I have no rest day or night: I
am become a burden to myself and others, and you might save me by a
word—a glance, and will not do it—is this right?”

“In the first place, I don’t believe you,” answered I; “in the
second, if you will be such a fool, I can’t hinder it.”

“If you affect,” replied he, earnestly, “to regard as folly the best,
the strongest, the most godlike impulses of our nature, I don’t believe
you. I know you are not the heartless, icy being you pretend to be—you
had a heart once, and gave it to your husband. When you found him
utterly unworthy of the treasure, you reclaimed it; and you will not
pretend that you loved that sensual, earthly-minded profligate so
deeply, so devotedly, that you can never love another? I know that
there are feelings in your nature that have never yet been called
forth; I know, too, that in your present neglected lonely state you are
and must be miserable. You have it in your power to raise two human
beings from a state of actual suffering to such unspeakable beatitude
as only generous, noble, self-forgetting love can give (for you can
love me if you will); you may tell me that you scorn and detest me,
but, since you have set me the example of plain speaking, I will answer
that I do not believe you! But you will not do it! you choose rather
to leave us miserable; and you coolly tell me it is the will of God
that we should remain so. You may call this religion, but I call it
wild fanaticism!”

“There is another life both for you and for me,” said I. “If it be the
will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may
reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others
by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a
mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your
disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be
sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I
were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I
would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with
heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting
happiness—happiness sure to end in misery even here—for myself or any
other!”

“There need be no disgrace, no misery or sacrifice in any quarter,”
persisted he. “I do not ask you to leave your home or defy the world’s
opinion.” But I need not repeat all his arguments. I refuted them to
the best of my power; but that power was provokingly small, at the
moment, for I was too much flurried with indignation—and even
shame—that he should thus dare to address me, to retain sufficient
command of thought and language to enable me adequately to contend
against his powerful sophistries. Finding, however, that he could not
be silenced by reason, and even covertly exulted in his seeming
advantage, and ventured to deride those assertions I had not the
coolness to prove, I changed my course and tried another plan.

“Do you really love me?” said I, seriously, pausing and looking him
calmly in the face.

“Do I love you!” cried he.

“Truly?” I demanded.

His countenance brightened; he thought his triumph was at hand. He
commenced a passionate protestation of the truth and fervour of his
attachment, which I cut short by another question:—

“But is it not a selfish love? Have you enough disinterested affection
to enable you to sacrifice your own pleasure to mine?”

“I would give my life to serve you.”

“I don’t want your life; but have you enough real sympathy for my
afflictions to induce you to make an effort to relieve them, at the
risk of a little discomfort to yourself?”

“Try me, and see.”

“If you have, never mention this subject again. You cannot recur to
it in any way without doubling the weight of those sufferings you so
feelingly deplore. I have nothing left me but the solace of a good
conscience and a hopeful trust in heaven, and you labour continually to
rob me of these. If you persist, I must regard you as my deadliest
foe.”

“But hear me a moment—”

“No, sir! You said you would give your life to serve me; I only ask
your silence on one particular point. I have spoken plainly; and what
I say I mean. If you torment me in this way any more, I must conclude
that your protestations are entirely false, and that you hate me in
your heart as fervently as you profess to love me!”

He bit his lip, and bent his eyes upon the ground in silence for a
while.

“Then I must leave you,” said he at length, looking steadily upon me,
as if with the last hope of detecting some token of irrepressible
anguish or dismay awakened by those solemn words. “I must leave you. I
cannot live here, and be for ever silent on the all-absorbing subject
of my thoughts and wishes.”

“Formerly, I believe, you spent but little of your time at home,” I
answered; “it will do you no harm to absent yourself again, for a
while—if that be really necessary.”

“If that be really possible,” he muttered; “and can you bid me go so
coolly? Do you really wish it?”

“Most certainly I do. If you cannot see me without tormenting me as you
have lately done, I would gladly say farewell and never see you more.”

He made no answer, but, bending from his horse, held out his hand
towards me. I looked up at his face, and saw therein such a look of
genuine agony of soul, that, whether bitter disappointment, or wounded
pride, or lingering love, or burning wrath were uppermost, I could not
hesitate to put my hand in his as frankly as if I bade a friend
farewell. He grasped it very hard, and immediately put spurs to his
horse and galloped away. Very soon after, I learned that he was gone to
Paris, where he still is; and the longer he stays there the better for
me.

I thank God for this deliverance!