The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
And I placed my hand on the portfolio to wrest it from him, but he
maintained his hold, assuring me that he “liked unfinished sketches of
all things.”
“But I hate them to be seen,” returned I. “I can’t let you have it,
indeed!”
“Let me have its bowels then,” said he; and just as I wrenched the
portfolio from his hand, he deftly abstracted the greater part of its
contents, and after turning them over a moment he cried out,—“Bless my
stars, here’s another;” and slipped a small oval of ivory paper into
his waistcoat pocket—a complete miniature portrait that I had sketched
with such tolerable success as to be induced to colour it with great
pains and care. But I was determined he should not keep it.
“Mr. Huntingdon,” cried I, “I _insist_ upon having that back! It is
mine, and you have no _right_ to take it. Give it me directly—I’ll
never forgive you if you don’t!”
But the more vehemently I insisted, the more he aggravated my distress
by his insulting, gleeful laugh. At length, however, he restored it to
me, saying,—“Well, well, since you value it so much, I’ll not deprive
you of it.”
To show him how I valued it, I tore it in two and threw it into the
fire. He was not prepared for this. His merriment suddenly ceasing, he
stared in mute amazement at the consuming treasure; and then, with a
careless “Humph! I’ll go and shoot now,” he turned on his heel and
vacated the apartment by the window as he came, and setting on his hat
with an air, took up his gun and walked away, whistling as he went—and
leaving me not too much agitated to finish my picture, for I was glad,
at the moment, that I had vexed him.
When I returned to the drawing-room, I found Mr. Boarham had ventured
to follow his comrades to the field; and shortly after lunch, to which
they did not think of returning, I volunteered to accompany the ladies
in a walk, and show Annabella and Milicent the beauties of the country.
We took a long ramble, and re-entered the park just as the sportsmen
were returning from their expedition. Toil-spent and travel-stained,
the main body of them crossed over the grass to avoid us, but Mr.
Huntingdon, all spattered and splashed as he was, and stained with the
blood of his prey—to the no small offence of my aunt’s strict sense of
propriety—came out of his way to meet us, with cheerful smiles and
words for all but me, and placing himself between Annabella Wilmot and
myself, walked up the road and began to relate the various exploits and
disasters of the day, in a manner that would have convulsed me with
laughter if I had been on good terms with him; but he addressed himself
entirely to Annabella, and I, of course, left all the laughter and all
the badinage to her, and affecting the utmost indifference to whatever
passed between them, walked along a few paces apart, and looking every
way but theirs, while my aunt and Milicent went before, linked arm in
arm and gravely discoursing together. At length Mr. Huntingdon turned
to me, and addressing me in a confidential whisper, said,—“Helen, why
did you burn my picture?”
“Because I wished to destroy it,” I answered, with an asperity it is
useless now to lament.
“Oh, very good!” was the reply; “if _you_ don’t value me, I must turn
to somebody that will.”
I thought it was partly in jest—a half-playful mixture of mock
resignation and pretended indifference: but immediately he resumed his
place beside Miss Wilmot, and from that hour to this—during all that
evening, and all the next day, and the next, and the next, and all this
morning (the 22nd), he has never given me one kind word or one pleasant
look—never spoken to me, but from pure necessity—never glanced towards
me but with a cold, unfriendly look I thought him quite incapable of
assuming.
My aunt observes the change, and though she has not inquired the cause
or made any remark to me on the subject, I see it gives her pleasure.
Miss Wilmot observes it, too, and triumphantly ascribes it to her own
superior charms and blandishments; but I am truly miserable—more so
than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has
brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.
He meant no harm—it was only his joyous, playful spirit; and I, by my
acrimonious resentment—so serious, so disproportioned to the
offence—have so wounded his feelings, so deeply offended him, that I
fear he will never forgive me—and all for a mere jest! He thinks I
dislike him, and he must continue to think so. I must lose him for
ever, and Annabella may win him, and triumph as she will.
But it is not my loss nor her triumph that I deplore so greatly as the
wreck of my fond hopes for his advantage, and her unworthiness of his
affection, and the injury he will do himself by trusting his happiness
to her. _She_ does not love him: she thinks only of herself. She cannot
appreciate the good that is in him: she will neither see it, nor value
it, nor cherish it. She will neither deplore his faults nor attempt
their amendment, but rather aggravate them by her own. And I doubt
whether she will not deceive him after all. I see she is playing double
between him and Lord Lowborough, and while she amuses herself with the
lively Huntingdon, she tries her utmost to enslave his moody friend;
and should she succeed in bringing both to her feet, the fascinating
commoner will have but little chance against the lordly peer. If he
observes her artful by-play, it gives him no uneasiness, but rather
adds new zest to his diversion by opposing a stimulating check to his
otherwise too easy conquest.
Messrs. Wilmot and Boarham have severally taken occasion by his neglect
of me to renew their advances; and if I were like Annabella and some
others I should take advantage of their perseverance to endeavour to
pique him into a revival of affection; but, justice and honesty apart,
I could not _bear_ to do it. I am annoyed enough by their present
persecutions without encouraging them further; and even if I did it
would have precious little effect upon him. He sees me suffering under
the condescending attentions and prosaic discourses of the one, and the
repulsive obtrusions of the other, without so much as a shadow of
commiseration for me, or resentment against my tormentors. He never
could have loved me, or he would not have resigned me so willingly, and
he would not go on talking to everybody else so cheerfully as he
does—laughing and jesting with Lord Lowborough and my uncle, teasing
Milicent Hargrave, and flirting with Annabella Wilmot—as if nothing
were on his mind. Oh! why can’t I hate him? I must be infatuated, or I
should scorn to regret him as I do. But I must rally all the powers I
have remaining, and try to tear him from my heart. There goes the
dinner-bell, and here comes my aunt to scold me for sitting here at my
desk all day, instead of staying with the company: wish the company
were—gone.
CHAPTER XIX
Twenty-Second: Night.—What have I done? and what will be the end of it?
I cannot calmly reflect upon it; I cannot sleep. I must have recourse
to my diary again; I will commit it to paper to-night, and see what I
shall think of it to-morrow.
I went down to dinner resolving to be cheerful and well-conducted, and
kept my resolution very creditably, considering how my head ached and
how internally wretched I felt. I don’t know what is come over me of
late; my very energies, both mental and physical, must be strangely
impaired, or I should not have acted so weakly in many respects as I
have done; but I have not been well this last day or two. I suppose it
is with sleeping and eating so little, and thinking so much, and being
so continually out of humour. But to return. I was exerting myself to
sing and play for the amusement, and at the request, of my aunt and
Milicent, before the gentlemen came into the drawing-room (Miss Wilmot
never likes to waste her musical efforts on ladies’ ears alone).
Milicent had asked for a little Scotch song, and I was just in the
middle of it when they entered. The first thing Mr. Huntingdon did was
to walk up to Annabella.
“Now, Miss Wilmot, won’t _you_ give us some music to-night?” said he.
“Do now! I know you will, when I tell you that I have been hungering
and thirsting all day for the sound of your voice. Come! the piano’s
vacant.”
It was, for I had quitted it immediately upon hearing his petition. Had
I been endowed with a proper degree of self-possession, I should have
turned to the lady myself, and cheerfully joined my entreaties to his,
whereby I should have disappointed his expectations, if the affront had
been purposely given, or made him sensible of the wrong, if it had only
arisen from thoughtlessness; but I felt it too deeply to do anything
but rise from the music-stool, and throw myself back on the sofa,
suppressing with difficulty the audible expression of the bitterness I
felt within. I knew Annabella’s musical talents were superior to mine,
but that was no reason why I should be treated as a perfect nonentity.
The time and the manner of his asking her appeared like a gratuitous
insult to me; and I could have wept with pure vexation.
Meantime, she exultingly seated herself at the piano, and favoured him
with two of his favourite songs, in such superior style that even I
soon lost my anger in admiration, and listened with a sort of gloomy
pleasure to the skilful modulations of her full-toned and powerful
voice, so judiciously aided by her rounded and spirited touch; and
while my ears drank in the sound, my eyes rested on the face of her
principal auditor, and derived an equal or superior delight from the
contemplation of his speaking countenance, as he stood beside her—that
eye and brow lighted up with keen enthusiasm, and that sweet smile
passing and appearing like gleams of sunshine on an April day. No
wonder he should hunger and thirst to hear her sing. I now forgave him
from my heart his reckless slight of me, and I felt ashamed at my
pettish resentment of such a trifle—ashamed too of those bitter envious
pangs that gnawed my inmost heart, in spite of all this admiration and
delight.
“There now,” said she, playfully running her fingers over the keys when
she had concluded the second song. “What shall I give you next?”
But in saying this she looked back at Lord Lowborough, who was standing
a little behind, leaning against the back of a chair, an attentive
listener, too, experiencing, to judge by his countenance, much the same
feelings of mingled pleasure and sadness as I did. But the look she
gave him plainly said, “Do you choose for me now: I have done enough
for him, and will gladly exert myself to gratify you;” and thus
encouraged, his lordship came forward, and turning over the music,
presently set before her a little song that I had noticed before, and
read more than once, with an interest arising from the circumstance of
my connecting it in my mind with the reigning tyrant of my thoughts.
And now, with my nerves already excited and half unstrung, I could not
hear those words so sweetly warbled forth without some symptoms of
emotion I was not able to suppress. Tears rose unbidden to my eyes, and
I buried my face in the sofa-pillow that they might flow unseen while I
listened. The air was simple, sweet, and sad. It is still running in my
head, and so are the words:—
Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
O beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.
If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.
That voice, the magic of whose tone