The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
know; so don’t excite such wicked passions again, for my soul’s sake.”
“I will give my whole heart and soul to my Maker if I can,” I answered,
“and not one atom more of it to you than He allows. What are _you_,
sir, that you should set yourself up as a god, and presume to dispute
possession of my heart with Him to whom I owe all I have and all I am,
every blessing I ever did or ever can enjoy—and yourself among the
rest—if you _are_ a blessing, which I am half inclined to doubt.”
“Don’t be so hard upon me, Helen; and don’t pinch my arm so: you are
squeezing your fingers into the bone.”
“Arthur,” continued I, relaxing my hold of his arm, “you don’t love me
half as much as I do you; and yet, if you loved me far less than you
do, I would not complain, provided you loved your Maker more. I should
_rejoice_ to see you at any time so deeply absorbed in your devotions
that you had not a single thought to spare for me. But, indeed, I
should lose nothing by the change, for the more you loved your God the
more deep and pure and true would be your love to me.”
At this he only laughed and kissed my hand, calling me a sweet
enthusiast. Then taking off his hat, he added: “But look here,
Helen—what can a man do with such a head as this?”
The head looked right enough, but when he placed my hand on the top of
it, it sunk in a bed of curls, rather alarmingly low, especially in the
middle.
“You see I was not made to be a saint,” said he, laughing, “If God
meant me to be religious, why didn’t He give me a proper organ of
veneration?”
“You are like the servant,” I replied, “who, instead of employing his
one talent in his master’s service, restored it to him unimproved,
alleging, as an excuse, that he knew him ‘to be a hard man, reaping
where he had not sown, and gathering where he had not strawed.’ Of him
to whom less is given, less will be required, but our utmost exertions
are required of us all. You are not without the capacity of veneration,
and faith and hope, and conscience and reason, and every other
requisite to a Christian’s character, if you choose to employ them; but
all our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and
bad, strengthens by exercise: therefore, if you choose to use the bad,
or those which tend to evil, till they become your masters, and neglect
the good till they dwindle away, you have only yourself to blame. But
you _have_ talents, Arthur—natural endowments both of heart and mind
and temper, such as many a better Christian would be glad to possess,
if you would only employ them in God’s service. I should never expect
to see you a devotee, but it is quite possible to be a good Christian
without ceasing to be a happy, merry-hearted man.”
“You speak like an oracle, Helen, and all you say is indisputably true;
but listen here: I am hungry, and I see before me a good substantial
dinner; I am told that if I abstain from this to-day I shall have a
sumptuous feast to-morrow, consisting of all manner of dainties and
delicacies. Now, in the first place, I should be loth to wait till
to-morrow when I have the means of appeasing my hunger already before
me: in the second place, the solid viands of to-day are more to my
taste than the dainties that are promised me; in the third place, I
don’t _see_ to-morrow’s banquet, and how can I tell that it is not all
a fable, got up by the greasy-faced fellow that is advising me to
abstain in order that he may have all the good victuals to himself? in
the fourth place, this table must be spread for somebody, and, as
Solomon says, ‘Who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto more than
I?’ and finally, with your leave, I’ll sit down and satisfy my cravings
of to-day, and leave to-morrow to shift for itself—who knows but what I
may secure both this and that?”
“But you are not required to abstain from the substantial dinner of
to-day: you are only advised to partake of these coarser viands in such
moderation as not to incapacitate you from enjoying the choicer banquet
of to-morrow. If, regardless of that counsel, you choose to make a
beast of yourself now, and over-eat and over-drink yourself till you
turn the good victuals into poison, who is to blame if, hereafter,
while you are suffering the torments of yesterday’s gluttony and
drunkenness, you see more temperate men sitting down to enjoy
themselves at that splendid entertainment which you are unable to
taste?”
“Most true, my patron saint; but again, our friend Solomon says, ‘There
is nothing better for a man than to eat and to drink, and to be
merry.’”
“And again,” returned I, “he says, ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth;
and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes:
but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment.’”
“Well, but, Helen, I’m sure I’ve been very good these last few weeks.
What have you seen amiss in me, and what would you have me to do?”
“Nothing more than you do, Arthur: your actions are all right so far;
but I would have your thoughts changed; I would have you to fortify
yourself against temptation, and not to call evil good, and good evil;
I should wish you to think more deeply, to look further, and aim higher
than you do.”
CHAPTER XXIV
March 25th.—Arthur is getting tired—not of me, I trust, but of the
idle, quiet life he leads—and no wonder, for he has so few sources of
amusement: he never reads anything but newspapers and sporting
magazines; and when he sees me occupied with a book, he won’t let me
rest till I close it. In fine weather he generally manages to get
through the time pretty well, but on rainy days, of which we have had a
good many of late, it is quite painful to witness his ennui. I do all I
can to amuse him, but it is impossible to get him to feel interested in
what I most like to talk about, while, on the other hand, he likes to
talk about things that cannot interest me—or even that annoy me—and
these please him—the most of all: for his favourite amusement is to sit
or loll beside me on the sofa, and tell me stories of his former
amours, always turning upon the ruin of some confiding girl or the
cozening of some unsuspecting husband; and when I express my horror and
indignation, he lays it all to the charge of jealousy, and laughs till
the tears run down his cheeks. I used to fly into passions or melt into
tears at first, but seeing that his delight increased in proportion to
my anger and agitation, I have since endeavoured to suppress my
feelings and receive his revelations in the silence of calm contempt;
but still he reads the inward struggle in my face, and misconstrues my
bitterness of soul for his unworthiness into the pangs of wounded
jealousy; and when he has sufficiently diverted himself with that, or
fears my displeasure will become too serious for his comfort, he tries
to kiss and soothe me into smiles again—never were his caresses so
little welcome as then! This is _double_ selfishness, displayed to me
and to the victims of his former love. There are times when, with a
momentary pang—a flash of wild dismay, I ask myself, “Helen, what have
you done?” But I rebuke the inward questioner, and repel the obtrusive
thoughts that crowd upon me; for were he ten times as sensual and
impenetrable to good and lofty thoughts, I well know I have no right to
complain. And I don’t and won’t complain. I do and will love him still;
and I do not and will not regret that I have linked my fate with his.
April 4th.—We have had a downright quarrel. The particulars are as
follows: Arthur had told me, at different intervals, the whole story of
his intrigue with Lady F——, which I would not believe before. It was
some consolation, however, to find that in this instance the lady had
been more to blame than he, for he was very young at the time, and she
had decidedly made the first advances, if what he said was true. I
hated her for it, for it seemed as if she had chiefly contributed to
his corruption; and when he was beginning to talk about her the other
day, I begged he would not mention her, for I detested the very sound
of her name.
“Not because you loved her, Arthur, mind, but because she injured you
and deceived her husband, and was altogether a very abominable woman,
whom you ought to be ashamed to mention.”
But he defended her by saying that she had a doting old husband, whom
it was impossible to love.
“Then why did she marry him?” said I.
“For his money,” was the reply.
“Then that was another crime, and her solemn promise to love and honour
him was another, that only increased the enormity of the last.”
“You are too severe upon the poor lady,” laughed he. “But never mind,
Helen, I don’t care for her now; and I never loved any of them half as
much as I do you, so you needn’t fear to be forsaken like them.”
“If you had told me these things before, Arthur, I never should have
given you the chance.”
“_Wouldn’t_ you, my darling?”
“Most certainly not!”
He laughed incredulously.
“I wish I could convince you of it now!” cried I, starting up from
beside him: and for the first time in my life, and I hope the last, I
wished I had not married him.
“Helen,” said he, more gravely, “do you know that if I believed you now
I should be very angry? but thank heaven I don’t. Though you stand
there with your white face and flashing eyes, looking at me like a very
tigress, I know the heart within you perhaps a trifle better than you
know it yourself.”
Without another word I left the room and locked myself up in my own
chamber. In about half an hour he came to the door, and first he tried
the handle, then he knocked.
“Won’t you let me in, Helen?” said he. “No; you have displeased me,” I
replied, “and I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice again
till the morning.”
He paused a moment as if dumfounded or uncertain how to answer such a
speech, and then turned and walked away. This was only an hour after
dinner: I knew he would find it very dull to sit alone all the evening;
and this considerably softened my resentment, though it did not make me
relent. I was determined to show him that my heart was not his slave,
and I could live without him if I chose; and I sat down and wrote a
long letter to my aunt, of course telling her nothing of all this. Soon
after ten o’clock I heard him come up again, but he passed my door and
went straight to his own dressing-room, where he shut himself in for
the night.
I was rather anxious to see how he would meet me in the morning, and
not a little disappointed to behold him enter the breakfast-room with a
careless smile.
“Are you cross still, Helen?” said he, approaching as if to salute me.
I coldly turned to the table, and began to pour out the coffee,
observing that he was rather late.
He uttered a low whistle and sauntered away to the window, where he
stood for some minutes looking out upon the pleasing prospect of sullen
grey clouds, streaming rain, soaking lawn, and dripping leafless trees,
and muttering execrations on the weather, and then sat down to
breakfast. While taking his coffee he muttered it was “d—d cold.”
“You should not have left it so long,” said I.
He made no answer, and the meal was concluded in silence. It was a
relief to both when the letter-bag was brought in. It contained upon
examination a newspaper and one or two letters for him, and a couple of
letters for me, which he tossed across the table without a remark. One
was from my brother, the other from Milicent Hargrave, who is now in
London with her mother. His, I think, were business letters, and
apparently not much to his mind, for he crushed them into his pocket
with some muttered expletives that I should have reproved him for at
any other time. The paper he set before him, and pretended to be deeply