The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“Ah, then, it is a secret flight you meditate! but with whom, Mrs.
Huntingdon?”
“With my son: and possibly, his nurse.”
“Alone—and unprotected! But where can you go? what can you do? He will
follow you and bring you back.”
“I have laid my plans too well for that. Let me once get clear of
Grassdale, and I shall consider myself safe.”
Mr. Hargrave advanced one step towards me, looked me in the face, and
drew in his breath to speak; but that look, that heightened colour,
that sudden sparkle of the eye, made my blood rise in wrath: I abruptly
turned away, and, snatching up my brush, began to dash away at my
canvas with rather too much energy for the good of the picture.
“Mrs. Huntingdon,” said he with bitter solemnity, “you are cruel—cruel
to me—cruel to yourself.”
“Mr. Hargrave, remember your promise.”
“I _must_ speak: my heart will burst if I don’t! I have been silent
long enough, and you _must_ hear me!” cried he, boldly intercepting my
retreat to the door. “You tell me you owe no allegiance to your
husband; he openly declares himself weary of you, and calmly gives you
up to anybody that will take you; you are about to leave him; no one
will believe that you go alone; all the world will say, ‘She has left
him at last, and who can wonder at it? Few can blame her, fewer still
can pity him; but who is the companion of her flight?’ Thus you will
have no credit for your virtue (if you call it such): even your best
friends will not believe in it; because it is monstrous, and not to be
credited but by those who suffer, from the effects of it, such cruel
torments that they know it to be indeed reality. But what can you do in
the cold, rough world alone? you, a young and inexperienced woman,
delicately nurtured, and utterly—”
“In a word, you would advise me to stay where I am,” interrupted I.
“Well, I’ll see about it.”
“By _all means_, leave him!” cried he earnestly; “but NOT alone! Helen!
let _me_ protect you!”
“Never! while heaven spares my reason,” replied I, snatching away the
hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own. But he was in
for it now; he had fairly broken the barrier: he was completely roused,
and determined to hazard all for victory.
“I must not be denied!” exclaimed he, vehemently; and seizing both my
hands, he held them very tight, but dropped upon his knee, and looked
up in my face with a half-imploring, half-imperious gaze. “You have no
reason now: you are flying in the face of heaven’s decrees. God has
designed me to be your comfort and protector—I feel it, I know it as
certainly as if a voice from heaven declared, ‘Ye twain shall be one
flesh’—and you spurn me from you—”
“Let me go, Mr. Hargrave!” said I, sternly. But he only tightened his
grasp.
“Let me go!” I repeated, quivering with indignation.
His face was almost opposite the window as he knelt. With a slight
start, I saw him glance towards it; and then a gleam of malicious
triumph lit up his countenance. Looking over my shoulder, I beheld a
shadow just retiring round the corner.
“That is Grimsby,” said he deliberately. “He will report what he has
seen to Huntingdon and all the rest, with such embellishments as he
thinks proper. He has no love for you, Mrs. Huntingdon—no reverence for
your sex, no belief in virtue, no admiration for its image. He will
give such a version of this story as will leave no doubt at all about
your character, in the minds of those who hear it. Your fair fame is
gone; and nothing that I or you can say can ever retrieve it. But give
me the power to protect you, and show me the villain that dares to
insult!”
“No one has ever dared to insult me as you are doing now!” said I, at
length releasing my hands, and recoiling from him.
“I do not insult you,” cried he: “I worship you. You are my angel, my
divinity! I lay my powers at your feet, and you must and shall accept
them!” he exclaimed, impetuously starting to his feet. “I _will_ be
your consoler and defender! and if your conscience upbraid you for it,
say I overcame you, and you could not choose but yield!”
I never saw a man go terribly excited. He precipitated himself towards
me. I snatched up my palette-knife and held it against him. This
startled him: he stood and gazed at me in astonishment; I daresay I
looked as fierce and resolute as he. I moved to the bell, and put my
hand upon the cord. This tamed him still more. With a
half-authoritative, half-deprecating wave of the hand, he sought to
deter me from ringing.
“Stand off, then!” said I; he stepped back. “And listen to me. I don’t
like you,” I continued, as deliberately and emphatically as I could, to
give the greater efficacy to my words; “and if I were divorced from my
husband, or if he were dead, I would not marry you. There now! I hope
you’re satisfied.”
His face grew blanched with anger.
“I _am_ satisfied,” he replied, with bitter emphasis, “that you are the
most cold-hearted, unnatural, ungrateful woman I ever yet beheld!”
“Ungrateful, sir?”
“Ungrateful.”
“No, Mr. Hargrave, I am not. For all the good you ever did me, or ever
wished to do, I most sincerely thank you: for all the evil you have
done me, and all you would have done, I pray God to pardon you, and
make you of a better mind.”
Here the door was thrown open, and Messrs. Huntingdon and Hattersley
appeared without. The latter remained in the hall, busy with his ramrod
and his gun; the former walked in, and stood with his back to the fire,
surveying Mr. Hargrave and me, particularly the former, with a smile of
insupportable meaning, accompanied as it was by the impudence of his
brazen brow, and the sly, malicious, twinkle of his eye.
“Well, sir?” said Hargrave, interrogatively, and with the air of one
prepared to stand on the defensive.
“Well, sir,” returned his host.
“We want to know if you are at liberty to join us in a go at the
pheasants, Walter,” interposed Hattersley from without. “Come! there
shall be nothing shot besides, except a puss or two; _I’ll_ vouch for
that.”
Walter did not answer, but walked to the window to collect his
faculties. Arthur uttered a low whistle, and followed him with his
eyes. A slight flush of anger rose to Hargrave’s cheek; but in a moment
he turned calmly round, and said carelessly:
“I came here to bid farewell to Mrs. Huntingdon, and tell her I must go
to-morrow.”
“Humph! You’re mighty sudden in your resolution. What takes you off so
soon, may I ask?”
“Business,” returned he, repelling the other’s incredulous sneer with a
glance of scornful defiance.
“Very good,” was the reply; and Hargrave walked away. Thereupon Mr.
Huntingdon, gathering his coat-laps under his arms, and setting his
shoulder against the mantel-piece, turned to me, and, addressing me in
a low voice, scarcely above his breath, poured forth a volley of the
vilest and grossest abuse it was possible for the imagination to
conceive or the tongue to utter. I did not attempt to interrupt him;
but my spirit kindled within me, and when he had done, I replied, “If
your accusation were true, Mr. Huntingdon, how _dare you_ blame me?”
“She’s hit it, by Jove!” cried Hattersley, rearing his gun against the
wall; and, stepping into the room, he took his precious friend by the
arm, and attempted to drag him away. “Come, my lad,” he muttered; “true
or false, _you’ve_ no right to blame her, you _know_, nor him either;
after what you said last night. So come along.”
There was something implied here that I could not endure.
“Dare you suspect me, Mr. Hattersley?” said I, almost beside myself
with fury.
“Nay, nay, I suspect nobody. It’s all right, it’s all right. So come
along, Huntingdon, you blackguard.”
“She can’t deny it!” cried the gentleman thus addressed, grinning in
mingled rage and triumph. “She can’t deny it if her life depended on
it!” and muttering some more abusive language, he walked into the hall,
and took up his hat and gun from the table.
“I scorn to justify myself to you!” said I. “But you,” turning to
Hattersley, “if you presume to have any doubts on the subject, ask Mr.
Hargrave.”
At this they simultaneously burst into a rude laugh that made my whole
frame tingle to the fingers’ ends.
“Where is he? I’ll ask him myself!” said I, advancing towards them.
Suppressing a new burst of merriment, Hattersley pointed to the outer
door. It was half open. His brother-in-law was standing on the front
without.
“Mr. Hargrave, will you please to step this way?” said I.
He turned and looked at me in grave surprise.
“Step this way, if you please!” I repeated, in so determined a manner
that he could not, or did not choose to resist its authority. Somewhat
reluctantly he ascended the steps and advanced a pace or two into the
hall.
“And tell those gentlemen,” I continued—“these men, whether or not I
yielded to your solicitations.”
“I don’t understand you, Mrs. Huntingdon.”
“You _do_ understand me, sir; and I charge you, upon your honour as a
gentleman (if you have any), to answer truly. Did I, or did I not?”
“No,” muttered he, turning away.
“Speak up, sir; they can’t hear you. Did I grant your request?
“You did not.”
“No, I’ll be sworn she didn’t,” said Hattersley, “or he’d never look so
black.”
“I’m willing to grant you the satisfaction of a gentleman, Huntingdon,”
said Mr. Hargrave, calmly addressing his host, but with a bitter sneer
upon his countenance.
“Go to the deuce!” replied the latter, with an impatient jerk of the
head. Hargrave withdrew with a look of cold disdain, saying,—“You know
where to find me, should you feel disposed to send a friend.”
Muttered oaths and curses were all the answer this intimation obtained.
“Now, Huntingdon, you see!” said Hattersley. “Clear as the day.”
“I don’t care _what_ he sees,” said I, “or what he imagines; but you,
Mr. Hattersley, when you hear my name belied and slandered, will you
defend it?”
“I will.”
I instantly departed and shut myself into the library. What could
possess me to make such a request of such a man I cannot tell; but
drowning men catch at straws: they had driven me desperate between
them; I hardly knew what I said. There was no other to preserve my name
from being blackened and aspersed among this nest of boon companions,
and through them, perhaps, into the world; and beside my abandoned
wretch of a husband, the base, malignant Grimsby, and the false villain
Hargrave, this boorish ruffian, coarse and brutal as he was, shone like
a glow-worm in the dark, among its fellow worms.
What a scene was this! Could I ever have imagined that I should be
doomed to bear such insults under my own roof—to hear such things
spoken in my presence; nay, spoken _to_ me and _of_ me; and by those
who arrogated to themselves the name of gentlemen? And could I have
imagined that I should have been able to endure it as calmly, and to
repel their insults as firmly and as boldly as I had done? A hardness
such as this is taught by rough experience and despair alone.
Such thoughts as these chased one another through my mind, as I paced
to and fro the room, and longed—oh, _how_ I longed—to take my child and
leave them now, without an hour’s delay! But it could not be; there was
work before me: hard work, that must be done.
“Then let me do it,” said I, “and lose not a moment in vain repinings
and idle chafings against my fate, and those who influence it.”
And conquering my agitation with a powerful effort, I immediately
resumed my task, and laboured hard all day.
Mr. Hargrave did depart on the morrow; and I have never seen him since.
The others stayed on for two or three weeks longer; but I kept aloof
from them as much as possible, and still continued my labour, and have
continued it, with almost unabated ardour, to the present day. I soon