The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
shocked at my undutiful conduct. You can’t imagine how she lectures me:
I am disobedient and ungrateful; I am thwarting her wishes, wronging my
brother, and making myself a burden on her hands. I sometimes fear
she’ll overcome me after all. I have a strong will, but so has she, and
when she says such bitter things, it provokes me to such a pass that I
feel inclined to do as she bids me, and then break my heart and say,
‘There, mamma, it’s all your fault!’”
“Pray don’t!” said I. “Obedience from such a motive would be positive
wickedness, and certain to bring the punishment it deserves. Stand
firm, and your mamma will soon relinquish her persecution; and the
gentleman himself will cease to pester you with his addresses if he
finds them steadily rejected.”
“Oh, no! mamma will weary all about her before she tires herself with
her exertions; and as for Mr. Oldfield, she has given him to understand
that I have refused his offer, not from any dislike of his person, but
merely because I am giddy and young, and cannot at present reconcile
myself to the thoughts of marriage under any circumstances: but by next
season, she has no doubt, I shall have more sense, and hopes my girlish
fancies will be worn away. So she has brought me home, to school me
into a proper sense of my duty, against the time comes round again.
Indeed, I believe she will not put herself to the expense of taking me
up to London again, unless I surrender: she cannot afford to take me to
town for pleasure and nonsense, she says, and it is not _every_ rich
gentleman that will consent to take me without a fortune, whatever
exalted ideas I may have of my own attractions.”
“Well, Esther, I pity you; but still, I repeat, stand firm. You might
as well sell yourself to slavery at once, as marry a man you dislike.
If your mother and brother are unkind to you, you may leave them, but
remember you are bound to your husband for life.”
“But I cannot leave them unless I get married, and I cannot get married
if nobody sees me. I saw one or two gentlemen in London that I might
have liked, but they were younger sons, and mamma would not let me get
to know them—one especially, who I believe rather liked me—but she
threw every possible obstacle in the way of our better acquaintance.
Wasn’t it provoking?”
“I have no doubt you would feel it so, but it is possible that if you
married him, you might have more reason to regret it hereafter than if
you married Mr. Oldfield. When I tell you not to marry _without_ love,
I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other
things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own
possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an
occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this
reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many,
your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage
_may_ change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private
opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.”
“So thinks Milicent; but allow me to say _I_ think otherwise. If I
thought myself doomed to old-maidenhood, I should cease to value my
life. The thoughts of living on, year after year, at the Grove—a
hanger-on upon mamma and Walter, a mere cumberer of the ground (now
that I know in what light they would regard it), is perfectly
intolerable; I would rather run away with the butler.”
“Your circumstances are peculiar, I allow; but have patience, love; do
nothing rashly. Remember you are not yet nineteen, and many years are
yet to pass before any one can set you down as an old maid: you cannot
tell what Providence may have in store for you. And meantime, remember
you have a _right_ to the protection and support of your mother and
brother, however they may seem to grudge it.”
“You are so grave, Mrs. Huntingdon,” said Esther, after a pause. “When
Milicent uttered the same discouraging sentiments concerning marriage,
I asked if she was happy: she said she was; but I only half believed
her; and now I must put the same question to you.”
“It is a very impertinent question,” laughed I, “from a young girl to a
married woman so many years her senior, and I shall not answer it.”
“Pardon me, dear _madam_,” said she, laughingly throwing herself into
my arms, and kissing me with playful affection; but I felt a tear on my
neck, as she dropped her head on my bosom and continued, with an odd
mixture of sadness and levity, timidity and audacity,—“I know you are
not so happy as I mean to be, for you spend half your life alone at
Grassdale, while Mr. Huntingdon goes about enjoying himself where and
how he pleases. I shall expect _my_ husband to have no pleasures but
what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the
enjoyment of my company, why, it will be the worse for him, that’s
all.”
“If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed,
be careful whom you marry—or rather, you must avoid it altogether.”
CHAPTER XLII
September 1st.—No Mr. Huntingdon yet. Perhaps he will stay among his
friends till Christmas; and then, next spring, he will be off again. If
he continue this plan, I shall be able to stay at Grassdale well
enough—that is, I _shall_ be able to stay, and that is enough; even an
occasional bevy of friends at the shooting season may be borne, if
Arthur get so firmly attached to me, so well established in good sense
and principles before they come that I shall be able, by reason and
affection, to keep him pure from their contaminations. Vain hope, I
fear! but still, till such a time of trial comes I will forbear to
think of my quiet asylum in the beloved old hall.
Mr. and Mrs. Hattersley have been staying at the Grove a fortnight: and
as Mr. Hargrave is still absent, and the weather was remarkably fine, I
never passed a day without seeing my two friends, Milicent and Esther,
either there or here. On one occasion, when Mr. Hattersley had driven
them over to Grassdale in the phaeton, with little Helen and Ralph, and
we were all enjoying ourselves in the garden—I had a few minutes’
conversation with that gentleman, while the ladies were amusing
themselves with the children.
“Do you want to hear anything of your husband, Mrs. Huntingdon?” said
he.
“No, unless you can tell me when to expect him home.”
“I can’t.—You don’t want him, do you?” said he, with a broad grin.
“No.”
“Well, I think you’re better without him, sure enough—for my part, I’m
downright weary of him. I told him I’d leave him if he didn’t mend his
manners, and he wouldn’t; so I left him. You see, I’m a better man than
you think me; and, what’s more, I have serious thoughts of washing my
hands of him entirely, and the whole set of ’em, and comporting myself
from this day forward with all decency and sobriety, as a Christian and
the father of a family should do. What do you think of that?”
“It is a resolution you ought to have formed long ago.”
“Well, I’m not thirty yet; it isn’t too late, is it?”
“No; it is never too late to reform, as long as you have the sense to
desire it, and the strength to execute your purpose.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve thought of it often and often
before; but he’s such devilish good company, is Huntingdon, after all.
You can’t imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he’s not fairly
drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over. We all have a bit of a
liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can’t respect
him.”
“But should you wish yourself to be like him?”
“No, I’d rather be like myself, bad as I am.”
“You can’t continue as bad as you are without getting worse and more
brutalised every day, and therefore more like him.”
I could not help smiling at the comical, half-angry, half-confounded
look he put on at this rather unusual mode of address.
“Never mind my plain speaking,” said I; “it is from the best of
motives. But tell me, should you wish your sons to be like Mr.
Huntingdon—or even like yourself?”
“Hang it! no.”
“Should you wish your daughter to despise you—or, at least, to feel no
vestige of respect for you, and no affection but what is mingled with
the bitterest regret?”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t stand that.”
“And, finally, should you wish your wife to be ready to sink into the
earth when she hears you mentioned; and to loathe the very sound of
your voice, and shudder at your approach?”
“She never will; she likes me all the same, whatever I do.”
“Impossible, Mr. Hattersley! you mistake her quiet submission for
affection.”
“Fire and fury—”
“Now don’t burst into a tempest at that. I don’t mean to say she does
not love you—she does, I know, a great deal better than you deserve;
but I am quite sure, that if you behave better, she will love you more,
and if you behave worse, she will love you less and less, till all is
lost in fear, aversion, and bitterness of soul, if not in secret hatred
and contempt. But, dropping the subject of affection, should you wish
to be the tyrant of her life—to take away all the sunshine from her
existence, and make her thoroughly miserable?”
“Of course not; and I don’t, and I’m not going to.”
“You have done more towards it than you suppose.”
“Pooh, pooh! she’s not the susceptible, anxious, worriting creature you
imagine: she’s a little meek, peaceable, affectionate body; apt to be
rather sulky at times, but quiet and cool in the main, and ready to
take things as they come.”
“Think of what she was five years ago, when you married her, and what
she is now.”
“I know she was a little plump lassie then, with a pretty pink and
white face: now she’s a poor little bit of a creature, fading and
melting away like a snow-wreath. But hang it!—that’s not my fault.”
“What is the cause of it then? Not years, for she’s only
five-and-twenty.”
“It’s her own delicate health, and confound it, madam! what would you
make of me?—and the children, to be sure, that worry her to death
between them.”
“No, Mr. Hattersley, the children give her more pleasure than pain:
they are fine, well-dispositioned children—”
“I know they are—bless them!”
“Then why lay the blame on them?—I’ll tell you what it is: it’s silent
fretting and constant anxiety on your account, mingled, I suspect, with
something of bodily fear on her own. When you behave well, she can only
rejoice with trembling; she has no security, no confidence in your
judgment or principles; but is continually dreading the close of such
short-lived felicity; when you behave ill, her causes of terror and
misery are more than any one can tell but herself. In patient endurance
of evil, she forgets it is our duty to admonish our neighbours of their
transgressions. Since you _will_ mistake her silence for indifference,
come with me, and I’ll show you one or two of her letters—no breach of
confidence, I hope, since you are her other half.”
He followed me into the library. I sought out and put into his hands
two of Milicent’s letters: one dated from London, and written during
one of his wildest seasons of reckless dissipation; the other in the
country, during a lucid interval. The former was full of trouble and
anguish; not accusing _him_, but deeply regretting his connection with
his profligate companions, abusing Mr. Grimsby and others, insinuating
bitter things against Mr. Huntingdon, and most ingeniously throwing the
blame of her husband’s misconduct on to other men’s shoulders. The
latter was full of hope and joy, yet with a trembling consciousness
that this happiness would not last; praising his goodness to the skies,
but with an evident, though but half-expressed wish, that it were based
on a surer foundation than the natural impulses of the heart, and a
half-prophetic dread of the fall of that house so founded on the