The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) (63 page)

As I may never have occasion to mention her again, I may as well tell you here, that she was at this time privately engaged to Richard Wilson – a secret, I believe to everyone but their two selves. That worthy student was now at Cambridge, where his most exemplary conduct and his diligent perseverance in the pursuit of learning carried him safely through, and eventually brought him with hard-earned honours and an untarnished reputation, to the close of his collegiate career.
⁴
In due time, he became Mr Millward’s first and only curate – for that gentleman’s declining years forced
him at last to acknowledge that the duties of his extensive parish were a little too much for those vaunted energies which he was wont to boast over his younger and less active brethren of the cloth. This was what the patient, faithful lovers had privately planned, and quietly waited for years ago; and in due time they were united, to the astonishment of the little world they lived in, that had long since declared them both born to single blessedness; affirming it impossible that the pale, retiring bookworm should ever summon courage to seek a wife, or be able to obtain one if he did, and equally impossible that the plain-looking, plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward should ever find a husband.

They still continued to live at the vicarage, the lady dividing her time between her father, her husband, and their poor parishioners, – and subsequently, her rising family; and now that the Reverend Michael Millward has been gathered to his fathers, full of years and honours,
⁵
the Reverend Richard Wilson
⁶
has succeeded him to the vicarage of Lindenhope, greatly to the satisfaction of its inhabitants, who had so long tried and fully proved his merits, and those of his excellent and well-loved partner.

If you are interested in the after-fate of that lady’s sister, I can only tell you – what perhaps you have heard from another quarter – that some twelve or thirteen years ago, she relieved the happy couple of her presence by marrying a wealthy tradesman of L—; and I don’t envy him his bargain. I fear she leads him a rather uncomfortable life, though happily he is too dull to perceive the extent of his misfortune. I have little enough to do with her myself: we have not met for many years; but, I am well assured, she has not yet forgotten or forgiven either her former lover or the lady whose superior qualities first opened his eyes to the folly of his boyish attachment.

As for Richard Wilson’s sister, she, having been wholly unable to recapture Mr Lawrence or obtain any partner rich and elegant enough to suit her ideas of what the husband of Jane Wilson ought to be, is yet in single blessedness. Shortly after the death of her mother, she withdrew the light of her presence from Ryecote Farm, finding it impossible any longer to endure the rough manners and
unsophisticated habits of her honest brother Robert and his worthy wife, or the idea of being identified with such vulgar people in the eyes of the world, – and took lodgings in – the county town, where she lived, and still lives, I suppose, in a kind of close-fisted, cold, uncomfortable gentility, doing no good to others and but little to herself; spending her days in fancy-work and scandal; referring frequently to her ‘brother the vicar’ and her ‘sister the vicar’s lady,’ but never to her brother the farmer and her sister the farmer’s wife; seeing as much company as she can without too much expense, but loving no one and beloved by none – a cold-hearted, supercilious, keenly, insidiously censorious old maid.

‘The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.’
¹

Though Mr Lawrence’s health was now quite re-established, my visits to Woodford were as unremitting as ever, though often less protracted than before. We seldom
talked
about Mrs Huntingdon; but yet we never met without mentioning her, for I never sought his company but with the hope of hearing something about her, and he never sought mine at all, because he saw me often enough without. But I always began to talk of other things, and waited first to see if
he
would introduce the subject. If he did not, I would casually ask, ‘Have you heard from your sister lately?’ If he said, ‘No,’ the matter was dropped: if he said ‘Yes,’ I would venture to enquire, ‘How is she?’ but never ‘How is her husband?’ though I might be burning to know; because I had not the hypocrisy to profess any anxiety for his recovery, and I had not the face to express any desire for a contrary result. Had I any such desire? – I fear I must plead guilty: but since you have heard my confession, you must hear my justification as well – a few of the excuses, at least, wherewith I sought to pacify my own accusing conscience: –

In the first place, you see, his life did harm to others, and evidently no good to himself; and though I wished it to terminate, I would not have hastened its close if, by the lifting of a finger, I could have done so, or if a spirit had whispered in my ear that a single effort of the will would be enough, – unless, indeed, I had the power to exchange him for some other victim of the grave, whose life might be of service to his race, and whose death would be lamented by his friends. But was there any harm in wishing that, among the many thousands whose souls would certainly be required of them
before the year was over, this wretched mortal might be one? I thought not, and therefore I wished with all my heart that it might please Heaven to remove him to a better world, or if that might not be, still, to take him out of this, for if he were unfit to answer the summons now, after a warning sickness, and with such an angel by his side, it seemed but too certain that he never would be – that, on the contrary, returning health would bring returning lust and villainy, and as he grew more certain of recovery, more accustomed to her generous goodness, his feelings would become more callous, his heart more flinty and impervious to her persuasive arguments – but God knew best. Meantime, however, I could not but be anxious for the result of His decrees; knowing, as I did, that (leaving myself entirely out of the question), however Helen might feel interested in her husband’s welfare, however she might deplore his fate, still, while he lived, she
must be
miserable.

A fortnight passed away, and my enquiries were always answered in the negative. At length a welcome ‘yes’ drew from me the second question. Lawrence divined my anxious thoughts, and appreciated my reserve. I feared at first, he was going to torture me by unsatisfactory replies, and either leave me quite in the dark concerning what I wanted to know, or force me to drag the information out of him, morsel by morsel, by direct enquiries – ‘and serve you right,’ you will say; but he was more merciful; and in a little while, he put his sister’s letter into my hand. I silently read it, and restored it to him without comment or remark. This mode of procedure suited him so well that thereafter he always pursued the plan of showing me her letters at once, when I enquired after her, if there were any to show: it was so much less trouble than to tell me their contents; and I received such confidences so quietly and discreetly that he was never induced to discontinue them.

But I devoured those precious letters with my eyes, and never let them go till their contents were stamped upon my mind; and when I got home, the most important passages were entered in my diary among the remarkable events of the day.

The first of these communications brought intelligence of a serious relapse in Mr Huntingdon’s illness, entirely the result of his own
infatuation in persisting in the indulgence of his appetite for stimulating drink. In vain had she remonstrated, in vain she had mingled his wine with water: her arguments and entreaties were a nuisance, her interference was an insult so intolerable that at length, on finding she had covertly diluted the pale port that was brought him, he threw the bottle out of the window, swearing he would not be cheated like a baby, ordered the butler, on pain of instant dismissal, to bring a bottle of the strongest wine in the cellar, and, affirming that he should have been well long ago if he had been let to have his own way, but she wanted to keep him weak in order that she might have him under her thumb – but by the Lord Harry, he would have no more humbug – seized a glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, and never rested till he had drunk it dry. Alarming symptoms were the immediate result of this ‘imprudence’ as she mildly termed it – symptoms which had rather increased than diminished since; and this was the cause of her delay in writing to her brother. Every former feature of his malady had returned with augmented virulence: the slight external wound, half-healed, had broken out afresh; internal inflammation had taken place, which might terminate fatally if not soon removed. Of course, the wretched sufferer’s temper was not improved by this calamity – in fact, I suspect it was wellnigh insupportable, though his kind nurse did not complain; but she said she had been obliged, at last, to give her son in charge to Esther Hargrave, as her presence was so constantly required in the sick room that she could not possibly attend to him herself, and though the child had begged to be allowed to continue with her there, and to help her to nurse his papa, and though she had no doubt he would have been very good and quiet, – she could not think of subjecting his young and tender feelings to the sight of so much suffering, or of allowing him to witness his father’s impatience, or hear the dreadful language he was wont to use in his paroxysms of pain or irritation.

‘The latter,’ continued she, ‘most deeply regrets the step that has occasioned his relapse, – but, as usual, he throws the blame upon me. If I had reasoned with him like a rational creature, he says, it never would have happened; but to be treated like a baby or a fool, was enough to put any man past his patience, and drive him to assert his
independence even at the sacrifice of his own interest – he forgets how often I had
reasoned
him “past his patience” before. He appears to be sensible of his danger; but nothing can induce him to behold it in the proper light The other night while I was waiting on him, and just as I had brought him a draught to assuage his burning thirst – he observed, with a return of his former sarcastic bitterness, –

‘“Yes, you’re mighty attentive
now
!– I suppose there’s
nothing
you wouldn’t do for me now?”

‘“You know,” said I, a little surprised at his manner, “that I am willing to do anything I can to relieve you.”

‘“Yes,
now
, my immaculate angel; but when once you have secured your reward, and find yourself safe in Heaven, and me howling in hell-fire, catch you lifting a finger to serve me
then
! – No, you’ll look complacently on, and not so much as dip the tip of your finger in water to cool my tongue!”
²

‘“If so, it will be because of the great gulf over which I cannot pass;
³
and if I
could
look complacently on in such a case,
⁴
it would be only from the assurance that you were being purified from your sins, and fitted to enjoy the happiness I felt. – But are you
determined
, Arthur, that I shall not meet you in Heaven?”

‘“Humph! What should I do there, I should like to know?”

‘“Indeed, I cannot tell; and I fear it is too certain that your tastes and feelings must be widely altered before you can have any enjoyment there. But do you prefer sinking, without an effort, into the state of torment you picture to yourself?”

‘“Oh, it’s all a fable;”
⁵
said he, contemptuously.

‘“Are you sure, Arthur? are you
quite
sure? Because if there is any doubt, and if you
should
find yourself mistaken after all, when it is too late to turn –”

‘“It would be rather awkward, to be sure,” said he; “but don’t bother me now – I’m not going to die yet. – I can’t and won’t,” he added vehemently, as if suddenly struck with the appalling aspect of that terrible event, “Helen, you
must
save me!” And he earnestly seized my hand, and looked into my face with such imploring eagerness that my heart bled for him, and I could not speak for tears.’

*

The next letter brought intelligence that the malady was fast increasing; and the poor sufferer’s horror of death was still more distressing than his impatience of bodily pain.
All
his friends had not forsaken him, for Mr Hattersley, hearing of his danger, had come to see him from his distant home in the north. His wife had accompanied him, as much for the pleasure of seeing her dear friend, from whom she had been parted so long, as to visit her mother and sister.

Mrs Huntingdon expressed herself glad to see Milicent once more, and pleased to behold her so happy and well. ‘She is now at the Grove,’ continued the letter, ‘but she often calls to see me. Mr Hattersley spends much of his time at Arthur’s bedside. With more good feeling than I gave him credit for, he evinces considerable sympathy for his unhappy friend, and is far more willing than able to comfort him. Sometimes he tries to joke and laugh with him, but that will not do: sometimes he endeavours to cheer him with talk about old times; and this, at one time, may serve to divert the sufferer from his own sad thoughts; at another, it will only plunge him into deeper melancholy than before; and then Hattersley is confounded, and knows not what to say, – unless it be a timid suggestion that the clergyman might be sent for. But Arthur will never consent to that: he knows he has rejected the clergyman’s well-meant admonitions with scoffing levity at other times, and cannot dream of turning to him for consolation now.

‘Mr Hattersley sometimes offers his services instead of mine, but Arthur will not let me go: that strange whim still increases, as his strength declines – the fancy to have me always by his side. I hardly ever leave him, except to go into the next room, where I sometimes snatch an hour or so of sleep when he is quiet; but even then, the door is left ajar that he may know me to be within call. I am with him now, while I write; and I fear my occupation annoys him; though I frequently break off to attend to him, and though Mr Hattersley is also by his side. That gentleman came, as he said, to beg a holiday for me, that I might have a run in the park, this fine, frosty morning, with Milicent, and Esther, and little Arthur, whom he had driven over to see me. Our poor invalid evidently felt it a
heartless proposition, and would have felt it still more heartless in me to accede to it. I therefore said I would only go and speak to them a minute, and then come back. I did but exchange a few words with them, just outside the portico – inhaling the fresh, bracing air as I stood – and then, resisting the earnest and eloquent entreaties of all three to stay a little longer, and join them in a walk round the garden, – I tore myself away and returned to my patient. I had not been absent five minutes, but he reproached me bitterly for my levity and neglect. His friend espoused my cause: –