The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) (42 page)

‘Well, but if you think her ideas are what they ought to be, strengthen them, will you? and confirm them, as far as you can; for
I
had romantic notions once, and – I don’t mean to say that I regret my lot, for I am quite sure I don’t – but –’

‘I understand you,’ said I; ‘you are contented for yourself, but you would not have your sister to suffer the same as you.’

‘No – or worse. She might have far worse to suffer than I – for I
am really
contented, Helen, though you mayn’t think it: I speak the solemn truth in saying that I would not exchange my husband for any man on earth, if I might do it by the plucking of this leaf.’

‘Well, I believe you: now that you have him, you would not exchange
him
for another, but then you would gladly exchange some of his qualities for those of better men.’

‘Yes; just as I would gladly exchange some of my own qualities for those of better women; for neither he nor I are perfect, and I desire his improvement as earnestly as my own. And he will improve – don’t you think so Helen? – he’s only six and twenty yet’.

‘He may,’ I answered.

‘He will – he WILL!’ repeated she.

‘Excuse the faintness of my acquiescence, Milicent; I would not discourage your hopes for the world, but mine have been so often disappointed, that I am become as cold and doubtful in my expectations as the flattest of octogenarians.’

‘And yet you do hope, still – even for Mr Huntingdon?’

‘I do, I confess – “even” for
him;
for it seems as if life and hope must cease together. And is he so
much
worse, Milicent, than Mr Hattersley?’

‘Well, to give you my candid opinion, I think there is no comparison between them. But you mustn’t be offended, Helen, for you know I always speak my mind; and you may speak yours too; I shan’t care.’

‘I am not offended, love; and
my
opinion is that if there
be
a comparison made between the two, the difference, for the most part, is certainly in Hattersley’s favour.’

Milicent’s own heart told her how much it cost me to make this acknowledgment; and, with a childlike impulse, she expressed her sympathy by suddenly kissing my cheek, without a word of reply, and then turning quickly away caught up her baby, and hid her face
in its frock. How odd it is that we so often weep for each other’s distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own! Her heart had been full enough of her own sorrows, but it overflowed at the idea of mine; – and I too shed tears at the sight of her sympathetic emotion, though I had not wept for myself for many a week.

But Milicent’s satisfaction in her choice is not entirely feigned: she really loves her husband; and it is too true that he loses nothing by comparison with mine. Either he is less unbridled in his excesses, or, owing to his stronger, hardier frame, they produce a much less deleterious effect upon him; for he never reduces himself to a state in any degree bordering on imbecility, and with him the worst effect of a night’s debauch is a slight increase of irascibility, or it may be a season of sullen ferocity on the following morning: there is nothing of that lost, depressing appearance – that peevish, ignoble fretfulness, that wears one out with very shame for the transgressor. But then, it was not formerly so with Arthur: he can bear less now than he could at Hattersley’s age; and if the latter does not reform, his powers of endurance may be equally impaired when he has tried them as long. He has five years the advantage of his friend, and his vices have not mastered him yet: he has not folded them to him and made them a part of himself. They seem to sit loose upon him, like a cloak
²
that he could throw aside at any moment if he would – but how long will that option be left him? – Though a creature of passion and sense, regardless of the duties and the higher privileges of intelligent beings, he is no voluptuary: he prefers the more active and invigorating animal enjoyments, to those of a more relaxing, enervating kind. He does not make a
science
of the gratification of his appetites either in the pleasures of the table or anything else; he eats heartily what is set before him, without demeaning himself by any of that abandonment to the palate and the eye – that unbecoming particularity in approval or disapproval which it is so hateful to witness in those we would esteem. Arthur, I fear, would give himself up to luxury as the chief good, and might ultimately plunge into the grossest excesses, but for the fear of irremediably blunting his appetites, and destroying his powers of further enjoyment. For Hattersley, graceless ruffian as he is, I believe there is more reasonable ground of hope; and – far be
it from me to blame poor Milicent for his delinquencies – but I do think that if she had the courage or the will to speak her mind about them, and maintain her point unflinchingly, there would be more chance of his reclamation, and he would be likely to treat her better, and love her more, in the end. I am partly led to think so by what he said to me himself, not many days ago – I purpose to give her a little advice on the subject sometime; but still, I hesitate from the consciousness that her ideas and disposition are both against it, and if my counsels failed to do good, they would do harm by making her more unhappy.

It was one rainy day last week: most of the company were killing time in the billiard-room, but Milicent and I were with little Arthur and Helen in the library, and between our books, our children, and each other, we expected to make out a very agreeable morning. We had not been thus secluded above two hours, however, when Mr Hattersley came in, attracted, I suppose, by the voice of his child as he was crossing the hall, for he is prodigiously fond of her, and she of him.

He was redolent of the stables, where he had been regaling himself with the company of his fellow-creatures, the horses, ever since breakfast. But that was no matter to my little namesake: as soon as the colossal person of her father darkened the door, she uttered a shrill scream of delight, and, quitting her mother’s side, ran crowing towards him – balancing her course with out-stretched arms, – and, embracing his knee, threw back her head and laughed in his face. He might well look smilingly down upon those small, fair features radiant with innocent mirth, those clear, blue, shining eyes, and that soft flaxen hair cast back upon the little ivory neck and shoulders. Did he not think how unworthy he was of such a possession? I fear no such idea crossed his mind. He caught her up, and there followed some minutes of very rough play, during which it is difficult to say whether the father or the daughter laughed and shouted the loudest. At length, however, the boisterous pastime terminated – suddenly, as might be expected: the little one was hurt and began to cry; and its ungentle playfellow tossed it into its mother’s lap, bidding her ‘make all straight.’ As happy to return to that gentle comforter as it had
been to leave her, the child nestled in her arms and hushed its cries in a moment; and, sinking its little weary head on her bosom, soon dropped asleep.

Meantime, Mr Hattersley strode up to the fire, and, interposing his height and breadth between us and it, stood, with arms akimbo, expanding his chest, and gazing round him as if the house and all its appurtenances and contents were his own undisputed possessions.

‘Deuced bad weather this!’ he began. ‘There’ll be no shooting today, I guess.’ Then, suddenly lifting up his voice, he regaled us with a few bars of a rollicking song, which abruptly ceasing, he finished the tune with a whistle, and then continued, – ‘I say Mrs Huntingdon, what a fine stud your husband has! – not large but good. – I’ve been looking at them a bit this morning; and upon my word, Black Bess, and Grey Tom, and that young Nimrod are the finest animals I’ve seen for many a day!’ Then followed a particular discussion of their various merits, succeeded by a sketch of the great things
he
intended to do in the horse-jockey line
³
when his old governor thought proper to quit the stage – ‘Not that I wish him to close his accounts,’ added he; ‘the old Trojan is welcome to keep his books open as long as he pleases for me.’

‘I hope so,
indeed
, Mr Hattersley!’

‘Oh yes! It’s only my way of talking. The event must come, sometime, and so I look to the bright side of it – that’s the right plan, isn’t it, Mrs H.? – What are you two doing here, by the by – where’s Lady Lowborough?’

‘In the billiard room.’

‘What a splendid creature she
is
!’ continued he, fixing his eyes on his wife, who changed colour, and looked more and more disconcerted as he proceeded. ‘What a noble figure she has! and what magnificent black eyes; and what a fine spirit of her own; – and what a tongue of her own, too, when she likes to use it – I perfectly adore her! – But never mind, Milicent: I wouldn’t have her for my wife – not if she’d a kingdom for her dowry! I’m better satisfied with the one I have. – Now
then!
what do you look so sulky for? don’t you believe me?’

‘Yes, I believe you,’ murmured she, in a tone of half sad, half
sullen resignation, as she turned away to stroke the hair of her sleeping infant, that she had laid on the sofa beside her.

‘Well
then
, what makes you so cross? Come here Milly, and tell me why you can’t be satisfied with my assurance.’

She went, and, putting her little hand within his arm, looked up in his face, and said softly, –

‘What does it amount to Ralph? Only to this, that though you admire Annabella so much, and for qualities that I don’t possess, you would still rather have me than her for your wife which merely proves that you don’t think it necessary to love your wife: you are satisfied if she can keep your house and take care of your child. But I’m not cross; I’m only sorry; for,’ added she in a low, tremulous accent, withdrawing her hand from his arm, and bending her looks on the rug, ‘if you don’t love me, you don’t, and it can’t be helped.’

‘Very true: but who told you I didn’t? Did I say I loved Annabella?’

‘You said you adored her.’

‘True, but adoration isn’t love. I adore Annabella, but I don’t love her, and I love thee Milicent, but I don’t adore thee.’ In proof of his affection, he clutched a handful of her light brown ringlets and appeared to twist them unmercifully.

‘Do you really, Ralph?’ murmured she with a faint smile beaming through her tears, just putting up her hand to his, in token that he pulled
rather
too hard.

‘To be sure I do,’ responded he: ‘only you bother me rather, sometimes.’

‘
I
bother you!’ cried she in very natural surprise.

‘Yes,
you
– but only by your exceeding goodness – when a boy has been cramming raisins and sugar-plums all day, he longs for a squeeze of sour orange by way of a change. And did you never, Milly, observe the sands on the sea-shore; how nice and smooth they look, and how soft and easy they feel to the foot? But if you plod along, for half an hour, over this soft, easy carpet – giving way at every step, yielding the more the harder you press, – you’ll find it rather wearisome work, and be glad enough to come to a bit of good, firm rock, that won’t budge an inch whether you stand, walk, or
stamp upon it; and, though it be hard as the nether millstone, you’ll find it the easier footing after all.’

‘I know what you mean, Ralph,’ said she, nervously playing with her watch-guard and tracing the figure on the rug with the point of her tiny foot, ‘I know what you mean, but I thought you always liked to be yielded to; and I can’t alter now.’

‘I do like it,’ replied he, bringing her to him by another tug at her hair. ‘You mustn’t mind my talk Milly. A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can’t complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.’

‘But why complain at all, unless, because you are tired and dissatisfied?’

‘To excuse my own failings, to be sure. Do you think I’ll bear all the burden of my sins on my own shoulders, as long as there’s another ready to help me, with none of her own to carry?’

‘There is no such one on earth,’ said she seriously; and then, taking his hand from her head, she kissed it with an air of genuine devotion, and tripped away to the door.

‘What now?’ said he. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To tidy my hair,’ she answered, smiling through her disordered locks: ‘you’ve made it all come down.’

‘Off with you then! – An excellent little woman,’ he remarked when she was gone, ‘but a thought too soft
⁴
– she almost melts in one’s hands. I positively think I ill-use her sometimes, when I’ve taken too much – but I can’t help it, for she never complains, either at the time or after. I suppose she doesn’t mind it.’

‘I can enlighten you on that subject, Mr Hattersley,’ said I: ‘she
does
mind it; and some other things she minds still more, which, yet, you may never hear her complain of.’

‘How do you know? – does she complain to you?’ demanded he, with a sudden spark of fury ready to burst into a flame if I should answer ‘Yes.’

‘No,’ I replied; ‘but I have known her longer and studied her more closely than you have done. – And I can tell you, Mr Hattersley,
that Milicent loves you more than you deserve, and that you have it in your power to make her very happy, instead of which you are her evil genius, and, I will venture to say, there is not a single day passes in which you do not inflict upon her some pang that you might spare her if you would.’

‘Well – it’s not
my
fault,’ said he, gazing carelessly up at the ceiling and plunging his hands into his pockets: ‘if my ongoings don’t suit her, she should tell me so.’

‘Is she not exactly the wife you wanted? Did you not tell Mr Huntingdon you must have one that would submit to anything without a murmur, and never blame you, whatever you did?’

‘True, but we shouldn’t always have what we want: it spoils the best of us, doesn’t it?
⁵
How can I help playing the deuce when I see it’s all one to her whether I behave like a Christian or like a scoundrel such as nature made me? – and how can I help teasing her when she’s so invitingly meek and mim – when she lies down like a spaniel at my feet
⁶
and never so much as squeaks to tell me that’s enough?’