The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) (38 page)

‘He couldn’t help it, Arthur,’ said I; ‘the carpet caught his foot – and there’s no great harm done. Never mind the pieces now, Benson, you can clear them away afterwards.’

Glad to be released, Benson expeditiously set out the dessert and withdrew.

‘What
could
you mean, Helen, by taking the servant’s part against me,’ said Arthur, as soon as the door was closed, ‘when you knew I was distracted?’

‘I did not know you were distracted, Arthur, and the poor man was quite frightened and hurt at your sudden explosion.’

‘Poor man indeed! and do you think I could stop to consider the feelings of an insensate brute like that, when my own nerves were racked and torn to pieces by his confounded blunders?’

‘I never heard you complain of your nerves before.’

‘And why shouldn’t I have nerves as well as you?’

‘Oh, I don’t dispute your claim to their possession, but I never complain of mine.’

‘No – how should you, when you never do anything to try them?’

‘Then why do you try yours, Arthur?’

‘Do you think I have nothing to do but to stay at home and take care of myself like a woman?’

‘Is it impossible then, to take care of yourself like a man when
you go abroad? You told me that you could – and would too; and you promised –’

‘Come, come, Helen, don’t begin with that nonsense now; I can’t bear it’

‘Can’t bear what? – to be reminded of the promises you have broken?’

‘Helen, you are cruel. If you knew how my heart throbbed, and how every nerve thrilled through me while you spoke, you would spare me. You can pity a dolt of a servant for breaking a dish; but you have no compassion for
me
, when my head is split in two and all on fire with this consuming fever.’

He leant his head on his hand, and sighed. I went to him and put my hand on his forehead. It was burning indeed.

‘Then come with me into the drawing-room, Arthur; and don’t take any more wine; you have taken several glasses since dinner, and eaten next to nothing all the day. How can
that
make you better?’

With some coaxing and persuasion, I got him to leave the table. When the baby was brought I tried to amuse him with that; but poor little Arthur was cutting his teeth, and his father could not bear his complaints; sentence of immediate banishment was passed upon him on the first indication of fretfulness; and, because, in the course of the evening, I went to share his exile for a little while, I was reproached, on my return, for preferring my child to my husband. I found the latter reclining on the sofa just as I had left him.

‘Well!’ exclaimed the injured man, in a tone of pseudo-resignation. ‘I thought I wouldn’t send for you; I thought I’d just see – how long it would please you to leave me alone.’

‘I have not been
very
long, have I, Arthur? I have not been an hour, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, of course, an hour is nothing to you, so pleasantly employed; but to
me
–’

‘It has not been pleasantly employed,’ interrupted I. ‘I have been nursing our poor little baby, who is very far from well, and I could not leave him till I got him to sleep.’

‘Oh to be sure, you’re overflowing with kindness and pity for everything but me.’

‘And why should I pity
you
? what is the matter with you?’

‘Well! that passes everything! After all the wear and tear that I’ve had, when I come home sick and weary, longing for comfort, and expecting to find attention and kindness, at least, from my wife, – she calmly asks what is the matter with me!’

‘There is
nothing
the matter with you,’ returned I, ‘except what you have wilfully brought upon yourself against my earnest exhortation and entreaty.’

‘Now, Helen,’ said he, emphatically, half rising from his recumbent posture, ‘if you bother me with another word, I’ll ring the bell and order six bottles of wine – and, by Heaven, I’ll drink them dry before I stir from this place!’

I said no more but sat down before the table and drew a book towards me.

‘Do let me have quietness at least!’ continued he, ‘if you deny me every other comfort,’ and sinking back into his former position, with an impatient expiration between a sigh and a groan, he languidly closed his eyes as if to sleep.

What the book was, that lay open on the table before me, I cannot tell, for I never looked at it. With an elbow on each side of it, and my hands clasped before my eyes, I delivered myself up to silent weeping. But Arthur was not asleep: at the first slight sob, he raised his head and looked round, impatiently exclaiming –

‘What are you crying for, Helen? What the deuce is the matter
now
?’

‘I’m crying for you Arthur,’ I replied, speedily drying my tears; and starting up, I threw myself on my knees before him, and, clasping his nerveless hand between my own, continued: ‘Don’t you know that you are a part of myself? And do you think you can injure and degrade yourself,
¹
and I not feel it?’

‘Degrade
myself, Helen?’

‘Yes, degrade! What have you been doing all this time?’

‘You’d better not ask,’ said he with a faint smile.

‘And you had better not tell – but you cannot deny that you
have
degraded yourself miserably. You have shamefully wronged yourself, body and soul – and me too; and I can’t endure it quietly – and I won’t!’

‘Well, don’t squeeze my hand so frantically and don’t agitate me so, for Heaven’s sake! Oh, Hattersley! you were right; this woman will be the death of me, with her keen feelings and her interesting force of character – There, there, do spare me a little.’

‘Arthur, you
must
repent!’ cried I, in a frenzy of desperation, throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his bosom. ‘You
shall
say you are sorry for what you have done!’

‘Well, well, I am.’

‘You are not! you’ll do it again.’

‘I shall never live to do it again, if you treat me so savagely,’ replied he, pushing me from him. ‘You’ve nearly squeezed the breath out of my body.’ He pressed his hand to his heart, and looked really agitated and ill.

‘Now get me a glass of wine,’ said he, ‘to remedy what you’ve done, you she-tiger! I’m almost ready to faint.’

I flew to get the required remedy. It seemed to revive him considerably.

‘What a shame it is,’ said I, as I took the empty glass from his hand, ‘for a strong young man like you to reduce yourself to such a state!’

‘If you knew all, my girl, you’d say rather, “What a wonder it is you can bear it so well as you do!” I’ve lived more in these four months, Helen, than you have in the whole course of your existence, or will to the end of your days, if they numbered a hundred years; – so I must expect to pay for it in some shape.’

‘You will have to pay a higher price than you anticipate, if you don’t take care – there will be the total loss of your own health, and of my affection too – if
that is
of any value to you.’

‘What, you’re at that game of threatening me with the loss of your affection again, are you? I think it couldn’t have been very genuine stuff to begin with, if it’s so easily demolished. If you don’t mind, my pretty tyrant, you’ll make me regret my choice in good earnest, and envy my friend Hattersley his meek little wife – she’s quite a pattern to her sex, Helen: he had her with him in London all the season, and she was no trouble at all. He might amuse himself just as he pleased, in regular bachelor style, and she never complained of neglect; he
might come home at any hour of the night or morning, or not come home at all; be sullen sober, or glorious drunk; and play the fool or the madman to his own heart’s desire without any fear or botheration. She never gives him a word of reproach or complaint, do what he will. He says there’s not such a jewel in all England, and swears he wouldn’t take a kingdom for her.’

‘But he makes her life a curse to her.’

‘Not he! She has no will but his, and is always contented and happy as long as he is enjoying himself.’

‘In that case, she is as great a fool as he is; but it is not so. I have several letters from her, expressing the greatest anxiety about his proceedings, and complaining that you incite him to commit those extravagances – one especially, in which she implores me to use my influence with you to get you away from London, and affirms that her husband never did such things before you came, and would certainly discontinue them as soon as you departed and left him to the guidance of his own good sense.’

‘The detestable little traitor! Give me the letter, and he shall see it as sure as I’m a living man.’

‘No, he shall not see it without her consent; but if he did, there is nothing there to anger him – nor in any of the others. She never speaks a word against him; it is only anxiety
for
him that she expresses. She only alludes to his conduct in the most delicate terms, and makes every excuse for him that she can possibly think of– and as for her own misery, I rather
feel
it than
see
it expressed in her letters.’

‘But she abuses
me;
and no doubt you helped her.’

‘No; I told her she overrated my influence with you, that I would gladly draw you away from the temptations of the town if I could, but had little hope of success, and that I thought she was wrong in supposing that you enticed Mr Hattersley or anyone else into error. I had, myself, held the
contrary
opinion at one time, but I now believed that you mutually corrupted each other; and, perhaps, if she used a little gentle but serious remonstrance with her husband, it might be of some service, as, though he was more rough-hewn than mine, I believed he was of a less impenetrable material.’

‘And so
that
is the way you go on – heartening each other up to mutiny, and abusing each other’s partners, and throwing out implications against your own, to the mutual gratification of both!’

‘According to your own account,’ said I, ‘my evil counsel has had but little effect upon
her
. And as to abuse and aspersions, we are both of us far too deeply ashamed of the errors and vices of our other halves, to make them the common subject of our correspondence. Friends as we are, we would willingly keep your failings to ourselves – even
from
ourselves if we could, unless by knowing them we could deliver you from them.’

‘Well, well! don’t worry me about them: you’ll never effect any good by that. Have patience with me, and bear with my languor and crossness a little while, till I get this cursed low fever out of my veins, and then you’ll find me cheerful and kind as ever. Why can’t you be gentle and good as you were last time? – I’m sure I was very grateful for it.’

‘And what good did your gratitude do? I deluded myself with the idea that you were ashamed of your transgressions, and hoped you would never repeat them again; but now, you have left me nothing to hope!’

‘My case is quite desperate, is it? A very blessed consideration, if it will only secure me from the pain and worry of my dear, anxious wife’s efforts to convert me, and her from the toil and trouble of such exertions, and her sweet face and silver accents from the ruinous effects of the same. A burst of passion is a fine, rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both deuced plaguy things for spoiling one’s beauty and tiring out one’s friends.’

Thenceforth, I restrained my tears and passions as much as I could. I spared him my exhortations and fruitless efforts at conversion too, for I saw it was all in vain: God might awaken that heart supine and stupified with self-indulgence, and remove the film of sensual darkness from his eyes, but I could not. His injustice and ill humour towards his inferiors, who could not defend themselves, I still resented and withstood; but when I alone was their object, as was frequently the case, I endured it with calm forbearance, except at
times when my temper, worn out by repeated annoyances, or stung to distraction by some new instance of irrationality, gave way in spite of myself, and exposed me to the imputations of fierceness, cruelty, and impatience. I attended carefully to his wants and amusements, but not, I own, with the same devoted fondness as before, because I could not feel it: besides, I had now another claimant on my time and care – my ailing infant, for whose sake I frequently braved and suffered the reproaches and complaints of his unreasonably exacting father.

But Arthur is not naturally a peevish or irritable man – so far from it that there was something almost ludicrous in the incongruity of this adventitious fretfulness and nervous irritability, rather calculated to excite laughter than anger, if it were not for the intensely painful considerations attendant upon those symptoms of a disordered frame, – and his temper gradually improved as his bodily health was restored, which was much sooner than would have been the case, but for my strenuous exertions; for there was still one thing about him that I did not give up in despair, and one effort for his preservation that I would not remit. His appetite for the stimulus of wine had increased upon him, as I had too well foreseen. It was now something more to him than an accessory to social enjoyment: it was an important source of enjoyment in itself. In this time of weakness and depression he would have made it his medicine and support, his comforter, his recreation, and his friend, – and thereby sunk deeper and deeper – and bound himself down for ever in the bathos whereinto he had fallen. But I determined this should never be, as long as I had any influence left; and though I could not prevent him from taking more than was good for him, still, by incessant perseverance, by kindness, and firmness, and vigilance, by coaxing, and daring, and determination, – I succeeded in preserving him from absolute bondage to that detestable propensity, so insidious in its advances, so inexorable in its tyranny, so disastrous in its effects.

And here, I must not forget that I am not a little indebted to his friend Mr Hargrave. About that time he frequently called at Grassdale, and often dined with us, on which occasions, I fear, Arthur
would willingly have cast prudence and decorum to the winds and made ‘a night of it,’ as often as his friend would have consented to join him in that exalted pastime; and if the latter had chosen to comply, he might in a night or two have ruined the labour of weeks, and overthrown with a touch the frail bulwark it had cost me such trouble and toil to construct. I was so fearful of this at first, that I humbled myself to intimate to him in private my apprehensions of Arthur’s proneness to these excesses and to express a hope that he would not encourage it. He was pleased with this mark of confidence, and certainly did not betray it On that and every subsequent occasion, his presence served rather as a check upon his host, than an incitement to further acts of intemperance; and he always succeeded in bringing him from the dining-room in good time and in tolerably good condition; for if Arthur disregarded such intimations, as ‘Well, I must not detain you from your lady,’ or ‘We must not forget that Mrs Huntingdon is alone,’ he would insist upon leaving the table himself, to join me, and his host, however unwillingly, was obliged to follow.