“LET ME GO HOME.”
When Hetty woke in the middle of the night, and found herself in
darkness, without a glimmer of light, curtains and shutters closing her
in, doors locked between her and all the rest of the world, a gloom
which could be felt weighing down her eyelids, the sensation of terror
which overwhelmed her was no doubt entirely unreasonable. Miss Hofland
next door felt these precautions essential to her rest. But little Hetty
lay not daring to breathe, bound in a speechless and horrible panic
which no words could express. Nothing that she could have seen or heard
would have equalled the horror of seeing nothing, of lying there a
hopeless prisoner of the darkness, the silence throbbing round her, the
gloom pressing upon her like a tangible weight. How she had woke,
whether by the reverberation of some cry, or by some stirring in the
night, she could not tell. She thought it was both. She thought that
some shriek penetrating the too great and tingling profundity of
silence, and some movement in the intense, insupportable gloom, had
broken the uneasy sleep into which she had fallen against her will while
the firelight lasted, with its friendly blaze and little crackling.
These had saved her from the horror of the shut-up place. But now the
fire had died out, there was no glimpse or glimmer anywhere; all was
dark, dark, horrible, a blackness growing upon her, getting into her
very soul. Something of the effect of a nightmare was in that horrible
gloom. It seemed to hold her so that she could not move, and scarcely
could breathe. There seemed no air, but only darkness, darkness within
and around. Her eyes were useless to her, as if she had none; and her
ears, which seemed strained and worn with the effort, were the only
sentinels she had to warn her of any approaching evil, and tingled and
throbbed, either they or that black vacancy which they watched. All this
was nothing, as the reader knows, it was only a child’s fantastic
rendering of the most common-place fact, but to Hetty it was a fever, a
nightmare, everything that was most appalling. She started up at last,
defying the still greater horror of meeting or running against some
awful presence hidden in the gloom, and groped about the dreadful place
till she found the curtains, restraining all the time with the most
frantic effort a scream which was in her throat, which only the
strongest resolution kept from bursting forth. When at last she had
succeeded in opening everything, and discerned with transport a pale
gleam of sky, with black tree-tops tossing about it, Hetty dropped upon
the floor beside the window, almost fainting with exhaustion and relief.
At last here was a little light, though it was only the glimmer of
midnight. It was the sky; there was one faint star in it, shining by the
edge of a cloud. She was not shut up in a box of blackness and darkness
and separated from all the world.
Feverish thoughts flew through Hetty’s brain in this half-swoon. She
said to herself, Would death be like that?--all black, nothing to be
heard or seen, a horrible blank, in which nothing but throbbing terror
and dread consciousness were. She tried to tell herself that death was
nothing at all, only a passage from earth to heaven, but had not enough
command of her faculties to follow that or any other argument, but only
to feel, with a wild relief, that she was not dead, for here was the sky
still palely glimmering, light in it, not blackness, as the shut-up room
had been. She supposed afterwards that she had fallen asleep there, half
wrapped in the curtain near that blessed window which had brought her
back to life; for when she came to herself much later, in the first
profound chills of dawn, she found herself half lying, half sitting, in
the elastic fold of the heavy curtain, aching with cold and exposure,
and for the moment deeply wondering how she came there, at the foot of
the tall window which was now full of the grey lightness of the coming
day.
Hetty was paler than ever, nervous, and trembling, next day. She had
caught a chill, everybody said; and again Miss Hofland prescribed the
sofa, the novel, hot cups of tea, and other gratifications; the lessons
were done by her side to save her trouble, and little Rhoda showed her a
great deal of silent sympathy, stealing to her side in the intervals of
those simple studies, putting an arm round her neck as she stood by the
sofa, even bestowing a silent kiss by way of consolation. The girl
recovered her courage during the day, especially as the sun shone, and
everything looked brighter. But as evening drew near, Hetty paled and
shivered once more. “A cold is always worse in the evening,” said Miss
Hofland, and recommended bed earlier than usual, and a hot drink. Bed
was the thing of all others that Hetty feared. She lay on the sofa by
the comfortable fire in a state of confused and self-reproachful misery,
such as only the very young are capable of feeling. Words seemed on her
very lips which she with difficulty kept from becoming audible. “Oh, let
me go home to mamma! oh, let me go home! let me go home!” She thought if
she once began saying it, she would have to go on and on and never could
stop herself. “Oh, let me go home!” She said it over and over and over
within herself, but was checked continually by the thought that if she
said it aloud, if she could have her wish, there would be an end of all
that had been dreamed of, of the bills that might be paid, and the
sealskin for mamma. Hetty bought the sealskin dear. It was that above
all that kept her dumb, that kept down that cry, “Oh, let me go to
mamma!” But then mamma would go cold in her thin cloak all next winter,
because Hetty could not command herself. It came to a compromise at last
in a fit of nervous sobbing, which she could not restrain when, after
Rhoda had been sent away, Miss Hofland again proposed going to bed.
“My dear! what is the matter? Do you feel ill? Have you a sore throat?
I do hope you are not going to be hysterical. My dear child, do get the
better of that crying. Tell me frankly what’s the matter. If it’s
anything I can help you in, I will do it; but, for goodness’ sake, don’t
sob like that. What is it you want, my dear?”
“Oh, Miss Hofland, I don’t know. I suppose it’s only mamma. I feel as if
I couldn’t do without mamma.”
“Oh, you poor child! Well, I have heard a great many girls say that, my
dear. It’s common when you’re beginning your life. I never had any
mother, and I used to envy them with their crying. I’d have given a
great deal to have had anything to cry for. But every one has to be
reasonable in the end, and you have a great deal of sense, my dear. You
wouldn’t have been sent away unless they had thought it was best for
you. Now isn’t that true? You must just make up your mind to it, and put
up with it, till the time comes; and then all will be right, and you’ll
get back.”
“Yes, I know; I can’t help saying it, Miss Hofland, but I don’t really
want it. I want to--stay out my time, and--and get my--money,” Hetty
said, keeping down her sobs.
“Yes, that is the right way to look at it,” said the governess. She
understood well enough, having seen it so often, the little sudden
access of home-sickness, the heroic childish resolution to bear up to
the end and get the money, which so often means far more than money to
the young creature who earns it. Miss Hofland patted Hetty’s shoulder,
and soothed her with genuine feeling; and then she fell into the tone of
one far older than Hetty, and which she truly called governessy.
“Besides, my dear,” she said, “you must recollect that if you are to be
from home at all, you couldn’t be in a more comfortable house. It’s a
little queer, and I can’t help thinking that some day or other something
will be found out to account for it: but they treat us very well; that
can’t be denied. In some places they don’t allow you a fire in your
room, and the schoolroom dinners are like nursery meals, only not so
plentiful. It is a great addition to all the other things you have to
put up with when that’s the case. But here everything is very
comfortable. Your mother would be quite pleased if she saw how
everything is arranged for us here.”
Hetty’s sobs died away under the influence of this speech--whether it
was the good sense in it, or that the mode of consolation adopted was so
entirely unfitted to the trouble, a thing which sometimes has quite a
good effect.
“And then, you know,” said Miss Hofland, “there’s the satisfaction of
knowing that whatever there may be that is strange and out of the way,
it doesn’t concern us. They say that other people’s misfortunes make you
enjoy your own comforts the more. I wouldn’t go quite so far as that:
but it is a great gratification to reflect, when you are in a house
where there is evidently a skeleton somewhere or other, that it is no
business of yours. There’s no telling the comfort there is in that.’
“But, Miss Hofland,” said Hetty, “do you think that just to lock your
door, and never to mind whatever may happen to the house, as Mrs. Mills
says----”
“Is that what she says?” said the governess, quickly. “Oh, you may be
sure that’s not her way; she would be at the bottom of it. I’m
confident, whatever it was, they couldn’t conceal anything from her! But
she’s got a good deal in her, that woman, though I don’t like her, my
dear. I shouldn’t say but it would be the wisest thing, on the whole.
For what could you do? You can’t clear up their mysteries or put things
straight, so why should you give yourself any trouble? If you thought
there were signs of fire, indeed, why then of course you should give the
alarm at once; for we all should suffer from that, we poor ladies who
have nothing to do with it, and the servants and all. Yes, I should
always give the alarm, whatever it cost you, in case of a fire; but for
other things I am not sure that she did not give you the very best
advice. A man, if he heard a noise, would have to get up and see what
it was; but a lady may always lock her door. I do it invariably wherever
I am, my dear. In the first place, it’s safer, for you never know who
might come blundering into your room, as I told you this morning; and
then it frees you from a great deal of responsibility. As a rule, at the
outset of your career, I should say that Mrs. Mills gave you very good
advice.”
Hetty’s attention failed while Miss Hofland ran on. She lost reckoning
of the motives presented to her, the rule of conduct which her companion
would have been the first to call governessy. Another subject was
foremost in Hetty’s thought--her own room, into which she was about to
be taken as into a prison, where all would be black again, as before,
and the doors locked, everybody’s door locked, so that if any stronger
horror should seize her, there was nowhere she could fly to, no one to
whom she could escape and be safe. She was glad the governess should
talk, in order to put off that evil hour as long as possible. Miss
Hofland sat over the fire, quietly flowing forth in that philosophy of
the dependent, how to keep safest in a sort of camp by yourself in the
midst of an ungenial, if not unfriendly, world, how to avoid
responsibility and secure calm, however those around you might be
agitated. This was the code of things expedient which had been fixed in
her mind by years of experience. The girl listened very vaguely at
first, and then went off altogether into her own individual alarms. Her
pretty, comfortable room, with its pleasant fire, that luxury which was
not always allowed, had once more become a dark prison-house to Hetty.
How was she to go through such another night?
There was a glimmer of comfort in the fact that Miss Hofland accompanied
her there, to see that her hot footbath was ready, and her hot drink.
“You must just jump into bed and cover yourself up warm, and never budge
till morning; and you’ll see your cold will be ever so much better,” she
said, tapping Hetty upon the cheek affectionately. “Now, my clear, don’t
be a little goose.” And then Hetty, with anguish which she could
scarcely contain, heard her go into her room and turn the key. “It
frees you from a great deal of responsibility,” she had said. And how
was she to know the miserable panic that was in the poor little girl’s
heart, left thus alone with her consciousness of wanderers outside and
mysteries within, and the sense of darkness and imprisonment, and no one
within call, whatever might happen? Hetty’s first wild idea was that it
would be better to sit up all night, and thus cheat the black gloom and
silence that lay in wait for her. But she was very obedient and quite
unused to act for herself; and there seemed to her something guilty,
something dreadful, in thus disregarding all the usages of life. She sat
down by her fire and read for as long a time as she could keep her
attention to her novel, and then, trembling to find it was midnight, she
stole to bed at last. Happily, she was so worn out that she slept
immediately, as if there had been no panics or mysteries in the world,
or as if her mother’s room--that shelter from all harm--had been open to
her next door.
[Illustration]