In the Wood
That same Thursday morning, as Arthur Donnithorne was moving about in
his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in
the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green
piece of tapestry, by Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens, who ought to
have been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with
himself, which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling
over his shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution.
“I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so,” he said aloud.
“I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready
by half-past eleven.”
The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution,
here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he
hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar’s Opera,
“When the heart of a man is oppressed with care.” Not an heroic strain;
nevertheless Arthur felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the
stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was
necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite
gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never
yet forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his
own virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly;
candour was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man’s candour
be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But
he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous
kind—impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty,
reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything
mean, dastardly, or cruel. “No! I’m a devil of a fellow for getting
myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my
own shoulders.” Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in
hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their
worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly
expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme
of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides
himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of
the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a
prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be
the model of an English gentleman—mansion in first-rate order, all
elegance and high taste—jolly housekeeping, finest stud in
Loamshire—purse open to all public objects—in short, everything as
different as possible from what was now associated with the name of
Donnithorne. And one of the first good actions he would perform in that
future should be to increase Irwine’s income for the vicarage of
Hayslope, so that he might keep a carriage for his mother and sisters.
His hearty affection for the rector dated from the age of frocks and
trousers. It was an affection partly filial, partly fraternal—fraternal
enough to make him like Irwine’s company better than that of most
younger men, and filial enough to make him shrink strongly from
incurring Irwine’s disapprobation.
You perceive that Arthur Donnithorne was “a good fellow”—all his
college friends thought him such. He couldn’t bear to see any one
uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for
any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had
the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole
sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless
and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a
question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but
twenty-one, you remember, and we don’t inquire too closely into
character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will
have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes—who, if he should
unfortunately break a man’s legs in his rash driving, will be able to
pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman’s
existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive _bon-bons_,
packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be
prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the
character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly
epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that
fine intuition which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see
at once that he is “nice.” The chances are that he will go through life
without scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would
refuse to insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which
sometimes make terribly evident some flaw in their construction that
would never have been discoverable in smooth water; and many a “good
fellow,” through a disastrous combination of circumstances, has
undergone a like betrayal.
But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries
concerning Arthur Donnithorne, who this morning proves himself capable
of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear:
Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect
comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that
border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults
from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of
Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole.
It was about ten o’clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly;
everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday’s rain. It is a
pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel
on one’s way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of
the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among the
soothing influences of a man’s life, always brought with it some
irritation to Arthur. There was no having his own way in the stables;
everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather
persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever
could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a
succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had
lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on
Arthur’s bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one
can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a
scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh and
blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of
misanthropy.
Old John’s wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met
Arthur’s eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for
him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could
never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead.
“You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past
eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do
you hear?”
“Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap’n,” said old John very deliberately,
following the young master into the stable. John considered a young
master as the natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in
general as a poor contrivance for carrying on the world.
Arthur went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as
possible to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper
before breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables,
and turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a
tiny spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably
curled up on her back.
“Well, Meg, my pretty girl,” said Arthur, patting her neck, “we’ll have
a glorious canter this morning.”
“Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be,” said John.
“Not be? Why not?”
“Why, she’s got lamed.”
“Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?”
“Why, th’ lad took her too close to Dalton’s hosses, an’ one on ’em
flung out at her, an’ she’s got her shank bruised o’ the near foreleg.”
The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued.
You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled
with soothing “who-ho’s” while the leg was examined; that John stood by
with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved
crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed
the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went.
He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was
not another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg
and Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the
way for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a
combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken
arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself at
Windsor—shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of
affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at
every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such
circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off
the irritation by some excess or other. “Salkeld would have drunk a
bottle of port every day,” he muttered to himself, “but I’m not well
seasoned enough for that. Well, since I can’t go to Eagledale, I’ll
have a gallop on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with
Gawaine.”
Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he
lunched with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the
Chase again till nearly five, when Hetty would be safe out of his sight
in the housekeeper’s room; and when she set out to go home, it would be
his lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way
altogether. There really would have been no harm in being kind to the
little thing, and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles
only to look at Hetty for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not
take any more notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as
Irwine had hinted; though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not
by any means so soft and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found
them twice as cool and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm
in Hetty’s case, it was out of the question: Arthur Donnithorne
accepted his own bond for himself with perfect confidence.
So the twelve o’clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by
good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine
leaps for Rattler. Nothing like “taking” a few bushes and ditches for
exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs,
with their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a
reputation in history.
After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine
was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely cleared
the last stroke of three when Arthur returned through the
entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the
house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men since
his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then
galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite
stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round
upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our
own.
“The cap’n’s been ridin’ the devil’s own pace,” said Dalton the
coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe
against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler.
“An’ I wish he’d get the devil to do’s grooming for’n,” growled John.
“Aye; he’d hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now,” observed
Dalton—and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon
the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth in
order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with a
silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the
beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants’ hall.
When Arthur went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was
inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the
day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now to
dwell on the remembrance—impossible to recall the feelings and
reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to
recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he
first opened his window. The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like
an ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which
this trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as
he brushed his hair—pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was
because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of
it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing
Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all
Irwine’s fault. “If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn’t have thought
half so much of Hetty as of Meg’s lameness.” However, it was just the
sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish
Dr. Moore’s _Zeluco_ there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in
Fir-tree Grove—the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall
Farm. So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a
mere circumstance of his walk, not its object.
Arthur’s shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the
Chase than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a
warm afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o’clock when he stood
before the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine
wood which skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree
Grove, not because the firs were many, but because they were few. It
was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a light
silver-stemmed birch—just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs:
you see their white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or
peeping from behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you
hear their soft liquid laughter—but if you look with a too curious
sacrilegious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you
believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they
metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and
mocks you from the topmost bough. It was not a grove with measured
grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow,
hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate
moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the
trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen
of the white-footed nymphs.
It was along the broadest of these paths that Arthur Donnithorne
passed, under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still
afternoon—the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper
boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its
edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises
her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm
downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Arthur strolled
along carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the
ground as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes _would_ fix themselves
on the distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely
appear before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of
colour, like a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure,
with a round hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a
deep-blushing, almost frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her
curtsy with a fluttered yet happy glance, as Arthur came up to her. If
Arthur had had time to think at all, he would have thought it strange
that he should feel fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too—in
fact, look and feel as foolish as if he had been taken by surprise
instead of meeting just what he expected. Poor things! It was a pity
they were not in that golden age of childhood when they would have
stood face to face, eyeing each other with timid liking, then given
each other a little butterfly kiss, and toddled off to play together.
Arthur would have gone home to his silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her
home-spun pillow, and both would have slept without dreams, and
to-morrow would have been a life hardly conscious of a yesterday.
Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty’s side without giving a reason.
They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering
presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this
little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet
rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had
forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her
limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting
on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a
contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and
confidence from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of
mind from what he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full
as he was of vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of
silence, for the thought that his previous debates and scruples were
needless.
“You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase,” he
said at last, looking down at Hetty; “it is so much prettier as well as
shorter than coming by either of the lodges.”
“Yes, sir,” Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice.
She didn’t know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur,
and her very vanity made her more coy of speech.
“Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?”
“Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she’s got to go out with Miss
Donnithorne.”
“And she’s teaching you something, is she?”
“Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the
stocking-mending—it looks just like the stocking, you can’t tell it’s
been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too.”
“What! are _you_ going to be a lady’s maid?”
“I should like to be one very much indeed.” Hetty spoke more audibly
now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as
stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.
“I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?”
“She expects me at four o’clock. I’m rather late to-day, because my
aunt couldn’t spare me; but the regular time is four, because that
gives us time before Miss Donnithorne’s bell rings.”
“Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the
Hermitage. Did you ever see it?”
“No, sir.”
“This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I’ll
show it you some other time, if you’d like to see it.”
“Yes, please, sir.”
“Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to
come so lonely a road?”
“Oh no, sir, it’s never late; I always set out by eight o’clock, and
it’s so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I
didn’t get home before nine.”
“Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?”
A deep blush overspread Hetty’s face and neck. “I’m sure he doesn’t;
I’m sure he never did; I wouldn’t let him; I don’t like him,” she said
hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had
done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt
ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her
happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round
her, and a gentle voice said, “Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn’t
mean to vex you. I wouldn’t vex you for the world, you little blossom.
Come, don’t cry; look at me, else I shall think you won’t forgive me.”
Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and
was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty
lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards
her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those
three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love
is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a
sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud
first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such
young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches
that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two
brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple
with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While
Arthur gazed into Hetty’s dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference
to him what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had
been in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then
that Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.
But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on
the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty’s basket; all her little
workwoman’s matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing a
capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in
picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Arthur hung the basket
over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his
look and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and
tone that were almost chilling to her, “I have been hindering you; I
must not keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house.
Good-bye.”
Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried
back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Hetty to
pursue her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in
bewildering delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness.
Would he meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as
if he were displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She
cried, hardly knowing why.
Arthur too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a
more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood
in the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench,
slammed it after him, pitched _Zeluco_ into the most distant corner,
and thrusting his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five
times up and down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated
himself on the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do
when we wish not to abandon ourselves to feeling.
He was getting in love with Hetty—that was quite plain. He was ready to
pitch everything else—no matter where—for the sake of surrendering
himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It
was no use blinking the fact now—they would get too fond of each other,
if he went on taking notice of her—and what would come of it? He should
have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be
miserable. He _must not_ see her alone again; he must keep out of her
way. What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine’s!
He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the
afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the
Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out
and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution
sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any
longer. He had made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he
might give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be
if circumstances were different—how pleasant it would have been to meet
her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and
look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were
thinking of him too—twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were
with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a
day with looking at them, and he _must_ see her again—he must see her,
simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner to
her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her—just to
prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes,
that would be the best thing to do after all.
It was a long while—more than an hour before Arthur had brought his
meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no
longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until
he should see Hetty again. And it was already late enough to go and
dress for dinner, for his grandfather’s dinner-hour was six.