In Hetty’s Bed-Chamber
It was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in
Mrs. Poyser’s early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she
went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the
door behind her.
_Now_ she would read her letter. It must—it must have comfort in it.
How was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what
he did say.
She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent
of roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put
it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two
swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her
hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not
easy for her to read a gentleman’s handwriting, though Arthur had taken
pains to write plainly.
“DEAREST HETTY—I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you,
and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long
as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say
anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of
love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do
for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to
think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss
them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with
her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part
from her—harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind,
though they spring from the truest kindness.
“Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would
be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been
better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is
my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The
fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the
longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection
for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I
should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now,
since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil
that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for
you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of
no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I
ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future
which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you
one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself
would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know
you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station;
and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I
have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of
life. You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always
live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so
little in which we should be alike.
“And since I cannot marry you, we must part—we must try not to feel
like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else
can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not
believe that I shall not always care for you—always be grateful to
you—always remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do
not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.
“I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to
write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not
write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear
Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive
me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as
long as I live, your affectionate friend,
“ARTHUR DONNITHORNE.”
Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there
was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass—a white
marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than
a child’s pain in it. Hetty did not see the face—she saw nothing—she
only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook
and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible
sensation—this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that
produced it, and Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her
clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of
nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a
firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this
time—great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She
felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel—cruel to write so, cruel not to
marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her
mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from
the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had
not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery.
As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the
glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a
companion that she might complain to—that would pity her. She leaned
forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and
at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker,
and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.
The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her
new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an
overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and
suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and
then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed
without undressing and went to sleep.
There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after
four o’clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke
upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the
dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to
conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that
was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the
table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay
the ear-rings and the locket—the signs of all her short happiness—the
signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the
little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the
earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments
when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such
strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a
bewildering delicious surprise—they were so much sweeter than she had
thought anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and
looked at her in this way, who was present with her now—whose arm she
felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her—was
the cruel, cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which
she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it
once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of
the last night’s violent crying made it necessary to her to look again
and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true—if the letter was
really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could
not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse—it was more
cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that
letter—hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all
her love—all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.
She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night,
and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the
first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.
Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she
would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.
For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first
moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it
is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have
recovered hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she
had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair,
she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She
should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the
old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to
church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no
happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled
for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her
life—the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr.
Britton’s at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say “No” to for a
long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last
when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once.
These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a
weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and
longing.
She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against
the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung
down in delicate rings—and they were just as beautiful as they were
that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber
glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms
now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered
sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards
the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of
her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah’s affectionate
entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had
been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could have
given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
she could never stay here and go on with the old life—she could better
bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
old faces again. But Hetty’s was not a nature to face difficulties—to
dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature—not a passionate
one—and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she
soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life:
she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady’s maid. Miss Lydia’s
maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her
uncle’s leave.
When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty’s blooming
health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in
her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an
indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took
up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it
out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the
great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes.
She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody
should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was
disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt
and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often
accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery
towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the
sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would
think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little
Hetty’s conscience.
So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.
In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his
good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the
opportunity of her aunt’s absence to say, “Uncle, I wish you’d let me
go for a lady’s maid.”
Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild
surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work
industriously.
“Why, what’s put that into your head, my wench?” he said at last, after
he had given one conservative puff.
“I should like it—I should like it better than farm-work.”
“Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It
wouldn’t be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i’ life.
I’d like you to stay wi’ us till you’ve got a good husband: you’re my
own niece, and I wouldn’t have you go to service, though it was a
gentleman’s house, as long as I’ve got a home for you.”
Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.
“I like the needlework,” said Hetty, “and I should get good wages.”
“Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi’ you?” said Mr. Poyser, not noticing
Hetty’s further argument. “You mustna mind that, my wench—she does it
for your good. She wishes you well; an’ there isn’t many aunts as are
no kin to you ’ud ha’ done by you as she has.”
“No, it isn’t my aunt,” said Hetty, “but I should like the work
better.”
“It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit—an’ I gev my
consent to that fast enough, sin’ Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach
you. For if anything was t’ happen, it’s well to know how to turn your
hand to different sorts o’ things. But I niver meant you to go to
service, my wench; my family’s ate their own bread and cheese as fur
back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your
grand-child to take wage?”
“Na-a-y,” said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to
make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked
down on the floor. “But the wench takes arter her mother. I’d hard work
t’ hould _her_ in, an’ she married i’ spite o’ me—a feller wi’ on’y two
head o’ stock when there should ha’ been ten on’s farm—she might well
die o’ th’ inflammation afore she war thirty.”
It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son’s question
had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long
unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more
indifferent to Hetty than to his son’s children. Her mother’s fortune
had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel’s
blood in her veins.
“Poor thing, poor thing!” said Martin the younger, who was sorry to
have provoked this retrospective harshness. “She’d but bad luck. But
Hetty’s got as good a chance o’ getting a solid, sober husband as any
gell i’ this country.”
After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe
and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign
of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty,
in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the
denial, half out of the day’s repressed sadness.
“Hegh, hegh!” said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, “don’t
let’s have any crying. Crying’s for them as ha’ got no home, not for
them as want to get rid o’ one. What dost think?” he continued to his
wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce
rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the
twittering of a crab’s antennæ.
“Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much
older, wi’ that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o’ nights. What’s
the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?”
“Why, she’s been wanting to go for a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Poyser. “I
tell her we can do better for her nor that.”
“I thought she’d got some maggot in her head, she’s gone about wi’ her
mouth buttoned up so all day. It’s all wi’ going so among them servants
at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it ’ud be a
finer life than being wi’ them as are akin to her and ha’ brought her
up sin’ she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there’s nothing belongs
to being a lady’s maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to,
I’ll be bound. It’s what rag she can get to stick on her as she’s
thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn’t
like to be the mawkin i’ the field, for then she’d be made o’ rags
inside and out. I’ll never gi’ my consent to her going for a lady’s
maid, while she’s got good friends to take care on her till she’s
married to somebody better nor one o’ them valets, as is neither a
common man nor a gentleman, an’ must live on the fat o’ the land, an’s
like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife
to work for him.”
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Poyser, “we must have a better husband for her nor
that, and there’s better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and
get to bed. I’ll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady’s
maid. Let’s hear no more on’t.”
When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, “I canna make it out as she
should want to go away, for I thought she’d got a mind t’ Adam Bede.
She’s looked like it o’ late.”
“Eh, there’s no knowing what she’s got a liking to, for things take no
more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell,
Molly—as is aggravatin’ enough, for the matter o’ that—but I believe
she’d care more about leaving us and the children, for all she’s been
here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she’s got this
notion o’ being a lady’s maid wi’ going among them servants—we might
ha’ known what it ’ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine
work. But I’ll put a stop to it pretty quick.”
“Thee’dst be sorry to part wi’ her, if it wasn’t for her good,” said
Mr. Poyser. “She’s useful to thee i’ the work.”
“Sorry? Yes, I’m fonder on her nor she deserves—a little hard-hearted
hussy, wanting to leave us i’ that way. I can’t ha’ had her about me
these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything
wi’out caring about her. An’ here I’m having linen spun, an’ thinking
all the while it’ll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she’s
married, an’ she’ll live i’ the parish wi’ us, and never go out of our
sights—like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no
better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside it.”
“Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle,” said Mr. Poyser,
soothingly. “She’s fond on us, I’ll be bound; but she’s young, an’ gets
things in her head as she can’t rightly give account on. Them young
fillies ’ull run away often wi’out knowing why.”
Her uncle’s answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides
that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom
he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid
husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her
marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where
no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of
right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet
endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague
clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor
Hetty’s vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic
calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut
out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready
for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men
and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.
Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that
it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still
want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam’s happiness in
the matter had never yet visited her.
“Strange!” perhaps you will say, “this rush of impulse towards a course
that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind,
and in only the second night of her sadness!”
Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty’s, struggling
amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, _are_ strange. So
are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a
stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the
sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!
“Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings.”
But that will not save the vessel—the pretty thing that might have been
a lasting joy.