The Journey of Hope
A long, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.
What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of definite
fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories—shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images of
what was to come—seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches—and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected—it was
plain that she must trust to carriers’ carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, “He’s pretty
nigh six foot, I’ll be bound, isna he, now?”
“Who?” said Hetty, rather startled.
“Why, the sweetheart as you’ve left behind, or else him as you’re goin’
arter—which is it?”
Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
She was too frightened to speak.
“Hegh, hegh!” said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
gratifying as he had expected, “you munna take it too ser’ous; if he’s
behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a
sweetheart any day.”
Hetty’s fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she had
formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her—not resting on
any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant of
traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store of
money—her three guineas—in her pocket, she thought herself amply
provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
Windsor.
“Well, I can’t rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for
it’s where the king lives,” was the answer. “Anyhow, you’d best go t’
Ashby next—that’s south’ard. But there’s as many places from here to
London as there’s houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I’ve
never been no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like
you to be thinking o’ taking such a journey as that?”
“I’m going to my brother—he’s a soldier at Windsor,” said Hetty,
frightened at the landlord’s questioning look. “I can’t afford to go by
the coach; do you think there’s a cart goes toward Ashby in the
morning?”
“Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
you might run over the town before you found out. You’d best set off
and walk, and trust to summat overtaking you.”
Every word sank like lead on Hetty’s spirits; she saw the journey
stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
to the rest of the journey. But it must be done—she must get to Arthur.
Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
because all the business of her life was managed for her—this
kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded at
by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with
her little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide
from any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and
find that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short
nightmare. She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret
for her own sake. Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in
it for other people’s sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur
had been so tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for
her, though it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain
bearable. For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in
future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have
had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew
no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He
would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could
think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing
and ambition.
The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a
departing hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of
heart at the length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all
afraid of spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would
have to ask people’s charity; for Hetty had the pride not only of a
proud nature but of a proud class—the class that pays the most
poor-rates, and most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate.
It had not yet occurred to her that she might get money for her locket
and earrings which she carried with her, and she applied all her small
arithmetic and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and
how many rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd
shillings, which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes
of the other bright-flaming coin.
For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first
she had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and
read that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage
sank. She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost
hungry again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed
to much movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks
which produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
falling on her face—it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is
like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable;
yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another
bite and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst
of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know, but
at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward—a
large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
mantle.
“Could you take me up in your waggon, if you’re going towards Ashby?”
said Hetty. “I’ll pay you for it.”
“Aw,” said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
to heavy faces, “I can take y’ up fawst enough wi’out bein’ paid for’t
if you dooant mind lyin’ a bit closish a-top o’ the wool-packs. Where
do you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?”
“I come from Stoniton. I’m going a long way—to Windsor.”
“What! Arter some service, or what?”
“Going to my brother—he’s a soldier there.”
“Well, I’m going no furder nor Leicester—and fur enough too—but I’ll
take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th’ hosses
wooant feel _your_ weight no more nor they feel the little doog there,
as I puck up on the road a fortni’t agoo. He war lost, I b’lieve, an’s
been all of a tremble iver sin’. Come, gi’ us your basket an’ come
behind and let me put y’ in.”
To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of
the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she
half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted
to get down and have “some victual”; he himself was going to eat his
dinner at this “public.” Late at night they reached Leicester, and so
this second day of Hetty’s journey was past. She had spent no money
except what she had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow
journeying would be intolerable for her another day, and in the morning
she found her way to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor,
and see if it would cost her too much to go part of the distance by
coach again. Yes! The distance was too great—the coaches were too
dear—she must give them up; but the elderly clerk at the office,
touched by her pretty anxious face, wrote down for her the names of the
chief places she must pass through. This was the only comfort she got
in Leicester, for the men stared at her as she went along the street,
and for the first time in her life Hetty wished no one would look at
her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she
was soon overtaken by a carrier’s cart which carried her to Hinckley,
and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion—who
frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting
hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle—she
was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a
hundred miles from Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it
was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it! She went by
mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of
places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right
road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford.
That seems but a slight journey as you look at the map, or remember
your own pleasant travels to and from the meadowy banks of the Avon.
But how wearily long it was to Hetty! It seemed to her as if this
country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and dotted houses, and villages,
and market-towns—all so much alike to her indifferent eyes—must have no
end, and she must go on wandering among them for ever, waiting tired at
toll-gates for some cart to come, and then finding the cart went only a
little way—a very little way—to the miller’s a mile off perhaps; and
she hated going into the public houses, where she must go to get food
and ask questions, because there were always men lounging there, who
stared at her and joked her rudely. Her body was very weary too with
these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they had made her look more pale
and worn than all the time of hidden dread she had gone through at
home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford, her impatience and
weariness had become too strong for her economical caution; she
determined to take the coach for the rest of the way, though it should
cost her all her remaining money. She would need nothing at Windsor but
to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for the last coach, she had
only a shilling; and as she got down at the sign of the Green Man in
Windsor at twelve o’clock in the middle of the seventh day, hungry and
faint, the coachman came up, and begged her to “remember him.” She put
her hand in her pocket and took out the shilling, but the tears came
with the sense of exhaustion and the thought that she was giving away
her last means of getting food, which she really required before she
could go in search of Arthur. As she held out the shilling, she lifted
up her dark tear-filled eyes to the coachman’s face and said, “Can you
give me back sixpence?”
“No, no,” he said, gruffly, “never mind—put the shilling up again.”
The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his good
nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
tearful face of Hetty’s would have found out the sensitive fibre in
most men.
“Come, young woman, come in,” he said, “and have a drop o’ something;
you’re pretty well knocked up, I can see that.”
He took her into the bar and said to his wife, “Here, missis, take this
young woman into the parlour; she’s a little overcome”—for Hetty’s
tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.
She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and
looked at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet,
and her curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in
its youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman’s
eyes presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on
her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger’s
eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.
“Why, you’re not very fit for travelling,” she said, glancing while she
spoke at Hetty’s ringless hand. “Have you come far?”
“Yes,” said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
and feeling the better for the food she had taken. “I’ve come a good
long way, and it’s very tiring. But I’m better now. Could you tell me
which way to go to this place?” Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
of paper: it was the end of Arthur’s letter on which he had written his
address.
While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.
“Why, what do you want at this house?” he said. It is in the nature of
innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to
ask as many questions as possible before giving any information.
“I want to see a gentleman as is there,” said Hetty.
“But there’s no gentleman there,” returned the landlord. “It’s shut
up—been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
I can let you know where to find him.”
“It’s Captain Donnithorne,” said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
find Arthur at once.
“Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit,” said the landlord, slowly. “Was he
in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
reddish whiskers—and had a servant by the name o’ Pym?”
“Oh yes,” said Hetty; “you know him—where is he?”
“A fine sight o’ miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia’s gone to
Ireland; it’s been gone this fortnight.”
“Look there! She’s fainting,” said the landlady, hastening to support
Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.
“Here’s a bad business, I suspect,” said the landlord, as he brought in
some water.
“Ah, it’s plain enough what sort of business it is,” said the wife.
“She’s not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
house—they’re all honest folks in the north.”
“I never saw a prettier young woman in my life,” said the husband.
“She’s like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one’s ’eart to look
at her.”
“It ’ud have been a good deal better for her if she’d been uglier and
had more conduct,” said the landlady, who on any charitable
construction must have been supposed to have more “conduct” than
beauty. “But she’s coming to again. Fetch a drop more water.”