Mrs. Oliphant

“ Hetty, like her mother before her, had a wholesome love of change, and a persistent hope in the unknown. And on the whole, barring their little breakings down, they all appeared with quite cheerful faces in their new place; and life turned out always to be livable wherever they went. The spectacle of their existence was a much more wonderful one to spectators than to themselves; for the lookers-on did not know the alleviations, the dear love among them, which was always sweet, the play of the children, which was never kept under by any misfortune, the household jests and pleasantries. ”

“ Miss Hofland hastily took up the eau-de-cologne, with a glance of alarm; and the doctor lifted his head sharply and fixed his eyes upon her, as if with a sudden gleam of hope.
“Uncle Hugh!” cried the old clergyman. “My dear Miss Hester—I—this is very surprising. He is Mr. Hugh Prescott, certainly, if you happen to mean that.”
“Oh,” cried Hetty, with awakened interest, “then it is Uncle Hugh! Mamma has not heard of any of them for such a long time. She says it is so wrong not to keep up writing, but there are so many of us, and she has so much to do. Then Uncle Hugh is still alive! ”

“ It is better even to love and lose, the poet says, than never to love at all. It is better to have the triumph and delight of knowing that you are loved, even if that love never comes to any earthly close. Why should Mary have lost that because they were both poor? Nobody could take away from them that moment of blessedness, that sense of sweetest union, even if they might never marry at all—never{102}—
But here a pang which was very acute and poignant like a sword went through the curate’s heart. Never marry at all! ”

“ Mary took in all this with quick ears, and asked herself, whether, in reality, a special providence was all that Mr. Asquith had to look to. “There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God,” we say in church day by day: but even that pious sentiment seems to convey a veiled opinion that other aid would be desirable: but when it is said of a man that a special providence is wanted for his promotion, that man’s hopes do not, to most of the world, seem particularly well founded. Mary felt with a curious swelling of her heart that she was glad this was the case with Mr. Asquith. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How was she to act that this moment might be the critical one, that she might be able to penetrate within the mist that enveloped Hetty? She tried to think, tried to form for herself a plan of action, but with trembling and doubt. The child’s life, the child’s reason, might depend upon her own presence of mind, her power to touch the right chord, her wisdom. Mary had never taken credit to herself for wisdom. She had never had to face the intricate problems of human consciousness ”

“ Asquith was cheered, and yet not quite cheered, by these encouragements. He was very happy, and yet quite miserable. Nothing could{80} take away from him the delight and glory which had fallen upon him out of heaven in that homely green lane of Paradise. But—his mind made a leap forward, or backward rather, to the things he had seen, to the facts of life which he knew, to the hard, hard existence of poverty. Had any man a right to drag down a woman, a girl so gently bred as Mary, into that gulf? had any man a right to bring children into the world with no bread to give them? ”

“ Not for this year only, as she had thought—not to go back triumphant with her fifty pounds, and buy mamma a sealskin, and settle forever at home. Ah, no! very different. She had left home for good, Hetty said to herself; she must never think of home again but as a holiday refuge. Her destiny was like Miss Hofland’s—to live in other people’s houses, to teach other people’s children, to lay up carefully out of her first earnings enough to bury her. ”

“ A MIDNIGHT VISITOR. THIS was what had happened to Hetty.
In the middle of the night she had woke up suddenly as on that occasion when she had come to life out of her dreams, and felt the intolerable darkness go chill to her very soul. What it was that awakened her, whether sound or sensation, the rush of the cold night air, or only some consciousness of trouble and horror, she never could tell. She woke, but not to darkness this time. ”

“ Her youth seemed to come back: the familiar figures which she had not seen for years surrounded her once more. Hetty slept, or seemed to sleep, not moving in her bed; and in Mary’s thoughts the familiar room took back its old appearance. This was where the mother of the house had sat with her basket of coloured worsteds and her endless work, which was never done. And there the girls had their little establishments: Anna with her music, Sophie with her little drawings. ”

“ I know you are not rich.”
“I see very little to thank heaven about,” said Mary, “on that score: perhaps you think that I have great prospects, or that somebody is going to leave me a great deal of money, or—something. Why, I have not a penny in the world! And my aunt is always shaking her head and saying, ‘If anything happens to your uncle!’ Do you know what I should have to do then? I should have to go out as a governess, if anybody would have me to teach their children—or perhaps as a maid in the nursery.” ”

“ The young doctor made a despairing movement of his hand towards the bed and hurried away.
Miss Hofland had taken the girl’s inanimate figure into her arms. “I’m almost too cold myself to be of any use to her,” she said, shivering at the contact of the frozen limbs. Mrs. Mills put down her candle by the bedside, where it threw a strange side light upon that tragic mask on the pillow, with the open mouth and staring, awful eyes. Was it Hetty? Was it possible it could be Hetty? All human identity as of feature, or age, or character seemed to have gone out of the rigid face. ”

“ She had not been so to any one in Horton, but how much more, she said to herself, in consequence, all their sweetness and kindness was. To make your own child happy, upon whom your happiness depends, what is that but selfishness of the most refined kind? But to make a little creature happy upon whom your happiness does not depend—is not that true love, the charity of the Gospel? ”

“ It is hard to go on teaching all one’s life, and that not even for somebody one cares for, but only just for one’s self, to keep the life in one, which one doesn’t much wish to keep.”
“Oh, Miss Hofland!” Hetty cried.
“It is quite true, my dear. Why should one? One has to live, because one has been brought into the world. And then one goes on working, a stranger everywhere, never with any home just in order to have enough to eat and clothes to put on. Oh, I have always envied the poor girls, whom everybody is sorry for, who have to send their money home to their mothers! ”

“ To be able to make her love him, that sweet little girl, Mary!
The world is hard, and it is bitter to give up, and to put a stop to that rising current of new life is enough to tax all a man’s powers. But when you have said everything that can be said in that respect, there still remains the fact that the curate had, in one flash of consciousness, a moment of delight which nobody could take from him. He had tasted the sweetness, though the cup might not be for him ”

“ All those comforts which Miss Hofland had felt to make up for so much did not compensate for the absence of Hetty, or what was worse, for the presence of Hetty, spell-bound in that great chair, and for the innocent questions of Rhoda, who asked and asked, every new demand being but an echo of the questions which already were thrilling through the governess’s heart. “But why?” Rhoda said. “What made her like that? What has happened to her? Things can’t happen, can they, without a cause? Why has Hetty turned like that? ”

“ Mary, who was in the room, listened with some curiosity, too, though she took no part in the conversation; and she was much amused to think that in the world, and even in the parish, there could thus be a duller man than John. Not that she was contemptuous of John for his dulness. She liked him almost the best of the family. He was tiresome, to be sure; if you were thrown upon him for society, it would not be cheerful society; but then you were never thrown upon John—there was always somebody else to talk, and show a little interest. ”

“ The curate shrank within himself, his heart seemed to contract with a great pang. By his means! all because he could not contain himself, could not keep silent; could not love her without betraying his love. Oh, what a thing it was, that highest of human sentiments, that it could not curb a man’s tongue, or restrain his impulses! That a man should love and yet not be able to keep silent, to spare the object of his love! He might have loved her all his life, and his love would have been a sweetness and a strength to him ”

“ It is so much nicer to be with you.”
“Then lie down on the sofa,” said the governess, “and try to go to sleep. Poor little thing! how you are trembling, your nerves are all wrong. That’s what it is to have a nuit blanche when one is young.”
“Did you hear anything, Hetty? did you see anything?” cried little Rhoda in her ear, while Miss Hofland covered her up. Hetty, in the agony of her unwonted secret, did not know how to make any reply. She had never known what it was to have a secret before. To know something which she kept to herself seemed wrong to Hetty. ”

“ And though it’s not Paradise, it’s better than marrying a poor curate, and bringing dozens of children into the world to misery, which is probably what you would do if you were not a governess. I am not fond of this way of living, but it’s better than that; at least you have nobody but yourself, and when you die there’s an end of it. ”

“ I like to see the sky. I can’t breathe when the curtains are drawn. I am not accustomed to curtains,” said Hetty, feeling that she was making a confession of poverty. Miss Hofland gave an approving nod.
“It is a great deal better for the health,” she said; “still I can’t sleep unless it is dark, and they keep out the cold in this big house. I hope you always see that your window is well fastened. I must speak to Mrs. Mills about it. To live in this queer way, with a regiment of servants and not to be attended to, would be too absurd. Good-night, my dear,” Miss Hofland said. ”

“ As for going to church, that was the first and easiest point; and here Mary came in with her music, which the curate did not understand, influencing the choice of the hymns, and getting up choir practices, and heaven knows how many other seductions—artful temptations to the young to do well instead of doing ill—sweetnesses and pleasures to make delightful the narrow way.
“You think you are doing an immense deal,” said Uncle Hugh, “but you’ll find it won’t last.”
“Why shouldn’t it last?” cried Mary. “They are so much happier in themselves. ”

“ The warm flicker of the firelight seemed to draw out the sweetness of the flowers, the deeper tints of colour, the reds and browns of the furniture. There could not have been a woman’s apartment more entirely breathing of women, and{370} of comfort, and tranquillity, and peace. Hetty lay on the sofa near the fire, the ruddy glow shedding a pink colour over her still pale face. Rhoda sat at her feet, leaning against the sofa, holding up her eager little face, asking questions in her eager way about Hetty’s home, about the children, about baby, who was so funny. ”

“ Everything that is good for one is a little hard perhaps for some one else—or almost everything. Mary thinks sometimes that it is a little hard upon Mrs. Rotherham, once Prescott, to be deprived of her only child; but then, when a woman cannot put up with a dull husband, which is so much less a matter than many other matrimonial burdens, what can she expect? ”

“ To be so far out of their ordinary way, in such a rush and whirl of unaccustomed sensation, seemed to them a superiority—an elevation such as the dwellers in every-day life might well be envious of. Mary told her husband about John, and they both laughed, in their superiority of happiness, at the awkward good fellow who had thought it right to make this overture, which it was so little likely they would ever take advantage of. ”

“ But the earl, or the viscount, or the duke’s son, who are the natural prey of such conquering invaders, had not turned up, and the beautiful old house, and the armorial bearings of the Prescotts, and all that was old and traditionary about them, had been felt by Miss Rotherham to be next best. To say that her husband belonged to the old untitled aristocracy, who looked upon new lordships with contempt, was so refined and exquisite a piece of brag that the imagination of the daughter of the wilds was captivated by it. ”