CHAPTER XXX

The Tenent of Windfell Hall

by Anne Bronte

CHAPTER XXX, THE TENENT OF WINDFELL HALL by Anne Bronte
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On the following morning I received a few lines from him myself,
confirming Hargrave's intimations respecting his approaching
return. And he did come next week, but in a condition of body and
mind even worse than before. I did not, however, intend to pass
over his derelictions this time without a remark; I found it would
not do. But the first day he was weary with his journey, and I was
glad to get him back: I would not upbraid him then; I would wait
till to-morrow. Next morning he was weary still: I would wait a
little longer. But at dinner, when, after breakfasting at twelve
o'clock on a bottle of soda-water and a cup of strong coffee, and
lunching at two on another bottle of soda-water mingled with
brandy, he was finding fault with everything on the table, and
declaring we must change our cook, I thought the time was come.

'It is the same cook as we had before you went, Arthur,' said I.
'You were generally pretty well satisfied with her then.'

'You must have been letting her get into slovenly habits, then,
while I was away. It is enough to poison one, eating such a
disgusting mess!' And he pettishly pushed away his plate, and
leant back despairingly in his chair.

'I think it is you that are changed, not she,' said I, but with the
utmost gentleness, for I did not wish to irritate him.

'It may be so,' he replied carelessly, as he seized a tumbler of
wine and water, adding, when he had tossed it off, 'for I have an
infernal fire in my veins, that all the waters of the ocean cannot
quench!'

'What kindled it?' I was about to ask, but at that moment the
butler entered and began to take away the things.

'Be quick, Benson; do have done with that infernal clatter!' cried
his master. 'And don't bring the cheese, unless you want to make
me sick outright!'

Benson, in some surprise, removed the cheese, and did his best to
effect a quiet and speedy clearance of the rest; but,
unfortunately, there was a rumple in the carpet, caused by the
hasty pushing back of his master's chair, at which he tripped and
stumbled, causing a rather alarming concussion with the trayful of
crockery in his hands, but no positive damage, save the fall and
breaking of a sauce tureen; but, to my unspeakable shame and
dismay, Arthur turned furiously around upon him, and swore at him
with savage coarseness. The poor man turned pale, and visibly
trembled as he stooped to pick up the fragments.

'He couldn't help it, Arthur,' said I; 'the carpet caught his foot,
and there's no great harm done. Never mind the pieces now, Benson;
you can clear them away afterwards.'

Glad to be released, Benson expeditiously set out the dessert and
withdrew.

'What could you mean, Helen, by taking the servant's part against
me,' said Arthur, as soon as the door was closed, 'when you knew I
was distracted?'

'I did not know you were distracted, Arthur: and the poor man was
quite frightened and hurt at your sudden explosion.'

'Poor man, indeed! and do you think I could stop to consider the
feelings of an insensate brute like that, when my own nerves were
racked and torn to pieces by his confounded blunders?'

'I never heard you complain of your nerves before.'

'And why shouldn't I have nerves as well as you?'

'Oh, I don't dispute your claim to their possession, but I never
complain of mine.'

'No, how should you, when you never do anything to try them?'

'Then why do you try yours, Arthur?'

'Do you think I have nothing to do but to stay at home and take
care of myself like a woman?'

'Is it impossible, then, to take care of yourself like a man when
you go abroad? You told me that you could, and would too; and you
promised - '

'Come, come, Helen, don't begin with that nonsense now; I can't
bear it.'

'Can't bear what? - to be reminded of the promises you have
broken?'

'Helen, you are cruel. If you knew how my heart throbbed, and how
every nerve thrilled through me while you spoke, you would spare
me. You can pity a dolt of a servant for breaking a dish; but you
have no compassion for me when my head is split in two and all on
fire with this consuming fever.'

He leant his head on his hand, and sighed. I went to him and put
my hand on his forehead. It was burning indeed.

'Then come with me into the drawing-room, Arthur; and don't take
any more wine: you have taken several glasses since dinner, and
eaten next to nothing all the day. How can that make you better?'

With some coaxing and persuasion, I got him to leave the table.
When the baby was brought I tried to amuse him with that; but poor
little Arthur was cutting his teeth, and his father could not bear
his complaints: sentence of immediate banishment was passed upon
him on the first indication of fretfulness; and because, in the
course of the evening, I went to share his exile for a little
while, I was reproached, on my return, for preferring my child to
my husband. I found the latter reclining on the sofa just as I had
left him.

'Well!' exclaimed the injured man, in a tone of pseudo-resignation.
'I thought I wouldn't send for you; I thought I'd just see how long
it would please you to leave me alone.'

'I have not been very long, have I, Arthur? I have not been an
hour, I'm sure.'

'Oh, of course, an hour is nothing to you, so pleasantly employed;
but to me - '

'It has not been pleasantly employed,' interrupted I. 'I have been
nursing our poor little baby, who is very far from well, and I
could not leave him till I got him to sleep.'

'Oh, to be sure, you're overflowing with kindness and pity for
everything but me.'

'And why should I pity you? What is the matter with you?'

'Well! that passes everything! After all the wear and tear that
I've had, when I come home sick and weary, longing for comfort, and
expecting to find attention and kindness, at least from my wife,
she calmly asks what is the matter with me!'

'There is nothing the matter with you,' returned I, 'except what
you have wilfully brought upon yourself, against my earnest
exhortation and entreaty.'

'Now, Helen,' said he emphatically, half rising from his recumbent
posture, 'if you bother me with another word, I'll ring the bell
and order six bottles of wine, and, by heaven, I'll drink them dry
before I stir from this place!'

I said no more, but sat down before the table and drew a book
towards me.

'Do let me have quietness at least!' continued he, 'if you deny me
every other comfort;' and sinking back into his former position,
with an impatient expiration between a sigh and a groan, he
languidly closed his eyes, as if to sleep.

What the book was that lay open on the table before me, I cannot
tell, for I never looked at it. With an elbow on each side of it,
and my hands clasped before my eyes, I delivered myself up to
silent weeping. But Arthur was not asleep: at the first slight
sob, he raised his head and looked round, impatiently exclaiming,
'What are you crying for, Helen? What the deuce is the matter
now?'

'I'm crying for you, Arthur,' I replied, speedily drying my tears;
and starting up, I threw myself on my knees before him, and
clasping his nerveless hand between my own, continued: 'Don't you
know that you are a part of myself? And do you think you can
injure and degrade yourself, and I not feel it?'

'Degrade myself, Helen?'

'Yes, degrade! What have you been doing all this time?'

'You'd better not ask,' said he, with a faint smile.

'And you had better not tell; but you cannot deny that you have
degraded yourself miserably. You have shamefully wronged yourself,
body and soul, and me too; and I can't endure it quietly, and I
won't!'

'Well, don't squeeze my hand so frantically, and don't agitate me
so, for heaven's sake! Oh, Hattersley! you were right: this woman
will be the death of me, with her keen feelings and her interesting
force of character. There, there, do spare me a little.'

'Arthur, you must repent!' cried I, in a frenzy of desperation,
throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his bosom. 'You
shall say you are sorry for what you have done!'

'Well, well, I am.'

'You are not! you'll do it again.'

'I shall never live to do it again if you treat me so savagely,'
replied he, pushing me from him. 'You've nearly squeezed the
breath out of my body.' He pressed his hand to his heart, and
looked really agitated and ill.

'Now get me a glass of wine,' said he, 'to remedy what you've done,
you she tiger! I'm almost ready to faint.'

I flew to get the required remedy. It seemed to revive him
considerably.

'What a shame it is,' said I, as I took the empty glass from his
hand, 'for a strong young man like you to reduce yourself to such a
state!'

'If you knew all, my girl, you'd say rather, "What a wonder it is
you can bear it so well as you do!" I've lived more in these four
months, Helen, than you have in the whole course of your existence,
or will to the end of your days, if they numbered a hundred years;
so I must expect to pay for it in some shape.'

'You will have to pay a higher price than you anticipate, if you
don't take care: there will be the total loss of your own health,
and of my affection too, if that is of any value to you.'

'What! you're at that game of threatening me with the loss of your
affection again, are you? I think it couldn't have been very
genuine stuff to begin with, if it's so easily demolished. If you
don't mind, my pretty tyrant, you'll make me regret my choice in
good earnest, and envy my friend Hattersley his meek little wife:
she's quite a pattern to her sex, Helen. He had her with him in
London all the season, and she was no trouble at all. He might
amuse himself just as he pleased, in regular bachelor style, and
she never complained of neglect; he might come home at any hour of
the night or morning, or not come home at all; be sullen, sober, or
glorious drunk; and play the fool or the madman to his own heart's
desire, without any fear or botheration. She never gives him a
word of reproach or complaint, do what he will. He says there's
not such a jewel in all England, and swears he wouldn't take a
kingdom for her.'

'But he makes her life a curse to her.'

'Not he! She has no will but his, and is always contented and
happy as long as he is enjoying himself.'

'In that case she is as great a fool as he is; but it is not so. I
have several letters from her, expressing the greatest anxiety
about his proceedings, and complaining that you incite him to
commit those extravagances - one especially, in which she implores
me to use my influence with you to get you away from London, and
affirms that her husband never did such things before you came, and
would certainly discontinue them as soon as you departed and left
him to the guidance of his own good sense.'

'The detestable little traitor! Give me the letter, and he shall
see it as sure as I'm a living man.'

'No, he shall not see it without her consent; but if he did, there
is nothing there to anger him, nor in any of the others. She never
speaks a word against him: it is only anxiety for him that she
expresses. She only alludes to his conduct in the most delicate
terms, and makes every excuse for him that she can possibly think
of; and as for her own misery, I rather feel it than see it
expressed in her letters.'

'But she abuses me; and no doubt you helped her.'

'No; I told her she over-rated my influence with you, that I would
gladly draw you away from the temptations of the town if I could,
but had little hope of success, and that I thought she was wrong in
supposing that you enticed Mr. Hattersley or any one else into
error. I had myself held the contrary opinion at one time, but I
now believed that you mutually corrupted each other; and, perhaps,
if she used a little gentle but serious remonstrance with her
husband, it might be of some service; as, though he was more rough-
hewn than mine, I believed he was of a less impenetrable material.'

'And so that is the way you go on - heartening each other up to
mutiny, and abusing each other's partners, and throwing out
implications against your own, to the mutual gratification of
both!'

'According to your own account,' said I, 'my evil counsel has had
but little effect upon her. And as to abuse and aspersions, we are
both of us far too deeply ashamed of the errors and vices of our
other halves, to make them the common subject of our
correspondence. Friends as we are, we would willingly keep your
failings to ourselves - even from ourselves if we could, unless by
knowing them we could deliver you from them.'

'Well, well! don't worry me about them: you'll never effect any
good by that. Have patience with me, and bear with my languor and
crossness a little while, till I get this cursed low fever out of
my veins, and then you'll find me cheerful and kind as ever. Why
can't you be gentle and good, as you were last time? - I'm sure I
was very grateful for it.'

'And what good did your gratitude do? I deluded myself with the
idea that you were ashamed of your transgressions, and hoped you
would never repeat them again; but now you have left me nothing to
hope!'

'My case is quite desperate, is it? A very blessed consideration,
if it will only secure me from the pain and worry of my dear
anxious wife's efforts to convert me, and her from the toil and
trouble of such exertions, and her sweet face and silver accents
from the ruinous effects of the same. A burst of passion is a fine
rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is
marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both
deuced plaguy things for spoiling one's beauty and tiring out one's
friends.'

Thenceforth I restrained my tears and passions as much as I could.
I spared him my exhortations and fruitless efforts at conversion
too, for I saw it was all in vain: God might awaken that heart,
supine and stupefied with self-indulgence, and remove the film of
sensual darkness from his eyes, but I could not. His injustice and
ill-humour towards his inferiors, who could not defend themselves,
I still resented and withstood; but when I alone was their object,
as was frequently the case, I endured it with calm forbearance,
except at times, when my temper, worn out by repeated annoyances,
or stung to distraction by some new instance of irrationality, gave
way in spite of myself, and exposed me to the imputations of
fierceness, cruelty, and impatience. I attended carefully to his
wants and amusements, but not, I own, with the same devoted
fondness as before, because I could not feel it; besides, I had now
another claimant on my time and care - my ailing infant, for whose
sake I frequently braved and suffered the reproaches and complaints
of his unreasonably exacting father.

But Arthur is not naturally a peevish or irritable man; so far from
it, that there was something almost ludicrous in the incongruity of
this adventitious fretfulness and nervous irritability, rather
calculated to excite laughter than anger, if it were not for the
intensely painful considerations attendant upon those symptoms of a
disordered frame, and his temper gradually improved as his bodily
health was restored, which was much sooner than would have been the
case but for my strenuous exertions; for there was still one thing
about him that I did not give up in despair, and one effort for his
preservation that I would not remit. His appetite for the stimulus
of wine had increased upon him, as I had too well foreseen. It was
now something more to him than an accessory to social enjoyment:
it was an important source of enjoyment in itself. In this time of
weakness and depression he would have made it his medicine and
support, his comforter, his recreation, and his friend, and thereby
sunk deeper and deeper, and bound himself down for ever in the
bathos whereinto he had fallen. But I determined this should never
be, as long as I had any influence left; and though I could not
prevent him from taking more than was good for him, still, by
incessant perseverance, by kindness, and firmness, and vigilance,
by coaxing, and daring, and determination, I succeeded in
preserving him from absolute bondage to that detestable propensity,
so insidious in its advances, so inexorable in its tyranny, so
disastrous in its effects.

And here I must not forget that I am not a little indebted to his
friend Mr. Hargrave. About that time he frequently called at
Grassdale, and often dined with us, on which occasions I fear
Arthur would willingly have cast prudence and decorum to the winds,
and made 'a night of it,' as often as his friend would have
consented to join him in that exalted pastime; and if the latter
had chosen to comply, he might, in a night or two, have ruined the
labour of weeks, and overthrown with a touch the frail bulwark it
had cost me such trouble and toil to construct. I was so fearful
of this at first, that I humbled myself to intimate to him, in
private, my apprehensions of Arthur's proneness to these excesses,
and to express a hope that he would not encourage it. He was
pleased with this mark of confidence, and certainly did not betray
it. On that and every subsequent occasion his presence served
rather as a check upon his host, than an incitement to further acts
of intemperance; and he always succeeded in bringing him from the
dining-room in good time, and in tolerably good condition; for if
Arthur disregarded such intimations as 'Well, I must not detain you
from your lady,' or 'We must not forget that Mrs. Huntingdon is
alone,' he would insist upon leaving the table himself, to join me,
and his host, however unwillingly, was obliged to follow.

Hence I learned to welcome Mr. Hargrave as a real friend to the
family, a harmless companion for Arthur, to cheer his spirits and
preserve him from the tedium of absolute idleness and a total
isolation from all society but mine, and a useful ally to me. I
could not but feel grateful to him under such circumstances; and I
did not scruple to acknowledge my obligation on the first
convenient opportunity; yet, as I did so, my heart whispered all
was not right, and brought a glow to my face, which he heightened
by his steady, serious gaze, while, by his manner of receiving
those acknowledgments, he more than doubled my misgivings. His
high delight at being able to serve me was chastened by sympathy
for me and commiseration for himself - about, I know not what, for
I would not stay to inquire, or suffer him to unburden his sorrows
to me. His sighs and intimations of suppressed affliction seemed
to come from a full heart; but either he must contrive to retain
them within it, or breathe them forth in other ears than mine:
there was enough of confidence between us already. It seemed wrong
that there should exist a secret understanding between my husband's
friend and me, unknown to him, of which he was the object. But my
after-thought was, 'If it is wrong, surely Arthur's is the fault,
not mine.'

And indeed I know not whether, at the time, it was not for him
rather than myself that I blushed; for, since he and I are one, I
so identify myself with him, that I feel his degradation, his
failings, and transgressions as my own: I blush for him, I fear
for him; I repent for him, weep, pray, and feel for him as for
myself; but I cannot act for him; and hence I must be, and I am,
debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the
actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious
to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and
labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst
of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a
partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted
me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason
and God's word declare them to be so; but I am gradually losing
that instinctive horror and repulsion which were given me by
nature, or instilled into me by the precepts and example of my
aunt. Perhaps then I was too severe in my judgments, for I
abhorred the sinner as well as the sin; now I flatter myself I am
more charitable and considerate; but am I not becoming more
indifferent and insensate too? Fool that I was, to dream that I
had strength and purity enough to save myself and him! Such vain
presumption would be rightly served, if I should perish with him in
the gulf from which I sought to save him! Yet, God preserve me
from it, and him too! Yes, poor Arthur, I will still hope and pray
for you; and though I write as if you were some abandoned wretch,
past hope and past reprieve, it is only my anxious fears, my strong
desires that make me do so; one who loved you less would be less
bitter, less dissatisfied.

His conduct has, of late, been what the world calls irreproachable;
but then I know his heart is still unchanged; and I know that
spring is approaching, and deeply dread the consequences.

As he began to recover the tone and vigour of his exhausted frame,
and with it something of his former impatience of retirement and
repose, I suggested a short residence by the sea-side, for his
recreation and further restoration, and for the benefit of our
little one as well. But no: watering-places were so intolerably
dull; besides, he had been invited by one of his friends to spend a
month or two in Scotland for the better recreation of grouse-
shooting and deer-stalking, and had promise to go.

'Then you will leave me again, Arthur?' said I.

'Yes, dearest, but only to love you the better when I come back,
and make up for all past offences and short-comings; and you
needn't fear me this time: there are no temptations on the
mountains. And during my absence you may pay a visit to
Staningley, if you like: your uncle and aunt have long been
wanting us to go there, you know; but somehow there's such a
repulsion between the good lady and me, that I never could bring
myself up to the scratch.'

About the third week in August, Arthur set out for Scotland, and
Mr. Hargrave accompanied him thither, to my private satisfaction.
Shortly after, I, with little Arthur and Rachel, went to
Staningley, my dear old home, which, as well as my dear old friends
its inhabitants, I saw again with mingled feelings of pleasure and
pain so intimately blended that I could scarcely distinguish the
one from the other, or tell to which to attribute the various
tears, and smiles, and sighs awakened by those old familiar scenes,
and tones, and faces.

Arthur did not come home till several weeks after my return to
Grassdale; but I did not feel so anxious about him now; to think of
him engaged in active sports among the wild hills of Scotland, was
very different from knowing him to be immersed amid the corruptions
and temptations of London. His letters now; though neither long
nor loverlike, were more regular than ever they had been before;
and when he did return, to my great joy, instead of being worse
than when he went, he was more cheerful and vigorous, and better in
every respect. Since that time I have had little cause to
complain. He still has an unfortunate predilection for the
pleasures of the table, against which I have to struggle and watch;
but he has begun to notice his boy, and that is an increasing
source of amusement to him within-doors, while his fox-hunting and
coursing are a sufficient occupation for him without, when the
ground is not hardened by frost; so that he is not wholly dependent
on me for entertainment. But it is now January; spring is
approaching; and, I repeat, I dread the consequences of its
arrival. That sweet season, I once so joyously welcomed as the
time of hope and gladness, awakens now far other anticipations by
its return.