Chapter XXXVII
The Journey in Despair
HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions
to be addressed to her--too ill even to think with any
distinctness of the evils that were to come. She only felt that
all her hope was crushed, and that instead of having found a
refuge she had only reached the borders of a new wilderness where
no goal lay before her. The sensations of bodily sickness, in a
comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the good-natured
landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as there
is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on
the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun.
But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary
for the keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next
morning looking at the growing light which was like a cruel task-
master returning to urge from her a fresh round of hated hopeless
labour--she began to think what course she must take, to remember
that all her money was gone, to look at the prospect of further
wandering among strangers with the new clearness shed on it by the
experience of her journey to Windsor. But which way could she
turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any service, even
if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate beggary
before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with
cold and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued
and taken to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly
understand the effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought
up among people who were somewhat hard in their feelings even
towards poverty, who lived among the fields, and had little pity
for want and rags as a cruel inevitable fate such as they
sometimes seem in cities, but held them a mark of idleness and
vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought burdens on the
parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison in obloquy,
and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same far-off
hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the
remembrance of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on
her way from church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back
upon her with the new terrible sense that there was very little
now to divide HER from the same lot. And the dread of bodily
hardship mingled with the dread of shame; for Hetty had the
luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet animal.
How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and
cared for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about
trifles would have been music to her ears now; she longed for it;
she used to hear it in a time when she had only trifles to hide.
Could she be the same Hetty that used to make up the butter in the
dairy with the Guelder roses peeping in at the window--she, a
runaway whom her friends would not open their doors to again,
lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that she had no
money to pay for what she received, and must offer those strangers
some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of her
locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached
it and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the
locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with
them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought
her, the words "Remember me" making the ornament of the border; a
steel purse, with her one shilling in it;and a small red-leather
case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings,
with their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her
ears with such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July!
She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its
dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the
sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard
for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it
was because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were
also worth a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money
for her ornaments: those Arthur had given her must have cost a
great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had been good to
her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for these
things.
But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when
it was gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want
and beggary drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle
and aunt and ask them to forgive her and have pity on her. But
she shrank from that idea again, as she might have shrunk from
scorching metal. She could never endure that shame before her
uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the servants at the Chase,
and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew her. They
should never know what had happened to her. What could she do?
She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the
last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high
hedges round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and
there, perhaps, when there was nothing else she could do, she
should get courage to drown herself in some pond like that in the
Scantlands. Yes, she would get away from Windsor as soon as
possible: she didn't like these people at the inn to know about
her, to know that she had come to look for Captain Donnithorne.
She must think of some reason to tell them why she had asked for
him.
With this thought she began to put the things back into her
pocket, meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to
her. She had her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred
to her that there might be something in this case which she had
forgotten--something worth selling; for without knowing what she
should do with her life, she craved the means of living as long as
possible; and when we desire eagerly to find something, we are apt
to search for it in hopeless places. No, there was nothing but
common needles and pins, and dried tulip-petals between the paper
leaves where she had written down her little money-accounts. But
on one of these leaves there was a name, which, often as she had
seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like a newly
discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There
was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own
hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting
together and Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before
her. Hetty did not read the text now: she was only arrested by
the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without
indifference the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and
those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that Hetty must think of
her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go to Dinah, and
ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as other
people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was
always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from
her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill
of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not
seem to belong to that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded
like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching
and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, "I will
go to Dinah": she only thought of that as a possible alternative,
if she had not courage for death.
The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs
soon after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-
possessed. Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She
had only been very tired and overcome with her journey, for she
had come a long way to ask about her brother, who had run away,
and they thought he was gone for a soldier, and Captain
Donnithorne might know, for he had been very kind to her brother
once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked doubtfully at
Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of self-
reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to
make a remark that might seem like prying into other people's
affairs. She only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them,
and in the course of it Hetty brought out her ear-rings and
locket, and asked the landlord if he could help her to get money
for them. Her journey, she said, had cost her much more than she
expected, and now she had no money to get back to her friends,
which she wanted to do at once.
It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for
she had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she
and her husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having
these beautiful things, with a stronger conviction than ever that
Hetty had been miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
"Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious
trifles before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for
there's one not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give
you a quarter o' what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like
to part with 'em?" he added, looking at her inquiringly.
"Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to
go back."
"And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to
sell 'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like
you to have fine jew'llery like that."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to
respectable folks," she said; "I'm not a thief."
"No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and
you'd no call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband.
"The things were gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen."
"I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically,
"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he
wouldn't be offering much money for 'em."
"Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on
the things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she
got home, she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two
months, we might do as we liked with 'em."
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady
had no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature
in the ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed,
the effect they would have in that case on the mind of the
grocer's wife had presented itself with remarkable vividness to
her rapid imagination. The landlord took up the ornaments and
pushed out his lips in a meditative manner. He wished Hetty well,
doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers would decline
to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is sincerely
affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will really
rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same time
she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as
possible.
"How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said
the well-wisher, at length.
"Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out
with, for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too
much.
"Well, I've ho objections to advance you three guineas," said the
landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the
jewellery again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to
run away."
"Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty,
relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the
jeweller's and be stared at and questioned.
"But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said
the landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up
our minds as you don't want 'em."
"Yes," said Hetty indifferently.
The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement.
The husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could
make a good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them.
The wife thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep
them. And they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty,
respectable-looking young woman, apparently in a sad case. They
declined to take anything for her food and bed: she was quite
welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty said "Good-bye" to them with
the same quiet, resolute air she had worn all the morning,
mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles back along
the way she had come.
There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the
last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than
perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be
counteracted by the sense of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would
make life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should
ever know her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess
even to Dinah. She would wander out of sight, and drown herself
where her body would never be found, and no one should know what
had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take
cheap rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without
distinct purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the
way she had come, though she was determined not to go back to her
own country. Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the
grassy Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows
that made a hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went
more slowly than she came, often getting over the stiles and
sitting for hours under the hedgerows, looking before her with
blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the edge of a hidden
pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering if it were
very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything worse
after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines
had taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous
people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their
catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and
yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in
death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or
Christian feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during
these wretched days, if you imagined that they were influenced
either by religious fears or religious hopes.
She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone
before by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her
former way towards it--fields among which she thought she might
find just the sort of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care
of her money still; she carried her basket; death seemed still a
long way off, and life was so strong in her. She craved food and
rest--she hastened towards them at the very moment she was
picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap towards
death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for
she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning
looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever
she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at night,
and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on her
way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she
had a happy life to cherish.
And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was
sadly different from that which had smiled at itself in the old
specked glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it
admiringly. A hard and even fierce look had come in the eyes,
though their lashes were as long as ever, and they had all their
dark brightness. And the cheek was never dimpled with smiles now.
It was the same rounded, pouting, childish prettiness, but with
all love and belief in love departed from it--the sadder for its
beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the passionate,
passionless lips.
At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a
long narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a
pool in that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the
fields. No, it was not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had
once been gravel-pits, leaving mounds and hollows studded with
brushwood and small trees. She roamed up and down, thinking there
was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she came to it, till her
limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The afternoon was far
advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the sun were
setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again,
feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off
finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter
for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and
might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew.
She walked through field after field, and no village, no house was
in sight; but there, at the corner of this pasture, there was a
break in the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two
trees leaned towards each other across the opening. Hetty's heart
gave a great heat as she thought there must be a pool there. She
walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips
and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in
spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search.
There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound
near. She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the
grass, trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time
it got shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in
the summer, no one could find out that it was her body. But then
there was her basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it
into the water--make it heavy with stones first, and then throw it
in. She got up to look about for stones, and soon brought five or
six, which she laid down beside her basket, and then sat down
again. There was no need to hurry--there was all the night to
drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the basket. She
was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her basket--three,
which she had supplied herself with at the place where she ate her
dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then sat
still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came
over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed
dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head
sank down on her knees. She was fast asleep.
When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was
frightened at this darkness--frightened at the long night before
her. If she could but throw herself into the water! No, not yet.
She began to walk about that she might get warm again, as if she
would have more resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that
darkness! The bright hearth and the warmth and the voices of
home, the secure uprising and lying down, the familiar fields, the
familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with their simple joys
of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young life rushed
before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms towards
them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of
Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would
do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life
of shame that he dared not end by death.
The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all
human reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as
if she were dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed
to get back to life again. But no: she was alive still; she had
not taken the dreadful leap. She felt a strange contradictory
wretchedness and exultation: wretchedness, that she did not dare
to face death; exultation, that she was still in life--that she
might yet know light and warmth again. She walked backwards and
forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern something of the
objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to the night--
the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no
longer felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she
could walk back across the field, and get over the stile; and
then, in the very next field, she thought she remembered there was
a hovel of furze near a sheepfold. If she could get into that
hovel, she would be warmer. She could pass the night there, for
that was what Alick did at Hayslope in lambing-time. The thought
of this hovel brought the energy of a new hope. She took up her
basket and walked across the field, but it was some time before
she got in the right direction for the stile. The exercise and
the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her,
however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude.
There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as
she set down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of
their movement comforted her, for it assured her that her
impression was right--this was the field where she had seen the
hovel, for it was the field where the sheep were. Right on along
the path, and she would get to it. She reached the opposite gate,
and felt her way along its rails and the rails of the sheep-fold,
till her hand encountered the pricking of the gorsy wall.
Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped her
way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw
on the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of
escape. Tears came--she had never shed tears before since she
left Windsor--tears and sobs of hysterical joy that she had still
hold of life, that she was still on the familiar earth, with the
sheep near her. The very consciousness of her own limbs was a
delight to her: she turned up her sleeves, and kissed her arms
with the passionate love of life. Soon warmth and weariness
lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell continually into
dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool again--fancying
that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking with a start,
and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless sleep
came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the
gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief
of unconsciousness.
Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It
seemed to Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into
another dream--that she was in the hovel, and her aunt was
standing over her with a candle in her hand. She trembled under
her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes. There was no candle, but
there was light in the hovel--the light of early morning through
the open door. And there was a face looking down on her; but it
was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a smock-frock.
"Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she
had done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt
that she was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place.
But in spite of her trembling, she was so eager to account to the
man for her presence here, that she found words at once.
"I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got
away from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark.
Will you tell me the way to the nearest village?"
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her
any answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked
towards the door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there
that he stood still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards
her, said, "Aw, I can show you the way to Norton, if you like.
But what do you do gettin' out o' the highroad?" he added, with a
tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin' into mischief, if you
dooant mind."
"Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road,
if you'll be so good as show me how to get to it."
"Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to
ax the way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud
think you was a wild woman, an' look at yer."
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this
last suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she
followed him out of the hovel she thought she would give him a
sixpence for telling her the way, and then he would not suppose
she was wild. As he stopped to point out the road to her, she put
her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence ready, and when he was
turning away, without saying good-morning, she held it out to him
and said, "Thank you; will you please to take something for your
trouble?"
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o'
your money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool
from yer, if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-
thatway."
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her
way. Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no
use to think of drowning herself--she could not do it, at least
while she had money left to buy food and strength to journey on.
But the incident on her waking this morning heightened her dread
of that time when her money would be all gone; she would have to
sell her basket and clothes then, and she would really look like a
beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said. The passionate joy
in life she had felt in the night, after escaping from the brink
of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now. Life now, by
the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard
wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was
worse; it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she
shrank and shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could
find no refuge from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had
still two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days
more, or it would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within
reach of Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly
now, since the experience of the night had driven her shuddering
imagination away from the pool. If it had been only going to
Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah would ever know--Hetty could have
made up her mind to go to her. The soft voice, the pitying eyes,
would have drawn her. But afterwards the other people must know,
and she could no more rush on that shame than she could rush on
death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair
to give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was
getting less and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--
such is the strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking
desire towards the very ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out
again from Norton, asked the straightest road northwards towards
Stonyshire, and kept it all that day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart
and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own,
and tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My
heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet,
or seated in a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road
before her, never thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger
comes and makes her desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart
from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride,
clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such miserty!
