The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë (librera reader .txt) 📖

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