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

agreeable morning. We had not been thus secluded above two hours, however, when Mr. Hattersley came in, attracted, I suppose, by the voice of his child, as he was crossing the hall, for he is prodigiously fond of her, and she of him.

He was redolent of the stables, where he had been regaling himself with the company of his fellow-creatures the horses ever since breakfast. But that was no matter to my little namesake; as soon as the colossal person of her father darkened the door, she uttered a shrill scream of delight, and, quitting her mother’s side, ran crowing towards him, balancing her course with outstretched arms, and embracing his knee, threw back her head and laughed in his face. He might well look smilingly down upon those small, fair features, radiant with innocent mirth, those clear blue shining eyes, and that soft flaxen hair cast back upon the little ivory neck and shoulders. Did he not think how unworthy he was of such a possession? I fear no such idea crossed his mind. He caught her up, and there followed some minutes of very rough play, during which it is difficult to say whether the father or the daughter laughed and shouted the loudest. At length, however, the boisterous pastime terminated, suddenly, as might be expected: the little one was hurt, and began to cry; and the ungentle playfellow tossed it into its mother’s lap, bidding her “make all straight.” As happy to return to that gentle comforter as it had been to leave her, the child nestled in her arms, and hushed its cries in a moment; and sinking its little weary head on her bosom, soon dropped asleep.

Meantime Mr. Hattersley strode up to the fire, and interposing his height and breadth between us and it, stood with arms akimbo, expanding his chest, and gazing round him as if the house and all its appurtenances and contents were his own undisputed possessions.

“Deuced bad weather this!” he began. “There’ll be no shooting today, I guess.” Then, suddenly lifting up his voice, he regaled us with a few bars of a rollicking song, which abruptly ceasing, he finished the tune with a whistle, and then continued:⁠—“I say, Mrs. Huntingdon, what a fine stud your husband has! not large, but good. I’ve been looking at them a bit this morning; and upon my word, Black Boss, and Grey Tom, and that young Nimrod are the finest animals I’ve seen for many a day!” Then followed a particular discussion of their various merits, succeeded by a sketch of the great things he intended to do in the horse-jockey line, when his old governor thought proper to quit the stage. “Not that I wish him to close his accounts,” added he: “the old Trojan is welcome to keep his books open as long as he pleases for me.”

“I hope so, indeed, Mr. Hattersley.”

“Oh, yes! It’s only my way of talking. The event must come some time, and so I look to the bright side of it: that’s the right plan⁠—isn’t it, Mrs. H.? What are you two doing here? By the by, where’s Lady Lowborough?”

“In the billiard-room.”

“What a splendid creature she is!” continued he, fixing his eyes on his wife, who changed colour, and looked more and more disconcerted as he proceeded. “What a noble figure she has; and what magnificent black eyes; and what a fine spirit of her own; and what a tongue of her own, too, when she likes to use it. I perfectly adore her! But never mind, Milicent: I wouldn’t have her for my wife, not if she’d a kingdom for her dowry! I’m better satisfied with the one I have. Now then! what do you look so sulky for? don’t you believe me?”

“Yes, I believe you,” murmured she, in a tone of half sad, half sullen resignation, as she turned away to stroke the hair of her sleeping infant, that she had laid on the sofa beside her.

“Well, then, what makes you so cross? Come here, Milly, and tell me why you can’t be satisfied with my assurance.”

She went, and putting her little hand within his arm, looked up in his face, and said softly⁠—

“What does it amount to, Ralph? Only to this, that though you admire Annabella so much, and for qualities that I don’t possess, you would still rather have me than her for your wife, which merely proves that you don’t think it necessary to love your wife; you are satisfied if she can keep your house, and take care of your child. But I’m not cross; I’m only sorry; for,” added she, in a low, tremulous accent, withdrawing her hand from his arm, and bending her looks on the rug, “if you don’t love me, you don’t, and it can’t be helped.”

“Very true; but who told you I didn’t? Did I say I loved Annabella?”

“You said you adored her.”

“True, but adoration isn’t love. I adore Annabella, but I don’t love her; and I love thee, Milicent, but I don’t adore thee.” In proof of his affection, he clutched a handful of her light brown ringlets, and appeared to twist them unmercifully.

“Do you really, Ralph?” murmured she, with a faint smile beaming through her tears, just putting up her hand to his, in token that he pulled rather too hard.

“To be sure I do,” responded he: “only you bother me rather, sometimes.”

“I bother you!” cried she, in very natural surprise.

“Yes, you⁠—but only by your exceeding goodness. When a boy has been eating raisins and sugarplums all day, he longs for a squeeze of sour orange by way of a change. And did you never, Milly, observe the sands on the seashore; how nice and smooth they look, and how soft and easy they feel to the foot? But if you plod along, for half an hour, over this soft, easy carpet⁠—giving way at every step, yielding the more the harder you press⁠—you’ll find it rather wearisome work, and be glad enough to come to a bit of