CHAPTER XVIII.
“LET ME GO HOME.”
WHEN Hetty woke in the middle of the night, and found herself in darkness, without a glimmer of light, curtains and shutters closing her in, doors locked between her and all the rest of the world, a gloom which could be felt weighing down her eyelids, the sensation of terror which overwhelmed her was no doubt entirely unreasonable. Miss Hofland next door felt these precautions essential to her rest. But little Hetty lay not daring to breathe, bound in a speechless and horrible panic which no words could express. Nothing that she could have seen or heard would have equalled the horror of seeing nothing, of lying there a hopeless prisoner of the darkness, the silence throbbing round her, the gloom pressing upon her like a tangible weight. How she had woke, whether by the reverberation of some cry, or by some stirring in the night, she could not tell. She thought it was both. She thought that some shriek penetrating the too great and tingling profundity of silence, and some movement in the intense, insupportable gloom, had broken the uneasy sleep into which she had fallen against her will while the firelight lasted, with its friendly blaze and little crackling. These had saved her from the horror of the shut-up place. But now the fire had died out, there was no glimpse or glimmer anywhere; all was dark, dark, horrible, a blackness growing upon her, getting into her very soul. Something of the effect of a nightmare was in that horrible gloom. It seemed to hold her so that she could not move, and scarcely could breathe. There seemed no air, but only darkness, darkness within and around. Her eyes were useless to her, as if she had none; and her ears, which seemed strained and worn with the effort, were the only sentinels she had to warn her of any approaching evil, and tingled and throbbed, either they or that black vacancy which they watched. All this was nothing, as the reader knows, it was only a child’s fantastic rendering of the most common-place fact, but to Hetty it was a fever, a nightmare, everything that was most appalling. She started up at last, defying the still greater horror of meeting or running against some awful presence hidden in the gloom, and groped about the dreadful place till she found the curtains, restraining all the time with the most frantic effort a scream which was in her throat, which only the strongest resolution kept from bursting forth. When at last she had succeeded in opening everything, and discerned with transport a pale gleam of sky, with black tree-tops tossing about it, Hetty dropped upon the floor beside the window, almost fainting with exhaustion and relief. At last here was a little light, though it was only the glimmer of midnight. It was the sky; there was one faint star in it, shining by the edge of a cloud. She was not shut up in a box of blackness and darkness and separated from all the world.
Feverish thoughts flew through Hetty’s brain in this half-swoon. She said to herself, Would death be like that?—all black, nothing to be heard or seen, a horrible blank, in which nothing but throbbing terror and dread consciousness were. She tried to tell herself that death was nothing at all, only a passage from earth to heaven, but had not enough command of her faculties to follow that or any other argument, but only to feel, with a wild relief, that she was not dead, for here was the sky still palely glimmering, light in it, not blackness, as the shut-up room had been. She supposed afterwards that she had fallen asleep there, half wrapped in the curtain near that blessed window which had brought her back to life; for when she came to herself much later, in the first profound chills of dawn, she found herself half lying, half sitting, in the elastic fold of the heavy curtain, aching with cold and exposure, and for the moment deeply wondering how she came there, at the foot of the tall window which was now full of the grey lightness of the coming day.
Hetty was paler than ever, nervous, and trembling, next day. She had caught a chill, everybody said; and again Miss Hofland prescribed the sofa, the novel, hot cups of tea, and other gratifications; the lessons were done by her side to save her trouble, and little Rhoda showed her a great deal of silent sympathy, stealing to her side in the intervals of those simple studies, putting an arm round her neck as she stood by the sofa, even bestowing a silent kiss by way of consolation. The girl recovered her courage during the day, especially as the sun shone, and everything looked brighter. But as evening drew near, Hetty paled and shivered once more. “A cold is always worse in the evening,” said Miss Hofland, and recommended bed earlier than usual, and a hot drink. Bed was the thing of all others that Hetty feared. She lay on the sofa by the comfortable fire in a state of confused and self-reproachful misery, such as only the very young are capable of feeling. Words seemed on her very lips which she with difficulty kept from becoming audible. “Oh, let me go home to mamma! oh, let me go home! let me go home!” She thought if she once began saying it, she would have to go on and on and never could stop herself. “Oh, let me go home!” She said it over and over and over within herself, but was checked continually by the thought that if she said it aloud, if she could have her wish, there would be an end of all that had been dreamed of, of the bills that might be paid, and the sealskin for mamma. Hetty bought the sealskin dear. It was that above all that kept her dumb, that kept down that cry, “Oh, let me go to mamma!” But then mamma would go cold in her thin cloak all next winter, because Hetty could not command herself. It came to a compromise at last in a fit of nervous sobbing, which she could not restrain when, after Rhoda had been sent away, Miss Hofland again proposed going to bed.
“My dear! what is the matter? Do you feel ill? Have you a sore throat? I do hope you are not going to be hysterical. My dear child, do get the better of that crying. Tell me frankly what’s the matter. If it’s anything I can help you in, I will do it; but, for goodness’ sake, don’t sob like that. What is it you want, my dear?”
“Oh, Miss Hofland, I don’t know. I suppose it’s only mamma. I feel as if I couldn’t do without mamma.”
“Oh, you poor child! Well, I have heard a great many girls say that, my dear. It’s common when you’re beginning your life. I never had any mother, and I used to envy them with their crying. I’d have given a great deal to have had anything to cry for. But every one has to be reasonable in the end, and you have a great deal of sense, my dear. You wouldn’t have been sent away unless they had thought it was best for you. Now isn’t that true? You must just make up your mind to it, and put up with it, till the time comes; and then all will be right, and you’ll get back.”
“Yes, I know; I can’t help saying it, Miss Hofland, but I don’t really want it. I want to—stay out my time, and—and get my—money,” Hetty said, keeping down her sobs.
“Yes, that is the right way to look at it,” said the governess. 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. It’s a little queer, and I can’t help thinking that some day or other something will be found out to account for it: but they treat us very well; that can’t be denied. In some places they don’t allow you a fire in your room, and the schoolroom dinners are like nursery meals, only not so plentiful. It is a great addition to all the other things you have to put up with when that’s the case. But here everything is very comfortable. Your mother would be quite pleased if she saw how everything is arranged for us here.”
Hetty’s sobs died away under the influence of this speech—whether it was the good sense in it, or that the mode of consolation adopted was so entirely unfitted to the trouble, a thing which sometimes has quite a good effect.
“And then, you know,” said Miss Hofland, “there’s the satisfaction of knowing that whatever there may be that is strange and out of the way, it doesn’t concern us. They say that other people’s misfortunes make you enjoy your own comforts the more. I wouldn’t go quite so far as that: but it is a great gratification to reflect, when you are in a house where there is evidently a skeleton somewhere or other, that it is no business of yours. There’s no telling the comfort there is in that.’
“But, Miss Hofland,” said Hetty, “do you think that just to lock your door, and never to mind whatever may happen to the house, as Mrs. Mills says——”
“Is that what she says?” said the governess, quickly. “Oh, you may be sure that’s not her way; she would be at the bottom of it. I’m confident, whatever it was, they couldn’t conceal anything from her! But she’s got a good deal in her, that woman, though I don’t like her, my dear. I shouldn’t say but it would be the wisest thing, on the whole. For what could you do? You can’t clear up their mysteries or put things straight, so why should you give yourself any trouble? If you thought there were signs of fire, indeed, why then of course you should give the alarm at once; for we all should suffer from that, we poor ladies who have nothing to do with it, and the servants and all. Yes, I should always give the alarm, whatever it cost you, in case of a fire; but for other things I am not sure that she did not give you the very best advice. A man, if he heard a noise, would have to get up and see what it was; but a lady may always lock her door. I do it invariably wherever I am, my dear. In the first place, it’s safer, for you never know who might come blundering into your room, as I told you this morning; and then it frees you from a great deal of responsibility. As a rule, at the outset of your career, I should say that Mrs. Mills gave you very good advice.”
Hetty’s attention failed while Miss Hofland ran on. She lost reckoning of the motives presented to her, the rule of conduct which her companion would have been the first to call governessy. Another subject was foremost in Hetty’s thought—her own room, into which she was about to be taken as into a prison, where all would be black again, as before, and the doors locked, everybody’s door locked, so that if any stronger horror should seize her, there was nowhere she could fly to, no one to whom she could escape and be safe. She was glad the governess should talk, in order to put off that evil hour as long as possible. Miss Hofland sat over the fire, quietly flowing forth in that philosophy of the dependent, how to keep safest in a sort of camp by yourself in the midst of an ungenial, if not unfriendly, world, how to avoid responsibility and secure calm, however those around you might be agitated. This was the code of things expedient which had been fixed in her mind by years of experience. The girl listened very vaguely at first, and then went off altogether into her own individual alarms. Her pretty, comfortable room, with its pleasant fire, that luxury which was not always allowed, had once more become a dark prison-house to Hetty. How was she to go through such another night?
There was a glimmer of comfort in the fact that Miss Hofland accompanied her there, to see that her hot footbath was ready, and her hot drink. “You must just jump into bed and cover yourself up warm, and never budge till morning; and you’ll see your cold will be ever so much better,” she said, tapping Hetty upon the cheek affectionately. “Now, my clear, don’t be a little goose.” And then Hetty, with anguish which she could scarcely contain, heard her go into her room and turn the key. “It frees you from a great deal of responsibility,” she had said. And how was she to know the miserable panic that was in the poor little girl’s heart, left thus alone with her consciousness of wanderers outside and mysteries within, and the sense of darkness and imprisonment, and no one within call, whatever might happen? Hetty’s first wild idea was that it would be better to sit up all night, and thus cheat the black gloom and silence that lay in wait for her. But she was very obedient and quite unused to act for herself; and there seemed to her something guilty, something dreadful, in thus disregarding all the usages of life. She sat down by her fire and read for as long a time as she could keep her attention to her novel, and then, trembling to find it was midnight, she stole to bed at last. Happily, she was so worn out that she slept immediately, as if there had been no panics or mysteries in the world, or as if her mother’s room—that shelter from all harm—had been open to her next door.