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<h2> Chapter XXIX </h2>
<h3> The Next Morning </h3>
<p>ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep
comes to the perplexed—if the perplexed are only weary enough. But
at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to
get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.</p>
<p>"And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my
grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for a
ride."</p>
<p>He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but
to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to
the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous
memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it
would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret,
self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than
in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he should be more of a man on
horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting on him with the usual
deference, was a reassurance to him after the scenes of yesterday. For,
with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion, the loss of Adam's respect was a
shock to his self-contentment which suffused his imagination with the
sense that he had sunk in all eyes—as a sudden shock of fear from
some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid even to step, because all her
perceptions are suffused with a sense of danger.</p>
<p>Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as easy
to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses and
good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to witness
pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of
pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old
gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not
reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that sad
fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of
his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur
ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits. If there
were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself against the
man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the time was come
for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment, Arthur had felt
pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that Adam's happiness was
involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had been a possibility of
making Adam tenfold amends—if deeds of gift, or any other deeds,
could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for him as a benefactor,
Arthur would not only have executed them without hesitation, but would
have felt bound all the more closely to Adam, and would never have been
weary of making retribution. But Adam could receive no amends; his
suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and affection could not be
recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He stood like an immovable
obstacle against which no pressure could avail; an embodiment of what
Arthur most shrank from believing in—the irrevocableness of his own
wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal to shake hands, the mastery
asserted over him in their last conversation in the Hermitage—above
all, the sense of having been knocked down, to which a man does not very
well reconcile himself, even under the most heroic circumstances—pressed
on him with a galling pain which was stronger than compunction. Arthur
would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no
one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much
better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our
consciences—out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may
have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective
weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when
others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions,
she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Arthur: Adam's
judgment of him, Adam's grating words, disturbed his self-soothing
arguments.</p>
<p>Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and
resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was
distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he must
leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking resolutions,
looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily end in
separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not to suffer
at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with uneasiness. He
had found out the dream in which she was living—that she was to be a
lady in silks and satins—and when he had first talked to her about
his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go with him and
be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had given the most
exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no word with the
purpose of deceiving her—her vision was all spun by her own childish
fancy—but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was spun half
out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this last evening
he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been obliged to soothe
her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw her into violent
distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the sorrow of the dear thing
in the present, and thought with a darker anxiety of the tenacity which
her feelings might have in the future. That was the one sharp point which
pressed against him; every other he could evade by hopeful
self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret; the Poysers had not the
shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew anything of what had
passed—no one else was likely to know; for Arthur had impressed on
Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or look, that there had
been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who knew half their
secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray it. It was an
unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in making it worse
than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings of evil that might
never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was the worst consequence; he
resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not
demonstrably inevitable. But—but Hetty might have had the trouble in
some other way if not in this. And perhaps hereafter he might be able to
do a great deal for her and make up to her for all the tears she would
shed about him. She would owe the advantage of his care for her in future
years to the sorrow she had incurred now. So good comes out of evil. Such
is the beautiful arrangement of things!</p>
<p>Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two
months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which
shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more
positive offence as possible for it?—who thought that his own
self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same, I
assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us, as
much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be
the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a
man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise
about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may
first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the
change, for this reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him
in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before
commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh
untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at
afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things
that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very
much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a <i>fait accompli</i>, and so does
an individual character—until the placid adjustment is disturbed by
a convulsive retribution.</p>
<p>No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own
sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of
that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at
ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to
him—he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not
been very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity
he was under of deceiving Adam—it was a course so opposed to the
honesty of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do.</p>
<p>Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in
consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that he
had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross
barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her.
And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden
impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry
Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to....</p>
<p>In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable
prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the crowd
of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which would
fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up his mind
in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in the fresh air
of that fine morning, he should be more master of the situation.</p>
<p>The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the
gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and
patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual. He
loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But Meg was
quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many others of
her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen towards whom
their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation.</p>
<p>Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot
of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then he
threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind.</p>
<p>Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur
went away—there was no possibility of their contriving another
without exciting suspicion—and she was like a frightened child,
unable to think of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting,
and then put her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do
nothing but comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be
a dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam
said—that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might
be worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of
satisfying Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he
could have seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a
thorny hedge of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal.
And yet, if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him
to suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it.
Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control.</p>
<p>A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination—the
dread lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon
that dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off
with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the
future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur
told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He had
never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved; he had
been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit confidence in
him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not
treat him harshly.</p>
<p>At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do was
to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he
persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between Adam
and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a while;
and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since it was
still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam was
deceived—deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a deep
wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection that
marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in mingled
shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in such a
dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure Hetty:
his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or acted a lie
on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was to have brought
himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had excuses, he had.
(Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!)</p>
<p>Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a
solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he
thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to
write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this last thought
helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never deliberately have
taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left himself at ease.
Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up Hetty to Adam went
to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.</p>
<p>When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set off
home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first thing, and
the rest of the day would be filled up with other business: he should have
no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine were coming to
dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should have left the Chase
miles behind him. There was some security in this constant occupation
against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to rush to Hetty and thrust
into her hand some mad proposition that would undo everything. Faster and
faster went the sensitive Meg, at every slight sign from her rider, till
the canter had passed into a swift gallop.</p>
<p>"I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said sour
old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's been
ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon."</p>
<p>"That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman.</p>
<p>"Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly.</p>
<p>Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been
relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning that
he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there again,
and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down with a
letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain was too
busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say. The letter was
directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before opening it. It
contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the inside of the cover
Adam read:</p>
<p>"In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it to
you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty or to
return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking a
measure which may pain her more than mere silence.</p>
<p>"There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet with
better feelings some months hence.</p>
<p>"A.D."</p>
<p>"Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's no
use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake hands
and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better not to
pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that
can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can
never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not
possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't feel the same towards
him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the same towards anybody: I
seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a false line, and had got it
all to measure over again."</p>
<p>But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed Adam's
thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing the
decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to
hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way—to
ascertain as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he
decided on delivering the letter.</p>
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