Chapter: A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.

What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of
definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was
plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty
nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?"

"Who?" said Hetty, rather startled.

"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin'
arter--which is it?"

Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
She was too frightened to speak.

"Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's
behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart
any day."

Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she
had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on
any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant
of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store
of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply
provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
Windsor.

"Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's
where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby
next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London
as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been
no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be
thinking o' taking such a journey as that?"

"I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty,
frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go
by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the
morning?"

"Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and
walk, and trust to summat overtaking you."

Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey
stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur.
Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
because all the business of her life was managed for her--this
kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded
at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her
little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from
any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find
that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare.
She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own
sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other
people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so
tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though
it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable.
For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than
a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no
delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no
romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would
not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think
of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and
ambition.

The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing
hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the
length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of
spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask
people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature
but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and
most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet
occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings
which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic
and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides
were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had
a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other
bright-flaming coin.

For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she
had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read
that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank.
She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry
again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much
movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which
produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like
the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet,
if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite
and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of
weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know,
but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a
large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
mantle.

"Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?"
said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it."

"Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't
if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do
you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?"

"I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor."

"What! Arter some service, or what?"

"Going to my brother--he's a soldier there."

"Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll
take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses
wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as
I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been
all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and
let me put y' in."

To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the
awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept
away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down
and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this
"public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day
of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she
had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be
intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way
to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would
cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The
distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them
up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious
face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass
through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men
stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in
her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking
again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by
a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a
return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her,
twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the
heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from
Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work
for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon,
finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told
she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth
day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as
you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from
the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty!
It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and
dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her
indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among
them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and
then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the
miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses,
where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were
always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her
body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they
had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread
she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford,
her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical
caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way,
though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need
nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for
the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the
sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the
seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her
to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the
shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the
thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which
she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she
held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the
coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?"

"No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again."

The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his
good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most
men.

"Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something;
you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that."

He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this
young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's
tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.

She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked
at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her
curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its
youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes
presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her
journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye
detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.

"Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she
spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?"

"Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good
long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me
which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his
address.

While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.

"Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of
innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask
as many questions as possible before giving any information.

"I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty.

"But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut
up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
I can let you know where to find him."

"It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
find Arthur at once.

"Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he
in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?"

"Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?"

"A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to
Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight."

"Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support
Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.

"Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in
some water.

"Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife.
"She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
house--they're all honest folks in the north."

"I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband.
"She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at
her."

"It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and
had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction
must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's
coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."




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 no 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 beat 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 misery!

 Hetty's journey to Windsor is a difficult one; ignorant of traveling, driven by fear, worn by fatigue and hunger, she presses on for seven days, finally arriving at Windsor both physically and mentally exhausted. Here she is befriended by a kindly innkeeper and his wife who immediately note her condition and take pity on her. She tells them she is looking for her brother and mentions Arthur's name, only to learn that Arthur's regiment has gone to Ireland. Hetty faints at the news. Hetty remains ill through the rest of that day. She feels utterly lost and hopeless; there seems to be nowhere left to turn. When she wakes the next morning, she tries to form some plans. She can't bring herself to go back home, admit her problem, and face the shame attached to it; at the same time, she dreads the thought of beggary or of bodily hardship. She decides to sell the jewels Arthur has given her in order to get a little money. But what then? She remembers Dinah's words on that night in her bedroom and decides to go to her, if she has not the courage to commit suicide. She sells the earrings and her locket to the landlord and sets out again for the north. Completely in despair, she goes to Stratford-on-Avon and wanders into the fields outside the town. She looks for a pool in which to drown herself, finds one, but falls asleep beside it. When she awakes, it is the dead of night, and she turns away from her suicide plan. Wandering into the next field, she finds a shepherd's hovel and falls asleep in it. She is discovered the next morning by the shepherd, who sends her on her way. She moves vaguely towards Snowfield and Dinah.

