"Fairest eyes, whose dawning light
Late with rapture blest my sight,
Ere your orbs extinguish'd be,
Bend their trembling beams on me!
"Drooping sweetness, verdant flower
Blooming, withering in an hour,
Ere thy gentle breast sustain
Latest, fiercest, mortal pain,
Hear a suppliant! Let me be
Partner in thy destiny:
That whene'er the fatal cloud
Must thy radiant temples shroud;
When deadly damps, impending now,
Shall hover round thy destin'd brow,
Diffusive may their influence be,
And with the blossom blast the tree!"
Mr. Wright inclosed these verses complacently enough. Poetry in his eyes was an elegant accomplishment vaguely connected with scholarship and gentility: and he took pride in possessing a wife who, as he more than once assured his cronies in the parlour of the "Turk's Head" at the end of the street, could sit down and write it by the yard.
To please Hetty he read them through, pronounced them very pretty, and folded up the paper, remarking, "I'll send it off to your brother John. He likes this sort of thing, and when he learns 'twas written in your weak state he'll think it wonderful."
Of the anguish in the closing lines his eye detected, his ear heard, nothing.
Yet it was an anguish which daily touched despair in Hetty's heart. God had laid a curse on her, and would not be placated by the good behaviour on which she had built her hopes. She had borne three children, and not one had He suffered to live for a week. No matter how many she might bear, the same fate stood ready for them. Nor was this all. She saw Him smiting, through these innocent babes, at her husband's love. Little by little she felt it relaxing and sinking through carelessness into neglect: and the whole scheme of her atonement rested on his continuing fondness. She had never loved him, but his love was, if not infinitely precious, of infinite moment to her. She needed it to sustain her and keep her in the right way. She omitted no small attentions which might make home pleasant to him. She kept the house bright (they had moved into Frith Street and lived over the shop), and unweariedly coaxed his appetite with her cookery, in which—and especially in pastry-making—she had a born gift. The fumes of the lead-works at the back often took her own appetite away and depressed her spirits, but she never failed to rouse herself and welcome him with a smile. Also (but this was to please herself) sometimes by a word of advice in the matter of toilet or of clothes, oftener by small secret attentions with the needle, she had gradually reformed his habits of dress until now he might pass for a London tradesman of the superior class, decently attired, well shaven and clean in his person. He resigned himself to these improvements with much good-nature and so passed through his metamorphosis almost without knowing it. She practised small economies too; and he owned (though he set it down to his own industry) that his worldly affairs were more prosperous than ever they had been before his marriage. But the fumes of the lead-works affected his appetite, too, and his spirits: and when these flag a man has an easy and specious remedy in brandy-and-water. By and by it became a habit with him, when his men ceased work, to stroll down to the "Turk's Head" for a "stiffener" before his meal. The men he met there respected him for a flourishing tradesman and flattered him. He adored his wife still. In his eyes no woman would compare with her. But there was no denying he felt more at home in company which allowed him to tell or listen to a coarse story and stretch his legs and boast at his ease.
He was not aware of any slackening in affection. But Hetty noted it and fought against it, though with a sinking heart. She had counted on this babe to draw him back—if not to her, then at least to home. When told that it was dead, on an impulse she had turned her face at once to him and with a heart-rending look appealed for his forgiveness. He did not understand. Yet he behaved well, stroking her head and saying what he could to comfort her.
She was convinced now that she lay under God's curse, and by and by her weak thoughts connected this curse with her father's displeasure. If she could move her father to relent, it might be lifted from her. And so after many weeks of brooding she found courage to write this letter:
From Hetty to her Father
Honoured Sir,—Although you have cast me off and I know that a determination once taken by you is not easily moved, I must tell you that some word of your forgiving is not only necessary to me, but would make happier the marriage in which, as you compelled it, you must still (I think) feel no small concern. My child, on whose frail help I had counted to make our life more supportable to my husband and myself, is dead. Should God give and take away another, I can never escape the thought that my father's intercession might have prevailed against His wrath, which I shall then, alas! take to be manifest.