"Keep your promise, dearest Harriet—never forget that your happiness, and that of others, depend upon it. Do not think that I have taken the blame, or am a victim—it is not only for my actions of that night that I have gone away. Sooner or later, it must have come. God bless you!—I hope to see you again soon. Your letter to Sidney is destroyed."
Harriet pondered over this missive. For weeks she became more thoughtful, and aroused fresh anxiety in her father—for weeks went on an unknown and fierce struggle to break away from her promise and tell all.
She had been afraid of the revelation, and what would be said and thought about it; she had seen her innocence construed as half-consent, and herself set down as an accomplice in Mr. Darcy's plot; she had feared losing the esteem and confidence of all who now respected her. But when Mattie had been sent away for keeping out all night—and though she had not heard the story, she guessed of whom Mattie had been in search—her sense of justice, her love for Mattie, led her more than once to the verge of the revelation. Keeping her own secret was one thing, but the blame to rest on another was very different, and despite her promise—into which she had been entrapped as it were—the avowal was ever trembling on her lips.
After, all it was but the truth to confess—her father and mother would believe her; and if Sidney Hinchford turned away, why surely there was nothing to grieve at in that—she could not have loved Sidney, or that letter would never have been written to him! And yet let it be recorded here, Harriet Wesden's main incentive to keep her secret close was for Sidney Hinchford's sake. It tortured her to think that she should have ever entertained one feeling of love or liking for the Mr. Darcy who had sought her humiliation; the shock to her pride had not only turned her utterly away from Mr. Darcy, but the very contrast he presented to young Hinchford, had aroused the old, or given birth to a new affection for the latter.
She valued Sidney Hinchford at his just due at last; she understood his patience, energy, and love; how he had been working for her from his boyhood, and what would have been the effect to him of losing her. She had made up her mind, when he returned, to give him all her heart, and sustain him by her love against those secret cares which lately had been shadowing him. She believed that her secret was for ever shut away from the light—that keeping it under lock and key would be better for Sidney, whose trust in her was so implicit. He had always believed in her devotion to himself; why should she break in upon that dream, now she felt that all girlish follies were over with her, and she had become a staid woman, whose hope was to be his wife?
She was consoled by Mattie's letter: "It is not only for my actions of that night that I have gone away. Sooner or later it must have come."
Mattie, ever a deep thinker, considered it best also—by her confession, even Mattie would be unhappy; so Harriet kept her secret for everybody's sake, and made her last mistake in life. Mattie and she had both regarded the subject from a narrow point of view, and were wrong; the best intentioned people are wrong sometimes, and from young women, with their heads disturbed concerning young men, we do not anticipate the judgment of Solomon.
Harriet Wesden felt secure—knowing not of the letter in Mr. Hinchford's coat, of Mr. Hinchford's mistake and Mattie's. And yet the chances now were against the revelation, thanks to the treacherous memory of the old gentleman. He had mentioned his error in the counting-house to his employers the same day, and met with a reprimand and a supercilious shrug of the shoulders—"It was like old Hinchford," one partner had muttered to another, and there the subject ended for a while. Mr. Hinchford went home, resolving to restore the letter to Harriet Wesden, took the letter from his pocket and put it on the bedroom mantel-piece, to keep the matter in his remembrance until he saw Harriet again.
There for two days the letter remained, till Ann Packet, in dusting the room, knocked it on the floor, picked it up and placed it on the dressing-glass, where Mr. Hinchford found it, and rather absently-shut it in the looking-glass drawer, as a safe place; and then the letter passed completely out of recollection, there being a great deal to trouble his mind just then.
For they were not kind to him at his business, expected too much from him, and made no allowance for an old servant; and above all, and before all, the boy's birthday was drawing near—it was three days before Harriet Wesden's—and there was no sign of Sidney Hinchford on his way towards him.