During the whole of that night Hester kept her position in the hall, holding her baby in her arms as long as the infant would sleep in that position, and then allowing the nurse to take it to its cradle up-stairs. And during the whole night also Mrs. Bolton remained with her daughter. Tea was brought to them, which each of them took, and after that neither spoke a word to the other till the morning. Before he went to bed, Mr. Bolton came down and made an effort for their joint comfort. ‘Hester,’ he said, ‘why should you not go to your room? You can do yourself no good by remaining there.’ ‘No,’ she said, sullenly; ‘no; I will stay.’ ‘You will only make yourself ill,— you and your mother.’
‘She can go. Though I should die, I will stay here.’
Nor could he succeed better with his wife. ‘If she is obstinate, so must I be,’ said Mrs. Bolton. It was in vain that he endeavoured to prove to her that there could be no reason for such obstinacy, that her daughter would not attempt to escape during the hours of the night without her baby.
‘You would not do that,’ said the old man, turning to his daughter. But to this Hester would make no reply, and Mrs. Bolton simply declared her purpose of remaining. To her mind there was present an idea that she would, at any rate, endure as much actual suffering as her daughter. There they both sat, and in the morning they were objects pitiable to be seen.
Macbeth and Sancho have been equally eloquent in the praise of sleep. ‘Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care!’ But sleep will knit up effectually no broken stitches unless it be enjoyed in bed. Blessings on him who invented sleep,’ said Sancho. But the great inventor was he who discovered mattresses and sheets and blankets. These two unfortunates no doubt slept; but in the morning they were weary, comfortless, and exhausted. Towels and basins were brought to them, and then they prepared themselves to watch through another day. It seemed to be a trial between them, which could outwatch the other. The mother was, of course, much the older; but with poor Hester there was the baby to add to her troubles. Never was there a woman more determined to carry out her purpose than Mrs. Bolton, or one more determined to thwart the purpose of another than she who still called herself Hester Caldigate. In the morning Mrs. Bolton implored her husband to go into Cambridge as usual; but he felt that he could not leave the house with such inmates. So he sat in his bedroom dozing wretchedly in his arm-chair.
Caldigate appeared before the house at nine o’clock, no further attempt having been made to exclude his entrance by the side gate, and asked to see Mr. Bolton. ‘Papa is up-stairs,’ said Hester through the window. But the old man would not come down to see his visitor, nor would he send any message. Then Caldigate declared his purpose of going at once to the mayor and demanding assistance from the police. He at any rate would return with the carriage as early as he could after his visit to the magistrates’ office. He went to the mayor, and inflicted much trouble on that excellent officer, who, however, at last, with the assistance of his clerk,— and of Robert Bolton, whom he saw on the sly,— came to the decision that his own authority would not suffice for the breaking open of a man’s house in order that his married daughter should be taken by violence from his custody. ‘No doubt,’ he said; ‘no doubt,’ when Caldigate pleaded that Mr. Bolton’s daughter was, at any rate for the present, his own wife; and that a man’s right to have his wife is undoubted. Those words ‘no doubt’ were said very often; but no other words were said. Then the clerk expressed an opinion that the proper course would be for Mr. Caldigate to go up to London and get an order from the Vice-Chancellor; which was, of course, tantamount to saying that his wife was to remain at Chesterton till after the trial,— unless she could effect her own escape.
But not on that account was he inclined to yield. He had felt from the first, as had she also, that she would make her way out of the house, or would not make it, as she might or might not have the courage to be persistent in demanding it. This, indeed, had been felt both by William and Robert Bolton when they had given their counsel. ‘She is a woman with a baby, and when in your house will be subject to your influences. She will be very angry at first, but will probably yield after a time to your instructions. She will at last give an unwilling assent to the course you propose. That is what may be expected. But if she should be firmer than we think, if there should be in her bosom a greater power of resistance than we expect, should she dash herself too violently against the cage,— then you must let her go.’ That was intended to be the gist of the advice given, though it perhaps was not so accurately expressed. It was in that way understood by the old man; but Mrs. Bolton would not so understand it. She had taken the matter in hand, and as she pressed her lips together she told herself that she intended to go through with it.
And so did Hester. But as this day went on, Hester became at times almost hysterical in her efforts to communicate with her husband through the window, holding up her baby and throwing back her head, and was almost in convulsions in her efforts to get at him. He on the other side thundered at the door with the knocker, till that instrument had been unscrewed from within. But still he could knock with his stick and shout with his voice; while the people outside the iron gates stood looking on in a crowd. In the course of the day Robert Bolton endeavoured to get an order from the magistrates for the removal of Caldigate by the police. But the mayor would not assent either to that. Old Mr. Bolton was the owner of the house, and if there was a nuisance to be complained of, it was he that must complain. The mayor during these days was much tried. The steady married people of the borough,— the shopkeepers and their wives, the doctors and lawyers and clergymen in favour of Mr. and Mrs. Bolton. It was held to be fitting that a poor lady in Hester’s unfortunate position should be consigned to the care of her parents till the matter had been settled. But the people generally sympathised with the young husband and young wife, and were loud in denouncing the illegality of the banker’s proceedings. And it was already rumoured that among the undergraduates Caldigate’s side was favoured. It was generally known that Crinkett and the woman had asked for money before they had brought their accusation and on that account sympathy ran with the Squire of Folking. The mayor, therefore, did not dare to give an order that Caldigate should be removed from off the premises at Puritan Grange, knowing that he was there in search of a wife who was only anxious to place herself in his custody.
But nothing was done all that day. About four in the afternoon, while Caldigate was still there, and at a moment in which poor Hester had been reduced by the continuance of her efforts to a state of hysterical prostration, the old man summoned his wife upstairs. She, with a motion to the cook, who still guarded the stairs, obeyed the order, and for a moment left her watch.
‘You must let her go,’ said the old man, with tremulous anxiety, beating with his fingers on his knees as he spoke. ‘You must let her go.’
‘No; no!’
‘It will kill her.’
‘If I let her go, I shall kill her soul,’ said the determined woman. ‘Is not her soul more than her body?’
‘They will say we — murdered her.’
‘Who will say it? And what would that be but the breath of a man? Does not our Father who is in heaven know that I would die to do her a service, if the service accorded with His will? Does He not know that I am cruel to her here in order that she may be saved from eternal ——’ She was going to say, in the natural fervour of her speech, ‘from eternal cruelty to come,’ but she checked herself. To have admitted that such a judgment could be worse than just, worse even than merciful, would be blasphemy to her. ‘Oh, He knows! He knows! And if He knows, what matters what men say that I have done to her.’
‘I cannot have it go on like this,’ said he, still whispering.
‘She will be wearied out, and then we will take her to her bed.’
But Mr. Bolton succeeded in demanding that a telegram should be sent up to William requesting him to come down to the Grange as early as possible on the following morning. This was sent, and also a message to Robert Bolton in Cambridge, telling him that William had been summoned. During these two days he had not been seen at the Grange, though he knew much of what was being done there. Had he, however, been aware of all that his sister and step-mother were enduring, he would probably have appeared upon the scene. As it was,............