Chapter X: The Sinner That Repenteth

The cause of Hester's degradation was one which always has, and one fears always will, people our streets with those unhappy women, whom the law refuses either to acknowledge or to suppress--refuses either to protect or to punish: a lasting stigma upon our civilization!

When Sir Chetsom Chetsom was killed, she had to look about her for means of subsistence; and at first imagined that literature would be an ample field.

Thanks to the diffusion of knowledge, and to the increasing taste for reading, it is now very possible for man or woman to earn a decent and honourable livelihood by the pen; but if possible, it is not easy, and is always, with the best of talents, eminently precarious. For a woman still more so than for a man. Above all, the woman must have good friends, must be "respectable," and fortunate.

Hester had no good friends; she had many acquaintances, but no one who interested himself in her success, no one, at any rate, who both could and would assist her. Moreover, she was not "respectable;" and what was the consequence? dissolute editors were afraid of her contributions "on the score of morals."

To be brief, Hester struggled in vain to get employment; and in great danger of starving, she determined to go back to Walton. Her father consented to receive his unhappy child, and promised that "bye-gones should be bye-gones."

She had better have taken a situation as servant of all-work in a lodginghouse, than have returned to her home after what had occurred. She found her father, indeed, glad enough to receive her, and willing enough to forgive the past, on condition of not absolutely _forgetting_ it: from time to time he could not refrain from "throwing it in her teeth," when he was at a loss for an argument or an invective.

This is always the case when a fallen daughter returns home, or when she commits the one unpardonable fault, and stays at home: her parents, her brothers, and sisters--oh! especially the sisters--never forget that fault. It is held over her head _in terrorem_. It is an ever-present warning and illustration. Bridling up in _their_ unshaken chastity--too often unshaken because untempted--the sisters make her feel in a hundred ways, that her fault is unpardoned and unpardonable. Exasperated by this incessant and unjust retribution for a fault which the girl feels deserves more pity, she is at last driven from home and takes refuge in the streets, because her virtuous family cannot forget!

It has been often remarked that women are more pitiless towards each other, on that very point where common sympathy should make them most tolerant; and little do they know the extent of the mischief their intolerance creates.

Hester had not to suffer from the sneers and allusions of chaste and offended sisters, but she had to endure worse--the sneers and slights of the whole offended town. The reader remembers how Walton was scandalized at her flirtation, how shocked at her flight; let him then imagine the howl of outraged purity which saluted her repentant return! She, indeed, come back to a town she had disgraced! She to show herself amongst the daughters of respectable people! She to be allowed to wallow in corruption, and then as soon as she found that course led to no good, to return again to her home as if nothing had occurred! The minx!

Mrs. Ruddles hoped her husband would take notice of it from the pulpit: such an example as it was to other girls!

Mrs. Spedley expected to see many imitations of such conduct; it was such a premium on vice!

The post-mistress hoped she was as charitable as most people, but she knew what was due to herself, and as long as that creature remained in Walton, she, the post-mistress, could not think of purchasing anything at her father's shop.

Nor, for that matter, could Mrs. Spedley.

Mrs. Ruddles had never for an instant thought of such a thing. It would be a positive encouragement. Mrs. Ruddles herself had daughters. She knew something, she thought, of what constituted a well-regulated mind. She had no fears for her Arabella, Mary, and Martha Jane; but Mrs. Ruddles knew the ill effects of example.

When Hester appeared in the street, all the women instantly crossed to the other side. If she went into a shop to make a purchase, the shop immediately became empty. Women avoided her as if she were a walking pestilence.

_En revanche_ the men ogled her with effrontery, and even middle-aged rotundities with large families, gave themselves killing airs when in her presence.

The stupid ignorance of men! I declare the older I grow the more amazed I am at the dull, purblind, inexcusable ignorance in which one-half of the human race seems destined to remain with respect to the other half, in spite of all experience. To meet with a man who has not some gross prejudice, founded on the most blundering misconception with regard to the nature of women, and on that point, too, which one would imagine they would best understand, is really one of the rarest occurrences. The vast majority of men never seem to escape from the ideas they form about women at school; and no contradiction in the shape of experience seems to suggest to them that those ideas are essentially false. To hear men--and men of the world too--talk about women, is to hear the strangest absurdities and platitudes you can listen to on any subject; to be let into the secret of their conduct towards women, is only to see the ludicrous results to which such erroneous opinions lead them.

It is a tempting subject, but I am not going to pursue this diatribe. I have an illustration to give instead.

Hester Mason having committed a _faux pas_, was instantly, and from that very cause, looked upon by all the men, young and old, as a woman "to be had for the asking." In their simplicity, they could admit of no gradations between a Lucretia and Messalina. If a woman were not as chaste as ice, she must necessarily be utterly abandoned. If one man had succeeded in overcoming her scruples, of course another might. The dolts!

Perhaps it is owing to our prudery, which keeps so strict a surveillance over every word and act, that the smallest licence seems to imply the extremity of licentiousness!

The school-boy notion of the facility of women was at the bottom of their minds, and with beautiful simplicity some of the "knowing dogs" commenced the attack upon Hester's virtue, without even thinking it necessary to adopt a semblance of respect and attachment.

Certainly Hester was not a woman, under any circumstances, to have admitted the addresses of these men; but now, the undisguised insolence and fatuity of their approaches not only made her cheek burn with shame, but made her heart sick with disgust.

With scorn and withering sarcasms she discomfited them one after the other. The contemptible fools instantly joined the chorus of the women; and with good proof that at any rate, she was not altogether abandoned, they were unanimous in their execration of her infamy.

If women were not purer, stronger, and honester than the dull and coarse imaginations of most men depict them, what a world this would be! what children would these women bring forth!

Those men who have known women, known how great their influence for good and for evil, known what a well of feeling, of pure, spontaneous nature, untarnished by contact with the world, there lies hidden in a woman's breast; those who have known how this nature has moulded their own minds, refined its coarseness, giving beauty to its strength, will exclaim with me: what a world would this be were women what men generally suppose them!

Here is Hester Mason, certainly not a good specimen of her sex: vain, capricious, wilful, sensual, perverted by sounding sophisms respecting the rights of women, and the injustice of the marriage laws; she acts up to her opinions, and throws herself away upon a rich and titled noodle for the sake of furthering her ambitious projects; she finds out her mistake, returns home repentant, and instantly a number of ill-conditioned, coarse-minded, coarse-mannered men imagine she cannot hesitate to stoop to them! Believing that she acted from unrestrained licentiousness, they interpreted one act, in this school-boy fashion, and hoped to profit by her weakness. But they found out their mistake; or rather never found it out, for they attributed her refusal to viler motives than those to which they would have attributed her consent.

The insult of their proposals struck deep into her heart--deeper far than the scorn of her own sex; and it made her so wretched, that, at last, it drove her once more from her home. Yes, home became insupportable, and in a moment of desperation she fled; fled to London, and there endeavoured to seek oblivion in the turbulent vortex of a career which one shudders to contemplate.

Of all the tortures, of all the humiliations to which she had submitted, none equalled that of meeting Cecil. In her strange unhappy life there had been but one short dream, and that was her love for Cecil; even when he had rejected her love, and humiliated her by his rejection, she still felt towards him something of that elevating, purifying attachment which forms a sort of serene heaven smiling upon the most abject condition--which is, as it were, the ideal region where the purest, brightest thoughts take refuge. And to meet him in the streets--to appear before his eyes in the flaunting finery of disgrace--to let him see the abyss into which she had fallen! Poor girl! if her errors had no other expiation than that, bitterly would she have expiated them.