The Unwelcome Truth — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

One morning in early November, while Gilbert is writing business letters, Eliza Millward comes to tease him. She has news about that sad Mrs Graham: her husband is not really dead, she ran away, and now a perfect reconciliation has taken place. The source is a Woodford servant who told the vicarage maid in confidence. Gilbert, sure she has not gone back willingly, still cannot bear the bare possibility that someone betrayed her and took her by force. He pockets the letters, saddles the horse himself, and gallops to Woodford. Lawrence is strolling in the grounds. Yes, she is gone. She is at Grassdale Manor. She went of her own accord, because Huntingdon is ill after a fall from his horse, and Miss Myers has already left him. He is not dying. He was alone, or she would not have gone.

Lawrence produces her letter. Gilbert snatches it, then offers it back; Lawrence lets him read. Helen found the house in confusion: decent servants gone, a grim hired nurse, Huntingdon in half delirium. He mistakes her for Alice, starts at the word wife, and later recoils from her white face and those eyes. She sits at the foot of the bed so that if he is dying he may know her. Next day he calls her Alice still, thanks her as dearest, and only slowly accepts that the pertinacious fancy of her face and voice is the truth. He cannot understand why she has come. She names duty, not revenge: she heard he was ill and alone.

She will not produce the child until he signs a written promise, witnessed by Rachel, that Arthur shall remain under her care and that she may take him away whenever she judges it necessary. He pleads fever, inability to hold the pen, inability to see; she will not give way. The boy, thirteen months absent, clings to her in the darkened room and answers Papa without gladness. Huntingdon swears she has taught the child to hate him. She sends Arthur out and goes on nursing. As the patient rallies he ascribes every attendance to sweet revenge and Christian magnanimity. She asks whether, if the illness should be fatal, he is prepared to meet it. He cannot bear to think of death; if she thinks there is danger she must save him first, and then in gratitude he will hear whatever she likes to say. She drops the unwelcome topic.

Gilbert folds the letter and says she is casting pearls before swine, yet he will say no more against her: the motives were the best and noblest. He keeps the letter because her hand wrote it, though she has not once mentioned him. He asks Lawrence, when he writes, to put one question: may Gilbert enlighten his mother and sister so far as to make the neighbourhood sensible of the injustice done her? No tender messages. Lawrence will come himself with the answer.