"Where IS the little un, Hetty?" said Mrs. Poyser. "She came in here not long ago."
"I don"t know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think."
The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty, pa.s.sed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however, without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her person and attire unfit for presentation.
"And do you carry the b.u.t.ter to market when you"ve made it?" said the Captain to Hetty, meanwhile.
"Oh no, sir; not when it"s so heavy. I"m not strong enough to carry it. Alick takes it on horseback."
"No, I"m sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights. But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don"t you? Why don"t you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it"s so green and pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church."
"Aunt doesn"t like me to go a-walking only when I"m going somewhere," said Hetty. "But I go through the Chase sometimes."
"And don"t you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw you once in the housekeeper"s room."
"It isn"t Mrs. Best, it"s Mrs. Pomfret, the lady"s maid, as I go to see. She"s teaching me tent-st.i.tch and the lace-mending. I"m going to tea with her to-morrow afternoon."
The reason why there had been s.p.a.ce for this tete-a-tete can only be known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore. But now she appeared holding her mother"s hand--the end of her round nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and water.
"Here she is!" said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the low stone shelf. "Here"s Totty! By the by, what"s her other name? She wasn"t christened Totty."
"Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte"s her christened name. It"s a name i" Mr. Poyser"s family: his grandmother was named Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it"s got to Totty. To be sure it"s more like a name for a dog than a Christian child."
"Totty"s a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a pocket on?" said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets.
Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse.
"It dot notin" in it," she said, as she looked down at it very earnestly.
"No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I"ve got some things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare I"ve got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise they make in Totty"s pink pocket." Here he shook the pocket with the five sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, "Oh for shame, you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he"s given you I"m sure, sir, it"s very kind of you; but she"s spoiled shameful; her father won"t have her said nay in anything, and there"s no managing her. It"s being the youngest, and th" only gell."
"Oh, she"s a funny little fatty; I wouldn"t have her different. But I must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me."
With a "good-bye," a bright glance, and a bow to Hetty Arthur left the dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector had been so much interested in his conversation with Dinah that he would not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what they had been saying to each other.
Chapter VIII.
A Vocation.
DINAH, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr. Irwine looking at her and advancing towards her. He had never yet spoken to her, or stood face to face with her, and her first thought, as her eyes met his, was, "What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish." The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance.
"You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood, I think?" were his first words, as he seated himself opposite to her.
"No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. But my aunt was very kind, wanting me to have rest from my work there, because I"d been ill, and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while."
"Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once had occasion to go there. It"s a dreary bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill there; but that"s many years ago now. I suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment that mill must have brought."
"It IS changed so far as the mill has brought people there, who get a livelihood for themselves by working in it, and make it better for the tradesfolks. I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful, for thereby I have enough and to spare. But it"s still a bleak place, as you say, sir--very different from this country."
"You have relations living there, probably, so that you are attached to the place as your home?"
"I had an aunt there once; she brought me up, for I was an orphan. But she was taken away seven years ago, and I have no other kindred that I know of, besides my Aunt Poyser, who is very good to me, and would have me come and live in this country, which to be sure is a good land, wherein they eat bread without scarceness. But I"m not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small gra.s.s on the hill-top."
"Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there; you are a Methodist--a Wesleyan, I think?"
"Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause to be thankful for the privileges I have had thereby from my earliest childhood."
"And have you been long in the habit of preaching? For I understand you preached at Hayslope last night."
"I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one."
"Your Society sanctions women"s preaching, then?"
"It doesn"t forbid them, sir, when they"ve a clear call to the work, and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of G.o.d"s people. Mrs. Fletcher, as you may have heard about, was the first woman to preach in the Society, I believe, before she was married, when she was Miss Bosanquet; and Mr. Wesley approved of her undertaking the work. She had a great gift, and there are many others now living who are precious fellow-helpers in the work of the ministry. I understand there"s been voices raised against it in the Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to nought. It isn"t for men to make channels for G.o.d"s Spirit, as they make channels for the watercourses, and say, "Flow here, but flow not there.""
"But don"t you find some danger among your people--I don"t mean to say that it is so with you, far from it--but don"t you find sometimes that both men and women fancy themselves channels for G.o.d"s Spirit, and are quite mistaken, so that they set about a work for which they are unfit and bring holy things into contempt?"
"Doubtless it is so sometimes; for there have been evil-doers among us who have sought to deceive the brethren, and some there are who deceive their own selves. But we are not without discipline and correction to put a check upon these things. There"s a very strict order kept among us, and the brethren and sisters watch for each other"s souls as they that must give account. They don"t go every one his own way and say, "Am I my brother"s keeper?""
"But tell me--if I may ask, and I am really interested in knowing it--how you first came to think of preaching?"
"Indeed, sir, I didn"t think of it at all--I"d been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in cla.s.s, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach, for when I"m not greatly wrought upon, I"m too much given to sit still and keep by myself. It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of G.o.d overflowing my soul--as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great--aren"t they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it"s my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can"t help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me."
"But tell me the circ.u.mstances--just how it was, the very day you began to preach."
"It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps--that"s a village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines, and where there"s no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep without a shepherd. It"s better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where there"s no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village, the people were expecting him, for he"d appointed the time and the place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were a.s.sembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn"t stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people, thinking we"d go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them. But as I pa.s.sed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men, who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body. And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages, and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the Lord. That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I"ve preached ever since."
Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Irwine was deeply interested. He said to himself, "He must be a miserable prig who would act the pedagogue here: one might as well go and lecture the trees for growing in their own shape."
"And you never feel any embarra.s.sment from the sense of your youth--that you are a lovely young woman on whom men"s eyes are fixed?" he said aloud.
"No, I"ve no room for such feelings, and I don"t believe the people ever take notice about that. I think, sir, when G.o.d makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was--he only saw the brightness of the Lord. I"ve preached to as rough ignorant people as can be in the villages about Snowfield--men that looked very hard and wild--but they never said an uncivil word to me, and often thanked me kindly as they made way for me to pa.s.s through the midst of them."
"THAT I can believe--that I can well believe," said Mr. Irwine, emphatically. "And what did you think of your hearers last night, now? Did you find them quiet and attentive?"
"Very quiet, sir, but I saw no signs of any great work upon them, except in a young girl named Bessy Cranage, towards whom my heart yearned greatly, when my eyes first fell on her blooming youth, given up to folly and vanity. I had some private talk and prayer with her afterwards, and I trust her heart is touched. But I"ve noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the cattle, there"s a strange deadness to the Word, as different as can be from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It"s wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil. I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at ease."
"Why, yes, our farm-labourers are not easily roused. They take life almost as slowly as the sheep and cows. But we have some intelligent workmen about here. I daresay you know the Bedes; Seth Bede, by the by, is a Methodist."
"Yes, I know Seth well, and his brother Adam a little. Seth is a gracious young man--sincere and without offence; and Adam is like the patriarch Joseph, for his great skill and knowledge and the kindness he shows to his brother and his parents."
"Perhaps you don"t know the trouble that has just happened to them? Their father, Matthias Bede, was drowned in the Willow Brook last night, not far from his own door. I"m going now to see Adam."
"Ah, their poor aged mother!" said Dinah, dropping her hands and looking before her with pitying eyes, as if she saw the object of her sympathy. "She will mourn heavily, for Seth has told me she"s of an anxious, troubled heart. I must go and see if I can give her any help."
As she rose and was beginning to fold up her work, Captain Donnithorne, having exhausted all plausible pretexts for remaining among the milk-pans, came out of the dairy, followed by Mrs. Poyser. Mr. Irwine now rose also, and, advancing towards Dinah, held out his hand, and said, "Good-bye. I hear you are going away soon; but this will not be the last visit you will pay your aunt--so we shall meet again, I hope."
His cordiality towards Dinah set all Mrs. Poyser"s anxieties at rest, and her face was brighter than usual, as she said, "I"ve never asked after Mrs. Irwine and the Miss Irwines, sir; I hope they"re as well as usual."
"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poyser, except that Miss Anne has one of her bad headaches to-day. By the by, we all liked that nice cream-cheese you sent us--my mother especially."
"I"m very glad, indeed, sir. It is but seldom I make one, but I remembered Mrs. Irwine was fond of "em. Please to give my duty to her, and to Miss Kate and Miss Anne. They"ve never been to look at my poultry this long while, and I"ve got some beautiful speckled chickens, black and white, as Miss Kate might like to have some of amongst hers."
"Well, I"ll tell her; she must come and see them. Good-bye," said the rector, mounting his horse.
"Just ride slowly on, Irwine," said Captain Donnithorne, mounting also. "I"ll overtake you in three minutes. I"m only going to speak to the shepherd about the whelps. Good-bye, Mrs. Poyser; tell your husband I shall come and have a long talk with him soon."
Mrs. Poyser curtsied duly, and watched the two horses until they had disappeared from the yard, amidst great excitement on the part of the pigs and the poultry, and under the furious indignation of the bull-dog, who performed a Pyrrhic dance, that every moment seemed to threaten the breaking of his chain. Mrs. Poyser delighted in this noisy exit; it was a fresh a.s.surance to her that the farm-yard was well guarded, and that no loiterers could enter un.o.bserved; and it was not until the gate had closed behind the captain that she turned into the kitchen again, where Dinah stood with her bonnet in her hand, waiting to speak to her aunt, before she set out for Lisbeth Bede"s cottage.
Mrs. Poyser, however, though she noticed the bonnet, deferred remarking on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at Mr. Irwine"s behaviour.
"Why, Mr. Irwine wasn"t angry, then? What did he say to you, Dinah? Didn"t he scold you for preaching?"
"No, he was not at all angry; he was very friendly to me. I was quite drawn out to speak to him; I hardly know how, for I had always thought of him as a worldly Sadducee. But his countenance is as pleasant as the morning sunshine."
"Pleasant! And what else did y" expect to find him but pleasant?" said Mrs. Poyser impatiently, resuming her knitting. "I should think his countenance is pleasant indeed! And him a gentleman born, and"s got a mother like a picter. You may go the country round and not find such another woman turned sixty-six. It"s summat-like to see such a man as that i" the desk of a Sunday! As I say to Poyser, it"s like looking at a full crop o" wheat, or a pasture with a fine dairy o" cows in it; it makes you think the world"s comfortable-like. But as for such creaturs as you Methodisses run after, I"d as soon go to look at a lot o" bare-ribbed runts on a common. Fine folks they are to tell you what"s right, as look as if they"d never tasted nothing better than bacon-sword and sour-cake i" their lives. But what did Mr. Irwine say to you about that fool"s trick o" preaching on the Green?"
"He only said he"d heard of it; he didn"t seem to feel any displeasure about it. But, dear aunt, don"t think any more about that. He told me something that I"m sure will cause you sorrow, as it does me. Thias Bede was drowned last night in the Willow Brook, and I"m thinking that the aged mother will be greatly in need of comfort. Perhaps I can be of use to her, so I have fetched my bonnet and am going to set out."
"Dear heart, dear heart! But you must have a cup o" tea first, child," said Mrs. Poyser, falling at once from the key of B with five sharps to the frank and genial C. "The kettle"s boiling--we"ll have it ready in a minute; and the young uns "ull be in and wanting theirs directly. I"m quite willing you should go and see th" old woman, for you"re one as is allays welcome in trouble, Methodist or no Methodist; but, for the matter o" that, it"s the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the difference. Some cheeses are made o" skimmed milk and some o" new milk, and it"s no matter what you call "em, you may tell which is which by the look and the smell. But as to Thias Bede, he"s better out o" the way nor in--G.o.d forgi" me for saying so--for he"s done little this ten year but make trouble for them as belonged to him; and I think it "ud be well for you to take a little bottle o" rum for th" old woman, for I daresay she"s got never a drop o" nothing to comfort her inside. Sit down, child, and be easy, for you shan"t stir out till you"ve had a cup o" tea, and so I tell you."
During the latter part of this speech, Mrs. Poyser had been reaching down the tea-things from the shelves, and was on her way towards the pantry for the loaf (followed close by Totty, who had made her appearance on the rattling of the tea-cups), when Hetty came out of the dairy relieving her tired arms by lifting them up, and clasping her hands at the back of her head.
"Molly," she said, rather languidly, "just run out and get me a bunch of dock-leaves: the b.u.t.ter"s ready to pack up now."
"D" you hear what"s happened, Hetty?" said her aunt.
"No; how should I hear anything?" was the answer, in a pettish tone.
"Not as you"d care much, I daresay, if you did hear; for you"re too feather-headed to mind if everybody was dead, so as you could stay upstairs a-dressing yourself for two hours by the clock. But anybody besides yourself "ud mind about such things happening to them as think a deal more of you than you deserve. But Adam Bede and all his kin might be drownded for what you"d care--you"d be perking at the gla.s.s the next minute."
"Adam Bede--drowned?" said Hetty, letting her arms fall and looking rather bewildered, but suspecting that her aunt was as usual exaggerating with a didactic purpose.
"No, my dear, no," said Dinah kindly, for Mrs. Poyser had pa.s.sed on to the pantry without deigning more precise information. "Not Adam. Adam"s father, the old man, is drowned. He was drowned last night in the Willow Brook. Mr. Irwine has just told me about it."
"Oh, how dreadful!" said Hetty, looking serious, but not deeply affected; and as Molly now entered with the dock-leaves, she took them silently and returned to the dairy without asking further questions.
Chapter IX.
Hetty"s World.
WHILE she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant b.u.t.ter as the primrose is set off by its nest of green I am afraid Hetty was thinking a great deal more of the looks Captain Donnithorne had cast at her than of Adam and his troubles. Bright, admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman with white hands, a gold chain, occasional regimentals, and wealth and grandeur immeasurable--those were the warm rays that set poor Hetty"s heart vibrating and playing its little foolish tunes over and over again. We do not hear that Memnon"s statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, or in response to any other influence divine or human than certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.
Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her. She was not blind to the fact that young Luke Britton of Broxton came to Hayslope Church on a Sunday afternoon on purpose that he might see her; and that he would have made much more decided advances if her uncle Poyser, thinking but lightly of a young man whose father"s land was so foul as old Luke Britton"s, had not forbidden her aunt to encourage him by any civilities. She was aware, too, that Mr. Craig, the gardener at the Chase, was over head and ears in love with her, and had lately made unmistakable avowals in luscious strawberries and hyperbolical peas. She knew still better, that Adam Bede--tall, upright, clever, brave Adam Bede--who carried such authority with all the people round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening, saying that "Adam knew a fine sight more o" the natur o" things than those as thought themselves his betters"--she knew that this Adam, who was often rather stern to other people and not much given to run after the la.s.ses, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty"s sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn"t help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off, and could do figures in his head--a degree of accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that countryside. Not at all like that slouching Luke Britton, who, when she once walked with him all the way from Broxton to Hayslope, had only broken silence to remark that the grey goose had begun to lay. And as for Mr. Craig, the gardener, he was a sensible man enough, to be sure, but he was knock-kneed, and had a queer sort of sing-song in his talk; moreover, on the most charitable supposition, he must be far on the way to forty.
Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Adam, and would be pleased for her to marry him. For those were times when there was no rigid demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan, and on the home hearth, as well as in the public house, they might be seen taking their jug of ale together; the farmer having a latent sense of capital, and of weight in parish affairs, which sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority in conversation. Martin Poyser was not a frequenter of public houses, but he liked a friendly chat over his own home-brewed; and though it was pleasant to lay down the law to a stupid neighbour who had no notion how to make the best of his farm, it was also an agreeable variety to learn something from a clever fellow like Adam Bede. Accordingly, for the last three years--ever since he had superintended the building of the new barn--Adam had always been made welcome at the Hall Farm, especially of a winter evening, when the whole family, in patriarchal fashion, master and mistress, children and servants, were a.s.sembled in that glorious kitchen, at well-graduated distances from the blazing fire. And for the last two years, at least, Hetty had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say, "Adam Bede may be working for wage now, but he"ll be a master-man some day, as sure as I sit in this chair. Mester Burge is in the right on"t to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if it"s true what they say; the woman as marries him "ull have a good take, be"t Lady day or Michaelmas," a remark which Mrs. Poyser always followed up with her cordial a.s.sent. "Ah," she would say, "it"s all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but mayhappen he"ll be a ready-made fool; and it"s no use filling your pocket full o" money if you"ve got a hole in the corner. It"ll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o" your own, if you"ve got a soft to drive you: he"ll soon turn you over into the ditch. I allays said I"d never marry a man as had got no brains; for where"s the use of a woman having brains of her own if she"s tackled to a geck as everybody"s a-laughing at? She might as well dress herself fine to sit back"ards on a donkey."
These expressions, though figurative, sufficiently indicated the bent of Mrs. Poyser"s mind with regard to Adam; and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Adam for a penniless niece. For what could Hetty have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants and children? But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his superiority to her other admirers, she had never brought herself to think of accepting him. She liked to feel that this strong, skilful, keen-eyed man was in her power, and would have been indignant if he had shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle Mary Burge, who would have been grateful enough for the most trifling notice from him. "Mary Burge, indeed! Such a sallow-faced girl: if she put on a bit of pink ribbon, she looked as yellow as a crow-flower and her hair was as straight as a hank of cotton." And always when Adam stayed away for several weeks from the Hall Farm, and otherwise made some show of resistance to his pa.s.sion as a foolish one, Hetty took care to entice him back into the net by little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble at his neglect. But as to marrying Adam, that was a very different affair! There was nothing in the world to tempt her to do that. Her cheeks never grew a shade deeper when his name was mentioned; she felt no thrill when she saw him pa.s.sing along the causeway by the window, or advancing towards her unexpectedly in the footpath across the meadow; she felt nothing, when his eyes rested on her, but the cold triumph of knowing that he loved her and would not care to look at Mary Burge. He could no more stir in her the emotions that make the sweet intoxication of young love than the mere picture of a sun can stir the spring sap in the subtle fibres of the plant. She saw him as he was--a poor man with old parents to keep, who would not be able, for a long while to come, to give her even such luxuries as she shared in her uncle"s house. And Hetty"s dreams were all of luxuries: to sit in a carpeted parlour, and always wear white stockings; to have some large beautiful ear-rings, such as were all the fashion; to have Nottingham lace round the top of her gown, and something to make her handkerchief smell nice, like Miss Lydia Donnithorne"s when she drew it out at church; and not to be obliged to get up early or be scolded by anybody. She thought, if Adam had been rich and could have given her these things, she loved him well enough to marry him.
But for the last few weeks a new influence had come over Hetty--vague, atmospheric, shaping itself into no self-confessed hopes or prospects, but producing a pleasant narcotic effect, making her tread the ground and go about her work in a sort of dream, unconscious of weight or effort, and showing her all things through a soft, liquid veil, as if she were living not in this solid world of brick and stone, but in a beatified world, such as the sun lights up for us in the waters. Hetty had become aware that Mr. Arthur Donnithorne would take a good deal of trouble for the chance of seeing her; that he always placed himself at church so as to have the fullest view of her both sitting and standing; that he was constantly finding reason for calling at the Hall Farm, and always would contrive to say something for the sake of making her speak to him and look at him. The poor child no more conceived at present the idea that the young squire could ever be her lover than a baker"s pretty daughter in the crowd, whom a young emperor distinguishes by an imperial but admiring smile, conceives that she shall be made empress. But the baker"s daughter goes home and dreams of the handsome young emperor, and perhaps weighs the flour amiss while she is thinking what a heavenly lot it must be to have him for a husband. And so, poor Hetty had got a face and a presence haunting her waking and sleeping dreams; bright, soft glances had penetrated her, and suffused her life with a strange, happy languor. The eyes that shed those glances were really not half so fine as Adam"s, which sometimes looked at her with a sad, beseeching tenderness, but they had found a ready medium in Hetty"s little silly imagination, whereas Adam"s could get no entrance through that atmosphere. For three weeks, at least, her inward life had consisted of little else than living through in memory the looks and words Arthur had directed towards her--of little else than recalling the sensations with which she heard his voice outside the house, and saw him enter, and became conscious that his eyes were fixed on her, and then became conscious that a tall figure, looking down on her with eyes that seemed to touch her, was coming nearer in clothes of beautiful texture with an odour like that of a flower-garden borne on the evening breeze. Foolish thoughts! But all this happened, you must remember, nearly sixty years ago, and Hetty was quite uneducated--a simple farmer"s girl, to whom a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an Olympian G.o.d. Until to-day, she had never looked farther into the future than to the next time Captain Donnithorne would come to the Farm, or the next Sunday when she should see him at church; but now she thought, perhaps he would try to meet her when she went to the Chase to-morrow--and if he should speak to her, and walk a little way, when n.o.body was by! That had never happened yet; and now her imagination, instead of retracing the past, was busy fashioning what would happen to-morrow--whereabout in the Chase she should see him coming towards her, how she should put her new rose-coloured ribbon on, which he had never seen, and what he would say to her to make her return his glance--a glance which she would be living through in her memory, over and over again, all the rest of the day.
In this state of mind, how could Hetty give any feeling to Adam"s troubles, or think much about poor old Thias being drowned? Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as b.u.t.terflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a barrier of dreams--by invisible looks and impalpable arms.
While Hetty"s hands were busy packing up the b.u.t.ter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by Mr. Irwine"s side towards the valley of the Willow Brook, had also certain indistinct antic.i.p.ations, running as an undercurrent in his mind while he was listening to Mr. Irwine"s account of Dinah--indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when Mr. Irwine suddenly said, "What fascinated you so in Mrs. Poyser"s dairy, Arthur? Have you become an amateur of damp quarries and skimming dishes?"
Arthur knew the rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use, so he said, with his accustomed frankness, "No, I went to look at the pretty b.u.t.ter-maker Hetty Sorrel. She"s a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would paint her. It"s amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmers" daughters, when the men are such clowns. That common, round, red face one sees sometimes in the men--all cheek and no features, like Martin Poyser"s--comes out in the women of the famuly as the most charming phiz imaginable."
"Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Hetty in an artistic light, but I must not have you feeding her vanity and filling her little noddle with the notion that she"s a great beauty, attractive to fine gentlemen, or you will spoil her for a poor man"s wife--honest Craig"s, for example, whom I have seen bestowing soft glances on her. The little puss seems already to have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it"s a law of nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty. Apropos of marrying, I hope our friend Adam will get settled, now the poor old man"s gone. He will only have his mother to keep in future, and I"ve a notion that there"s a kindness between him and that nice modest girl, Mary Burge, from something that fell from old Jonathan one day when I was talking to him. But when I mentioned the subject to Adam he looked uneasy and turned the conversation. I suppose the love-making doesn"t run smooth, or perhaps Adam hangs back till he"s in a better position. He has independence of spirit enough for two men--rather an excess of pride, if anything."
"That would be a capital match for Adam. He would slip into old Burge"s shoes and make a fine thing of that building business, I"ll answer for him. I should like to see him well settled in this parish; he would be ready then to act as my grand-vizier when I wanted one. We could plan no end of repairs and improvements together. I"ve never seen the girl, though, I think--at least I"ve never looked at her."
"Look at her next Sunday at church--she sits with her father on the left of the reading-desk. You needn"t look quite so much at Hetty Sorrel then. When I"ve made up my mind that I can"t afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow it upon you."
"Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day though I don"t know that I have any present use for it. Bless me! How the brook has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now we"re at the bottom of the hill."
That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in the lane behind Adam"s cottage.
Chapter X.
Dinah Visits Lisbeth.
AT five o"clock Lisbeth came downstairs with a large key in her hand: it was the key of the chamber where her husband lay dead. Throughout the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing grief, she had been in incessant movement, performing the initial duties to her dead with the awe and exact.i.tude that belong to religious rites. She had brought out her little store of bleached linen, which she had for long years kept in reserve for this supreme use. It seemed but yesterday--that time so many midsummers ago, when she had told Thias where this linen lay, that he might be sure and reach it out for her when SHE died, for she was the elder of the two. Then there had been the work of cleansing to the strictest purity every object in the sacred chamber, and of removing from it every trace of common daily occupation. The small window, which had hitherto freely let in the frosty moonlight or the warm summer sunrise on the working man"s slumber, must now be darkened with a fair white sheet, for this was the sleep which is as sacred under the bare rafters as in ceiled houses. Lisbeth had even mended a long-neglected and unnoticeable rent in the checkered bit of bed-curtain; for the moments were few and precious now in which she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. And the aged peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious. Decent burial was what Lisbeth had been thinking of for herself through years of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should know when she was being carried to the churchyard, followed by her husband and her sons; and now she felt as if the greatest work of her life were to be done in seeing that Thias was buried decently before her--under the white thorn, where once, in a dream, she had thought she lay in the coffin, yet all the while saw the sunshine above and smelt the white blossoms that were so thick upon the thorn the Sunday she went to be churched after Adam was born.
But now she had done everything that could be done to-day in the chamber of death--had done it all herself, with some aid from her sons in lifting, for she would let no one be fetched to help her from the village, not being fond of female neighbours generally; and her favourite Dolly, the old housekeeper at Mr. Burge"s, who had come to condole with her in the morning as soon as she heard of Thias"s death, was too dim-sighted to be of much use. She had locked the door, and now held the key in her hand, as she threw herself wearily into a chair that stood out of its place in the middle of the house floor, where in ordinary times she would never have consented to sit. The kitchen had had none of her attention that day; it was soiled with the tread of muddy shoes and untidy with clothes and other objects out of place. But what at another time would have been intolerable to Lisbeth"s habits of order and cleanliness seemed to her now just what should be: it was right that things should look strange and disordered and wretched, now the old man had come to his end in that sad way; the kitchen ought not to look as if nothing had happened. Adam, overcome with the agitations and exertions of the day after his night of hard work, had fallen asleep on a bench in the workshop; and Seth was in the back kitchen making a fire of sticks that he might get the kettle to boil, and persuade his mother to have a cup of tea, an indulgence which she rarely allowed herself.