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I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed
this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to
meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily
expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the
schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had the
impression that he was sure to visit it that day.
But the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the
quiet course of Adele's studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard some
bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester's chamber, Mrs. Fairfax's
voice, and Leah's, and the cook's--that is, John's wife--and even John's
own gruff tones. There were exclamations of "What a mercy master was not
burnt in his bed!" "It is always dangerous to keep a candle lit at
night." "How providential that he had presence of mind to think of the
water-jug!" "I wonder he waked nobody!" "It is to be hoped he will not
take cold with sleeping on the library sofa," &c.
To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to
rights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I saw
through the open door that all was again restored to complete order; only
the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the window-seat,
rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about to address
her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the affair: but,
on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber--a woman sitting on a
chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains. That woman was
no other than Grace Poole.
There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff
gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on
her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard
forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the
paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the
countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended
victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed),
charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was
amazed--confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start,
no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of
guilt, or fear of detection. She said "Good morning, Miss," in her usual
phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more tape,
went on with her sewing.
"I will put her to some test," thought I: "such absolute impenetrability
is past comprehension."
"Good morning, Grace," I said. "Has anything happened here? I thought I
heard the servants all talking together a while ago."
"Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep with
his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he awoke
before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to quench
the flames with the water in the ewer."
"A strange affair!" I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her
fixedly--"Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?"
She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of
consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily; then
she answered--
"The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be likely
to hear. Mrs. Fairfax's room and yours are the nearest to master's; but
Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get elderly, they often
sleep heavy." She paused, and then added, with a sort of assumed
indifference, but still in a marked and significant tone--"But you are
young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper: perhaps you may have heard
a noise?"
"I did," said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still polishing
the panes, could not hear me, "and at first I thought it was Pilot: but
Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a strange one."
She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her
needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure--
"It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he
was in such danger: You must have been dreaming."
"I was not dreaming," I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness
provoked me. Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and
conscious eye.
"Have you told master that you heard a laugh?" she inquired.
"I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning."
"You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the
gallery?" she further asked.
She appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me
information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew
or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant
pranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard.
"On the contrary," said I, "I bolted my door."
"Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before
you get into bed?"
"Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans
accordingly!" Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied
sharply, "Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not
think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be
dreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future" (and I laid marked stress on
the words) "I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture to
lie down."
"It will be wise so to do," was her answer: "this neighbourhood is as
quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by
robbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds' worth
of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for such a
large house, there are very few servants, because master has never lived
here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he needs little
waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe side; a door is
soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt between one and any
mischief that may be about. A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all
to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means,
though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly." And here
she closed her harangue: a long one for her, and uttered with the
demureness of a Quakeress.
I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her
miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook
entered.
"Mrs. Poole," said she, addressing Grace, "the servants' dinner will soon
be ready: will you come down?"
"No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I'll
carry it upstairs."
"You'll have some meat?"
"Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that's all."
"And the sago?"
"Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I'll
make it myself."
The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for me:
so I departed.
I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax's account of the curtain conflagration during
dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical
character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the problem of her
position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been given into
custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed from her master's
service. He had almost as much as declared his conviction of her
criminality last night: what mysterious cause withheld him from accusing
her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to secrecy? It was strange: a bold,
vindictive, and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of one of
the meanest of his dependants; so much in her power, that even when she
lifted her hand against his life, he dared not openly charge her with the
attempt, much less punish her for it.
Had Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think
that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester in
her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea could
not be admitted. "Yet," I reflected, "she has been young once; her youth
would be contemporary with her master's: Mrs. Fairfax told me once, she
had lived here many years. I don't think she can ever have been pretty;
but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and strength of
character to compensate for the want of personal advantages. Mr.
Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric: Grace is eccentric
at least. What if a former caprice (a freak very possible to a nature so
sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him into her power, and she
now exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his own
indiscretion, which he cannot shake off, and dare not disregard?" But,
having reached this point of conjecture, Mrs. Poole's square, flat
figure, and uncomely, dry, even coarse face, recurred so distinctly to my
mind's eye, that I thought, "No; impossible! my supposition cannot be
correct. Yet," suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own
hearts, "you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves
you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last
night--remember his words; remember his look; remember his voice!"
I well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment
vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom; Adele was drawing; I bent
over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start.
"Qu' avez-vous, mademoiselle?" said she. "Vos doigts tremblent comme la
feuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!"
"I am hot, Adele, with stooping!" She went on sketching; I went on
thinking.
I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been conceiving
respecting Grace Poole; it disgusted me. I compared myself with her, and
found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was quite a lady; and
she spoke truth--I was a lady. And now I looked much better than I did
when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh, more life, more
vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener enjoyments.
"Evening approaches," said I, as I looked towards the window. "I have
never heard Mr. Rochester's voice or step in the house to-day; but surely
I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the morning; now I
desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown
impatient."
When dusk actually closed, and when Adele left me to go and play in the
nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the
bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I
fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester's own tread, and I turned to the
door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut;
darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late; he
often sent for me at seven and eight o'clock, and it was yet but six.
Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many
things to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace
Poole, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if
he really believed it was she who had made last night's hideous attempt;
and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little mattered
whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of vexing and
soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure
instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the verge of
provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my
skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my
station, I could still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy
restraint; this suited both him and me.
A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance; but it
was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax's room. Thither
I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I
imagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester's presence.
"You must want your tea," said the good lady, as I joined her; "you ate
so little at dinner. I am afraid," she continued, "you are not well to-
day: you look flushed and feverish."
"Oh, quite well! I never felt better."
"Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the
teapot while I knit off this needle?" Having completed her task, she
rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I
suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast
deepening into total obscurity.
"It is fair to-night," said she, as she looked through the panes, "though
not starlight; Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a favourable day for
his journey."
"Journey!--Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out."
"Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas,
Mr. Eshton's place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe
there is quite a party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn,
Colonel Dent, and others."
"Do you expect him back to-night?"
"No--nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a
week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they are
so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all that can
please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen
especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr. Rochester is
so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is a general
favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would not think
his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in their eyes:
but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his wealth and good
blood, make amends for any little fault of look."
"Are there ladies at the Leas?"
"There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters--very elegant young ladies
indeed; and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram, most
beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or seven
years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a
Christmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the
dining-room that day--how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit
up! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present--all of
the first county families; and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of
the evening."
"You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax: what was she like?"
"Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was
Christmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to
hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to
come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw
a more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of
them--at least most of the younger ones--looked handsome; but Miss Ingram
was certainly the queen."
"And what was she like?"
"Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive
complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr.
Rochester's: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then
she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged:
a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest
curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf
was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and
descending in long, fringed ends below her knee. She wore an
amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the
jetty mass of her curls."
"She was greatly admired, of course?"
"Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments.
She was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the
piano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet."
"Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing."
"Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music."
"And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice had she?"
"A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to
listen to her;--and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music, but
Mr. Rochester is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably good."
"And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?"
"It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large
fortunes. Old Lord Ingram's estates were chiefly entailed, and the
eldest son came in for everything almost."
"But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to her:
Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?"
"Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr.
Rochester is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five."
"What of that? More unequal matches are made every day."
"True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an idea
of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since you
began tea."
"No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?"
I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr.
Rochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adele came in, and the
conversation was turned into another channel.
When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into
my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring
back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's
boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.
Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes,
wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night--of the general
state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason
having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished
tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the
ideal;--I pronounced judgment to this effect:--
That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life;
that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies,
and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.
"_You_," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? _You_ gifted with the
power of pleasing him? _You_ of importance to him in any way? Go! your
folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens
of preference--equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man
of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid
dupe!--Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to
yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?--Cover your face and
be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind
puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed
senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior,
who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women
to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and
unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and
responded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence there
is no extrication.
"Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass
before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without
softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing
irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected,
poor, and plain.'
"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your
drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest
tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully
the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and
sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of
Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye;--What! you
revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!--no sentiment!--no
regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet
harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and
dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither diamond ring
nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire, aerial lace and
glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call it 'Blanche, an
accomplished lady of rank.'
"Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks
well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, 'Mr.
Rochester might probably win that noble lady's love, if he chose to
strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this
indigent and insignificant plebeian?'"
"I'll do it," I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew
calm, and fell asleep.
I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in
crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature
of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face enough, and when
compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great as self-
control could desire. I derived benefit from the task: it had kept my
head and hands employed, and had given force and fixedness to the new
impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my heart.
Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome
discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit. Thanks to
it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which,
had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to
maintain, even externally.
| The next day Jane is anxious to talk to Mr. Rochester about the night before. She is quite surprised when she sees Grace Poole in Rochester's room with another servant mending curtains. Jane questions Grace about what happened there the night before, putting her to a test, and Grace tells her that the master left a candle burning and it caught fire to his bed. Jane cannot believe that Grace is still there, and wonders what power she has over Rochester that he did not make her leave. That night Jane is sure Rochester will call for her, but when Mrs. Fairfax calls her to tea, she learns that Rochester had left for a journey that morning and will be gone a week or more. Mrs. Fairfax tells her that when these fine, fashionable people get together, they do not like to soon part company. Mrs. Fairfax then tells Jane about Miss Ingram, a beautiful, single woman that Rochester may have a fancy for. She says that it is not likely that Rochester will think of marrying her though, as he is almost forty, and Miss Ingram is but twenty-five. When Jane is at last alone and thinking of all that Mrs. Fairfax had told her, she thinks that she had been a fool to think that she had been a favorite of Mr. Rochester's. The next day she makes two drawings, one of herself with all her faults, and one of a beautiful woman as Mrs. Fairfax had described Miss Ingram. She decides that whenever she feels that Mr. Rochester may be taking a fancy to her, she will take out these pictures and compare them | summary |
A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and still
he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be surprised if he
were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the Continent,
and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to come; he had not
unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt and unexpected. When
I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange chill and failing at the
heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense
of disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles,
I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got
over the temporary blunder--how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr.
Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital
interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority:
on the contrary, I just said--
"You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to
receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protegee, and to be
grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty,
you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he
seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don't make him the object
of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth. He is not
of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish
the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not
wanted and would be despised."
I went on with my day's business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague
suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit
Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering
conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to
check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.
Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post
brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter.
"It is from the master," said she, as she looked at the direction. "Now
I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not."
And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking
my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that
circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand
shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into my
saucer, I did not choose to consider.
"Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being
busy enough now: for a little while at least," said Mrs. Fairfax, still
holding the note before her spectacles.
Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of
Adele's pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to
another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly--
"Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?"
"Indeed he is--in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and
not alone either. I don't know how many of the fine people at the Leas
are coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to be
prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I am
to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from
wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the
gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it." And Mrs.
Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence operations.
The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought all
the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it
appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such
scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets,
such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors
and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets
and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since.
Adele ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company and
the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She
would have Sophie to look over all her "toilettes," as she called frocks;
to furbish up any that were "_passees_," and to air and arrange the new.
For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers, jump
on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and piled-up bolsters
and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the chimneys. From
school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had pressed me into her
service, and I was all day in the storeroom, helping (or hindering) her
and the cook; learning to make custards and cheese-cakes and French
pastry, to truss game and garnish desert-dishes.
The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for
dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse
chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody--Adele
excepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my
cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of
doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to
see the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept
locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in prim
cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along the
gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her look
into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,--just say a word, perhaps, to
the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a marble
mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass on. She
would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner, smoke a
moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of porter with
her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper haunt. Only one
hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her fellow-servants below; all
the rest of her time was spent in some low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the
second storey: there she sat and sewed--and probably laughed drearily to
herself,--as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon.
The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except me,
noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed her
position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I once,
indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the
charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying
something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked--
"She gets good wages, I guess?"
"Yes," said Leah; "I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain
of,--there's no stinginess at Thornfield; but they're not one fifth of
the sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying by: she goes every
quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved
enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose she's
got used to the place; and then she's not forty yet, and strong and able
for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business."
"She is a good hand, I daresay," said the charwoman.
"Ah!--she understands what she has to do,--nobody better," rejoined Leah
significantly; "and it is not every one could fill her shoes--not for all
the money she gets."
"That it is not!" was the reply. "I wonder whether the master--"
The charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and
she instantly gave her companion a nudge.
"Doesn't she know?" I heard the woman whisper.
Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. All I
had gathered from it amounted to this,--that there was a mystery at
Thornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely
excluded.
Thursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening; carpets
were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white counterpanes
spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers piled in vases:
both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as hands could make
them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved clock, as well as
the steps and banisters of the staircase, were polished to the brightness
of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard flashed resplendent with
plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases of exotics bloomed on all
sides.
Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, her
gloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the
company,--to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c. Adele, too, would be
dressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to
the party that day at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie to
apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I had
no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my
sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,--"a
very pleasant refuge in time of trouble."
It had been a mild, serene spring day--one of those days which, towards
the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth
as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was
even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.
"It gets late," said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. "I am
glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned; for
it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if there
is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in the
direction of Millcote." She went to the window. "Here he is!" said she.
"Well, John" (leaning out), "any news?"
"They're coming, ma'am," was the answer. "They'll be here in ten
minutes."
Adele flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one side,
so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen.
The ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels were
heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came two
open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the vehicles;
two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen; the third was
Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot bounding before him; at
his side rode a lady, and he and she were the first of the party. Her
purple riding-habit almost swept the ground, her veil streamed long on
the breeze; mingling with its transparent folds, and gleaming through
them, shone rich raven ringlets.
"Miss Ingram!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to her post
below.
The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the angle
of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adele now petitioned to go down;
but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she must not
on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies, either now or
at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr. Rochester would be
very angry, &c. "Some natural tears she shed" on being told this; but as
I began to look very grave, she consented at last to wipe them.
A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen's deep tones and
ladies' silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and distinguishable
above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of the master of
Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests under its roof.
Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a tripping through
the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and closing doors,
and, for a time, a hush.
"Elles changent de toilettes," said Adele; who, listening attentively,
had followed every movement; and she sighed.
"Chez maman," said she, "quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais
partout, au salon et a leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes de
chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c'etait si amusant: comme cela
on apprend."
"Don't you feel hungry, Adele?"
"Mais oui, mademoiselle: voila cinq ou six heures que nous n'avons pas
mange."
"Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and
get you something to eat."
And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs which
conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire and
commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection, and
the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening
spontaneous combustion. In the servants' hall two coachmen and three
gentlemen's gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the abigails, I
suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new servants, that had
been hired from Millcote, were bustling about everywhere. Threading this
chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I took possession of a cold
chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate or two and a knife and
fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I had regained the
gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind me, when an
accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to issue from their
chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom without passing some of
their doors, and running the risk of being surprised with my cargo of
victualage; so I stood still at this end, which, being windowless, was
dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set and twilight gathering.
Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another: each
came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous through the
dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other extremity of
the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity: they then
descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down
a hill. Their collective appearance had left on me an impression of high-
born elegance, such as I had never before received.
I found Adele peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar.
"What beautiful ladies!" cried she in English. "Oh, I wish I might go to
them! Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-bye, after
dinner?"
"No, indeed, I don't; Mr. Rochester has something else to think about.
Never mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow: here
is your dinner."
She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her
attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or both she, I,
and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run a
chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much
engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after nine
and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and coffee-
cups. I allowed Adele to sit up much later than usual; for she declared
she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept opening and
shutting below, and people bustling about. Besides, she added, a message
might possibly come from Mr. Rochester when she was undressed; "et alors
quel dommage!"
I told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a
change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and
it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants passing
backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a sound of
music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been removed;
Adele and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen. Presently
a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a lady who
sang, and very sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet followed, and
then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the intervals. I
listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on
analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst the
confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester; and when it caught them,
which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the tones, rendered
by distance inarticulate, into words.
The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adele, whose head leant against my
shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and
carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies
sought their chambers.
The next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the party
to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out early in
the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I witnessed both
the departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before, was the only lady
equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at her side; the two
rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this circumstance to
Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the window with me--
"You said it was not likely they should think of being married," said I,
"but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other
ladies."
"Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her."
"And she him," I added; "look how she leans her head towards him as if
she were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have
never had a glimpse of it yet."
"You will see her this evening," answered Mrs. Fairfax. "I happened to
remark to Mr. Rochester how much Adele wished to be introduced to the
ladies, and he said: 'Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after
dinner; and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.'"
"Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure," I
answered.
"Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not
think you would like appearing before so gay a party--all strangers; and
he replied, in his quick way--'Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is
my particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her in
case of contumacy.'"
"I will not give him that trouble," I answered. "I will go, if no better
may be; but I don't like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?"
"No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I'll tell you how to manage
so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance, which is
the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into the drawing-
room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the dinner-table; choose
your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not stay long after the
gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr. Rochester see you are
there and then slip away--nobody will notice you."
"Will these people remain long, do you think?"
"Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the Easter
recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote, will
have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester will
accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so protracted a
stay at Thornfield."
It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I
was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adele had been in a
state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the
ladies in the evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the operation
of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of the
process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls arranged
in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put on, her
long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as grave as any
judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire: when she was
dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking care
previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease it, and
assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I quickly
was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss Temple's
wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was soon
smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We
descended.
Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that
through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the
apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth, and
wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers with
which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the arch:
slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party in the
adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of their
conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur.
Adele, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most solemnising
impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I pointed out to
her. I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from a table near,
endeavoured to read. Adele brought her stool to my feet; ere long she
touched my knee.
"What is it, Adele?"
"Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendrie une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques,
mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette."
"You think too much of your 'toilette,' Adele: but you may have a
flower." And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She
sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were
now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress:
there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little
Parisienne's earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress.
A soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back
from the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre
pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent
dessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the
opening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.
There were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the
impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall; many
were dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that
seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose and
curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the others only
stared at me.
They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and
buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of
them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and
ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books:
the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but
clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names afterwards,
and may as well mention them now.
First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had evidently
been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. Of her daughters,
the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naive, and child-like in face and
manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue sash became
her well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant in figure;
with a very pretty face, of that order the French term _minois chiffone_:
both sisters were fair as lilies.
Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect,
very haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful sheen:
her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume, and
within the circlet of a band of gems.
Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like. She
had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her black satin
dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments, pleased
me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.
But the three most distinguished--partly, perhaps, because the tallest
figures of the band--were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters,
Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women.
The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine;
her hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were
still apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid
woman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but then
there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her
bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin,
disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me
not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the
chin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost
preternatural erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it
reminded me of Mrs. Reed's; she mouthed her words in speaking; her voice
was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,--very
intolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of some
gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought) with a
truly imperial dignity.
Blanche and Mary were of equal stature,--straight and tall as poplars.
Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian. I
regarded her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to see
whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax's description;
secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted
of her; and thirdly--it will out!--whether it were such as I should fancy
likely to suit Mr. Rochester's taste.
As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture
and Mrs. Fairfax's description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders,
the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;--but
her face? Her face was like her mother's; a youthful unfurrowed
likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. It
was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her
laugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched and
haughty lip.
Genius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram
was a genius, but she was self-conscious--remarkably self-conscious
indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs.
Dent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she
said, she liked flowers, "especially wild ones;" Miss Ingram had, and she
ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was (what
is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on her
ignorance--her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not good-
natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her voice
was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it well,
with fluency and with a good accent.
Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche; softer features
too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a
Spaniard)--but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression,
her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat,
remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both attired
in spotless white.
And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be
likely to make? I could not tell--I did not know his taste in female
beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty: then
she was accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her, I
thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have obtained
proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to see them
together.
You are not to suppose, reader, that Adele has all this time been sitting
motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies entered, she
rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and said with
gravity--
"Bon jour, mesdames."
And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and exclaimed,
"Oh, what a little puppet!"
Lady Lynn had remarked, "It is Mr. Rochester's ward, I suppose--the
little French girl he was speaking of."
Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss.
Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously--"What a love of a
child!"
And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced
between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English;
absorbing not only the young ladies' attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton
and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart's content.
At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in
the shade--if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the
window-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The
collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is very
imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall, some
young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed; and
Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of the
district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows and
whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of a
"pere noble de theatre." Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall;
like them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Mary's apathetic and
listless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of
blood or vigour of brain.
And where is Mr. Rochester?
He comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter. I
try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes
of the purse I am forming--I wish to think only of the work I have in my
hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my lap;
whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall the
moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he deemed,
an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my
face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to
overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached him
at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my
relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So
far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me. I did
not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at the other side
of the room, and began conversing with some of the ladies.
No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I
might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily
to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise,
and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in
looking,--a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely
point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel
who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and
drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
Most true is it that "beauty is in the eye of the gazer." My master's
colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows,
deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,--all energy, decision,
will,--were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than
beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite
mastered me,--that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them
in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought
hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now,
at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and
strong! He made me love him without looking at me.
I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the Lynns,
the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,--even the military distinction of
Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power?
I had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I could
imagine that most observers would call them attractive, handsome,
imposing; while they would pronounce Mr. Rochester at once harsh-featured
and melancholy-looking. I saw them smile, laugh--it was nothing; the
light of the candles had as much soul in it as their smile; the tinkle of
the bell as much significance as their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester
smile:--his stern features softened; his eye grew both brilliant and
gentle, its ray both searching and sweet. He was talking, at the moment,
to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them receive with calm that
look which seemed to me so penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall,
their colour to rise under it; yet I was glad when I found they were in
no sense moved. "He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is
not of their kind. I believe he is of mine;--I am sure he is--I feel
akin to him--I understand the language of his countenance and movements:
though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and
heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did
I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive
my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other
light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true,
vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must
conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he
cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not
mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean
only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must,
then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:--and yet, while I
breathe and think, I must love him."
Coffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have become
lively as larks; conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and
Mr. Eshton argue on politics; their wives listen. The two proud
dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir
George--whom, by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,--a very big, and
very fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa, coffee-
cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr. Frederick Lynn has
taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is showing her the engravings of a
splendid volume: she looks, smiles now and then, but apparently says
little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on
the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up at
him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does Mr.
Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the feet of
Louisa: Adele shares it with him: he is trying to talk French with her,
and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche Ingram pair?
She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully over an album. She
seems waiting to be sought; but she will not wait too long: she herself
selects a mate.
Mr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth as
solitary as she stands by the table: she confronts him, taking her
station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece.
"Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?"
"Nor am I."
"Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that?"
(pointing to Adele). "Where did you pick her up?"
"I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands."
"You should have sent her to school."
"I could not afford it: schools are so dear."
"Why, I suppose you have a governess for her: I saw a person with her
just now--is she gone? Oh, no! there she is still, behind the window-
curtain. You pay her, of course; I should think it quite as
expensive,--more so; for you have them both to keep in addition."
I feared--or should I say, hoped?--the allusion to me would make Mr.
Rochester glance my way; and I involuntarily shrank farther into the
shade: but he never turned his eyes.
"I have not considered the subject," said he indifferently, looking
straight before him.
"No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should hear
mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think,
a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest
ridiculous, and all incubi--were they not, mama?"
"Did you speak, my own?"
The young lady thus claimed as the dowager's special property, reiterated
her question with an explanation.
"My dearest, don't mention governesses; the word makes me nervous. I
have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. I thank
Heaven I have now done with them!"
Mrs. Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something in her
ear; I suppose, from the answer elicited, it was a reminder that one of
the anathematised race was present.
"Tant pis!" said her Ladyship, "I hope it may do her good!" Then, in a
lower tone, but still loud enough for me to hear, "I noticed her; I am a
judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class."
"What are they, madam?" inquired Mr. Rochester aloud.
"I will tell you in your private ear," replied she, wagging her turban
three times with portentous significancy.
"But my curiosity will be past its appetite; it craves food now."
"Ask Blanche; she is nearer you than I."
"Oh, don't refer him to me, mama! I have just one word to say of the
whole tribe; they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from
them; I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used to
play on our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame Jouberts! Mary was
always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun was with
Madame Joubert: Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing, lachrymose and low-
spirited, not worth the trouble of vanquishing, in short; and Mrs. Grey
was coarse and insensible; no blow took effect on her. But poor Madame
Joubert! I see her yet in her raging passions, when we had driven her to
extremities--spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter, tossed our
books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the ruler and desk,
the fender and fire-irons. Theodore, do you remember those merry days?"
"Yaas, to be sure I do," drawled Lord Ingram; "and the poor old stick
used to cry out 'Oh you villains childs!'--and then we sermonised her on
the presumption of attempting to teach such clever blades as we were,
when she was herself so ignorant."
"We did; and, Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting (or
persecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr. Vining--the parson in the pip, as
we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling in
love with each other--at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised sundry
tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of 'la belle
passion,' and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of our
discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our dead-weights
from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she got an inkling of the
business, found out that it was of an immoral tendency. Did you not, my
lady-mother?"
"Certainly, my best. And I was quite right: depend on that: there are a
thousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and tutors should never
be tolerated a moment in any well-regulated house; firstly--"
"Oh, gracious, mama! Spare us the enumeration! _Au reste_, we all know
them: danger of bad example to innocence of childhood; distractions and
consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached--mutual alliance
and reliance; confidence thence resulting--insolence accompanying--mutiny
and general blow-up. Am I right, Baroness Ingram, of Ingram Park?"
"My lily-flower, you are right now, as always."
"Then no more need be said: change the subject."
Amy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding this dictum, joined in with her
soft, infantine tone: "Louisa and I used to quiz our governess too; but
she was such a good creature, she would bear anything: nothing put her
out. She was never cross with us; was she, Louisa?"
"No, never: we might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her
workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured,
she would give us anything we asked for."
"I suppose, now," said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, "we
shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in
order to avert such a visitation, I again move the introduction of a new
topic. Mr. Rochester, do you second my motion?"
"Madam, I support you on this point, as on every other."
"Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo, are you
in voice to-night?"
"Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be."
"Then, signior, I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your lungs
and other vocal organs, as they will be wanted on my royal service."
"Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?"
"A fig for Rizzio!" cried she, tossing her head with all its curls, as
she moved to the piano. "It is my opinion the fiddler David must have
been an insipid sort of fellow; I like black Bothwell better: to my mind
a man is nothing without a spice of the devil in him; and history may say
what it will of James Hepburn, but I have a notion, he was just the sort
of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have consented to gift with my
hand."
"Gentlemen, you hear! Now which of you most resembles Bothwell?" cried
Mr. Rochester.
"I should say the preference lies with you," responded Colonel Dent.
"On my honour, I am much obliged to you," was the reply.
Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano,
spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant
prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse
to-night; both her words and her air seemed intended to excite not only
the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was evidently bent
on striking them as something very dashing and daring indeed.
"Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!" exclaimed she,
rattling away at the instrument. "Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a
step beyond papa's park gates: nor to go even so far without mama's
permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their
pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man
had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special
prerogative of woman--her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an
ugly _woman_ is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the
_gentlemen_, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour:
let their motto be:--Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a
fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man."
"Whenever I marry," she continued after a pause which none interrupted,
"I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will
suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage:
his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his
mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you."
"I am all obedience," was the response.
"Here then is a Corsair-song. Know that I doat on Corsairs; and for that
reason, sing it _con spirito_."
"Commands from Miss Ingram's lips would put spirit into a mug of milk and
water."
"Take care, then: if you don't please me, I will shame you by showing how
such things _should_ be done."
"That is offering a premium on incapacity: I shall now endeavour to
fail."
"Gardez-vous en bien! If you err wilfully, I shall devise a
proportionate punishment."
"Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for she has it in her power to inflict
a chastisement beyond mortal endurance."
"Ha! explain!" commanded the lady.
"Pardon me, madam: no need of explanation; your own fine sense must
inform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for
capital punishment."
"Sing!" said she, and again touching the piano, she commenced an
accompaniment in spirited style.
"Now is my time to slip away," thought I: but the tones that then severed
the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a
fine voice: he did--a mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own
feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and
there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last deep and full
vibration had expired--till the tide of talk, checked an instant, had
resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered corner and made my exit by
the side-door, which was fortunately near. Thence a narrow passage led
into the hall: in crossing it, I perceived my sandal was loose; I stopped
to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of the
staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose; a gentleman came out;
rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it was Mr. Rochester.
"How do you do?" he asked.
"I am very well, sir."
"Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?"
I thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it: but I
would not take that freedom. I answered--
"I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir."
"What have you been doing during my absence?"
"Nothing particular; teaching Adele as usual."
"And getting a good deal paler than you were--as I saw at first sight.
What is the matter?"
"Nothing at all, sir."
"Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?"
"Not the least."
"Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early."
"I am tired, sir."
He looked at me for a minute.
"And a little depressed," he said. "What about? Tell me."
"Nothing--nothing, sir. I am not depressed."
"But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would
bring tears to your eyes--indeed, they are there now, shining and
swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag.
If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a
servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I
excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you
to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect
it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adele. Good-night, my--" He stopped,
bit his lip, and abruptly left me.
| After ten days there is no word from Rochester, and Mrs. Fairfax says that she would not be surprised if he was gone a year. Jane tries not to be upset by this, convincing herself that she should have no bearing on the actions of her master. After a fortnight a letter from Mr. Rochester comes, saying that he will be home in three days with company. All of the rooms are cleaned and more servants are hired to make ready for the company and the servants they will bring with them. Jane notices that while everyone is doing all they can to prepare, Grace Poole stays up on the third story and only comes down to eat. Jane thinks it odd that no one else seems to notice her strange behavior. She overhears two of the servants talking about Grace, and saying that it is good that she gets paid well, because not everyone could do what she does. When they see Jane, one servant quiets the other, who asks, "Doesn't she know. to which the first servant answers negatively. The guests arrive Thursday evening, and Mrs. Fairfax sees that Miss Ingram is among them. The next day Jane notices that Miss Ingram and Mr. Rochester seem to prefer each other. Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane that Rochester wants her to bring Adele into the drawing room after dinner. Adele and Jane enter the room before the others, and when the women come in, only a few nod to Jane, while the others just stare. Jane describes each of the eight women in the room. Coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen enter. Rochester does not speak to Jane, but stands by the fireplace with Miss Ingram. Jane can not stop looking at him, and she tells the reader that she did not mean to love him. When asked why he does not send Adele to school, Rochester says that it is too expensive. The others say that having a governess is also expensive, and then many go into stories about how useless and silly governesses are. Even this does not make Rochester look at Jane. Miss Ingram tries to change the subject by getting Rochester to sing. He does, and Jane hears he has a wonderful voice, and when he is done, she slips out of the room. He follows her into the hall, and Jane is on the verge of tears. He asks her what is wrong, and says that if he had the time he would talk to her about it, but that he must get back to his guests. He also tells her that he expects her to appear in the drawing room every evening with the guests, and when they part he says "Good-night, my-" and stops, bites his lip, and re-enters the room | summary |
Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how
different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and
solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now
driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life
everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the
gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so
tenantless, without encountering a smart lady's-maid or a dandy valet.
The kitchen, the butler's pantry, the servants' hall, the entrance hall,
were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when
the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called
their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was broken,
and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over
enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in
consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.
I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of
entertainment was proposed: they spoke of "playing charades," but in my
ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in,
the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the
chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester and
the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running
up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to
give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls,
dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey
were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped
petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought
down in armfuls by the abigails; then a selection was made, and such
things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the
drawing-room.
Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was
selecting certain of their number to be of his party. "Miss Ingram is
mine, of course," said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and
Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been
fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent's bracelet, which had got loose.
"Will you play?" he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I
rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my
usual seat.
He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which
was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of
the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should
be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.
"No," I heard her say: "she looks too stupid for any game of the sort."
Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the
bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen,
was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a
large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester's
cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell
merrily; then Adele (who had insisted on being one of her guardian's
party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of
flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of
Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of
roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they
drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton,
dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony
followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime
of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted
in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out--
"Bride!" Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.
A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising
displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. The drawing-
room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the dining-
room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within
the room, appeared a large marble basin--which I recognised as an
ornament of the conservatory--where it usually stood, surrounded by
exotics, and tenanted by gold fish--and whence it must have been
transported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight.
Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester,
costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy
skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very
model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring.
Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in
oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an
embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her
beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of
supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of
form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the idea
of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was
doubtless the character she intended to represent.
She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she
again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed
to accost her; to make some request:--"She hasted, let down her pitcher
on her hand, and gave him to drink." From the bosom of his robe he then
produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and
earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the
treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks
and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the
rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were
wanting.
The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could
not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated. Colonel
Dent, their spokesman, demanded "the tableau of the whole;" whereupon the
curtain again descended.
On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the
rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse
drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table
and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light
proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.
Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on
his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though
the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one
arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the
desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well
have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to his wrists were
attached fetters.
"Bridewell!" exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.
A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their
ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in
Miss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting.
"Do you know," said she, "that, of the three characters, I liked you in
the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant
gentleman-highwayman you would have made!"
"Is all the soot washed from my face?" he asked, turning it towards her.
"Alas! yes: the more's the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your
complexion than that ruffian's rouge."
"You would like a hero of the road then?"
"An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian
bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate."
"Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour
since, in the presence of all these witnesses." She giggled, and her
colour rose.
"Now, Dent," continued Mr. Rochester, "it is your turn." And as the
other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss
Ingram placed herself at her leader's right hand; the other diviners
filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the
actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my
attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on the
arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs. What
charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose, how they
acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the
consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss
Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards him,
till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his
cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged
glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle
returns in memory at this moment.
I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could
not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice
me--because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once
turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions
appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her
robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me
by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to
merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would
soon marry this very lady--because I read daily in her a proud security
in his intentions respecting her--because I witnessed hourly in him a
style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought
than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its
very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though
much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender
jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a
woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;--the
nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss
Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the
feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very
showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant
attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing
bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted
by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to
repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an
opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did
not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were
not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a
spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her
away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her;
sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with
coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these
manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes;
the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended
a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness
of his--this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects--this
obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever-
torturing pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons,
because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her
his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him
that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched
and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: _she could
not charm him_.
If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely
laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the
wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a
good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I
should have had one vital struggle with two tigers--jealousy and despair:
then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired
her--acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days:
and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my
admiration--the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really
stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to
witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail;
vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly
pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled
further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to
be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.
Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows
that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell
harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have
quivered keen in his proud heart--have called love into his stern eye,
and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a
silent conquest might have been won.
"Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so
near to him?" I asked myself. "Surely she cannot truly like him, or not
like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles
so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so
elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by
merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get
nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression
from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him;
but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and
calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he
asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and
it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a
fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are
married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed;
and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun
shines on."
I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's project of
marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first
discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely
to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but
the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the
less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram
for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them,
doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles:
I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not
fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take
to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of
the advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan
convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of
which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act
as I wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my
master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a
sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of
his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing
of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm
that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only
like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but
their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the
vague something--was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a
desponding expression?--that opened upon a careful observer, now and
then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange
depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and
shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and
had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I,
at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with
palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare--to
divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might
look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their
nature.
Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride--saw
only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their
movements of importance--the rest of the party were occupied with their
own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram
continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two
turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting
gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on
which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs. Dent
talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a
courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr.
Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice business. Lord
Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of
the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant
speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one consent, suspended
their by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors: for, after
all, Mr. Rochester and--because closely connected with him--Miss Ingram
were the life and soul of the party. If he was absent from the room an
hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his
guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the
vivacity of conversation.
The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one
day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not likely
to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had
proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond
Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the
stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing
billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought
solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having repelled,
by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to
draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental
tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the
library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and
prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of
absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the
merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.
It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the
hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in the
drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed--
"Voila, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!"
I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too,
looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a
crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible
on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
"What can possess him to come home in that style?" said Miss Ingram. "He
rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot
was with him:--what has he done with the animals?"
As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so
near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking
of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when
she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The
post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman
alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was
a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
"How provoking!" exclaimed Miss Ingram: "you tiresome monkey!"
(apostrophising Adele), "who perched you up in the window to give false
intelligence?" and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.
He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.
"It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam," said he, "when my
friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long
journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate
acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns."
His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being
somewhat unusual,--not precisely foreign, but still not altogether
English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester's,--between thirty and
forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a
fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you
detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to
please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large
and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life--at
least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till
after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease. But
I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at
the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no
meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never
remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking
man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that
smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline
nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even
forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the
girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him--for he occupied an
arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if
he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference
be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek
gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated
keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship
theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage
that "extremes meet."
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps
of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much
sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary
Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that
reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they
both called him "a beautiful man." Louisa said he was "a love of a
creature," and she "adored him;" and Mary instanced his "pretty little
mouth, and nice nose," as her ideal of the charming.
"And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!" cried Louisa,--"so
smooth--none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such
a placid eye and smile!"
And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other
side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to
Hay Common.
I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and
I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then I
learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from
some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so
sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the
house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated
the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I
gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted
with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend's dislike of the burning
heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr.
Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought
the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never
heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.
I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected
one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one
chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire,
which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot
and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near
Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I
heard only the words, "old woman,"--"quite troublesome."
"Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself
off," replied the magistrate.
"No--stop!" interrupted Colonel Dent. "Don't send her away, Eshton; we
might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies." And
speaking aloud, he continued--"Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common
to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches
is in the servants' hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought
in before 'the quality,' to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to
see her?"
"Surely, colonel," cried Lady Ingram, "you would not encourage such a low
impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!"
"But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady," said the footman; "nor
can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating
her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says
nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here."
"What does she want?" asked Mrs. Eshton.
"'To tell the gentry their fortunes,' she says, ma'am; and she swears she
must and will do it."
"What is she like?" inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.
"A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock."
"Why, she's a real sorceress!" cried Frederick Lynn. "Let us have her
in, of course."
"To be sure," rejoined his brother; "it would be a thousand pities to
throw away such a chance of fun."
"My dear boys, what are you thinking about?" exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.
"I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding," chimed
in the Dowager Ingram.
"Indeed, mama, but you can--and will," pronounced the haughty voice of
Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had
sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. "I have a
curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame
forward."
"My darling Blanche! recollect--"
"I do--I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will--quick,
Sam!"
"Yes--yes--yes!" cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. "Let
her come--it will be excellent sport!"
The footman still lingered. "She looks such a rough one," said he.
"Go!" ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.
Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery
and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.
"She won't come now," said he. "She says it's not her mission to appear
before the 'vulgar herd' (them's her words). I must show her into a room
by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by
one."
"You see now, my queenly Blanche," began Lady Ingram, "she encroaches. Be
advised, my angel girl--and--"
"Show her into the library, of course," cut in the "angel girl." "It is
not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to
have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?"
"Yes, ma'am--but she looks such a tinkler."
"Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding."
Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow
once more.
"She's ready now," said the footman, as he reappeared. "She wishes to
know who will be her first visitor."
"I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,"
said Colonel Dent.
"Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming."
Sam went and returned.
"She says, sir, that she'll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble
themselves to come near her; nor," he added, with difficulty suppressing
a titter, "any ladies either, except the young, and single."
"By Jove, she has taste!" exclaimed Henry Lynn.
Miss Ingram rose solemnly: "I go first," she said, in a tone which might
have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van
of his men.
"Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause--reflect!" was her mama's cry; but
she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which
Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.
A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it "le cas" to wring
her hands: which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for
her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under
their breath, and looked a little frightened.
The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the library-
door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch.
Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a
glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and
coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to
her seat, and took it in silence.
"Well, Blanche?" said Lord Ingram.
"What did she say, sister?" asked Mary.
"What did you think? How do you feel?--Is she a real fortune-teller?"
demanded the Misses Eshton.
"Now, now, good people," returned Miss Ingram, "don't press upon me.
Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem,
by the importance of you all--my good mama included--ascribe to this
matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who
is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy
vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry
and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now
I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow
morning, as he threatened."
Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined further
conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all that
time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker, more
dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had
obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from
her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself,
notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to
whatever revelations had been made her.
{During all that time she never turned a page: p184.jpg}
Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go
alone; and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened through
the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro,
till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached with the exercise,
permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous
Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.
Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram's had been: we heard
hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and
at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came
running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.
"I am sure she is something not right!" they cried, one and all. "She
told us such things! She knows all about us!" and they sank breathless
into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.
Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of
things they had said and done when they were mere children; described
books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that
different relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had
even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the
name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what
they most wished for.
Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further
enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes,
ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity. The
matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and
again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had
not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger
urged their services on the agitated fair ones.
In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged
in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and
saw Sam.
"If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young
single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she
will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no
one else for it. What shall I tell her?"
"Oh, I will go by all means," I answered: and I was glad of the
unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped
out of the room, unobserved by any eye--for the company were gathered in
one mass about the trembling trio just returned--and I closed the door
quietly behind me.
"If you like, miss," said Sam, "I'll wait in the hall for you; and if she
frightens you, just call and I'll come in."
"No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid." Nor was
I; but I was a good deal interested and excited.
| One evening in the drawing room the party decides to play charades. Rochester picks his team, and of course Miss Ingram is on it. A man from the party asks Miss Ingram if they should ask Jane to play, and she returns that "she looks too stupid for any game of the sort. Rochester's team plays out a dumbshow where he and Miss Ingram are married, and the other team solves the charade as 'bridewell. It is then the other team's turn, but Jane cannot relate what their charade was, as she spent the whole time staring at Rochester and Miss Ingram. Jane says that she could not feel real jealousy, as Miss Ingram was "too inferior to excite the feeling. Jane goes on to say that "she was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature. Jane also relates that she and the other guests had noticed a spiteful antipathy that Miss Ingram had for Adele. She would push her away and order her from the room. Jane says that if Miss Ingram was a noble woman and had won Rochester's heart, she could have admired her, but she sees that Rochester is not won over by her. Jane is surprised that it seems that it is Rochester's intention to marry for interest and connections, but Jane feels herself unjustified in judging him or Miss Ingram for conforming to the ideas of their class. One day Rochester is summoned to Millcote on business, and the party feels his absence and are not as animated. A stranger arrives saying he is an old friend of Rochester's and will stay until he returns. Jane overhears that the man's name is Mr. Mason, and that he knows Rochester from his travels in the West Indies. Jane is surprised that Rochester's travels took him to such distant shores. The footman enters the room and says that there is a gypsy in the house that will not leave until she tells the fortunes to the party. Miss Ingram wants her brought in. The gypsy is shown into the library and states that she will see no men, but only young and single ladies. Miss Ingram goes first, but when she comes out fifteen minutes later all of the joy she went in with is gone. She sits in a corner pretending to read, but Jane notices she does not turn any pages. Other of the female guests then go in together, and all come out saying how amazing it was that the gypsy seemed to know them and their wishes so well. The footman then comes up to Jane, saying that the gypsy knows that there is yet another young single woman, and Jane says she will go | summary |
The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl--if
Sibyl she were--was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney-
corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad-
brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin.
An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire,
and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the
light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women
do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it
appeared she wished to finish a paragraph.
I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with
sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed
as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's
appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked
up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she
raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-
locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin,
and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at
once, with a bold and direct gaze.
"Well, and you want your fortune told?" she said, in a voice as decided
as her glance, as harsh as her features.
"I don't care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to
warn you, I have no faith."
"It's like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in
your step as you crossed the threshold."
"Did you? You've a quick ear."
"I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain."
"You need them all in your trade."
"I do; especially when I've customers like you to deal with. Why don't
you tremble?"
"I'm not cold."
"Why don't you turn pale?"
"I am not sick."
"Why don't you consult my art?"
"I'm not silly."
The old crone "nichered" a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then
drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having
indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the
pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very
deliberately--"You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly."
"Prove it," I rejoined.
"I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact
strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best
of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away
from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon
it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits
you."
She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking
with vigour.
"You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a
solitary dependent in a great house."
"I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any
one?"
"In my circumstances."
"Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely
placed as you are."
"It would be easy to find you thousands."
"You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly
situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials
are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance
laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results."
"I don't understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life."
"If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm."
"And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?"
"To be sure."
I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she
took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she
told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the
palm, and pored over it without touching it.
"It is too fine," said she. "I can make nothing of such a hand as that;
almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written
there."
"I believe you," said I.
"No," she continued, "it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes,
in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head."
"Ah! now you are coming to reality," I said, as I obeyed her. "I shall
begin to put some faith in you presently."
I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a
ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she
sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.
"I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night," she said, when she
had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart
during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting
before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic
communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere
shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance."
"I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad."
"Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with
whispers of the future?"
"Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to
set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself."
"A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window-
seat (you see I know your habits )--"
"You have learned them from the servants."
"Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I
have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole--"
I started to my feet when I heard the name.
"You have--have you?" thought I; "there is diablerie in the business
after all, then!"
"Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand is
Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But,
as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but
your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company
who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you
study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?"
"I like to observe all the faces and all the figures."
"But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?"
"I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a
tale: it amuses me to watch them."
"What tale do you like best to hear?"
"Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same
theme--courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage."
"And do you like that monotonous theme?"
"Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me."
"Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health,
charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits
and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you--"
"I what?"
"You know--and perhaps think well of."
"I don't know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a
syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider
some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young,
dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to
be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling
disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me."
"You don't know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable
with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!"
"He is not at home."
"A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this
morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that
circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance--blot him, as
it were, out of existence?"
"No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme
you had introduced."
"I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so
many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester's eyes that they overflow
like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?"
"Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests."
"No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all
the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with
the most lively and the most continuous?"
"The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator." I said
this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice,
manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected
sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web
of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for
weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse.
"Eagerness of a listener!" repeated she: "yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by
the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight
in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to
receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have
noticed this?"
"Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face."
"Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not
gratitude?"
I said nothing.
"You have seen love: have you not?--and, looking forward, you have seen
him married, and beheld his bride happy?"
"Humph! Not exactly. Your witch's skill is rather at fault sometimes."
"What the devil have you seen, then?"
"Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that
Mr. Rochester is to be married?"
"Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram."
"Shortly?"
"Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with
an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it),
they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome,
noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not
his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester
estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her
something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous
grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her
blackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or
clearer rent-roll,--he's dished--"
"But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester's fortune: I came to
hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it."
"Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait
contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that
I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it
carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself
to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is
the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug."
"Don't keep me long; the fire scorches me."
{She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair:
p190.jpg}
I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in
her chair. She began muttering,--
"The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft
and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible;
impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases
to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that
signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it
will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance,
the truth of the discoveries I have already made,--to disown the charge
both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in
my opinion. The eye is favourable.
"As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to
impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent
on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never
intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a
mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection
for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.
"I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow
professes to say,--'I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances
require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an
inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous
delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford
to give.' The forehead declares, 'Reason sits firm and holds the reins,
and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild
chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they
are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment
shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in
every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but
I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the
dictates of conscience.'
"Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed
my plans--right plans I deem them--and in them I have attended to the
claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth
would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one
dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want
sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution--such is not my taste. I wish to foster,
not to blight--to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood--no, nor of
brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet--That will
do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now
to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare not. So far I have
governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would
act; but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave
me; the play is played out'."
Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream
still? The old woman's voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and
all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass--as the speech of my
own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and
I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her
face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand
stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once
noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own;
it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically
turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward,
I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I
looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me--on the contrary,
the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced.
"Well, Jane, do you know me?" asked the familiar voice.
"Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then--"
"But the string is in a knot--help me."
"Break it, sir."
"There, then--'Off, ye lendings!'" And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his
disguise.
"Now, sir, what a strange idea!"
"But well carried out, eh? Don't you think so?"
"With the ladies you must have managed well."
"But not with you?"
"You did not act the character of a gipsy with me."
"What character did I act? My own?"
"No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying to
draw me out--or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk
nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir."
"Do you forgive me, Jane?"
"I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I
find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you;
but it was not right."
"Oh, you have been very correct--very careful, very sensible."
I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but,
indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the
interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and
fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had
expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to
conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace Poole--that
living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered her. I had
never thought of Mr. Rochester.
"Well," said he, "what are you musing about? What does that grave smile
signify?"
"Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire
now, I suppose?"
"No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room
yonder are doing."
"Discussing the gipsy, I daresay."
"Sit down!--Let me hear what they said about me."
"I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o'clock. Oh,
are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since you
left this morning?"
"A stranger!--no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?"
"No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty of
installing himself here till you returned."
"The devil he did! Did he give his name?"
"His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from Spanish
Town, in Jamaica, I think."
Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead
me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile
on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.
"Mason!--the West Indies!" he said, in the tone one might fancy a
speaking automaton to enounce its single words; "Mason!--the West
Indies!" he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times,
growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly
seemed to know what he was doing.
"Do you feel ill, sir?" I inquired.
"Jane, I've got a blow; I've got a blow, Jane!" He staggered.
"Oh, lean on me, sir."
"Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now."
"Yes, sir, yes; and my arm."
He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his
own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most troubled
and dreary look.
"My little friend!" said he, "I wish I were in a quiet island with only
you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me."
"Can I help you, sir?--I'd give my life to serve you."
"Jane, if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands; I promise you that."
"Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,--I'll try, at least, to do it."
"Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be
at supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is
doing."
I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr.
Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,--the supper was
arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood
about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands.
Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and
animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and Mrs.
Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a wine-glass (I saw
Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she thought I was taking a
liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the library.
Mr. Rochester's extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more
firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand.
"Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!" he said. He swallowed the
contents and returned it to me. "What are they doing, Jane?"
"Laughing and talking, sir."
"They don't look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something
strange?"
"Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety."
"And Mason?"
"He was laughing too."
"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do,
Jane?"
"Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could."
He half smiled. "But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me
coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off
and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?"
"I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with
you."
"To comfort me?"
"Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could."
"And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?"
"I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should
care nothing about it."
"Then, you could dare censure for my sake?"
"I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as
you, I am sure, do."
"Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in his
ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in here
and then leave me."
"Yes, sir."
I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight
among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him
from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs.
At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors
repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester's voice, and
heard him say, "This way, Mason; this is your room."
He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon
asleep.
| Jane enters the room and tells the gypsy that she can tell her fortune, but that she has no faith. They talk for a while, and the gypsy tells Jane that she knows that she sits with the rest of the party every night, and asks if she studies one person more than the others. Jane says that she looks at them all. The gypsy tells Jane that it is hard to tell her fortune, as one trait contradicts another. Their talk continues, until the gypsy gets closer to the fire and Jane realizes that it is Rochester. Jane is surprised and tries to remember if she had said anything absurd. She feels that she had not, and Rochester says that she had been very careful and correct. He wants to know what the others had said about him. Jane tells him, and then mentions that Mr. Mason had arrived. Mr. Rochester's smile leaves him and he gets quite white, leaning on Jane. Rochester asks Jane what she would do if all of his friends suddenly turned on him, and she says that she would not leave, but would stay and comfort him. He tells her to go and get him a glass of wine and for her to lead Mason to him. Later, after she had been in bed awhile, she hears Rochester lead Mason to a room | summary |
I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let
down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon, which was
full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that
space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the
unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of
night, I opened my eyes on her disk--silver-white and crystal clear. It
was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw
the curtain.
Good God! What a cry!
The night--its silence--its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp,
a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.
My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed.
The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that
fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on
the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud
shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere
it could repeat the effort.
It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And
overhead--yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling--I now heard a
struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered
voice shouted--
"Help! help! help!" three times rapidly.
"Will no one come?" it cried; and then, while the staggering and stamping
went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:--
"Rochester! Rochester! for God's sake, come!"
A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery.
Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and there
was silence.
I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued
from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations,
terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one
looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and
ladies alike had quitted their beds; and "Oh! what is it?"--"Who is
hurt?"--"What has happened?"--"Fetch a light!"--"Is it fire?"--"Are there
robbers?"--"Where shall we run?" was demanded confusedly on all hands.
But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They
ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the
confusion was inextricable.
"Where the devil is Rochester?" cried Colonel Dent. "I cannot find him
in his bed."
"Here! here!" was shouted in return. "Be composed, all of you: I'm
coming."
And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced
with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey. One of the
ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.
"What awful event has taken place?" said she. "Speak! let us know the
worst at once!"
"But don't pull me down or strangle me," he replied: for the Misses
Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white
wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
"All's right!--all's right!" he cried. "It's a mere rehearsal of Much
Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous."
And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself
by an effort, he added--
"A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She's an excitable,
nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something
of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I
must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled,
she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the
ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing
superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a
pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames" (to the dowagers), "you will take
cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer."
And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get
them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not
wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I
had left it.
Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself
carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that
had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had
proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a
servant's dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that
the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to
pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When
dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent
grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed
to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.
No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in
about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed
that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon
declined: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and
darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left
the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped
to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.
"Am I wanted?" I asked.
"Are you up?" asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master's.
"Yes, sir."
"And dressed?"
"Yes."
"Come out, then, quietly."
I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.
"I want you," he said: "come this way: take your time, and make no
noise."
My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat.
He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low
corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his
side.
"Have you a sponge in your room?" he asked in a whisper.
"Yes, sir."
"Have you any salts--volatile salts?"
"Yes."
"Go back and fetch both."
I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer,
and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his
hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock;
he paused, and addressed me again.
"You don't turn sick at the sight of blood?"
"I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet."
I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no faintness.
"Just give me your hand," he said: "it will not do to risk a fainting
fit."
I put my fingers into his. "Warm and steady," was his remark: he turned
the key and opened the door.
I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax
showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was
now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then
been concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room
within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog
quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, "Wait a
minute," and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of laughter
greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole's
own goblin ha! ha! _She_ then was there. He made some sort of
arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he
came out and closed the door behind him.
"Here, Jane!" he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large
bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of
the chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it,
dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant
back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I
recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face--the stranger, Mason:
I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in
blood.
"Hold the candle," said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a basin
of water from the washstand: "Hold that," said he. I obeyed. He took
the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked
for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason
shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of
the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away
blood, trickling fast down.
"Is there immediate danger?" murmured Mr. Mason.
"Pooh! No--a mere scratch. Don't be so overcome, man: bear up! I'll
fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you'll be able to be removed by
morning, I hope. Jane," he continued.
"Sir?"
"I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour,
or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns:
if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his
lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any
pretext--and--Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak
to her: open your lips--agitate yourself--and I'll not answer for the
consequences."
Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear,
either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him.
Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to
use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying,
"Remember!--No conversation," he left the room. I experienced a strange
feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating
step ceased to be heard.
Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic
cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and
hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes--that
was appalling--the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of
Grace Poole bursting out upon me.
I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly
countenance--these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose--these eyes now
shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and
ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again and
again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore.
I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the
shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black
under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the
doors of a great cabinet opposite--whose front, divided into twelve
panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each
enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top
rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.
According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or
glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his
brow; now St. John's long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of
Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and
threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor--of Satan himself--in his
subordinate's form.
Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the
movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since
Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but
three sounds at three long intervals,--a step creak, a momentary renewal
of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.
Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived
incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor
subdued by the owner?--what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now
in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that,
masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a
mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?
And this man I bent over--this commonplace, quiet stranger--how had he
become involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him?
What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when
he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him
an apartment below--what brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame
under the violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit
to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why _did_ Mr. Rochester
enforce this concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own life on a
former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he
smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was
submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held
complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had
passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their
former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been
habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had
arisen Mr. Rochester's dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason's arrival? Why
had the mere name of this unresisting individual--whom his word now
sufficed to control like a child--fallen on him, a few hours since, as a
thunderbolt might fall on an oak?
Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered:
"Jane, I have got a blow--I have got a blow, Jane." I could not forget
how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no
light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the
vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester.
"When will he come? When will he come?" I cried inwardly, as the night
lingered and lingered--as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened:
and neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water
to Mason's white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts:
my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss
of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength. He
moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and
I might not even speak to him.
The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks
of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching.
Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the
courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more
the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It
could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has seemed
shorter.
Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.
"Now, Carter, be on the alert," he said to this last: "I give you but
half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the
patient downstairs and all."
"But is he fit to move, sir?"
"No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must
be kept up. Come, set to work."
Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let
in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how
far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the
east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling.
"Now, my good fellow, how are you?" he asked.
"She's done for me, I fear," was the faint reply.
"Not a whit!--courage! This day fortnight you'll hardly be a pin the
worse of it: you've lost a little blood; that's all. Carter, assure him
there's no danger."
"I can do that conscientiously," said Carter, who had now undone the
bandages; "only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have
bled so much--but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well
as cut. This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth
here!"
"She bit me," he murmured. "She worried me like a tigress, when
Rochester got the knife from her."
"You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once,"
said Mr. Rochester.
"But under such circumstances, what could one do?" returned Mason. "Oh,
it was frightful!" he added, shuddering. "And I did not expect it: she
looked so quiet at first."
"I warned you," was his friend's answer; "I said--be on your guard when
you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had
me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and
alone."
"I thought I could have done some good."
"You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but,
however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not
taking my advice; so I'll say no more. Carter--hurry!--hurry! The sun
will soon rise, and I must have him off."
"Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other
wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think."
"She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," said Mason.
I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust,
horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only
said--
"Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don't repeat
it."
"I wish I could forget it," was the answer.
"You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish
Town, you may think of her as dead and buried--or rather, you need not
think of her at all."
"Impossible to forget this night!"
"It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as
dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now.
There!--Carter has done with you or nearly so; I'll make you decent in a
trice. Jane" (he turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance),
"take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into
my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a
clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble."
I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named,
and returned with them.
"Now," said he, "go to the other side of the bed while I order his
toilet; but don't leave the room: you may be wanted again."
I retired as directed.
"Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?" inquired Mr.
Rochester presently.
"No, sir; all was very still."
"We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your
sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long
to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here,
Carter, help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred
cloak? You can't travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold
climate. In your room?--Jane, run down to Mr. Mason's room,--the one
next mine,--and fetch a cloak you will see there."
Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and
edged with fur.
"Now, I've another errand for you," said my untiring master; "you must
away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!--a
clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open
the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a
little glass you will find there,--quick!"
I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.
"That's well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a
dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an
Italian charlatan--a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a
thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now,
for instance. Jane, a little water."
He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on
the washstand.
"That will do;--now wet the lip of the phial."
I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it
to Mason.
"Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so."
"But will it hurt me?--is it inflammatory?"
"Drink! drink! drink!"
Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was
dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied.
Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the
liquid; he then took his arm--
"Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said--"try."
The patient rose.
"Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard;
step out--that's it!"
"I do feel better," remarked Mr. Mason.
"I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the backstairs;
unbolt the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise you
will see in the yard--or just outside, for I told him not to drive his
rattling wheels over the pavement--to be ready; we are coming: and, Jane,
if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem."
It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of
rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage
door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all the
yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a
post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box,
stationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were coming;
he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened. The stillness of
early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the
servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the
blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands
over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped
from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.
The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the
surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the
chaise; Carter followed.
"Take care of him," said Mr. Rochester to the latter, "and keep him at
your house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to
see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?"
"The fresh air revives me, Fairfax."
"Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind--good-bye,
Dick."
"Fairfax--"
"Well what is it?"
"Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let
her--" he stopped and burst into tears.
"I do my best; and have done it, and will do it," was the answer: he shut
up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.
"Yet would to God there was an end of all this!" added Mr. Rochester, as
he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.
This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in
the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me,
prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call "Jane!"
He had opened the portal and stood at it, waiting for me.
"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said; "that
house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?"
"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir."
"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; "and you
see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is
slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate,
and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now _here_" (he
pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) "all is real, sweet, and
pure."
He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and
cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of
old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies,
mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They
were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a
lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the
dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees
and shone down the quiet walks under them.
"Jane, will you have a flower?"
He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to
me.
"Thank you, sir."
"Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds
which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm--this placid and balmly
atmosphere?"
"I do, very much."
"You have passed a strange night, Jane."
"Yes, sir."
"And it has made you look pale--were you afraid when I left you alone
with Mason?"
"I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room."
"But I had fastened the door--I had the key in my pocket: I should have
been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb--my pet lamb--so near a
wolf's den, unguarded: you were safe."
"Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?"
"Oh yes! don't trouble your head about her--put the thing out of your
thoughts."
"Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays."
"Never fear--I will take care of myself."
"Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?"
"I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To
live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and
spue fire any day."
"But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently
potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure
you."
"Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me--but,
unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me,
if not of life, yet for ever of happiness."
"Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him
how to avert the danger."
He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it
from him.
"If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated
in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to
him 'Do that,' and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders
in this case: I cannot say 'Beware of harming me, Richard;' for it is
imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible.
Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further. You are my little
friend, are you not?"
"I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right."
"Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and
mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me--working
for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, '_all that is
right_:' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no
light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and
animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale,
and would say, 'No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot do it, because it
is wrong;' and would become immutable as a fixed star. Well, you too
have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you where I am
vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix
me at once."
"If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir,
you are very safe."
"God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down."
The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic
seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood
before him.
"Sit," he said; "the bench is long enough for two. You don't hesitate to
take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?"
I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.
"Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew--while all the
flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their
young ones' breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their
first spell of work--I'll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to
suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and
not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in staying."
"No, sir; I am content."
"Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:--suppose you were no longer a
girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood
upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you
there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what
motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and
taint all your existence. Mind, I don't say a _crime_; I am not speaking
of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the
perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_. The results of what
you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take
measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor
culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very
confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel
will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations
have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there,
seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure--I mean in heartless,
sensual pleasure--such as dulls intellect and blights feeling.
Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary
banishment: you make a new acquaintance--how or where no matter: you find
in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have
sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all
fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives,
regenerates: you feel better days come back--higher wishes, purer
feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains
to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this
end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom--a mere
conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your
judgment approves?"
He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good spirit
to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The
west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its
breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops; but their
song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
"Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man
justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him for
ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own
peace of mind and regeneration of life?"
"Sir," I answered, "a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should
never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers
falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has
suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to
amend and solace to heal."
"But the instrument--the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the
instrument. I have myself--I tell it you without parable--been a
worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the
instrument for my cure in--"
He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I
almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the
suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes--so
long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy
speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.
"Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone--while his face changed
too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and
sarcastic--"you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don't
you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?"
He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he
came back he was humming a tune.
"Jane, Jane," said he, stopping before me, "you are quite pale with your
vigils: don't you curse me for disturbing your rest?"
"Curse you? No, sir."
"Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were
warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious
chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?"
"Whenever I can be useful, sir."
"For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be
able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To
you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her."
"Yes, sir."
"She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?"
"Yes, sir."
"A strapper--a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just
such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there's Dent and
Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket."
As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying
cheerfully--
"Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise:
I rose at four to see him off."
| In the middle of the night Jane hears a shrill cry from the end of the hall. It is coming from the third story, and she can hear someone yelling 'Help,' and calling for Rochester. She hears someone running and the noise stopping, but soon all of the guests are awake and wondering what is going on. Rochester returns from the end of the hall and tells everyone that one of the servants had had a bad dream. All go back to bed except Jane, who dresses and waits in case she should be called. A while later there is a tap at the door and Rochester asks her to come with a sponge and some smelling salts. He takes her to Mason, whose arm is bleeding, and tells her to stay with him, wipe his blood, and use the smelling salts to keep him awake while he runs for the surgeon. He warns each of them not to talk to the other at all. It seems like a long time, and Jane is scared that someone will come out of the third story for them, but finally Rochester returns. When the surgeon unwraps Mason's arm it is seen that there are bite marks there. Mason says that she had bit him, and Rochester says that he had told him to be careful and not to see her alone. The surgeon patches up Mason and they leave Thornfield. Jane and Rochester are then walking out to get some fresh air until the others awaken. Jane wonders to Rochester why he keeps Grace Poole there, as she thinks it is she that causes the trouble. He tells Jane not to worry about her. Rochester asks Jane to suppose hypothetically that there is a boy who causes a capital error, the results of which had been bad, and that he takes unusual measures to rid himself of the error. When the boy meets a new friend, is he justified in overleaping this obstacle. Should the man risk the world's opinion to attach himself to this other. Jane answers that it should not be the world's opinion that he is worried about, but that he should look higher than his equals for solace. The guests start rising, and Jane and Rochester leave the garden in different directions | summary |
Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are
signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not
yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because
I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for
instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives
asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to
which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension.
And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with
man.
When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie
Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little
child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either
to one's self or one's kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory,
had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix
it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her
little sister.
Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during
the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not
brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my
arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with
daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water. It was
a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled
close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition
evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive
nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.
I did not like this iteration of one idea--this strange recurrence of one
image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the
vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had
been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on
the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message
that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax's room. On repairing thither, I
found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman's
servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand
was surrounded with a crape band.
"I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss," he said, rising as I entered;
"but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at
Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still."
"Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give
me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana's bay pony. And how is Bessie? You
are married to Bessie?"
"Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another
little one about two months since--we have three now--and both mother and
child are thriving."
"And are the family well at the house, Robert?"
"I am sorry I can't give you better news of them, Miss: they are very
badly at present--in great trouble."
"I hope no one is dead," I said, glancing at his black dress. He too
looked down at the crape round his hat and replied--
"Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London."
"Mr. John?"
"Yes."
"And how does his mother bear it?"
"Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been
very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and
his death was shocking."
"I heard from Bessie he was not doing well."
"Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate
amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into
jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he
returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the
knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came
down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all
to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his
extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was
dead. How he died, God knows!--they say he killed himself."
I was silent: the things were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed--
"Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very
stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of
poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John's
death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She
was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather
better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making
signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however,
that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she
made out the words, 'Bring Jane--fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to
her.' Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means
anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and
advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but
their mother grew so restless, and said, 'Jane, Jane,' so many times,
that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can
get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow
morning."
"Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go."
"I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse:
but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?"
"Yes; and I will do it now;" and having directed him to the servants'
hall, and recommended him to the care of John's wife, and the attentions
of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester.
He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the
stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;--yes:
she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-
room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded
thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton, and their
admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some courage to
disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one I could not
defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram's side.
She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to
demand, "What can the creeping creature want now?" and when I said, in a
low voice, "Mr. Rochester," she made a movement as if tempted to order me
away. I remember her appearance at the moment--it was very graceful and
very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure
scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game,
and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty
lineaments.
"Does that person want you?" she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr.
Rochester turned to see who the "person" was. He made a curious
grimace--one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations--threw down his
cue and followed me from the room.
"Well, Jane?" he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door,
which he had shut.
"If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two."
"What to do?--where to go?"
"To see a sick lady who has sent for me."
"What sick lady?--where does she live?"
"At Gateshead; in ---shire."
"-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for
people to see her that distance?"
"Her name is Reed, sir--Mrs. Reed."
"Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate."
"It is his widow, sir."
"And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?"
"Mr. Reed was my uncle--my mother's brother."
"The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you
had no relations."
"None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me
off."
"Why?"
"Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me."
"But Reed left children?--you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was
talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the
veriest rascals on town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of
the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago
in London."
"John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his
family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked
his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack."
"And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of
running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead
before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off."
"Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very
different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now."
"How long will you stay?"
"As short a time as possible, sir."
"Promise me only to stay a week--"
"I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it."
"At all events you _will_ come back: you will not be induced under any
pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?"
"Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well."
"And who goes with you? You don't travel a hundred miles alone."
"No, sir, she has sent her coachman."
"A person to be trusted?"
"Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family."
Mr. Rochester meditated. "When do you wish to go?"
"Early to-morrow morning, sir."
"Well, you must have some money; you can't travel without money, and I
daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have
you in the world, Jane?" he asked, smiling.
I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. "Five shillings, sir." He
took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as
if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: "Here,"
said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but
fifteen. I told him I had no change.
"I don't want change; you know that. Take your wages."
I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as
if recollecting something, he said--
"Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay
away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not
plenty?"
"Yes, sir, but now you owe me five."
"Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds."
"Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you
while I have the opportunity."
"Matter of business? I am curious to hear it."
"You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be
married?"
"Yes; what then?"
"In that case, sir, Adele ought to go to school: I am sure you will
perceive the necessity of it."
"To get her out of my bride's way, who might otherwise walk over her
rather too emphatically? There's sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of
it. Adele, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march
straight to--the devil?"
"I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere."
"In course!" he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of
features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.
"And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by
you to seek a place, I suppose?"
"No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in
asking favours of them--but I shall advertise."
"You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!" he growled. "At your peril
you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten
pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I've a use for it."
"And so have I, sir," I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind
me. "I could not spare the money on any account."
"Little niggard!" said he, "refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me
five pounds, Jane."
"Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence."
"Just let me look at the cash."
"No, sir; you are not to be trusted."
"Jane!"
"Sir?"
"Promise me one thing."
"I'll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform."
"Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I'll
find you one in time."
"I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I
and Adele shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters
it."
"Very well! very well! I'll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow,
then?"
"Yes, sir; early."
"Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?"
"No, sir, I must prepare for the journey."
"Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?"
"I suppose so, sir."
"And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I'm
not quite up to it."
"They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer."
"Then say it."
"Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present."
"What must I say?"
"The same, if you like, sir."
"Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?"
"Yes?"
"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
instance; but no--that would not content me either. So you'll do no more
than say Farewell, Jane?"
"It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word
as in many."
"Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell.'"
"How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?" I asked
myself; "I want to commence my packing." The dinner-bell rang, and
suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more
during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.
I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon of
the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was
very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white
curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished
bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her
last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.
"Bless you!--I knew you would come!" exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.
"Yes, Bessie," said I, after I had kissed her; "and I trust I am not too
late. How is Mrs. Reed?--Alive still, I hope."
"Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The
doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she
will finally recover."
"Has she mentioned me lately?"
"She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come,
but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the
house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and
wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss,
and then I will go up with you?"
Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and
went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet
and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to
accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling
garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.
Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about--setting
out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting
a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an
occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days.
Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good
looks.
Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit
still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the
fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my
cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with
some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and
obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a
person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master,
whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was
rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly,
and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company
that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Bessie
listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.
In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my
bonnet, &c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall.
It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked
down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in
January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered
heart--a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation--to seek the chilly
harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same
hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet;
and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of
the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers,
and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs,
too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
"You shall go into the breakfast-room first," said Bessie, as she
preceded me through the hall; "the young ladies will be there."
In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article
of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced
to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the
hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two
volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying their old place on the third
shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above.
The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered
past recognition.
Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as
Miss Ingram--very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There
was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme
plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen
collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a
string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though
I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and
colourless visage.
The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I
remembered--the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a
full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular
features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of
her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her
sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the
other's looked puritanical.
In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one;
the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the
blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and
chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable
hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by
the name of "Miss Eyre." Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short,
abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her
eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her "How
d'ye do?" several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on,
uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances
that measured me from head to foot--now traversing the folds of my drab
merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage
bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they
think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain
superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone,
express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by
any positive rudeness in word or deed.
A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power
over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised
to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-
sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana
ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the
last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than
any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and
exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or
bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.
"How is Mrs. Reed?" I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who
thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected
liberty.
"Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you
can see her to-night."
"If," said I, "you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I
should be much obliged to you."
Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. "I
know she had a particular wish to see me," I added, "and I would not
defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary."
"Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening," remarked Eliza. I soon
rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would
just step out to Bessie--who was, I dared say, in the kitchen--and ask
her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-
night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand,
I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my habit
always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should,
a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now,
it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I
had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay
with her till she was better--or dead: as to her daughters' pride or
folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. So I
addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should
probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my
chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing.
"Missis is awake," said she; "I have told her you are here: come and let
us see if she will know you."
I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so
often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I
hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on
the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post
bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair,
and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to
kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a
certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once
dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and
lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened
the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.
Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar
image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance
and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in
bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion
than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to
forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in
amity.
The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever--there was that
peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised,
imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and
hate! and how the recollection of childhood's terrors and sorrows revived
as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her:
she looked at me.
"Is this Jane Eyre?" she said.
"Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?"
I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no
sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her
hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should
at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable
natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily
eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather
from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so
icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me--her feeling towards me--was
unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye--opaque to
tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me
bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous
pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to
subdue her--to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.
My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their
source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over
the pillow.
"You sent for me," I said, "and I am here; and it is my intention to stay
till I see how you get on."
"Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?"
"Yes."
"Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things
over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a
difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to
say--let me see--"
The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place
in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes
round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she
was at once irritated.
"Sit up!" said she; "don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are
you Jane Eyre?"
"I am Jane Eyre."
"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such
a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me,
daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden
starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one's
movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a
fiend--no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her
away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever
broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die:
but I said she did--I wish she had died!"
"A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?"
"I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband's only
sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family's disowning
her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he
wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated
him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated
it the first time I set my eyes on it--a sickly, whining, pining thing!
It would wail in its cradle all night long--not screaming heartily like
any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used
to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than
he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children
friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was
angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he
had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he
died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally
weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it:
John is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish
he would cease tormenting me with letters for money? I have no more
money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the
servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never
submit to do that--yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income
goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and
always loses--poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him."
She was getting much excited. "I think I had better leave her now," said
I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
"Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night--in
the morning she is calmer."
I rose. "Stop!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "there is another thing I wished to
say. He threatens me--he continually threatens me with his own death, or
mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in
his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange
pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be
had?"
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and
sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her.
She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade
everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well
as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at
first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and
scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would
chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of
me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or
amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me
for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take
a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching
fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to
shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse
of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk;
a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-
flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest,
under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be,
I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad
point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and
prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour
gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features.
Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then
followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full
nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm
chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black
whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and
waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last,
because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I
shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids
lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I thought, as I
surveyed the effect: "they want more force and spirit;" and I wrought the
shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy
touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my
gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs
on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed
and content.
"Is that a portrait of some one you know?" asked Eliza, who had
approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,
and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in
fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that
to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The
other drawings pleased her much, but she called that "an ugly man." They
both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits;
and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her
album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at
once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we
had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she
had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent
in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the
attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest
she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and
sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of
fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The
communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same
theme--herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never once
adverted either to her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the
present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly
taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after
dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her
mother's sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw
a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what
she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an
alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before
breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular
portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she
studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer
Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and
she said, "the Rubric." Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold
thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a
carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she
informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately
erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to
working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of
her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe
she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing
annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to
vary its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than
usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had
been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,
settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
taken care to secure; and when her mother died--and it was wholly
improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or
linger long--she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a
retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from
disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
"Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had
had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.
Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers."
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time
in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and
wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an
invitation up to town. "It would be so much better," she said, "if she
could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over." I
did not ask what she meant by "all being over," but I suppose she
referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of
funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister's
indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had
been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and
unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus--
"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never
allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make
no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a
reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some
other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or
himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you
are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must
be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a
dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be
flattered--you must have music, dancing, and society--or you languish,
you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you
independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no
stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes--include
all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid
regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun;
and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant
moment: you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy,
forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to
do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you
will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it--go on as
heretofore, craving, whining, and idling--and suffer the results of your
idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this
plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now
about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I
wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in
Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known
each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the
same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest
claim: I can tell you this--if the whole human race, ourselves excepted,
were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you
in the old world, and betake myself to the new."
She closed her lips.
"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,"
answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless
creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord
Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a
title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and
so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever."
Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour
afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.
True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were
two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably
savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy
draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and
husky a morsel for human deglutition.
It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa
over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day
service at the new church--for in matters of religion she was a rigid
formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she
considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice
every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers.
I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who
lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent
attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of
the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own
family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found
the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the
patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the
pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel,
re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on
me, and then I moved away to the window.
The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:
"One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly
elements. Whither will that spirit--now struggling to quit its material
tenement--flit when at length released?"
In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her
dying words--her faith--her doctrine of the equality of disembodied
souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered
tones--still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and
sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her
longing to be restored to her divine Father's bosom--when a feeble voice
murmured from the couch behind: "Who is that?"
I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to
her.
"It is I, Aunt Reed."
"Who--I?" was her answer. "Who are you?" looking at me with surprise and
a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. "You are quite a stranger to
me--where is Bessie?"
"She is at the lodge, aunt."
"Aunt," she repeated. "Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the
Gibsons; and yet I know you--that face, and the eyes and forehead, are
quiet familiar to me: you are like--why, you are like Jane Eyre!"
I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
identity.
"Yet," said she, "I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I
wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:
besides, in eight years she must be so changed." I now gently assured
her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing
that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I
explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.
"I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn myself
a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I
should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health,
burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here?
or is there no one in the room but you?"
I assured her we were alone.
"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in
breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own
child; the other--" she stopped. "After all, it is of no great
importance, perhaps," she murmured to herself: "and then I may get
better; and to humble myself so to her is painful."
She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed;
she seemed to experience some inward sensation--the precursor, perhaps,
of the last pang.
"Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell
her.--Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see
there."
I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said.
It was short, and thus conceived:--
"Madam,--Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my
niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to
write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has
blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried
and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at
my death whatever I may have to leave.--I am, Madam, &c., &c.,
"JOHN EYRE, Madeira."
It was dated three years back.
"Why did I never hear of this?" I asked.
"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in
lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me,
Jane--the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you
declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the
unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought
of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable
cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up
and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I
had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in
a man's voice.--Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!"
"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she required,
"think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me
for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have
passed since that day."
She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and
drawn breath, she went on thus--
"I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be
adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was
what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at
Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion--expose
my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my
torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but
for you, I should never have been tempted to commit."
"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to
regard me with kindness and forgiveness"
"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel
it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and
quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and
violence, I can never comprehend."
"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled
to you now: kiss me, aunt."
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I
oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she
drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble
fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my
full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace."
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to
change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me--dying,
she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour
longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was
fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve
o'clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor
were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that
all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look
at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared
not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame,
rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow
and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange
and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and
pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or
subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_ woes--not _my_
loss--and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a
form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she
observed--
"With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life
was shortened by trouble." And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an
instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I.
Neither of us had dropt a tear.
| Jane begins the chapter by saying that she had never been one to believe in signs or presentiments, but she remembers when she was younger that a woman in the house had had a dream with an infant in it, believed that something bad was to come, and then got word that her sister was on her deathbed. Jane says that she had had dreams for the last seven nights about infants. She is called to the drawing room and there finds Robert, the coachman from Gateshead. He tells her that John Reed had killed himself after driving himself into debt and spending much of his mother's money. Robert continues to say that Mrs. Reed had had a stroke and was now on her deathbed and had been calling for Jane. Jane says that she will leave with him early the next morning and goes to ask Rochester's leave. Rochester is surprised when Jane asks for leave, as she had told him that she had no family. She says that she had had none that would own her, and explains about the Reeds of Gateshead. Rochester tries to get Jane to promise that she will stay only a week, and when he gives her more money that he owes her for her wages, he then takes some back so that she will return for it and not stay away. She mentions that since it seems that he is going to be married soon, it would be a good idea for him to put Adele in a school and for her to advertise for a new position. He makes her promise that she will not advertise but will let him find her a new position. She agrees as long as she and "Adele shall be both safe out of the house before bride enters it. When Jane reaches Gateshead, Bessie is glad to see her and says that the doctor has said that Mrs. Reed may linger a week or two. Jane sees the Misses Reed, and they are not friendly to her, although they become better later. Jane goes to see Mrs. Reed, but she is somewhat delirious and tells her to come back when she has rested. She also then talks to her about Jane as if she is not Jane, saying that she had never liked her because she had never liked her mother because she was a favorite of her husband's. Ten days pass and Jane does not see Mrs. Reed again, as she is delirious. When Jane finally does get to talk to Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed says that she must tell her of two wrongs that she had done her. The first was sending her away after she had promised to take care of her, and for the other she tells Jane to take out a letter from her dressing case. It is from John Eyre, Jane's uncle, and is dated three years before. It says that he had come into some money and that he wanted Jane's address so that she could live with him and he could bequeath everything to her at his death since he is not married and is childless. Mrs. Reed tells Jane that she had written back and told him that Jane had died in the fever outbreak at Lowood. Jane takes the letter and tells Mrs. Reed that she forgives her. Mrs. Reed dies that night | summary |
Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence: yet a month
elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after
the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to
London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who
had come down to direct his sister's interment and settle the family
affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from
her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor
aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and
selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for
her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would
idle; and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined to live always
together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I
should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should
assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else
it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of
those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It
is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes
at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so
patient and compliant on my part."
At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza's turn to request me to
stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she
said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long
she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks,
emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any
one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer
notes of condolence.
One morning she told me I was at liberty. "And," she added, "I am
obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There is
some difference between living with such an one as you and with
Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.
To-morrow," she continued, "I set out for the Continent. I shall take up
my abode in a religious house near Lisle--a nunnery you would call it;
there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time
to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study
of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it
is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently
and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the
veil."
I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade
her from it. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," I thought: "much
good may it do you!"
When we parted, she said: "Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well:
you have some sense."
I then returned: "You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you
have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French
convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don't
much care."
"You are in the right," said she; and with these words we each went our
separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her
sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an
advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza
actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where
she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her
fortune.
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or
short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had
known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long
walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to
come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good
fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was
very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,
increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return
to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
My journey seemed tedious--very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night
spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours
I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and
discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the
funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and
servants--few was the number of relatives--the gaping vault, the silent
church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I
beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent
cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person
and character. The evening arrival at the great town of--scattered these
thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's
bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.
I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not
long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim
of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had
left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a
fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements
for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said
the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but
from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could
no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. "You would be
strangely incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment. "I
don't doubt it."
The question followed, "Where was I to go?" I dreamt of Miss Ingram all
the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of
Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester
looked on with his arms folded--smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at
both her and me.
I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I did
not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to
walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my
box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six
o'clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road
which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the
haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from
cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue--where blue
was visible--was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin.
The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it--it seemed as if
there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled
vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once
to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not
to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place
where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. "Mrs.
Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure," said I; "and little
Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you
are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you."
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These
affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again
looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they
added--"Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or
weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!" And then I
strangled a new-born agony--a deformed thing which I could not persuade
myself to own and rear--and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers
are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on
their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to
traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full
the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want to be
at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches
across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see--Mr.
Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.
Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment
I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should
tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of
motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir: I need not
make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It
does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.
"Hillo!" he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. "There you
are! Come on, if you please."
I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely
cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above
all, to control the working muscles of my face--which I feel rebel
insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved
to conceal. But I have a veil--it is down: I may make shift yet to
behave with decent composure.
"And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?
Yes--just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come
clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into
the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a
dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last
month?"
"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead."
"A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other
world--from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she
meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I'd touch you, to see
if you are substance or shadow, you elf!--but I'd as soon offer to take
hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant! truant!" he
added, when he had paused an instant. "Absent from me a whole month, and
forgetting me quite, I'll be sworn!"
I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though
broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by
the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr.
Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of
communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to
stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last words
were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether
I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home--would
that it were my home!
He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I
inquired soon if he had not been to London.
"Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight."
"Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter."
"And did she inform you what I went to do?"
"Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand."
"You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it will
suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won't look like Queen
Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I
were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now,
fairy as you are--can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something
of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added, "A
loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or
rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty."
Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to
me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my
abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of
his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it
too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling--he
shed it over me now.
"Pass, Janet," said he, making room for me to cross the stile: "go up
home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold."
All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to
colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to
leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast--a force turned me round. I
said--or something in me said for me, and in spite of me--
"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad
to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home--my only home."
I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he
tried. Little Adele was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs.
Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and
even Sophie bid me "bon soir" with glee. This was very pleasant; there
is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and
feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my
ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming
grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I
had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, kneeling on the carpet, had
nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to
surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that
we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr.
Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take
pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable--when he said he
supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted
daughter back again, and added that he saw Adele was "prete a croquer sa
petite maman Anglaise"--I half ventured to hope that he would, even after
his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his
protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.
A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.
Nothing was said of the master's marriage, and I saw no preparation going
on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had
yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the negative. Once
she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as to when he
was going to bring his bride home; but he had answered her only by a joke
and one of his queer looks, and she could not tell what to make of him.
One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no journeyings
backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty
miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was that distance
to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr.
Rochester, it would be but a morning's ride. I began to cherish hopes I
had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had
been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used
to look at my master's face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could
not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or
evil feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I
lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay.
Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder
to me when there--and, alas! never had I loved him so well.
| Mr. Rochester had asked Jane to be gone only a week, but already she had been gone more than a month when she finally begins her return to Thornfield. She has heard from Mrs. Fairfax that the party at Thornfield had dispersed and that Mr. Rochester had gone to London for a few weeks to buy a new carriage in preparation for his upcoming marriage. Jane does not tell Mrs. Fairfax the exact date of her arrival home, as she wants to walk to Thornfield. As she nears the Hall, she sees Rochester writing in a book and he calls to her. Rochester shows Jane the carriage and walks with her to the Hall. Adele and Mrs. Fairfax are happy to see Jane, but Jane is full of grief at the upcoming separation when Rochester marries. A fortnight passes with calm, and while Jane notices that Rochester never goes to see Miss Ingram, she writes that he had never called her more frequently to him and had never been nicer to her | summary |
A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant
as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave-
girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South,
like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the
cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield
were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their
dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted
well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.
On Midsummer-eve, Adele, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay
Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop
asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.
It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:--"Day its fervid fires
had wasted," and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.
Where the sun had gone down in simple state--pure of the pomp of
clouds--spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and
furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and
wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own
charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a casino and solitary
star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon.
I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent--that of
a cigar--stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a
handbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the
orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it
was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out
from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it
from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation from
lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a
giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led down to the
fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such
silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such
shade for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the
upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising
moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed--not by sound, not
by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance.
Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been
yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of
shrub nor flower; it is--I know it well--it is Mr. Rochester's cigar. I
look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear
a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is
visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee.
I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester
entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he
will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will never see me.
But no--eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden
as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree
branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden;
now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of
flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on
their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at
Mr. Rochester's foot: he sees it, and bends to examine it.
"Now, he has his back towards me," thought I, "and he is occupied too;
perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed."
I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might
not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant
from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. "I shall get
by very well," I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long over
the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without
turning--
"Jane, come and look at this fellow."
I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind--could his shadow feel? I
started at first, and then I approached him.
"Look at his wings," said he, "he reminds me rather of a West Indian
insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England;
there! he is flown."
The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr.
Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said--
"Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and
surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with
moonrise."
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough
at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an
excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or
plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful
embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr.
Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege
for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts busily bent
on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed
and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil--if
evil existent or prospective there was--seemed to lie with me only; his
mind was unconscious and quiet.
"Jane," he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly strayed
down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut,
"Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?"
"Yes, sir."
"You must have become in some degree attached to the house,--you, who
have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of
Adhesiveness?"
"I am attached to it, indeed."
"And though I don't comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired a
degree of regard for that foolish little child Adele, too; and even for
simple dame Fairfax?"
"Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both."
"And would be sorry to part with them?"
"Yes."
"Pity!" he said, and sighed and paused. "It is always the way of events
in this life," he continued presently: "no sooner have you got settled in
a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move
on, for the hour of repose is expired."
"Must I move on, sir?" I asked. "Must I leave Thornfield?"
"I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you
must."
This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.
"Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes."
"It is come now--I must give it to-night."
"Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?"
"Ex-act-ly--pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail
straight on the head."
"Soon, sir?"
"Very soon, my--that is, Miss Eyre: and you'll remember, Jane, the first
time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to
put my old bachelor's neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy
estate of matrimony--to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short (she's an
extensive armful: but that's not to the point--one can't have too much of
such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well, as I was
saying--listen to me, Jane! You're not turning your head to look after
more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child, 'flying away
home.' I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with
that discretion I respect in you--with that foresight, prudence, and
humility which befit your responsible and dependent position--that in
case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele had better trot
forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on
the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I'll
try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I
have made it my law of action. Adele must go to school; and you, Miss
Eyre, must get a new situation."
"Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose--" I was
going to say, "I suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to
betake myself to:" but I stopped, feeling it would not do to risk a long
sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.
"In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom," continued Mr. Rochester;
"and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum
for you."
"Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give--"
"Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her
duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her
employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed
I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I
think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters
of Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You'll
like Ireland, I think: they're such warm-hearted people there, they say."
"It is a long way off, sir."
"No matter--a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the
distance."
"Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier--"
"From what, Jane?"
"From England and from Thornfield: and--"
"Well?"
"From _you_, sir."
I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free
will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I
avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck
cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam,
destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I
now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean--wealth,
caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably
loved.
"It is a long way," I again said.
"It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught,
Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that's morally certain. I
never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the
country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?"
"Yes, sir."
"And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the
little time that remains to them close to each other. Come! we'll talk
over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the
stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the
chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit
there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit
there together." He seated me and himself.
"It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little
friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be
helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"
I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to
you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string
somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a
similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little
frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of
land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be
snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.
As for you,--you'd forget me."
"That I _never_ should, sir: you know--" Impossible to proceed.
"Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!"
In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured
no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot
with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express an
impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.
"Because you are sorry to leave it?"
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was
claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to
predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,--and to
speak.
"I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:--I love it, because I
have lived in it a full and delightful life,--momentarily at least. I
have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been
buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion
with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face,
with what I reverence, with what I delight in,--with an original, a
vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it
strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from
you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking
on the necessity of death."
"Where do you see the necessity?" he asked suddenly.
"Where? You, sir, have placed it before me."
"In what shape?"
"In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,--your bride."
"My bride! What bride? I have no bride!"
"But you will have."
"Yes;--I will!--I will!" He set his teeth.
"Then I must go:--you have said it yourself."
"No: you must stay! I swear it--and the oath shall be kept."
"I tell you I must go!" I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do
you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an
automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of
bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my
cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am
soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as
you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty
and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it
is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the
medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my
spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the
grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!"
"As we are!" repeated Mr. Rochester--"so," he added, enclosing me in his
arms. Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: "so,
Jane!"
"Yes, so, sir," I rejoined: "and yet not so; for you are a married man--or
as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you--to one with
whom you have no sympathy--whom I do not believe you truly love; for I
have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union:
therefore I am better than you--let me go!"
"Where, Jane? To Ireland?"
"Yes--to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now."
"Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is
rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an
independent will, which I now exert to leave you."
Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.
"And your will shall decide your destiny," he said: "I offer you my hand,
my heart, and a share of all my possessions."
"You play a farce, which I merely laugh at."
"I ask you to pass through life at my side--to be my second self, and
best earthly companion."
"For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it."
"Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still
too."
A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through
the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite
distance--it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the
hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking
at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last
said--
"Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another."
"I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot
return."
"But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry."
I was silent: I thought he mocked me.
"Come, Jane--come hither."
"Your bride stands between us."
He rose, and with a stride reached me.
"My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal
is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?"
Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I
was still incredulous.
"Do you doubt me, Jane?"
"Entirely."
"You have no faith in me?"
"Not a whit."
"Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little sceptic, you
_shall_ be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that
you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to
prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of
what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result;
it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not--I could
not--marry Miss Ingram. You--you strange, you almost unearthly thing!--I
love as my own flesh. You--poor and obscure, and small and plain as you
are--I entreat to accept me as a husband."
"What, me!" I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness--and especially in
his incivility--to credit his sincerity: "me who have not a friend in the
world but you--if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you have
given me?"
"You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own. Will you be
mine? Say yes, quickly."
"Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight."
"Why?"
"Because I want to read your countenance--turn!"
"There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched
page. Read on: only make haste, for I suffer."
His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were
strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes.
"Oh, Jane, you torture me!" he exclaimed. "With that searching and yet
faithful and generous look, you torture me!"
"How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my only
feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion--they cannot torture."
"Gratitude!" he ejaculated; and added wildly--"Jane accept me quickly.
Say, Edward--give me my name--Edward--I will marry you."
"Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to
be your wife?"
"I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it."
"Then, sir, I will marry you."
"Edward--my little wife!"
"Dear Edward!"
"Come to me--come to me entirely now," said he; and added, in his deepest
tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, "Make my
happiness--I will make yours."
"God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long; "and man meddle not with me: I
have her, and will hold her."
"There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere."
"No--that is the best of it," he said. And if I had loved him less I
should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but,
sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting--called to the
paradise of union--I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so
abundant a flow. Again and again he said, "Are you happy, Jane?" And
again and again I answered, "Yes." After which he murmured, "It will
atone--it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and
comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there
not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at
God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's
judgment--I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion--I defy it."
But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were
all in shadow: I could scarcely see my master's face, near as I was. And
what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind roared
in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.
"We must go in," said Mr. Rochester: "the weather changes. I could have
sat with thee till morning, Jane."
"And so," thought I, "could I with you." I should have said so, perhaps,
but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking, and
there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and I thought only
of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester's shoulder.
The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds,
and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the
threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water
out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did
not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit. The
clock was on the stroke of twelve.
"Hasten to take off your wet things," said he; "and before you go, good-
night--good-night, my darling!"
He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there
stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran
upstairs. "Explanation will do for another time," thought I. Still,
when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even
temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every
other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder
crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as
the rain fell during a storm of two hours' duration, I experienced no
fear and little awe. Mr. Rochester came thrice to my door in the course
of it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that was
strength for anything.
Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came running in to tell
me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been
struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.
| One evening while Jane is walking in the park she meets Rochester. He asks Jane if she will be sorry to leave Thornfield. She says that she will, and Rochester tells her that he must give her notice. He tells her that he has found her a position with a Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall in Ireland. Jane says that she will be sorry to be so far from Thornfield and from Rochester himself. They talk more about Jane's sorrow at leaving until Rochester swears that she must stay and gathers her to him and kisses her. He then offers her his hand in marriage. Jane is not sure what to think, as she believes he is playing a game with her, but he finally convinces her he is true, and she accepts. Mrs. Fairfax is surprised to see them embrace when they return to the house | summary |
As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered if
it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen
Mr. Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love and promise.
While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it
was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour;
and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and
borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to
look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look;
but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his
affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer
dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so well
become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.
I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a
brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and to
feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant
breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar-woman and
her little boy--pale, ragged objects both--were coming up the walk, and I
ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse--some
three or four shillings: good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee.
The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but nothing was so merry or so
musical as my own rejoicing heart.
Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad
countenance, and saying gravely--"Miss Eyre, will you come to breakfast?"
During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not undeceive her
then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and so must she. I
ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met Adele leaving the
schoolroom.
"Where are you going? It is time for lessons."
"Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the nursery."
"Where is he?"
"In there," pointing to the apartment she had left; and I went in, and
there he stood.
"Come and bid me good-morning," said he. I gladly advanced; and it was
not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I received,
but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural: it seemed genial to be so
well loved, so caressed by him.
"Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty," said he: "truly
pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-
seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips;
the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?" (I had green
eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were
new-dyed, I suppose.)
"It is Jane Eyre, sir."
"Soon to be Jane Rochester," he added: "in four weeks, Janet; not a day
more. Do you hear that?"
I did, and I could not quite comprehend it: it made me giddy. The
feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than
was consistent with joy--something that smote and stunned. It was, I
think almost fear.
"You blushed, and now you are white, Jane: what is that for?"
"Because you gave me a new name--Jane Rochester; and it seems so
strange."
"Yes, Mrs. Rochester," said he; "young Mrs. Rochester--Fairfax
Rochester's girl-bride."
"It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never
enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different
destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is
a fairy tale--a day-dream."
"Which I can and will realise. I shall begin to-day. This morning I
wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his
keeping,--heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope
to pour them into your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall be
yours that I would accord a peer's daughter, if about to marry her."
"Oh, sir!--never rain jewels! I don't like to hear them spoken of.
Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not
have them."
"I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on
your forehead,--which it will become: for nature, at least, has stamped
her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the bracelets
on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings."
"No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in
another strain. Don't address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain,
Quakerish governess."
"You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my
heart,--delicate and aerial."
"Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir,--or you are
sneering. For God's sake don't be ironical!"
"I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too," he went on, while
I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he
was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. "I will attire my
Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will
cover the head I love best with a priceless veil."
"And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any
longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket--a jay in borrowed plumes. I
would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as
myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome, sir,
though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't
flatter me."
He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. "This
very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must
choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in four
weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below
yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a brief
stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun: to French
vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is famous in old
story and in modern record: she shall taste, too, of the life of cities;
and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others."
"Shall I travel?--and with you, sir?"
"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and
Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you:
wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also. Ten years
since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my
companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel
as my comforter."
I laughed at him as he said this. "I am not an angel," I asserted; "and
I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must
neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me--for you will not get
it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all
anticipate."
"What do you anticipate of me?"
"For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,--a very little
while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and
then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when
you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,--_like_ me, I
say, not _love_ me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months,
or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned
as the farthest to which a husband's ardour extends. Yet, after all, as
a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my
dear master."
"Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and
yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_
you--with truth, fervour, constancy."
"Yet are you not capricious, sir?"
"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I
find out they have neither souls nor hearts--when they open to me a
perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness,
and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul
made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break--at once
supple and stable, tractable and consistent--I am ever tender and true."
"Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever love
such an one?"
"I love it now."
"But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult
standard?"
"I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me--you
seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I
am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up
my arm to my heart. I am influenced--conquered; and the influence is
sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery
beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that
inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?"
"I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I
was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers--"
"You were, you little elfish--"
"Hush, sir! You don't talk very wisely just now; any more than those
gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would
no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as
suitors; and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year
hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or
pleasure to grant."
"Ask me something now, Jane,--the least thing: I desire to be entreated--"
"Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition all ready."
"Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall
swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of me."
"Not at all, sir; I ask only this: don't send for the jewels, and don't
crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round
that plain pocket handkerchief you have there."
"I might as well 'gild refined gold.' I know it: your request is granted
then--for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my banker.
But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to be
withdrawn: try again."
"Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much
piqued on one point."
He looked disturbed. "What? what?" he said hastily. "Curiosity is a
dangerous petition: it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every
request--"
"But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir."
"Utter it, Jane: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps,
a secret, it was a wish for half my estate."
"Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you
think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land? I would much
rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your
confidence if you admit me to your heart?"
"You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane; but for
God's sake, don't desire a useless burden! Don't long for poison--don't
turn out a downright Eve on my hands!"
"Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be
conquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don't you think I
had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and
entreat--even cry and be sulky if necessary--for the sake of a mere essay
of my power?"
"I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the game is
up."
"Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows
have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in
some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, 'a blue-piled
thunderloft.' That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?"
"If that will be _your_ married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give
up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what
had you to ask, thing,--out with it?"
"There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal
better than flattery. I had rather be a _thing_ than an angel. This is
what I have to ask,--Why did you take such pains to make me believe you
wished to marry Miss Ingram?"
"Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!" And now he unknit his black
brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well
pleased at seeing a danger averted. "I think I may confess," he
continued, "even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane--and
I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You
glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate,
and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who
made me the offer."
"Of course I did. But to the point if you please, sir--Miss Ingram?"
"Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to render you
as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy would be
the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end."
"Excellent! Now you are small--not one whit bigger than the end of my
little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act
in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram's feelings, sir?"
"Her feelings are concentrated in one--pride; and that needs humbling.
Were you jealous, Jane?"
"Never mind, Mr. Rochester: it is in no way interesting to you to know
that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not
suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won't she feel forsaken and
deserted?"
"Impossible!--when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me: the
idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a
moment."
"You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester. I am afraid your
principles on some points are eccentric."
"My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little
awry for want of attention."
"Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been
vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the
bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?"
"That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the
world has the same pure love for me as yourself--for I lay that pleasant
unction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection."
I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very
much--more than I could trust myself to say--more than words had power to
express.
"Ask something more," he said presently; "it is my delight to be
entreated, and to yield."
I was again ready with my request. "Communicate your intentions to Mrs.
Fairfax, sir: she saw me with you last night in the hall, and she was
shocked. Give her some explanation before I see her again. It pains me
to be misjudged by so good a woman."
"Go to your room, and put on your bonnet," he replied. "I mean you to
accompany me to Millcote this morning; and while you prepare for the
drive, I will enlighten the old lady's understanding. Did she think,
Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?"
"I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir."
"Station! station!--your station is in my heart, and on the necks of
those who would insult you, now or hereafter.--Go."
I was soon dressed; and when I heard Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. Fairfax's
parlour, I hurried down to it. The old lady, had been reading her
morning portion of Scripture--the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open
before her, and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation, suspended
by Mr. Rochester's announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed on
the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred
by unwonted tidings. Seeing me, she roused herself: she made a sort of
effort to smile, and framed a few words of congratulation; but the smile
expired, and the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put up her
spectacles, shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the table.
"I feel so astonished," she began, "I hardly know what to say to you,
Miss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming, have I? Sometimes I half
fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never
happened. It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a doze,
that my dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in and sat
down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my name, Alice,
as he used to do. Now, can you tell me whether it is actually true that
Mr. Rochester has asked you to marry him? Don't laugh at me. But I
really thought he came in here five minutes ago, and said that in a month
you would be his wife."
"He has said the same thing to me," I replied.
"He has! Do you believe him? Have you accepted him?"
"Yes."
She looked at me bewildered. "I could never have thought it. He is a
proud man: all the Rochesters were proud: and his father, at least, liked
money. He, too, has always been called careful. He means to marry you?"
"He tells me so."
She surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there
found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma.
"It passes me!" she continued; "but no doubt, it is true since you say
so. How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really don't know. Equality of
position and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are
twenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your
father."
"No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!" exclaimed I, nettled; "he is nothing like my
father! No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for an instant.
Mr. Rochester looks as young, and is as young, as some men at five-and-
twenty."
"Is it really for love he is going to marry you?" she asked.
I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my
eyes.
"I am sorry to grieve you," pursued the widow; "but you are so young, and
so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard. It is
an old saying that 'all is not gold that glitters;' and in this case I do
fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or
I expect."
"Why?--am I a monster?" I said: "is it impossible that Mr. Rochester
should have a sincere affection for me?"
"No: you are very well; and much improved of late; and Mr. Rochester, I
daresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of
pet of his. There are times when, for your sake, I have been a little
uneasy at his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your
guard: but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I
knew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were so
discreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you might be
trusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell you what I
suffered when I sought all over the house, and could find you nowhere,
nor the master either; and then, at twelve o'clock, saw you come in with
him."
"Well, never mind that now," I interrupted impatiently; "it is enough
that all was right."
"I hope all will be right in the end," she said: "but believe me, you
cannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr. Rochester at a distance:
distrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are not
accustomed to marry their governesses."
I was growing truly irritated: happily, Adele ran in.
"Let me go,--let me go to Millcote too!" she cried. "Mr. Rochester
won't: though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him to let
me go mademoiselle."
"That I will, Adele;" and I hastened away with her, glad to quit my
gloomy monitress. The carriage was ready: they were bringing it round to
the front, and my master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following him
backwards and forwards.
"Adele may accompany us, may she not, sir?"
"I told her no. I'll have no brats!--I'll have only you."
"Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please: it would be better."
"Not it: she will be a restraint."
He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs.
Fairfax's warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something of
unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the
sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without
further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked at
my face.
"What is the matter?" he asked; "all the sunshine is gone. Do you really
wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind?"
"I would far rather she went, sir."
"Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!" cried he
to Adele.
She obeyed him with what speed she might.
"After all, a single morning's interruption will not matter much," said
he, "when I mean shortly to claim you--your thoughts, conversation, and
company--for life."
Adele, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her
gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a
corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat;
so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious
mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.
"Let her come to me," I entreated: "she will, perhaps, trouble you, sir:
there is plenty of room on this side."
He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. "I'll send her to school
yet," he said, but now he was smiling.
Adele heard him, and asked if she was to go to school "sans
mademoiselle?"
"Yes," he replied, "absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take
mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the
white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me
there, and only me."
"She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her," observed Adele.
"I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides
in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele."
"She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?"
"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her
up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater."
"Oh, qu' elle y sera mal--peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will
wear out: how can she get new ones?"
Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. "Hem!" said he. "What would you
do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a
pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty
enough scarf out of a rainbow."
"She is far better as she is," concluded Adele, after musing some time:
"besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I
were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you."
"She has consented: she has pledged her word."
"But you can't get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all
air; and neither you nor she can fly."
"Adele, look at that field." We were now outside Thornfield gates, and
bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was
well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty timber
trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.
"In that field, Adele, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight
since--the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard
meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on
a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to
write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for
happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight was
fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped two
yards off me. I looked at it. It was a little thing with a veil of
gossamer on its head. I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at my
knee. I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I
read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this
effect--
"It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to
make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely
place--such as the moon, for instance--and it nodded its head towards her
horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver
vale where we might live. I said I should like to go; but reminded it,
as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.
"'Oh,' returned the fairy, 'that does not signify! Here is a talisman
will remove all difficulties;' and she held out a pretty gold ring. 'Put
it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and
you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.'
She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adele, is in my breeches-pocket,
under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to change it to a ring
again."
"But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don't care for the fairy:
you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?"
"Mademoiselle is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously. Whereupon I
told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a fund
of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester "un vrai
menteur," and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his
"contes de fee," and that "du reste, il n'y avait pas de fees, et quand
meme il y en avait:" she was sure they would never appear to him, nor
ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon.
The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr.
Rochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse: there I was
ordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business, I begged
leave to defer it: no--it should be gone through with now. By dint of
entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to
two: these however, he vowed he would select himself. With anxiety I
watched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of the
most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in a
new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a
silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his
choice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I
persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and
pearl-grey silk. "It might pass for the present," he said; "but he would
yet see me glittering like a parterre."
Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a
jewellers shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a
sense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and I
sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of events,
dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten--the letter of my uncle, John
Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me his legatee.
"It would, indeed, be a relief," I thought, "if I had ever so small an
independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr.
Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling
daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell
my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a
prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I
could better endure to be kept by him now." And somewhat relieved by
this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I ventured once more
to meet my master's and lover's eye, which most pertinaciously sought
mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled; and I thought his
smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow
on a slave his gold and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was
ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the
passionate pressure.
"You need not look in that way," I said; "if you do, I'll wear nothing
but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I'll be married in
this lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the
pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black
satin."
He chuckled; he rubbed his hands. "Oh, it is rich to see and hear her?"
he exclaimed. "Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange
this one little English girl for the Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle-
eyes, houri forms, and all!"
The Eastern allusion bit me again. "I'll not stand you an inch in the
stead of a seraglio," I said; "so don't consider me an equivalent for
one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir,
to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave-
purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend
satisfactorily here."
"And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of
flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?"
"I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to
them that are enslaved--your harem inmates amongst the rest. I'll get
admitted there, and I'll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as
you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands:
nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a
charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred."
"I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane."
"I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, if you supplicated for it with an
eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain that whatever
charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when released,
would be to violate its conditions."
"Why, Jane, what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go through
a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the altar. You
will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms--what will they be?"
"I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do
you remember what you said of Celine Varens?--of the diamonds, the
cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Celine Varens. I
shall continue to act as Adele's governess; by that I shall earn my board
and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I'll furnish my own
wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but--"
"Well, but what?"
"Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit."
"Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven't your
equal," said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. "Will it please
you to dine with me to-day?" he asked, as we re-entered the gates.
"No, thank you, sir."
"And what for, 'no, thank you?' if one may inquire."
"I never have dined with you, sir: and I see no reason why I should now:
till--"
"Till what? You delight in half-phrases."
"Till I can't help it."
"Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being the
companion of my repast?"
"I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir; but I want to go on as
usual for another month."
"You will give up your governessing slavery at once."
"Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not. I shall just go on with
it as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been
accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel
disposed to see me, and I'll come then; but at no other time."
"I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under all this,
'pour me donner une contenance,' as Adele would say; and unfortunately I
have neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box. But listen--whisper. It
is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine presently; and when
once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I'll
just--figuratively speaking--attach you to a chain like this" (touching
his watch-guard). "Yes, bonny wee thing, I'll wear you in my bosom, lest
my jewel I should tyne."
He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while he
afterwards lifted out Adele, I entered the house, and made good my
retreat upstairs.
He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared an
occupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole time in a
_tete-a-tete_ conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I knew he liked
to sing--good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself, and, in
his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted in
listening when the performance was good. No sooner had twilight, that
hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the
lattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love
of heaven, to give me a song. He said I was a capricious witch, and that
he would rather sing another time; but I averred that no time was like
the present.
"Did I like his voice?" he asked.
"Very much." I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of his;
but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e'en soothe and
stimulate it.
"Then, Jane, you must play the accompaniment."
"Very well, sir, I will try."
I did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated "a
little bungler." Being pushed unceremoniously to one side--which was
precisely what I wished--he usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany
himself: for he could play as well as sing. I hied me to the
window-recess. And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees
and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following
strain:--
"The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core,
Did through each vein, in quickened start,
The tide of being pour.
Her coming was my hope each day,
Her parting was my pain;
The chance that did her steps delay
Was ice in every vein.
I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,
As I loved, loved to be;
And to this object did I press
As blind as eagerly.
But wide as pathless was the space
That lay our lives between,
And dangerous as the foamy race
Of ocean-surges green.
And haunted as a robber-path
Through wilderness or wood;
For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
Between our spirits stood.
I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;
I omens did defy:
Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,
I passed impetuous by.
On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
I flew as in a dream;
For glorious rose upon my sight
That child of Shower and Gleam.
Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
Shines that soft, solemn joy;
Nor care I now, how dense and grim
Disasters gather nigh.
I care not in this moment sweet,
Though all I have rushed o'er
Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
Proclaiming vengeance sore:
Though haughty Hate should strike me down,
Right, bar approach to me,
And grinding Might, with furious frown,
Swear endless enmity.
My love has placed her little hand
With noble faith in mine,
And vowed that wedlock's sacred band
Our nature shall entwine.
My love has sworn, with sealing kiss,
With me to live--to die;
I have at last my nameless bliss.
As I love--loved am I!"
He rose and came towards me, and I saw his face all kindled, and his full
falcon-eye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every lineament. I
quailed momentarily--then I rallied. Soft scene, daring demonstration, I
would not have; and I stood in peril of both: a weapon of defence must be
prepared--I whetted my tongue: as he reached me, I asked with asperity,
"whom he was going to marry now?"
"That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane."
"Indeed! I considered it a very natural and necessary one: he had talked
of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean by such a pagan
idea? _I_ had no intention of dying with him--he might depend on that."
"Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for, was that I might live with him!
Death was not for such as I."
"Indeed it was: I had as good a right to die when my time came as he had:
but I should bide that time, and not be hurried away in a suttee."
"Would I forgive him for the selfish idea, and prove my pardon by a
reconciling kiss?"
"No: I would rather be excused."
Here I heard myself apostrophised as a "hard little thing;" and it was
added, "any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing such
stanzas crooned in her praise."
I assured him I was naturally hard--very flinty, and that he would often
find me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers
rugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed: he
should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was yet
time to rescind it.
"Would I be quiet and talk rationally?"
"I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I flattered
myself I was doing that now."
He fretted, pished, and pshawed. "Very good," I thought; "you may fume
and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I
am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a
bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you from
the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that
distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual
advantage."
From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation; then,
after he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the room, I
got up, and saying, "I wish you good-night, sir," in my natural and
wonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away.
The system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of
probation; and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather
cross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently
entertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility,
while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment,
satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.
In other people's presence I was, as formerly, deferential and quiet; any
other line of conduct being uncalled for: it was only in the evening
conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to send for
me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared
before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as "love" and "darling" on
his lips: the best words at my service were "provoking puppet,"
"malicious elf," "sprite," "changeling," &c. For caresses, too, I now
got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss
on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I
decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. Mrs.
Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on my account vanished;
therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr. Rochester affirmed I
was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened awful vengeance for my
present conduct at some period fast coming. I laughed in my sleeve at
his menaces. "I can keep you in reasonable check now," I reflected; "and
I don't doubt to be able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its
virtue, another must be devised."
Yet after all my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have
pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole
world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood
between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes
between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for
His creature: of whom I had made an idol.
| The next day Rochester tells Jane that they will be married in four weeks and that they will travel to Paris, Rome and Naples. He then tells her to ask of him anything, and she says that she has been curious about something. Rochester gets quite serious and his demeanor changes, but he is relieved when Jane only asks why he had made her think that he meant to marry Miss Ingram. He replies that he wished to make her jealous to see how deep her love for him really ran. He tells her to ask of him more, and she says that she wishes Mrs. Fairfax to know of their marriage. Later, when Jane sees Rochester leave Mrs. Fairfax, Jane enters to find her disbelieving. She asks if it is true, and warns Jane to be on her guard, saying that she cannot be too careful, as men like Mr. Rochester "are not accustomed to marry their governesses. Rochester calls for Jane to take her to town to buy some new gowns, and while they do buy some, Jane has to talk Rochester out of buying her so many and of buying her such fancy ones. She also has to talk him out of the jeweler's shop. With all of the excitement, Jane had forgotten all about her uncle's letter. She decides to write to him immediately, and feels that if her uncle tells her that she will get an inheritance later, she will feel better about Rochester supporting her now. Rochester is concerned about her not taking things from him, and she explains that she does not want to be like his French opera-dancer mistress, but would rather continue on as governess for her wages. Later in the evening Jane gets Rochester to sing and play the piano for her, and she is colder to him, remembering Mrs. Fairfax's warning | summary |
The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being
numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced--the bridal
day; and all preparations for its arrival were complete. _I_, at least,
had nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded,
ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber; to-morrow, at this
time, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I
(D.V.),--or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet I
knew not. The cards of address alone remained to nail on: they lay, four
little squares, in the drawer. Mr. Rochester had himself written the
direction, "Mrs. Rochester, --- Hotel, London," on each: I could not
persuade myself to affix them, or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester!
She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after
eight o'clock a.m.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into the
world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was enough
that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said to be
hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet:
for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the
pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped
portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like
apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour--nine o'clock--gave out
certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. "I
will leave you by yourself, white dream," I said. "I am feverish: I hear
the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it."
It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish; not only
the anticipation of the great change--the new life which was to commence
to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share, doubtless, in
producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me forth at this late
hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause influenced my mind
more than they.
I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened
which I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but
myself: it had taken place the preceding night. Mr. Rochester that night
was absent from home; nor was he yet returned: business had called him to
a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty miles
off--business it was requisite he should settle in person, previous to
his meditated departure from England. I waited now his return; eager to
disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that
perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret
to him, you shall share the confidence.
I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day
had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a
speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to
augment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one way,
never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an
hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads
northward--the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on
mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.
It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind,
delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering
through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the
chestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the
centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each
other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below;
though community of vitality was destroyed--the sap could flow no more:
their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests
would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might
be said to form one tree--a ruin, but an entire ruin.
"You did right to hold fast to each other," I said: as if the monster-
splinters were living things, and could hear me. "I think, scathed as
you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life
in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots:
you will never have green leaves more--never more see birds making nests
and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over
with you: but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to
sympathise with him in his decay." As I looked up at them, the moon
appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure;
her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one
bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep
drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far
away over wood and water, poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to
listen to, and I ran off again.
Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples with
which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I employed
myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them into the
house and put them away in the store-room. Then I repaired to the
library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, for, though summer, I knew
on such a gloomy evening Mr. Rochester would like to see a cheerful
hearth when he came in: yes, the fire had been kindled some time, and
burnt well. I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner: I wheeled the
table near it: I let down the curtain, and had the candles brought in
ready for lighting. More restless than ever, when I had completed these
arrangements I could not sit still, nor even remain in the house: a
little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the hall
simultaneously struck ten.
"How late it grows!" I said. "I will run down to the gates: it is
moonlight at intervals; I can see a good way on the road. He may be
coming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense."
The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates; but
the road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the left, was all
still and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at
intervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried
by one moving speck.
A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked--a tear of disappointment and
impatience; ashamed of it, I wiped it away. I lingered; the moon shut
herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense
cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale.
"I wish he would come! I wish he would come!" I exclaimed, seized with
hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea; now it
was dark: what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of
last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of
disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised; and I had
enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its
meridian, and must now decline.
"Well, I cannot return to the house," I thought; "I cannot sit by the
fireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather: better tire my limbs
than strain my heart; I will go forward and meet him."
I set out; I walked fast, but not far: ere I had measured a quarter of a
mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a dog
ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment! It was he: here he was,
mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot. He saw me; for the moon had
opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright: he took his
hat off, and waved it round his head. I now ran to meet him.
"There!" he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from the
saddle: "You can't do without me, that is evident. Step on my boot-toe;
give me both hands: mount!"
I obeyed: joy made me agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I
got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well
as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, "But is
there anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an
hour? Is there anything wrong?"
"No, but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait in the
house for you, especially with this rain and wind."
"Rain and wind, indeed! Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my
cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek and
hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything the matter?"
"Nothing now; I am neither afraid nor unhappy."
"Then you have been both?"
"Rather: but I'll tell you all about it by-and-bye, sir; and I daresay
you will only laugh at me for my pains."
"I'll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare not:
my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as slippery as an
eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay a
finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up a
stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your
shepherd, did you, Jane?"
"I wanted you: but don't boast. Here we are at Thornfield: now let me
get down."
He landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse, and he followed me
into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry on, and
then return to him in the library; and he stopped me, as I made for the
staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be long: nor was I long;
in five minutes I rejoined him. I found him at supper.
"Take a seat and bear me company, Jane: please God, it is the last meal
but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time."
I sat down near him, but told him I could not eat. "Is it because you
have the prospect of a journey before you, Jane? Is it the thoughts of
going to London that takes away your appetite?"
"I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night, sir; and I hardly know what
thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal."
"Except me: I am substantial enough--touch me."
"You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all: you are a mere dream."
He held out his hand, laughing. "Is that a dream?" said he, placing it
close to my eyes. He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous hand, as well
as a long, strong arm.
"Yes; though I touch it, it is a dream," said I, as I put it down from
before my face. "Sir, have you finished supper?"
"Yes, Jane."
I rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again alone, I
stirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master's knee.
"It is near midnight," I said.
"Yes: but remember, Jane, you promised to wake with me the night before
my wedding."
"I did; and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least: I have
no wish to go to bed."
"Are all your arrangements complete?"
"All, sir."
"And on my part likewise," he returned, "I have settled everything; and
we shall leave Thornfield to-morrow, within half-an-hour after our return
from church."
"Very well, sir."
"With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word--'very well,'
Jane! What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how
strangely your eyes glitter! Are you well?"
"I believe I am."
"Believe! What is the matter? Tell me what you feel."
"I could not, sir: no words could tell you what I feel. I wish this
present hour would never end: who knows with what fate the next may come
charged?"
"This is hypochondria, Jane. You have been over-excited, or
over-fatigued."
"Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?"
"Calm?--no: but happy--to the heart's core."
I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face: it was ardent
and flushed.
"Give me your confidence, Jane," he said: "relieve your mind of any
weight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me. What do you fear?--that
I shall not prove a good husband?"
"It is the idea farthest from my thoughts."
"Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?--of the
new life into which you are passing?"
"No."
"You puzzle me, Jane: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex
and pain me. I want an explanation."
"Then, sir, listen. You were from home last night?"
"I was: I know that; and you hinted a while ago at something which had
happened in my absence:--nothing, probably, of consequence; but, in
short, it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs. Fairfax has said
something, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?--your
sensitive self-respect has been wounded?"
"No, sir." It struck twelve--I waited till the time-piece had concluded
its silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating stroke, and then I
proceeded.
"All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless
bustle; for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting
fears about the new sphere, et cetera: I think it a glorious thing to
have the hope of living with you, because I love you. No, sir, don't
caress me now--let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I trusted well in
Providence, and believed that events were working together for your good
and mine: it was a fine day, if you recollect--the calmness of the air
and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on your
journey. I walked a little while on the pavement after tea, thinking of
you; and I beheld you in imagination so near me, I scarcely missed your
actual presence. I thought of the life that lay before me--_your_ life,
sir--an existence more expansive and stirring than my own: as much more
so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs are than the shallows
of its own strait channel. I wondered why moralists call this world a
dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like a rose. Just at sunset, the
air turned cold and the sky cloudy: I went in, Sophie called me upstairs
to look at my wedding-dress, which they had just brought; and under it in
the box I found your present--the veil which, in your princely
extravagance, you sent for from London: resolved, I suppose, since I
would not have jewels, to cheat me into accepting something as costly. I
smiled as I unfolded it, and devised how I would tease you about your
aristocratic tastes, and your efforts to masque your plebeian bride in
the attributes of a peeress. I thought how I would carry down to you the
square of unembroidered blond I had myself prepared as a covering for my
low-born head, and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who could
bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw
plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers,
and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your
wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse or a
coronet."
"How well you read me, you witch!" interposed Mr. Rochester: "but what
did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find poison, or
a dagger, that you look so mournful now?"
"No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found
nothing save Fairfax Rochester's pride; and that did not scare me,
because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it grew dark,
the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now--wild and
high--but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' far more eerie. I wished you
were at home. I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair
and fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed, I
could not sleep--a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale
still rising, seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound; whether
in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it recurred,
doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it must be some
dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping, I
continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also
the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful
consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I
was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed
me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a
very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in
my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you
were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to
overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat
you to stop--but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away
inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every
moment."
"And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to
you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of
real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes--I will not forget that;
and you cannot deny it. _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your
lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but
sweet as music--'I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of
living with you, Edward, because I love you.' Do you love me,
Jane?--repeat it."
"I do, sir--I do, with my whole heart."
"Well," he said, after some minutes' silence, "it is strange; but that
sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you
said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward
gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is
too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know
well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me
you hate me--tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be
incensed than saddened."
"I will tease you and vex you to your heart's content, when I have
finished my tale: but hear me to the end."
"I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source
of your melancholy in a dream."
I shook my head. "What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be
anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on."
The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his
manner, surprised me: but I proceeded.
"I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the
retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front
nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very
fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-
grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there
over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still
carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere,
however tired were my arms--however much its weight impeded my progress,
I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the
road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and
for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous
haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled
from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung
round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the
summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment.
The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow
ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the
road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was
shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and
woke."
"Now, Jane, that is all."
"All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On waking, a gleam
dazzled my eyes; I thought--Oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken; it
was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a
light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before
going to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard a
rustling there. I asked, 'Sophie, what are you doing?' No one answered;
but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held it aloft, and
surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. 'Sophie! Sophie!' I
again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent
forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my
blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie,
it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was not--no, I was sure of
it, and am still--it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole."
"It must have been one of them," interrupted my master.
"No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing
before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield
Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me."
"Describe it, Jane."
"It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair
hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was
white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell."
"Did you see her face?"
"Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she held
it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and
turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage
and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass."
"And how were they?"
"Fearful and ghastly to me--oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was
a discoloured face--it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll
of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!"
"Ghosts are usually pale, Jane."
"This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow
furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall
I tell you of what it reminded me?"
"You may."
"Of the foul German spectre--the Vampyre."
"Ah!--what did it do?"
"Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and
flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."
{It removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and
flinging both on the floor, trampled on them: p272.jpg}
"Afterwards?"
"It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn
approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at
my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me--she thrust
up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was
aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for
the second time in my life--only the second time--I became insensible
from terror."
"Who was with you when you revived?"
"No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in
water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill,
and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now,
sir, tell me who and what that woman was?"
"The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must be
careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough
handling."
"Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real: the
transaction actually took place."
"And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a
ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you
without a tear--without a kiss--without a word?"
"Not yet."
"Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to bind
us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no
recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that."
"Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such: I
wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the
mystery of that awful visitant."
"And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal."
"But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I
looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful
aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there--on the carpet--I
saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,--the veil, torn from top
to bottom in two halves!"
I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round
me. "Thank God!" he exclaimed, "that if anything malignant did come near
you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh, to think what
might have happened!"
He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could
scarcely pant. After some minutes' silence, he continued, cheerily--
"Now, Janet, I'll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, half
reality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman
was--must have been--Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself:
from all you know, you have reason so to call her--what did she do to me?
what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her
entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you
ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long
dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were
figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of
the veil was real: and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep
such a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I
will tell you; but not now. Are you satisfied, Jane? Do you accept my
solution of the mystery?"
I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one:
satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear
so--relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented
smile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.
"Does not Sophie sleep with Adele in the nursery?" he asked, as I lit my
candle.
"Yes, sir."
"And there is room enough in Adele's little bed for you. You must share
it with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident you have
related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep
alone: promise me to go to the nursery."
"I shall be very glad to do so, sir."
"And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go
upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to-
morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight.
And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet. Don't you
hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more
beating of rain against the window-panes: look here" (he lifted up the
curtain)--"it is a lovely night!"
It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping
before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off eastward
in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully.
"Well," said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, "how is my
Janet now?"
"The night is serene, sir; and so am I."
"And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy
love and blissful union."
This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of sorrow,
but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all. With little
Adele in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood--so tranquil, so
passionless, so innocent--and waited for the coming day: all my life was
awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun rose I rose too. I
remember Adele clung to me as I left her: I remember I kissed her as I
loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried over her with strange
emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs would break her still
sound repose. She seemed the emblem of my past life; and here I was now
to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future
day.
| The night before the wedding Jane feels anxious that Mr. Rochester is still away on his errands, and when the time of his supposed return far passes, she runs out into the wind and rain to meet him. She comes upon him riding home, and he takes her on the horse back to the house. They eat supper, and Jane tells Rochester why she is so anxious. The night before she dreamt that she was in the wind and rain caring for a crying infant and chasing Rochester who was riding away. Jane then tells of another dream where she saw Thornfield Hall as a dreary ruin. She tells him that when she awoke from this dream she saw a candle in her room and someone at her portmanteau looking at her garments. She says that she did not recognize the person, and that it was a woman with a discolored and savage face, who put on her wedding veil and then took it off and ripped it in two. She then came over and looked closely at Jane before leaving the room. Rochester says that he is sure she imagined it, but she says that the next morning she saw the veil ripped in two. He says that it must have been a half dream, where someone she knew entered her room, but that she dreamt the part about what kind of creature it was. He then asks her to sleep with Adele in the nursery that night and to have more pleasant dreams. Jane, however, does not sleep at all, and rises early in the morning to prepare for her wedding | summary |
Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in
accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose,
impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just
fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with a
brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.
"Stop!" she cried in French. "Look at yourself in the mirror: you have
not taken one peep."
So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my
usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. "Jane!" called
a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the stairs
by Mr. Rochester.
"Lingerer!" he said, "my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry
so long!"
He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced
me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of
his eyes," and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat
some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants, a
footman, answered it.
"Is John getting the carriage ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is the luggage brought down?"
"They are bringing it down, sir."
"Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are
there: return and tell me."
The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
footman soon returned.
"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."
"And the carriage?"
"The horses are harnessing."
"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we
return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the
coachman in his seat."
"Yes, sir."
"Jane, are you ready?"
I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait
for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the
hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was
held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly
follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face was to feel that not a second
of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other
bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so grimly
resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming
and flashing eyes.
I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I
gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both
seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see the
invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a
glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he
seemed breasting and resisting.
At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of
breath. "Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant: lean on
me, Jane."
And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm
before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky
beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have
not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low
hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I
noticed them, because, as they saw us, they passed round to the back of
the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle
door and witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed;
he was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay,
momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips
cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the
path to the porch.
We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white
surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two
shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct:
the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault
of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails the
old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains
of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil
wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife.
Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step
behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers--a gentleman,
evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service began. The
explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then the
clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly towards Mr.
Rochester, went on.
"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of
judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if
either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined
together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that
so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow, are
not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful."
He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever
broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the
clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his
breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched
towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this
woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said--
"The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment."
The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the
same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under
his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he
said, "Proceed."
Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said--
"I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted,
and evidence of its truth or falsehood."
"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us. "I am
in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this
marriage exists."
Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making
no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong
grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive
front at this moment! How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild
beneath!
Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" he
asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?"
"Hardly," was the answer. "I have called it insuperable, and I speak
advisedly."
The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering
each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly--
"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
Rochester has a wife now living."
My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
to thunder--my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt
frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I
looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was
colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing:
he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without
smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he only twined
my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.
"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.
"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of --- Street, London."
"And you would thrust on me a wife?"
"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
recognises, if you do not."
"Favour me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her
place of abode."
"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read
out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--
"'I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. --- (a date of
fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the
county of ---, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---shire, England, was married
to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant,
and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at --- church, Spanish Town,
Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register of
that church--a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard
Mason.'"
"That--if a genuine document--may prove I have been married, but it does
not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living."
"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.
"How do you know?"
"I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will
scarcely controvert."
"Produce him--or go to hell."
"I will produce him first--he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the
goodness to step forward."
Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a
sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the
spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second
stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a
pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was Mason
himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I have
often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in
its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless forehead
received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred,
lifted his strong arm--he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the
church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body--but
Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on
Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he
only asked--"What have _you_ to say?"
An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.
"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,
what have you to say?"
"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a sacred
place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you aware, sir,
whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?"
"Courage," urged the lawyer,--"speak out."
"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate
tones: "I saw her there last April. I am her brother."
"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am an
old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.
Rochester at Thornfield Hall."
I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lips, and he muttered--
"No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it--or of her under
that name." He mused--for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he
formed his resolve, and announced it--
"Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel.
Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the
clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day." The man
obeyed.
Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: "Bigamy is an ugly
word!--I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred
me, or Providence has checked me,--perhaps the last. I am little better
than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me,
deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless
fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:--what this
lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to
whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at
the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined
your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch
and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister:
some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I
married fifteen years ago,--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute
personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing
you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick!--never fear me!--I'd
almost as soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came
of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her
mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!--as I found out
after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets
before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points.
I had a charming partner--pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy
man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly,
if you only knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs,
Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs.
Poole's patient, and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was
cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break
the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human. This
girl," he continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the
disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt
she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded
wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner! Come all of
you--follow!"
Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester coolly; "it
will not be wanted to-day."
At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adele, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and
greet us.
"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master; "away with your
congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!--they are fifteen years too
late!"
He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the
first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey:
the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to
the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.
"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed you
here."
He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this,
too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded
by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a
chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a
saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure
ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being,
one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all
fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was
covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a
mane, hid its head and face.
"Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!" said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and how is
your charge to-day?"
"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the boiling
mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not 'rageous."
A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed
hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.
"Ah! sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay."
"Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments."
"Take care then, sir!--for God's sake, take care!"
The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and
gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,--those
bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: "she has
no knife now, I suppose, and I'm on my guard."
"One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in
mortal discretion to fathom her craft."
"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.
"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.
"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat
viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a
big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent
besides: she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she
almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with
a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At
last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned
them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a
chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the
most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators: he
looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
"That is _my wife_," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure
hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my
shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth
of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just
as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the
difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this
face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of
the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge
ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize."
We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some
further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended
the stair.
"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be
glad to hear it--if, indeed, he should be still living--when Mr. Mason
returns to Madeira."
"My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?"
"Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating
the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason, who
was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica,
happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he
knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of
Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may suppose,
revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is
now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his
disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will
ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you
from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to
lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred
him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful I was not
too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain
that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to
accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in
England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we
anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason.
"No, no--let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting to
take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The
clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or
reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.
I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which
I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the
bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn, I
was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the wedding
dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I
thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I
leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I
thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down
where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open
beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I thought_.
The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene
with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there
was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance
or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly
pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions
put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an
open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the
living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over.
I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change:
nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was
the Jane Eyre of yesterday?--where was her life?--where were her
prospects?
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride, was a
cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December
storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed
the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes
which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with
untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and
flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and
white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead--struck
with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in
the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so
blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could
never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my
master's--which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering
child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not
seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast.
Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence
destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not
what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say
he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from
his idea, and from his presence I must go: _that_ I perceived well.
When--how--whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted
not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could
not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he
would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view
must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my
conduct!
My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round
me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned,
relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up
bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and
felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.
I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like
within me--a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these
words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that
should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them--
"Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help."
It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it--as I
had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips--it
came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole
consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith
death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That
bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters came into my soul;
I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the
floods overflowed me."
| As they walk to the church the next morning, Jane sees two strangers enter it. During the ceremony, when the clergyman asks them if either have any reason why they cannot be wed, one of the strangers steps forward and says that Mr. Rochester is already married. He states that he was married to Bertha Antoinetta Mason in the West Indies. Then Mason himself comes out of the shadows and confirms that it is true and that he is Bertha's brother and that his sister is alive and at Thornfield. Rochester says that it is true, but that Bertha is mad, and he takes them all to Thornfield. They go to the third story and there they see Grace Poole and another figure that may or may not be human. It acts like a wild animal, and it attacks Rochester when it sees him. He finally gets control over her and ties her up. He tells them all that this is his wife and asks if they could they blame him for trying to have another wife in Jane, telling them to compare the two. The men say that Jane is cleared of all blame, and that her uncle will be glad to hear of it. They tell her that her uncle was working with Mason when he received her letter that talked of her upcoming marriage. He told Mason about it, and he related Rochester's story. Jane's uncle begged Mason to travel and stop the wedding, and he himself fell so ill they are not sure whether he will survive or not. The men leave, and Jane goes to her room to think. She realizes that she must leave Thornfield and is dismayed | summary |
Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me
down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum
I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world.
The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment I
discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach,
where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain;
and now, I am absolutely destitute.
Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up
where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a
distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest
town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten
miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the well-known names of these
towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk
with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see. There are great moors
behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond
that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see
no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and
south--white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the
heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller
might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder
what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless
and lost. I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would
sound incredible and excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human
society at this moment--not a charm or hope calls me where my
fellow-creatures are--none that saw me would have a kind thought or a
good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I
will seek her breast and ask repose.
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply
furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I
turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a
hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the
crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread
that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might
discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it
was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.
Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep
silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence.
As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I
regained the faculty of reflection.
What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could
do nothing and go nowhere!--when a long way must yet be measured by my
weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation--when cold
charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant
sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale
could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!
I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer
day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above
the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze
whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me,
outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust,
rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at
least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me
without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet: the
remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a
stray penny--my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and
there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them
with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased
by this hermit's meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and
then chose my couch.
{I said my evening prayers: p311.jpg}
Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were
buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for
the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me
for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was
not, at least--at the commencement of the night, cold.
My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It
plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It
trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter
pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird
with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain
attempts to seek him.
Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was
come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the
companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we
feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread
before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel
their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His
omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr.
Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-
way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space
like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure
was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that
neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned
my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of
spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God's, and by God would he be
guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in
sleep forgot sorrow.
But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds
had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day
to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried--when the long morning
shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky--I got up, and I
looked round me.
What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading
moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I
saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet
bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I
might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a
human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not linger where there
was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left.
Hopeless of the future, I wished but this--that my Maker had that night
thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary
frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to
decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.
Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and
pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried; the want
provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled. I set
out.
Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent
and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice. I
walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and
might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered
me--might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a stone I saw
near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb--I
heard a bell chime--a church bell.
I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic
hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a
hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-
fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag
through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre
woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to
the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill,
and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human
labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil
like the rest.
About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one
street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window. I
coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a
degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed. The wish
to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was
amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint with
hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer
in exchange for one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk
handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly tell
how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not
know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they
would not; but I must try.
I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed
person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How
could she serve me? I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter
the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves,
the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd. I only
begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired. Disappointed in
the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She
pointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep; but
conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained
it. Soon I asked her "if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in
the village?"
"Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for."
I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face
with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource,
without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What? I must
apply somewhere. Where?
"Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was
wanted?"
"Nay; she couldn't say."
"What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people
do?"
"Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver's
needle-factory, and at the foundry."
"Did Mr. Oliver employ women?"
"Nay; it was men's work."
"And what do the women do?"
"I knawn't," was the answer. "Some does one thing, and some another.
Poor folk mun get on as they can."
She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to
importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently
wanted. I took leave.
I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right
hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an
inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to
a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more. Much
exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside
into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed,
I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something--a
resource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the
top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and
brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach
the white door or touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it
possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me?
Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman
opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless
heart and fainting frame--a voice wretchedly low and faltering--I asked
if a servant was wanted here?
"No," said she; "we do not keep a servant."
"Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?" I continued.
"I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want some work:
no matter what."
But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me:
besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character,
position, tale. She shook her head, she "was sorry she could give me no
information," and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it
shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should
have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.
I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no
prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to a
wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer
inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature's
cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance
of food. Solitude would be no solitude--rest no rest--while the vulture,
hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.
I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I
wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to
ask--no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime, the
afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving
dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened
towards it. Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a garden, stood a
well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage. I
remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no
friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for
introduction and aid. It is the clergyman's function to help--at least
with advice--those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have
something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage,
and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the
house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened: I asked was
this the parsonage?
"Yes."
"Was the clergyman in?"
"No."
"Would he be in soon?"
"No, he was gone from home."
"To a distance?"
"Not so far--happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden
death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay
there a fortnight longer."
"Was there any lady of the house?"
"Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;" and of her,
reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was
sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.
Once more I took off my handkerchief--once more I thought of the cakes of
bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to
allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the
village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others were
there besides the woman I ventured the request--"Would she give me a roll
for this handkerchief?"
She looked at me with evident suspicion: "Nay, she never sold stuff i'
that way."
Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. "How could
she tell where I had got the handkerchief?" she said.
"Would she take my gloves?"
"No! what could she do with them?"
Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is
enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I
can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral
degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a
recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who
repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not
be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a
well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was
employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment? Not,
certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who
knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not take
my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the
offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me
condense now. I am sick of the subject.
A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the
farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and
said--
"Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry." He cast on me
a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from
his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar,
but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown
loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.
I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood
I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the
ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more
than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters; no sense of
safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards morning it rained; the
whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask me, reader, to give a
minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was
repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips. At the
door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold
porridge into a pig trough. "Will you give me that?" I asked.
{"Will you give me that?" I asked: p316.jpg}
She stared at me. "Mother!" she exclaimed, "there is a woman wants me to
give her these porridge."
"Well lass," replied a voice within, "give it her if she's a beggar. T'
pig doesn't want it."
The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
ravenously.
As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which
I had been pursuing an hour or more.
"My strength is quite failing me," I said in a soliloquy. "I feel I
cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While
the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground? I
fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be very
dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense
of desolation--this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood,
though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself
to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?
Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of
want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh,
Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!--direct me!"
My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had
strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very
cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and by-
paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few
fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were
scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.
"Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented
road," I reflected. "And far better that crows and ravens--if any ravens
there be in these regions--should pick my flesh from my bones, than that
they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper's
grave."
To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find
a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure.
But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no variation
but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black,
where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I could
still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and
shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.
My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among
the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. "That is an _ignis
fatuus_," was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It
burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. "Is
it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned. I watched to see
whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not
enlarge. "It may be a candle in a house," I then conjectured; "but if
so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a
yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have
it shut in my face."
And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I lay
still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died
moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the
skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost--the friendly
numbness of death--it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it;
but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere
long.
The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I
tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It
led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been
impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height
of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my
faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.
Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I
approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light,
which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees--firs,
apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms
and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I drew near: some
obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my hand to feel the
dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall--above
it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I
groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate--a
wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a
sable bush-holly or yew.
Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose
to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone
nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared
it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out
the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small
latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the
growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick
over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was
so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed
unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage
shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room
with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter
plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing
peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The
candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its
light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean,
like all about her, was knitting a stocking.
I noticed these objects cursorily only--in them there was nothing
extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth,
sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young,
graceful women--ladies in every point--sat, one in a low rocking-chair,
the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and
bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and
faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one
girl--in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.
A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were
they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the
table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and
cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I
gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call
them handsome--they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each
bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand
between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which
they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller
books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to
aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all
the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so
hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock
tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the
click-click of the woman's knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice
broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
"Listen, Diana," said one of the absorbed students; "Franz and old Daniel
are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which
he has awakened in terror--listen!" And in a low voice she read
something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an
unknown tongue--neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or
German I could not tell.
"That is strong," she said, when she had finished: "I relish it." The
other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated,
while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later
day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the
line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on
sounding brass to me--conveying no meaning:--
"'Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.' Good! good!"
she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. "There you have a
dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a
hundred pages of fustian. 'Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines
Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.' I like it!"
Both were again silent.
"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old woman,
looking up from her knitting.
"Yes, Hannah--a far larger country than England, where they talk in no
other way."
"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t' one t'other:
and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?"
"We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all--for we
are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don't speak German, and we
cannot read it without a dictionary to help us."
"And what good does it do you?"
"We mean to teach it some time--or at least the elements, as they say;
and then we shall get more money than we do now."
"Varry like: but give ower studying; ye've done enough for to-night."
"I think we have: at least I'm tired. Mary, are you?"
"Mortally: after all, it's tough work fagging away at a language with no
master but a lexicon."
"It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch.
I wonder when St. John will come home."
"Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold
watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you have
the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?"
The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:
soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.
"Ah, childer!" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond' room now:
it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner."
She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked
sad now.
"But he is in a better place," continued Hannah: "we shouldn't wish him
here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had."
"You say he never mentioned us?" inquired one of the ladies.
"He hadn't time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He had
been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when
Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o' ye to be sent for, he fair
laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the
next day--that is, a fortnight sin'--and he went to sleep and niver
wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and
fand him. Ah, childer! that's t' last o' t' old stock--for ye and Mr.
St. John is like of different soart to them 'at's gone; for all your
mother wor mich i' your way, and a'most as book-learned. She wor the
pictur' o' ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father."
I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for
such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair
complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction
and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the
other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Mary's
pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana's duskier tresses
covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten.
"Ye'll want your supper, I am sure," observed Hannah; "and so will Mr.
St. John when he comes in."
And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed
about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so intent
on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so
keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it
recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from
contrast. And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this
house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe in the truth of my
wants and woes--to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings! As
I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last
idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened.
"What do you want?" she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed
me by the light of the candle she held.
"May I speak to your mistresses?" I said.
"You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come
from?"
"I am a stranger."
"What is your business here at this hour?"
"I want a night's shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of
bread to eat."
Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah's face. "I'll
give you a piece of bread," she said, after a pause; "but we can't take
in a vagrant to lodge. It isn't likely."
"Do let me speak to your mistresses."
"No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about
now; it looks very ill."
"But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?"
"Oh, I'll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don't do
wrong, that's all. Here is a penny; now go--"
"A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don't
shut the door:--oh, don't, for God's sake!"
"I must; the rain is driving in--"
"Tell the young ladies. Let me see them--"
"Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn't
make such a noise. Move off."
"But I must die if I am turned away."
"Not you. I'm fear'd you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about
folk's houses at this time o' night. If you've any
followers--housebreakers or such like--anywhere near, you may tell them
we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and
guns." Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and
bolted it within.
This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering--a throe of true
despair--rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another
step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned--I wrung my
hands--I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this
last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation--this
banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of
fortitude was gone--at least for a moment; but the last I soon
endeavoured to regain.
"I can but die," I said, "and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His
will in silence."
These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my
misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there--dumb
and still.
"All men must die," said a voice quite close at hand; "but all are not
condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be
if you perished here of want."
"Who or what speaks?" I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and
incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was
near--what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented
me from distinguishing. With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed
to the door.
"Is it you, Mr. St. John?" cried Hannah.
"Yes--yes; open quickly."
"Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come
in--your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad
folks about. There has been a beggar-woman--I declare she is not gone
yet!--laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!"
"Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your
duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and
listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case--I must at
least examine into it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the
house."
{Hush, Hannah; I have a word to say to the woman: p323.jpg}
With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean,
bright kitchen--on the very hearth--trembling, sickening; conscious of an
aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. The two
ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing at
me.
"St. John, who is it?" I heard one ask.
"I cannot tell: I found her at the door," was the reply.
"She does look white," said Hannah.
"As white as clay or death," was responded. "She will fall: let her
sit."
And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me. I still
possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak.
"Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she
is worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!"
"A mere spectre!"
"Is she ill, or only famished?"
"Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of
bread."
Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and
the fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and
put it to my lips. Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it,
and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too,
the same balm-like emotion spoke: "Try to eat."
"Yes--try," repeated Mary gently; and Mary's hand removed my sodden
bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me: feebly at
first, eagerly soon.
"Not too much at first--restrain her," said the brother; "she has had
enough." And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.
"A little more, St. John--look at the avidity in her eyes."
"No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now--ask her her
name."
I felt I could speak, and I answered--"My name is Jane Elliott." Anxious
as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an _alias_.
"And where do you live? Where are your friends?"
I was silent.
"Can we send for any one you know?"
I shook my head.
"What account can you give of yourself?"
Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and
once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast,
vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the
mendicant--to resume my natural manner and character. I began once more
to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account--which at
present I was far too weak to render--I said after a brief pause--
"Sir, I can give you no details to-night."
"But what, then," said he, "do you expect me to do for you?"
"Nothing," I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana
took the word--
"Do you mean," she asked, "that we have now given you what aid you
require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?"
I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct
both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her
compassionate gaze with a smile, I said--"I will trust you. If I were a
masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your
hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me
as you like; but excuse me from much discourse--my breath is short--I
feel a spasm when I speak." All three surveyed me, and all three were
silent.
"Hannah," said Mr. St. John, at last, "let her sit there at present, and
ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder of that
milk and bread. Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and talk the
matter over."
They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned--I could not tell
which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the
genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere
long, with the servant's aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my
dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me. I
thanked God--experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful
joy--and slept.
| Two days have passed since Jane left Thornfield, and the money that she had could only allow the driver to take her as far as Whitcross, which is not even a town, but a crossroads. Jane had forgotten her parcel on the coach, so now realizes she is quite penniless and destitute. She spends the night outside, and the next morning, driven by hunger, walks to the nearest village. She stops at a shop to see if the woman knows of any work needed in the village. The woman does not, and neither does a woman at a small house Jane stops at. Jane continues on, her hunger getting stronger, until she sees the parsonage. She asks if the clergyman is in, but is told that he is not expected for another fortnight, as his father died and he had to leave town. She goes again to the shop, mastering her embarrassment to ask for some bread in exchange for her gloves, but the woman will not trade. Jane walks out of town and begs some bread from a man in a farmhouse and again sleeps outside. In the morning she passes a girl about to throw porridge to a pig, but the girl gives it to Jane when she asks for it. Jane wanders farther out of the town, and it gets darker. She sees a light in the distance, but feels too weak to approach it. She finally finds the strength and approaches a small house. Inside are an older woman and two, young graceful women, and Jane watches them through the window. When she knocks, the older woman tells her to go away. Jane tells her that she will die, and when the older woman closes the door, Jane collapses on the doorstep. Just then a man approaches and opens the door and tells the woman to let Jane in. Jane tells the people that her name is Jane Elliot and that she is too tired and famished to answer any questions. They give her some food and a bed for the night | summary |
The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very
dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but
few thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small
room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on
it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been
almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time--of the change
from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one
entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could
understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could
not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed
me. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand
me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me. Diana and
Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper
sentences of this sort at my bedside--
"It is very well we took her in."
"Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning
had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through?"
"Strange hardships, I imagine--poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?"
"She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of
speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though
splashed and wet, were little worn and fine."
"She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like
it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy
would be agreeable."
Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the
hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to,
myself. I was comforted.
Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of
lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted
fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was
sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve had been
overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while.
There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when
once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet,
low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little
accustomed to expansive comment, "Rather an unusual physiognomy;
certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation."
"Far otherwise," responded Diana. "To speak truth, St. John, my heart
rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit
her permanently."
"That is hardly likely," was the reply. "You will find she is some young
lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably
injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to
them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face
which make me sceptical of her tractability." He stood considering me
some minutes; then added, "She looks sensible, but not at all handsome."
"She is so ill, St. John."
"Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of beauty
are quite wanting in those features."
On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise
in bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about,
as I supposed, the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish: the food was
good--void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had
swallowed. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived:
ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I wished to
rise; but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel; in
which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed
to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation.
On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My
black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were
removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite
decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered
presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb and
brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting every five
minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on me;
for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once
more, clean and respectable looking--no speck of the dirt, no trace of
the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left--I crept
down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low
passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.
It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous
fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most
difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened
or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had
begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and
well-dressed, she even smiled.
"What, you have got up!" she said. "You are better, then. You may sit
you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will."
She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about,
examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to
me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly--
"Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?"
I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the
question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered
quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness--
"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more
than yourself or your young ladies."
After a pause she said, "I dunnut understand that: you've like no house,
nor no brass, I guess?"
"The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not
make a beggar in your sense of the word."
"Are you book-learned?" she inquired presently.
"Yes, very."
"But you've never been to a boarding-school?"
"I was at a boarding-school eight years."
She opened her eyes wide. "Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?"
"I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are you
going to do with these gooseberries?" I inquired, as she brought out a
basket of the fruit.
"Mak' 'em into pies."
"Give them to me and I'll pick them."
"Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought."
"But I must do something. Let me have them."
She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my
dress, "lest," as she said, "I should mucky it."
"Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands," she
remarked. "Happen ye've been a dressmaker?"
"No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don't trouble
your head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we
are."
"Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House."
"And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?"
"Nay; he doesn't live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at
home, he is in his own parish at Morton."
"That village a few miles off?
"Aye."
"And what is he?"
"He is a parson."
I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I
had asked to see the clergyman. "This, then, was his father's
residence?"
"Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and
gurt (great) grandfather afore him."
"The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?"
"Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name."
"And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?"
"Yes."
"Their father is dead?"
"Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke."
"They have no mother?"
"The mistress has been dead this mony a year."
"Have you lived with the family long?"
"I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three."
"That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will
say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a
beggar."
She again regarded me with a surprised stare. "I believe," she said, "I
was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats
goes about, you mun forgie me."
"And though," I continued, rather severely, "you wished to turn me from
the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog."
"Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o' th'
childer nor of mysel: poor things! They've like nobody to tak' care on
'em but me. I'm like to look sharpish."
I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.
"You munnut think too hardly of me," she again remarked.
"But I do think hardly of you," I said; "and I'll tell you why--not so
much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an
impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I
had no 'brass' and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived
have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not
to consider poverty a crime."
"No more I ought," said she: "Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I
wor wrang--but I've clear a different notion on you now to what I had.
You look a raight down dacent little crater."
"That will do--I forgive you now. Shake hands."
She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile
illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.
Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she
made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details
about her deceased master and mistress, and "the childer," as she called
the young people.
Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of
as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the
Rivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, "aboon two
hundred year old--for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to
compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down i' Morton Vale. But she could
remember Bill Oliver's father a journeyman needlemaker; and th' Rivers
wor gentry i' th' owd days o' th' Henrys, as onybody might see by looking
into th' registers i' Morton Church vestry." Still, she allowed, "the
owd maister was like other folk--naught mich out o' t' common way: stark
mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich like." The mistress was
different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the "bairns"
had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor
ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time
they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak' of their own." Mr.
St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the
girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses: for
they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of
money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was now not
rich enough to give them fortunes, they must provide for themselves. They
had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to
stay a few weeks on account of their father's death; but they did so like
Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about. They had been
in London, and many other grand towns; but they always said there was no
place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other--never
fell out nor "threaped." She did not know where there was such a family
for being united.
Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two
ladies and their brother were now.
"Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour
to tea."
They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by
the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed
through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly
expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to
come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me.
"You should have waited for my leave to descend," she said. "You still
look very pale--and so thin! Poor child!--poor girl!"
Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She
possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face
seemed to me full of charm. Mary's countenance was equally
intelligent--her features equally pretty; but her expression was more
reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked and
spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was my
nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers,
and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active
will.
"And what business have you here?" she continued. "It is not your place.
Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be
free, even to license--but you are a visitor, and must go into the
parlour."
"I am very well here."
"Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour."
"Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary.
"To be sure," added her sister. "Come, you must be obedient." And still
holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.
"Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take our things
off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our
little moorland home--to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined,
or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing."
She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat
opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first, the
parlour, and then its occupant.
The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet
comfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very
bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few
strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated
the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and
an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the
room--not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a
lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:
everything--including the carpet and curtains--looked at once well worn
and well saved.
Mr. St. John--sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls,
keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely
sealed--was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a
man, he could not have been easier. He was young--perhaps from twenty-
eight to thirty--tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a
Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite
an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes
so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked
at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His
eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead,
colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of
fair hair.
This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it
describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding,
an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat,
there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my
perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or
eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one
glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in
the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top
of the oven.
"Eat that now," she said: "you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had
nothing but some gruel since breakfast."
I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers
now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed
his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious
directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which
told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted
from the stranger.
"You are very hungry," he said.
"I am, sir." It is my way--it always was my way, by instinct--ever to
meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.
"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the
last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings
of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not
immoderately."
"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir," was my very clumsily-
contrived, unpolished answer.
"No," he said coolly: "when you have indicated to us the residence of
your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home."
"That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being
absolutely without home and friends."
The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no
suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak
particularly of the young ladies. St. John's eyes, though clear enough
in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He
seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's
thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of
keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than
to encourage.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you are completely isolated from
every connection?"
"I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess
to admittance under any roof in England."
"A most singular position at your age!"
Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the
table before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon
explained the quest.
"You have never been married? You are a spinster?"
Diana laughed. "Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old,
St. John," said she.
"I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No."
I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating
recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw
the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning
their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the colder and
sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had excited forced
out tears as well as colour.
"Where did you last reside?" he now asked.
"You are too inquisitive, St. John," murmured Mary in a low voice; but he
leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and
piercing look.
"The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my
secret," I replied concisely.
"Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from
St. John and every other questioner," remarked Diana.
"Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you," he
said. "And you need help, do you not?"
"I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will
put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the remuneration
for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries of life."
"I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid
you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell
me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do."
I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as
much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and
enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily.
"Mr. Rivers," I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at
me, openly and without diffidence, "you and your sisters have done me a
great service--the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued
me, by your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit conferred gives
you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent,
on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer
you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of
mind--my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.
"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I
could know them. I was brought up a dependant; educated in a charitable
institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I
passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher--Lowood Orphan Asylum,
---shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?--the Rev. Robert
Brocklehurst is the treasurer."
"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school."
"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I
obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to
leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot
and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound
incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as
any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the
catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a
strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my
departure--speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me
everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and
trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to
Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I
slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without
crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food;
and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the
last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your
door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your
sisters have done for me since--for I have not been insensible during my
seeming torpor--and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial
compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity."
"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I paused;
"she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit
down now, Miss Elliott."
I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten
my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at
once.
"You said your name was Jane Elliott?" he observed.
"I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be
called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it
sounds strange to me."
"Your real name you will not give?"
"No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would
lead to it, I avoid."
"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana. "Now do, brother, let her
be at peace a while."
But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably
and with as much acumen as ever.
"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality--you would
wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' compassion,
and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction
drawn, nor do I resent it--it is just): you desire to be independent of
us?"
"I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work:
that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest
cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of
the horrors of homeless destitution."
"Indeed you _shall_ stay here," said Diana, putting her white hand on my
head. "You _shall_," repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
sincerity which seemed natural to her.
"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. St. John,
"as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen
bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement. I feel
more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall
endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am but the
incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort.
And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some
more efficient succour than such as I can offer."
"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can
do," answered Diana for me; "and you know, St. John, she has no choice of
helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you."
"I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a
servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better," I answered.
"Right," said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. "If such is your spirit, I
promise to aid you, in my own time and way."
He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I
soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my
present strength would permit.
| For three days and nights Jane stays in bed and they tend to her. When she is finally able to arise, she finds her clothes have all be cleaned and are waiting for her, and she goes downstairs. She there sees Hannah, the older woman, and after a talk they come to an understanding and Jane forgives her for not letting her in, and they become friends. Soon the rest of the household return from their walk to Morton. The two sisters are Diana and Mary Rivers, and the brother is Mr. St. John Rivers. Jane learns that their father has recently died, and that that is why they are all at Moor House, as the house is called. Mr. St. John is the clergyman in Morton, where Jane had gone for help. The household tries to talk to Jane more. She tells them that she will not disclose where she had been before then, but she does tell much of her life, including her stay at Lowood School and that she had been a private governess. She also tells them that her name is an alias, but that she fears disclosure, so will not tell them her real name. She asks Mr. St. John to find her some work, no matter how humble, and he says he will try | summary |
The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In
a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day,
and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their
occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when
and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this
intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time--the pleasure
arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.
I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me;
what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I,
too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its
latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs--all
grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with
yew and holly--and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would
bloom--found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple
moors behind and around their dwelling--to the hollow vale into which the
pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound
between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little
pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave
sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-
faced lambs:--they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm
of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its
strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the
consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell
and sweep--on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss,
by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow
granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them--so
many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft
breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset;
the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions,
the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell
that entranced theirs.
Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and
better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of
knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me:
then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I
had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion:
we coincided, in short, perfectly.
If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In
her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow,
such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I could
talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity
and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's feet, to rest
my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Mary, while they
sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched. Diana offered
to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of
instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited
me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection--of the strongest
kind--was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and
colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this
one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and
watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile,
intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually
entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days.
As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly
between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the
distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at
home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the
sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.
No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or
fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat,
and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission
of love or duty--I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would
expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than
cheerful--
"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from
these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I
propose to myself?"
Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and some
minutes of apparently mournful meditation.
But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of
a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his
life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity,
that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere
Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening, when he
sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading
or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know
not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might
be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.
I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it
was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a
strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection
for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more
of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was
manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their
soothing silence--never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful
delights they could yield.
Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity
of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him
preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon:
but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it
produced on me.
It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it
was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal
breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language.
This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was
thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were
softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of
consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic
doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent; and each
reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by
his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to
me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to which
I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of
disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and
disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived,
conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God
which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than
had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost
elysium--regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which
possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.
Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House,
and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as
governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each
held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they
were regarded only as humble dependants, and who neither knew nor sought
out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired
accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste
of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about
the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent
that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left
alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the
window-recess--which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of
study--and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what
words to frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the
ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.
Looking up as I drew near--"You have a question to ask of me?" he said.
"Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer
myself to undertake?"
"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed
both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached
to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it
inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching
departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary."
"And they will go in three days now?" I said.
"Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah
will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up."
I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his
look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to
recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious
interest to me.
"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay
will not have increased the difficulty of securing it."
"Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and
you to accept."
He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew
impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance
fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words
could have done, and with less trouble.
"You need be in no hurry to hear," he said: "let me frankly tell you, I
have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,
recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it
must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find
that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to
me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the
patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I
am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of
the race, two earn the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third
considers himself an alien from his native country--not only for life,
but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by
the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from
fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that
church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word,
'Rise, follow Me!'"
St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,
deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of
glance. He resumed--
"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of
poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading--for I see now
your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to
the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but
_I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold
that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian
labourer's task of tillage is appointed him--the scantier the meed his
toil brings--the higher the honour. His, under such circumstances, is
the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the
Apostles--their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself."
"Well?" I said, as he again paused--"proceed."
He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read
my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The
conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his
succeeding observations.
"I believe you will accept the post I offer you," said he, "and hold it
for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently
keep the narrow and narrowing--the tranquil, hidden office of English
country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to
repose as that in mine, though of a different kind."
"Do explain," I urged, when he halted once more.
"I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,--how trivial--how
cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,
and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the
course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the
utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had
no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of
progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school
for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of
two rooms attached to it for the mistress's house. Her salary will be
thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but
sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter
of the sole rich man in my parish--Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-
factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the
education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that
she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own
house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her
having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress?"
He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an
indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing
all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in
what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble--but then
it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding--but then,
compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent;
and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it
was not ignoble--not unworthy--not mentally degrading, I made my
decision.
"I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my
heart."
"But you comprehend me?" he said. "It is a village school: your scholars
will be only poor girls--cottagers' children--at the best, farmers'
daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all
you will have to teach. What will you do with your accomplishments?
What, with the largest portion of your mind--sentiments--tastes?"
"Save them till they are wanted. They will keep."
"You know what you undertake, then?"
"I do."
He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and
deeply gratified.
"And when will you commence the exercise of your function?"
"I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next
week."
"Very well: so be it."
He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at
me. He shook his head.
"What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?" I asked.
"You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!"
"Why? What is your reason for saying so?"
"I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the
maintenance of an even tenor in life."
"I am not ambitious."
He started at the word "ambitious." He repeated, "No. What made you
think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find
it out?"
"I was speaking of myself."
"Well, if you are not ambitious, you are--" He paused.
"What?"
"I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have
misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human
affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure
you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to
devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus:
any more than I can be content," he added, with emphasis, "to live here
buried in morass, pent in with mountains--my nature, that God gave me,
contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed--made useless. You
hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached contentment with a
humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers
of water in God's service--I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my
restlessness. Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by
some means."
He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in
the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.
Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached
for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as
usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not
be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would be a
different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would probably,
as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a
parting for life.
"He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves," she said: "natural
affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane;
but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in
some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my
conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe
decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is
right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!" And the tears gushed
to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.
"We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,"
she murmured.
At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate
purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that "misfortunes never come
singly," and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip
between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a
letter. He entered.
"Our uncle John is dead," said he.
Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings
appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.
"Dead?" repeated Diana.
"Yes."
She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face. "And what then?" she
demanded, in a low voice.
"What then, Die?" he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature.
"What then? Why--nothing. Read."
He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to
Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All
three looked at each other, and all three smiled--a dreary, pensive smile
enough.
"Amen! We can yet live," said Diana at last.
"At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before," remarked
Mary.
"Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might
have been_," said Mr. Rivers, "and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with
what _is_."
He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.
For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.
"Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries," she said, "and think us
hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a
relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was my
mother's brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by his
advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that
ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in
anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged afterwards in more
prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty
thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no near kindred but
ourselves and one other person, not more closely related than we. My
father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by
leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has
bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of
thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers,
for the purchase of three mourning rings. He had a right, of course, to
do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the
receipt of such news. Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with
a thousand pounds each; and to St. John such a sum would have been
valuable, for the good it would have enabled him to do."
This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference
made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day I left
Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it for
distant B-. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage:
and so the old grange was abandoned.
| Jane's stay at Moor House is quite pleasant. Diana, Mary and she get along very well and have much in common. They loan her books, and she draws for them, and they converse much. Jane does not get along so well with Mr. St. John though, but she explains that he is not much at the house and that his disposition is not like the others'. A month passes since Jane's arrival, and soon the sisters are to return to their jobs as governesses. Jane asks St. John if he had found any work for her, and he says that he had. He tells her that he is opening a school for girls in Morton, and that if she were the mistress of it she would have a house and a housemaid and some money. He feels that it is beneath her station and she will not be very happy with it, but Jane accepts the position. That evening St. John brings home a letter that he had received. He says that their uncle John had died. They explain that they had never met him, but that he had come into a fortune that they thought they might have seen a part of as their uncle never married and had no children. His will however has left all his money to another who is no more closely related than they are. The next day Jane leaves for her house in Morton, and the day after Diana and Mary return to their jobs. Soon after St. John and Hannah close up the house and return to the parsonage | summary |
My home, then, when I at last find a home,--is a cottage; a little room
with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs
and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes,
and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same dimensions
as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too
large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my
gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such
things as are necessary.
It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little
orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth.
This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But
three of the number can read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a
few sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district.
At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other's
language. Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as
ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a
disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad
little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest
genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement,
intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in
those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I
shall find some happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I
do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I
regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live
on from day to day.
Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder
bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to deceive
myself, I must reply--No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt--yes,
idiot that I am--I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which
sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was
weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I
heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much
for these feelings; I know them to be wrong--that is a great step gained;
I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the
better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite
subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing
progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute
gratification for disgust.
Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no
struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on
the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the
luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr.
Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he
would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He _did_ love
me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet
homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall
I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what
no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I
saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a
slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one
hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the
next--or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?
Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and
scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God
directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!
Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my
door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile
from the village. The birds were singing their last strains--
"The air was mild, the dew was balm."
While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself
ere long weeping--and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion
to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and
fatal fury--consequences of my departure--which might now, perhaps, be
dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate
restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face aside from the
lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton--I say _lonely_, for in that
bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church
and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the
roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I
hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but
soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the
meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog--old Carlo, Mr. Rivers' pointer,
as I saw in a moment--was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John
himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave
almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in.
"No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters
left for you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper."
I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I
thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were
doubtless very visible upon it.
"Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?" he
asked.
"Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my
scholars very well."
"But perhaps your accommodations--your cottage--your furniture--have
disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough; but--"
I interrupted--
"My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and
commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not
absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a
carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing--I
was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a
business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends;
the bounty of my lot. I do not repine."
"But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you
is dark and empty."
"I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less
to grow impatient under one of loneliness."
"Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your
good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the
vacillating fears of Lot's wife. What you had left before I saw you, of
course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation
which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career
steadily, for some months at least."
"It is what I mean to do," I answered. St. John continued--
"It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent
of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has
given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our
energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will
strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from
inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another
nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to
taste--and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road
as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if
rougher than it.
"A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had
made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to
death. I burnt for the more active life of the world--for the more
exciting toils of a literary career--for the destiny of an artist,
author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of
a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a
luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice. I considered; my
life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season
of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped
existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds--my powers
heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread
their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear
which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and
eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator,
were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.
"A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind
changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving
nothing of bondage but its galling soreness--which time only can heal. My
father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have
not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a
successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings
broken through or cut asunder--a last conflict with human weakness, in
which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_
overcome--and I leave Europe for the East."
He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when
he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I
looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the
field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the
water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and
scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell,
exclaimed--
"Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is
quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears
and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have
your back towards me now."
It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical
accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood
yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the
speaker had surprised him--his arm resting on the gate, his face directed
towards the west. He turned at last, with measured deliberation. A
vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side. There appeared,
within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white--a youthful, graceful
form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo,
it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under
his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong
expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever
the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as
ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified,
in this instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no defect was
perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes
shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark,
and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so
soft a fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the
white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of
tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh too,
ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth without flaw;
the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses--all
advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were
fully hers. I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her
with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood;
and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed
this, her darling, with a grand-dame's bounty.
What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked
myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as
naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He had
already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft
of daisies which grew by the wicket.
"A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone," he said, as he
crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.
"Oh, I only came home from S-" (she mentioned the name of a large town
some twenty miles distant) "this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened
your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my
bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?"
pointing to me.
"It is," said St. John.
"Do you think you shall like Morton?" she asked of me, with a direct and
naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.
"I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so."
"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?"
"Quite."
"Do you like your house?"
"Very much."
"Have I furnished it nicely?"
"Very nicely, indeed."
"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?"
"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy." (This then, I thought,
is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune,
as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets
presided over her birth, I wonder?)
"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added. "It will
be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr.
Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S-. Last night, or rather
this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The ---th regiment are
stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable
men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor
merchants to shame."
It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his upper
lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,
and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the
laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from
the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning
gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well
became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.
As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. "Poor
Carlo loves me," said she. "_He_ is not stern and distant to his
friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent."
As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his young
and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face. I saw his
solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion.
Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she
for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of
despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a
vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think,
as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded neither by
word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.
"Papa says you never come to see us now," continued Miss Oliver, looking
up. "You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this evening,
and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?"
"It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver," answered St.
John.
"Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when
papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no business
to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come. Why are you so very shy, and
so very sombre?" She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of
her own.
"I forgot!" she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if
shocked at herself. "I am so giddy and thoughtless! _Do_ excuse me. It
had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for
joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is
shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see
papa."
"Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night."
Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort
it cost him thus to refuse.
"Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any
longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!"
She held out her hand. He just touched it. "Good evening!" he repeated,
in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment
returned.
"Are you well?" she asked. Well might she put the question: his face was
blanched as her gown.
"Quite well," he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She went
one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped
fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned
at all.
This spectacle of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from
exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother
"inexorable as death." She had not exaggerated.
| Jane describes her home in Morton as a cottage, and says that her furniture is useful yet humble. It is the evening of the first day of class, and Jane relates that she has twenty students, only three of which can read. She sees challenges ahead, and though she feels that she may not enjoy her new life, she will try. Jane goes outside to look around and is met there by St. John who brings her a present from his sisters of some drawing materials. He asks how she likes her new position, and she says that she does. He tells her that a year ago he had become miserable and had thought it a mistake that he had joined the ministry. He had then decided to become a missionary and is happy in the planning for it and believes he will travel from Europe for the East. Just then Miss Oliver, an heiress and the patron of the school, arrives. Jane sees that she is quite beautiful and that she has an affect on St. John. She asks Jane how she likes the school and her house and says that she will come and help her teach sometimes. Miss Oliver tries to get St. John to return with her to the house so he can visit her father, but he makes up excuses and the three part ways | summary |
I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully
as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before,
with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature.
Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me
hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I
was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst the
educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference
rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules,
and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping
rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves
obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few
examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of
excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These
soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons
neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly
manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even
surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began
personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I had
amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters: young women grown,
almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught
the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of
needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them--characters
desirous of information and disposed for improvement--with whom I passed
many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then (the
farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment
in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a
consideration--a scrupulous regard to their feelings--to which they were
not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and
benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it
made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.
I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I
heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly
smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of
working people, is like "sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;" serene
inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this period of my life,
my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection:
and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful
existence--after a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars,
an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone--I used to rush
into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the
ideal, the stirring, the stormy--dreams where, amidst unusual scenes,
charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still
again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and
then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye,
touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him--the hope of
passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first
force and fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how
situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering;
and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and
heard the burst of passion. By nine o'clock the next morning I was
punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady
duties of the day.
Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the
school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would
canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery servant.
Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple habit, with
her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls
that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can scarcely be
imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic building, and glide
through the dazzled ranks of the village children. She generally came at
the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catechising
lesson. Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the visitress pierce the young
pastor's heart. A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance,
even when he did not see it; and when he was looking quite away from the
door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble-seeming
features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in
their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger
than working muscle or darting glance could indicate.
Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could not,
conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she went
up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly in his
face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say, with
his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, "I love
you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that keeps
me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it. But that
heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it.
It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed."
And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud would
soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily from
his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so heroic
and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to
follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give
one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one
hope of the true, eternal Paradise. Besides, he could not bind all that
he had in his nature--the rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest--in
the limits of a single passion. He could not--he would not--renounce his
wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale
Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once, despite his
reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.
Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I
had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise:
she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly
selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely
spoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it,
when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness),
but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth;
ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she was
very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex like me;
but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive. A very
different sort of mind was hers from that, for instance, of the sisters
of St. John. Still, I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Adele; except
that, for a child whom we have watched over and taught, a closer
affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult
acquaintance.
She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers,
only, certainly, she allowed, "not one-tenth so handsome, though I was a
nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel." I was, however,
good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a _lusus naturae_, she
affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous history,
if known, would make a delightful romance.
One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless
yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and the
table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books,
a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my
drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty
little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from
nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors. She
was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with delight.
"Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a
love--what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first
school in S-. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?"
"With pleasure," I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at the
idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then on a
dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only ornament
was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with all the
wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine card-board, and drew
a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it; and,
as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit another
day.
She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself
accompanied her next evening--a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and
grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright
flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud
personage; but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosamond's portrait
pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of it. He
insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale
Hall.
I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant
evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and
pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable; and when he
entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong terms
his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he only
feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place, and
would soon quit it for one more suitable.
"Indeed," cried Rosamond, "she is clever enough to be a governess in a
high family, papa."
I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the
land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers--of the Rivers family--with great
respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood; that the
ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once belonged to
them; that even now he considered the representative of that house might,
if he liked, make an alliance with the best. He accounted it a pity that
so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going
out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It
appeared, then, that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of
Rosamond's union with St. John. Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young
clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient
compensation for the want of fortune.
It was the 5th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after
helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of a
penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright--scoured floor,
polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself neat, and
had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.
The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got my
palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier
occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver's miniature. The head was
finished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery to
shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips--a soft curl
here and there to the tresses--a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash
under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these nice
details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting St. John
Rivers.
"I am come to see how you are spending your holiday," he said. "Not, I
hope, in thought? No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel
lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up
wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace," and
he laid on the table a new publication--a poem: one of those genuine
productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days--the
golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era are less
favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I
know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power
over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence,
their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful
angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble
ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished?
No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they
not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence
spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.
While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of "Marmion" (for
"Marmion" it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall
figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing. I looked up at
him: he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read his
heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had then
temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination to do
him some good, if I could.
"With all his firmness and self-control," thought I, "he tasks himself
too far: locks every feeling and pang within--expresses, confesses,
imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about
this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make
him talk."
I said first, "Take a chair, Mr. Rivers." But he answered, as he always
did, that he could not stay. "Very well," I responded, mentally, "stand
if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude is
at least as bad for you as it is for me. I'll try if I cannot discover
the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in that marble
breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy."
"Is this portrait like?" I asked bluntly.
"Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely."
"You did, Mr. Rivers."
He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me
astonished. "Oh, that is nothing yet," I muttered within. "I don't mean
to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm prepared to go to
considerable lengths." I continued, "You observed it closely and
distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again," and I
rose and placed it in his hand.
"A well-executed picture," he said; "very soft, clear colouring; very
graceful and correct drawing."
"Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it
like?"
Mastering some hesitation, he answered, "Miss Oliver, I presume."
"Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will
promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very
picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I
don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would
deem worthless."
He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he
held it, the more he seemed to covet it. "It is like!" he murmured; "the
eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect. It
smiles!"
"Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting? Tell
me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would
it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the
sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?"
He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute,
disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.
"That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious
or wise is another question."
Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her
father was not likely to oppose the match, I--less exalted in my views
than St. John--had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate
their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr.
Oliver's large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went
and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a
tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered--
"As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to
take to yourself the original at once."
By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before
him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I
discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw
even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed
unapproachable--to hear it thus freely handled--was beginning to be felt
by him as a new pleasure--an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often
really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than
the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to
"burst" with boldness and good-will into "the silent sea" of their souls
is often to confer on them the first of obligations.
"She likes you, I am sure," said I, as I stood behind his chair, "and her
father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl--rather thoughtless;
but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her. You
ought to marry her."
"_Does_ she like me?" he asked.
"Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you
continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so
often."
"It is very pleasant to hear this," he said--"very: go on for another
quarter of an hour." And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon
the table to measure the time.
"But where is the use of going on," I asked, "when you are probably
preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to
fetter your heart?"
"Don't imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am
doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and
overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and
with such labour prepared--so assiduously sown with the seeds of good
intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a
nectarous flood--the young germs swamped--delicious poison cankering
them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at
Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver's feet: she is talking to me with
her sweet voice--gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has
copied so well--smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine--I am
hers--this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say
nothing--my heart is full of delight--my senses are entranced--let the
time I marked pass in peace."
I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood
silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid
the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.
"Now," said he, "that little space was given to delirium and delusion. I
rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck
voluntarily under her yoke of flowers. I tasted her cup. The pillow was
burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her
promises are hollow--her offers false: I see and know all this."
I gazed at him in wonder.
"It is strange," pursued he, "that while I love Rosamond Oliver so
wildly--with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of
which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating--I experience at
the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a
good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should
discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months'
rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know."
"Strange indeed!" I could not help ejaculating.
"While something in me," he went on, "is acutely sensible to her charms,
something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such
that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to--co-operate in nothing
I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond
a missionary's wife? No!"
"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme."
"Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on
earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band
who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their
race--of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance--of substituting
peace for war--freedom for bondage--religion for superstition--the hope
of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer
than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to
live for."
After a considerable pause, I said--"And Miss Oliver? Are her
disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?"
"Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a
month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me; and
will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I
should do."
"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are
wasting away."
"No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet
unsettled--my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning,
I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so
long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come
yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six."
"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the
schoolroom."
Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined
that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in
this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong,
discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed
the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of
confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.
"You are original," said he, "and not timid. There is something brave in
your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure
you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them more
profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance of
sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour, and when I shade
before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know
it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion
of the soul. _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths
of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am--a cold hard man."
I smiled incredulously.
"You have taken my confidence by storm," he continued, "and now it is
much at your service. I am simply, in my original state--stripped of
that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity--a
cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all the
sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not feeling, is my
guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more
than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance, industry,
talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and
mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest, because I
consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not
because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you
still suffer."
"You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher," I said.
"No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I
believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a
pagan, but a Christian philosopher--a follower of the sect of Jesus. As
His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I
advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she
has cultivated my original qualities thus:--From the minute germ, natural
affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From
the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of
the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my
wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's kingdom;
to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion
done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning
and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be
eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality.'"
Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my
palette. Once more he looked at the portrait.
"She _is_ lovely," he murmured. "She is well named the Rose of the
World, indeed!"
"And may I not paint one like it for you?"
"_Cui bono_? No."
He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was
accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from
being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was
impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took it
up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me,
inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed
to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it
traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips parted, as if to
speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"Nothing in the world," was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw
him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in
his glove; and, with one hasty nod and "good-afternoon," he vanished.
"Well!" I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, "that caps the
globe, however!"
I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few
dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I
pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and
being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon
forgot it.
| Jane continues her work at the school, and she soon notices that some of the girls are polite and try to do their work well, and this encourages her. She relates that she has become a favorite in the community, and that she often gets salutations and smiles. While she is happier now, she does have dreams at night of Mr. Rochester. Miss Oliver keeps her word and comes to the school, usually timing her visits with when Mr. St. John is giving his lesson to the girls. She seems to know her power over him, but it seems as if he would not let it consume him, as he wants to be a missionary. One day when Miss Oliver is visiting Jane in her home, she finds her drawings and asks her to do one of her. The next day Mr. Oliver accompanies Miss Oliver on her visit to Jane, and Jane is invited to their home of Vale Hall. Through the conversation, Jane comes to understand that Mr. Oliver likes Mr. St. John and seemingly would not oppose a match between him and his daughter. Soon after, St. John visits Jane as she is finishing her picture of Miss Oliver. She shows it to him, asking if he would like her to make him a copy. She tells him that Miss Oliver seems to like him. He replies that he does love her, but that he feels she would not be a good wife for him, as he cannot give up the plan of being a missionary. As he looks at the picture again, he notices the piece of paper that Jane rests her hand on, tears a piece off of it and bids Jane good-bye. Jane looks at the paper but sees nothing but a few marks she has made | summary |
When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm
continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding
falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable. I
had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from
blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on
the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle,
took down "Marmion," and beginning--
"Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone;
The massive towers, the donjon keep,
The flanking walls that round them sweep,
In yellow lustre shone"--
I soon forgot storm in music.
I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was St.
John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen
hurricane--the howling darkness--and stood before me: the cloak that
covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in
consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up
vale that night.
"Any ill news?" I demanded. "Has anything happened?"
"No. How very easily alarmed you are!" he answered, removing his cloak
and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed
the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow from his
boots.
"I shall sully the purity of your floor," said he, "but you must excuse
me for once." Then he approached the fire. "I have had hard work to get
here, I assure you," he observed, as he warmed his hands over the flame.
"One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite soft yet."
"But why are you come?" I could not forbear saying.
"Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask
it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my
mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced
the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is
impatient to hear the sequel."
He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I
began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, however, his was
a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that
handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did
just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the
firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where it grieved
me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved.
I waited, expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend;
but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking.
It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps
uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was moved to say--
"I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that
you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own
health."
"Not at all," said he: "I care for myself when necessary. I am well now.
What do you see amiss in me?"
This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that
my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I was
silenced.
He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye
dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something,
I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which
was behind him.
"No, no!" he responded shortly and somewhat testily.
"Well," I reflected, "if you won't talk, you may be still; I'll let you
alone now, and return to my book."
So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of "Marmion." He soon
stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a
morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence,
folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain to try to
read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in
impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk
I would.
"Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?"
"Not since the letter I showed you a week ago."
"There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You
will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?"
"I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me." Baffled so
far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school
and my scholars.
"Mary Garrett's mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this
morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry
Close--they would have come to-day but for the snow."
"Indeed!"
"Mr. Oliver pays for two."
"Does he?"
"He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas."
"I know."
"Was it your suggestion?"
"No."
"Whose, then?"
"His daughter's, I think."
"It is like her: she is so good-natured."
"Yes."
Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It
aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.
"Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire," he said.
Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.
"Half-an-hour ago," he pursued, "I spoke of my impatience to hear the
sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed
by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting you into a listener.
Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound
somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree
of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest, whether
trite or novel, it is short.
"Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this moment--fell
in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with him, and
married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently
disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the
rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab.
(I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge
churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown
manufacturing town in ---shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its
very birth, Charity received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I
almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to
the house of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-
law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start--did
you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the
rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it
repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.--To
proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or
not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the end of
that time she transferred it to a place you know--being no other than
Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career
there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like
yourself--really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history
and yours--she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were
analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr.
Rochester."
"Mr. Rivers!" I interrupted.
"I can guess your feelings," he said, "but restrain them for a while: I
have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester's character I
know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable
marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he
had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and
proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event
transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was
discovered she was gone--no one could tell when, where, or how. She had
left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had
been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of
information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be
found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put
in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a
solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an
odd tale?"
"Just tell me this," said I, "and since you know so much, you surely can
tell it me--what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he
doing? Is he well?"
"I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never mentions
him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to.
You should rather ask the name of the governess--the nature of the event
which requires her appearance."
"Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?"
"I suppose not."
"But they wrote to him?"
"Of course."
"And what did he say? Who has his letters?"
"Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr.
Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed 'Alice Fairfax.'"
I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had
in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to
some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe
sufferings--what object for his strong passions--had he sought there? I
dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master--once almost my
husband--whom I had often called "my dear Edward!"
"He must have been a bad man," observed Mr. Rivers.
"You don't know him--don't pronounce an opinion upon him," I said, with
warmth.
"Very well," he answered quietly: "and indeed my head is otherwise
occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won't ask
the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it
here--it is always more satisfactory to see important points written
down, fairly committed to black and white."
And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought
through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of
paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of
ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the
portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced
in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words "JANE EYRE"--the work
doubtless of some moment of abstraction.
"Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:" he said, "the advertisements
demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.--I confess I had my
suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once
resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?"
"Yes--yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr.
Rochester than you do."
"Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about
Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime,
you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why
Mr. Briggs sought after you--what he wanted with you."
"Well, what did he want?"
"Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that
he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich--merely
that--nothing more."
"I!--rich?"
"Yes, you, rich--quite an heiress."
Silence succeeded.
"You must prove your identity of course," resumed St. John presently: "a
step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate
possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Briggs has the
will and the necessary documents."
Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted
in a moment from indigence to wealth--a very fine thing; but not a matter
one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then there
are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving: _this_
is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its
associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same.
One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a
fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business;
on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain
ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.
Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words,
Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead--my only relative; ever
since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one
day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only to
me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It was a
grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious--yes, I felt
that--that thought swelled my heart.
"You unbend your forehead at last," said Mr. Rivers. "I thought Medusa
had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you
will ask how much you are worth?"
"How much am I worth?"
"Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of--twenty thousand pounds, I
think they say--but what is that?"
"Twenty thousand pounds?"
Here was a new stunner--I had been calculating on four or five thousand.
This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had
never heard laugh before, laughed now.
"Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your
crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast."
"It is a large sum--don't you think there is a mistake?"
"No mistake at all."
"Perhaps you have read the figures wrong--it may be two thousand!"
"It is written in letters, not figures,--twenty thousand."
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical
powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for
a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
"If it were not such a very wild night," he said, "I would send Hannah
down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left
alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I:
her legs are not quite so long: so I must e'en leave you to your sorrows.
Good-night."
He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. "Stop one
minute!" I cried.
"Well?"
"It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he
knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way
place, had the power to aid in my discovery."
"Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; "and the clergy are often appealed to
about odd matters." Again the latch rattled.
"No; that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and indeed there was
something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of
allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
"It is a very strange piece of business," I added; "I must know more
about it."
"Another time."
"No; to-night!--to-night!" and as he turned from the door, I placed
myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.
"You certainly shall not go till you have told me all," I said.
"I would rather not just now."
"You shall!--you must!"
"I would rather Diana or Mary informed you."
Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it
must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
"But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to
persuade."
"And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off."
{And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off: p369.jpg}
"And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me."
"Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed
all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my
floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be
forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a
sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know."
"Well, then," he said, "I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your
perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must
know some day,--as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?"
"Of course: that was all settled before."
"You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?--that I was
christened St. John Eyre Rivers?"
"No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your
initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I
never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely--"
I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express,
the thought that rushed upon me--that embodied itself,--that, in a
second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit
themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been
lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,--every
ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the
matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot expect
the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his
explanation.
"My mother's name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who
married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq.,
merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre's
solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle's death, and
to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman's
orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never
forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since,
to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of
her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find
her out. You know the rest." Again he was going, but I set my back
against the door.
"Do let me speak," I said; "let me have one moment to draw breath and
reflect." I paused--he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed
enough. I resumed--
"Your mother was my father's sister?"
"Yes."
"My aunt, consequently?"
He bowed.
"My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his
sister's children, as I am his brother's child?"
"Undeniably."
"You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from
the same source?"
"We are cousins; yes."
I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud
of,--one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that,
when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine
affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the
wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House
kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair,
were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman who had found
me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious
discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!--wealth to the
heart!--a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing, bright,
vivid, and exhilarating;--not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and
welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now clapped
my hands in sudden joy--my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.
"Oh, I am glad!--I am glad!" I exclaimed.
St. John smiled. "Did I not say you neglected essential points to pursue
trifles?" he asked. "You were serious when I told you you had got a
fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited."
"What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters and
don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three relations,--or
two, if you don't choose to be counted,--are born into my world
full-grown. I say again, I am glad!"
I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the
thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle
them:--thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere
long. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending
stars,--every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my
life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit.
They were under a yoke,--I could free them: they were scattered,--I could
reunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be
theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally
would be five thousand each, justice--enough and to spare: justice would
be done,--mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me:
now it was not a mere bequest of coin,--it was a legacy of life, hope,
enjoyment.
How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot
tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair behind me,
and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also advised me
to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and
distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again.
"Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow," I said, "and tell them to come home
directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with a
thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well."
"Tell me where I can get you a glass of water," said St. John; "you must
really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings."
"Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you? Will
it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and settle down
like an ordinary mortal?"
"You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in
communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength."
"Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it
is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand."
"Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should
comprehend better."
"Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty
thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the nephew
and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each? What I
want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the
fortune that has accrued to them."
"To you, you mean."
"I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any
other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly
ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections. I
like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and Mary,
and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would please and
benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me
to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be mine in justice,
though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely
superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about
it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once."
"This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such a
matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid."
"Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice of
the case?"
"I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom. Besides,
the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his own efforts;
he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to you. After all,
justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear conscience,
consider it absolutely your own."
"With me," said I, "it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of
conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an
opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a
year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught a
glimpse--that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning to
myself lifelong friends."
"You think so now," rejoined St. John, "because you do not know what it
is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion
of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it
would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to
you: you cannot--"
"And you," I interrupted, "cannot at all imagine the craving I have for
fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or
sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me
and own me, are you?"
"Jane, I will be your brother--my sisters will be your sisters--without
stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights."
"Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes;
slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy--gorged with gold I never earned
and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation!
Close union! Intimate attachment!"
"But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may
be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may marry."
"Nonsense, again! Marry! I don't want to marry, and never shall marry."
"That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the
excitement under which you labour."
"It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my
inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for
love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money
speculation. And I do not want a stranger--unsympathising, alien,
different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full fellow-
feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the words I
was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them sincerely."
"I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know on
what my affection for them is grounded,--respect for their worth and
admiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind: your
tastes and habits resemble Diana's and Mary's; your presence is always
agreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time found
a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in my
heart for you, as my third and youngest sister."
"Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for if
you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful
scruple."
"And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?"
"No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute."
He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave.
I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments I
used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My task
was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved--as my cousins saw
at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on making a just
division of the property--as they must in their own hearts have felt the
equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been innately conscious
that in my place they would have done precisely what I wished to do--they
yielded at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration.
The judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able lawyer: both coincided in
my opinion: I carried my point. The instruments of transfer were drawn
out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I, each became possessed of a competency.
| The next day Jane is surprised by a visit from St. John. He is very excited, but does not immediately tell her why he has come. Eventually he begins to tell her a story. He says that there was a clergyman and a woman who married and had a daughter. They died, and the girl was sent to a Mrs. Reed and then to Lowood School. Jane is startled, but he continues that the woman then went to live with a Mr. Rochester and was to marry him until it was found out that he was already married. She then ran off and is now missing. He says that he received a letter from a solicitor looking for this woman whose name was Jane Eyre, and bringing out the scrap of paper that he had taken from Jane's paper, she sees that she had absent-mindedly written Jane Eyre on it. He continues on to say that her uncle had died and left her all his money, a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. Jane is quite surprised at the large amount. She then asks why the solicitor should write to him, and he replies that he is her cousin, the son of her father's sister. Jane is so excited that she has family, especially family such as Diana and Mary, who she felt could have been sisters to her anyway. She instantly decides to split the money with them so that they will each have five thousand pounds and can all live together at Moor House. St. John believes that it is just the surprise and that she will really not want to split the money, but she convinces him. She tells him that she will keep the school open until he can find a replacement | summary |
It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of general
holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care that the
parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens the hand as
well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely
received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the
sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic
scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness was confirmed:
they manifested their affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my
gratification to find I had really a place in their unsophisticated
hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass in future that I
did not visit them, and give them an hour's teaching in their school.
Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty
girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in
my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen
of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed
young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry. And
that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British peasantry are the
best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe: since
those days I have seen paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them
seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton
girls.
"Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?"
asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. "Does not the consciousness of
having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?"
"Doubtless."
"And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the
task of regenerating your race be well spent?"
"Yes," I said; "but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own
faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy
them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of
it and disposed for full holiday."
He looked grave. "What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince?
What are you going to do?"
"To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set
Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you."
"Do you want her?"
"Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a
week, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival."
"I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It
is better so: Hannah shall go with you."
"Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom key:
I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning."
He took it. "You give it up very gleefully," said he; "I don't quite
understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what employment
you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are
relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you
now?"
"My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force
of the expression?)--to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar;
my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of
cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table,
bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to
ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and
lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected
will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of
currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up
of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as
words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you.
My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect
state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my
ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come."
St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.
"It is all very well for the present," said he; "but seriously, I trust
that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little
higher than domestic endearments and household joys."
"The best things the world has!" I interrupted.
"No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to
make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful."
"I mean, on the contrary, to be busy."
"Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months' grace I allow you for
the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with
this late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will begin
to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and the
selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope your
energies will then once more trouble you with their strength."
I looked at him with surprise. "St. John," I said, "I think you are
almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and
you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?"
"To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to
your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict
account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously--I warn you of
that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you
throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so
tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an
adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you
hear, Jane?"
"Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause
to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Goodbye!"
Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she was
charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned
topsy-turvy--how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook. And
really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was
delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made.
I had previously taken a journey to S--- to purchase some new furniture:
my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what alterations I
pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that purpose. The ordinary
sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they were: for I knew Diana and
Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables,
and chairs, and beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest
innovations. Still some novelty was necessary, to give to their return
the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new
carpets and curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique
ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and
dressing-cases, for the toilet tables, answered the end: they looked
fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished
entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the
passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished, I thought
Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness within, as it
was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and desert dreariness
without.
The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark, and
ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in perfect
trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness.
St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the
house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the
commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed
to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen, watching the
progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking. Approaching the hearth,
he asked, "If I was at last satisfied with housemaid's work?" I answered
by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of
my labours. With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the
house. He just looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered
upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of
fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so
short a time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the
improved aspect of his abode.
This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed
some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case:
no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone.
"Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously
respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed more
thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, for instance,
had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very room?--By-the-bye,
could I tell him where such a book was?"
I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing to
his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.
Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began
to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold.
The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him--its
peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire--after
what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor
approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead,
still and pale as a white stone--at his fine lineaments fixed in study--I
comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that
it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by
inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him
that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should
despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he
should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever
conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the
material from which nature hews her heroes--Christian and Pagan--her
lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great
interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous
column, gloomy and out of place.
"This parlour is not his sphere," I reflected: "the Himalayan ridge or
Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him
better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his
element: there his faculties stagnate--they cannot develop or appear to
advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger--where courage is
proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked--that he will speak
and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the
advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary's
career--I see it now."
"They are coming! they are coming!" cried Hannah, throwing open the
parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran.
It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had a
lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened
the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out. In a
minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Mary's
soft cheek, then with Diana's flowing curls. They laughed--kissed
me--then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked
eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened
into the house.
They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and
chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances
expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought
in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from
the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave
each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a
while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would
soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge.
I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give
hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me.
They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms;
with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases:
they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of
feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I
had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home.
Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so
eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. John's
taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow
of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The event of the
day--that is, the return of Diana and Mary--pleased him; but the
accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee of
reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In the
very meridian of the night's enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a rap
was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that "a poor
lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his
mother, who was drawing away."
"Where does she live, Hannah?"
"Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss all
the way."
"Tell him I will go."
"I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel after
dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog. And then it is
such a bitter night--the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send
word, sir, that you will be there in the morning."
But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without one
objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o'clock: he did not
return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked
happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty; made an
exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms
with himself.
I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was
Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a sort
of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of
home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some
life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon
till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy,
original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and
sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our
vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish
was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in
visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some
minutes, asked him, "If his plans were yet unchanged."
"Unchanged and unchangeable," was the reply. And he proceeded to inform
us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the
ensuing year.
"And Rosamond Oliver?" suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her
lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a
gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand--it
was his unsocial custom to read at meals--he closed it, and looked up.
"Rosamond Oliver," said he, "is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one of
the best connected and most estimable residents in S-, grandson and heir
to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father
yesterday."
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him:
he was serene as glass.
"The match must have been got up hastily," said Diana: "they cannot have
known each other long."
"But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S-. But where
there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the
connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will
be married as soon as S--- Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them,
can he refitted for their reception."
The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt
tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little
to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I
experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already
hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve
was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had
not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made
little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the
development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his
kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance
between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the
village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been
admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present
frigidity.
Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his
head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said--
"You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won."
Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a
moment's hesitation I answered--
"But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose
triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?"
"I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be
called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is
decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!" So saying, he
returned to his papers and his silence.
As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled into
a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies,
St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes
for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of
encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I
fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some
Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his
plans.
Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed
enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish-
looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing upon us, his
fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation: if caught, it
would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it returned searchingly
to our table. I wondered what it meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual
satisfaction he never failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me
of small moment, namely, my weekly visit to Morton school; and still more
was I puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or
rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would
invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish
the task without regard to the elements.
"Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her," he would say: "she
can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well
as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;--better
calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust."
And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little
weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur
would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the reverse
was a special annoyance.
One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really had
a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading
Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged a
translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I found
myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How long it
had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I cannot
tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment
superstitious--as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny.
"Jane, what are you doing?"
"Learning German."
"I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee."
"You are not in earnest?"
"In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why."
He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget
the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with
whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them
thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time between
me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw I could
sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this favour? I
should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it wanted now
barely three months to his departure.
St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every
impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved and
permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former found
her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and both
she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them to
such a step. He answered quietly--
"I know it."
I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master:
he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his expectations,
he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he
acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind:
his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I
could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely
importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was
distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and
occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain
or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he
said "go," I went; "come," I came; "do this," I did it. But I did not
love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.
One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, bidding
him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and, as was
equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to be in a
frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his will; for
hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed--
"St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don't treat
her as such: you should kiss her too."
She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt
uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St.
John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his
eyes questioned my eyes piercingly--he kissed me. There are no such
things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical
cousin's salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be
experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed
me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush;
perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss
were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony
afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it,
seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.
As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily
more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my
faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the
adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to
train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to
aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to
mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give
to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his
own.
Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of late
it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat at my
heart and drained my happiness at its source--the evil of suspense.
Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these
changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with
me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a
sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a
tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to
know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at Morton,
I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now at Moor
House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.
In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the
will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester's present
residence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was
quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax,
entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty
on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early
answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but when
two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought
nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.
I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed.
Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some
weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word reached
me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and
then I felt dark indeed.
A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer
approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to
accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not
want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too
purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying
deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and
grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool,
never thought of resisting him--I could not resist him.
One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was
occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me in
the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it,
almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at
last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business. The
bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over
the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my
eyes filled again.
St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice
failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of
the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room, Mary was
gardening--it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy. My
companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me
as to its cause; he only said--
"We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed." And
while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient,
leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye
of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient's malady.
Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not
being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in
completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked his desk, and
said--
"Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me."
"I will call Diana and Mary."
"No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put
on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the
head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment."
I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings
with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute
submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the
one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic
vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances
warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful
obedience to St. John's directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the
wild track of the glen, side by side with him.
The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents
of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending
the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and
clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the
firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy
fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and
spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills, meantime, shut us
quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core.
"Let us rest here," said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of
a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck
rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain
shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for
gem--where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh
for the frowning--where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a
last refuge for silence.
I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down
the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to
traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat, let
the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion with
the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something.
"And I shall see it again," he said aloud, "in dreams when I sleep by the
Ganges: and again in a more remote hour--when another slumber overcomes
me--on the shore of a darker stream!"
Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot's passion for his
fatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to
me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced--
"Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which
sails on the 20th of June."
"God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work," I answered.
"Yes," said he, "there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an
infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to
the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king,
my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that
all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,--to join in the
same enterprise."
"All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish
to march with the strong."
"I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as
are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it."
"Those are few in number, and difficult to discover."
"You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up--to urge and
exhort them to the effort--to show them what their gifts are, and why
they were given--to speak Heaven's message in their ear,--to offer them,
direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen."
"If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be
the first to inform them of it?"
I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I
trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and
rivet the spell.
"And what does _your_ heart say?" demanded St. John.
"My heart is mute,--my heart is mute," I answered, struck and thrilled.
"Then I must speak for it," continued the deep, relentless voice. "Jane,
come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer."
The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard
a summons from Heaven--as if a visionary messenger, like him of
Macedonia, had enounced, "Come over and help us!" But I was no
apostle,--I could not behold the herald,--I could not receive his call.
"Oh, St. John!" I cried, "have some mercy!"
I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty,
knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued--
"God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not
personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for
labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must--shall be. You shall
be mine: I claim you--not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's
service."
"I am not fit for it: I have no vocation," I said.
He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by
them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his
arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a
long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to last
him to its close--resolved, however, that that close should be conquest
for him.
"Humility, Jane," said he, "is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you
say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who,
that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I,
for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself
the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my personal
vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as well as
mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great
task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the
inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me, Jane--trust like me.
It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not doubt but it will
bear the weight of your human weakness."
"I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary
labours."
"There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you
your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment to
moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your powers)
you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require my help."
"But my powers--where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them.
Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light
kindling--no life quickening--no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I
wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a
rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths--the fear
of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!"
"I have an answer for you--hear it. I have watched you ever since we
first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you in
that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the
village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly,
labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could
perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled. In
the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a
mind clear of the vice of Demas:--lucre had no undue power over you. In
the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares,
keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the
claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame
and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which, at my wish,
you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another
because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have
since persevered in it--in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with
which you have met its difficulties--I acknowledge the complement of the
qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested,
faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease
to mistrust yourself--I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of
Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will
be to me invaluable."
My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure
step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in
making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My
work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed
itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping
hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to
think, before I again hazarded a reply.
"Very willingly," he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance up
the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still.
{He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still:
p389.jpg}
"I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge
that," I meditated,--"that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is
not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then?
He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me,
in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very
plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty
land--Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that
ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so
absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some
impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of
course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to
replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the
most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares
and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by
uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes--and
yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go
to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval between
leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I
know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to
satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him--to the
finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations. If
I _do_ go with him--if I _do_ make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it
absolutely: I will throw all on the altar--heart, vitals, the entire
victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him
energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected. Yes, I
can work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging.
"Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item--one dreadful
item. It is--that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a
husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the
stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would a
good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never grieve
me; but can I let him complete his calculations--coolly put into practice
his plans--go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the
bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would
scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I
bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice
made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will
never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him--not as his wife:
I will tell him so."
I looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate column;
his face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to
his feet and approached me.
"I am ready to go to India, if I may go free."
"Your answer requires a commentary," he said; "it is not clear."
"You have hitherto been my adopted brother--I, your adopted sister: let
us continue as such: you and I had better not marry."
He shook his head. "Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you
were my real sister it would be different: I should take you, and seek no
wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated and sealed by
marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves to
any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment--your strong
sense will guide you."
I did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to
the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should: and
therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. "St. John," I
returned, "I regard you as a brother--you, me as a sister: so let us
continue."
"We cannot--we cannot," he answered, with short, sharp determination: "it
would not do. You have said you will go with me to India: remember--you
have said that."
"Conditionally."
"Well--well. To the main point--the departure with me from England, the
co-operation with me in my future labours--you do not object. You have
already as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too consistent to
withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view--how the work you have
undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests,
feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all considerations in one
purpose: that of fulfilling with effect--with power--the mission of your
great Master. To do so, you must have a coadjutor: not a brother--that
is a loose tie--but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister: a sister
might any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can
influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death."
I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow--his hold on
my limbs.
"Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you."
"One fitted to my purpose, you mean--fitted to my vocation. Again I tell
you it is not the insignificant private individual--the mere man, with
the man's selfish senses--I wish to mate: it is the missionary."
"And I will give the missionary my energies--it is all he wants--but not
myself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For
them he has no use: I retain them."
"You cannot--you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half
an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of
God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept
on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire."
"Oh! I will give my heart to God," I said. "_You_ do not want it."
I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed
sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the
feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now,
because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had
held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could
not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this conference:
the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I saw his
fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood that, sitting there
where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form before me,
I sat at the feet of a man, caring as I. The veil fell from his hardness
and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I
felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal--one with
whom I might argue--one whom, if I saw good, I might resist.
He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently
risked an upward glance at his countenance.
His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry.
"Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to _me_!" it seemed to say. "What does
this signify?"
"Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter," he said ere long;
"one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I
trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart to
God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it on
your Maker, the advancement of that Maker's spiritual kingdom on earth
will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do at once
whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be given to
your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage: the
only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the
destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all minor
caprices--all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling--all scruple
about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal
inclination--you will hasten to enter into that union at once."
"Shall I?" I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in
their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his
brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and
searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied
myself in idea _his wife_. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his
comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that
capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that
office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour;
accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his
ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man:
profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should suffer
often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be
under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I
should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved
feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would
be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came,
and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity
could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as
his wife--at his side always, and always restrained, and always
checked--forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel
it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame
consumed vital after vital--_this_ would be unendurable.
"St. John!" I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation.
"Well?" he answered icily.
"I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary, but
not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become part of you."
"A part of me you must become," he answered steadily; "otherwise the
whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with me
to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me? How can we be
for ever together--sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage
tribes--and unwed?"
"Very well," I said shortly; "under the circumstances, quite as well as
if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman like
yourself."
"It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as such:
to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both. And
for the rest, though you have a man's vigorous brain, you have a woman's
heart and--it would not do."
"It would do," I affirmed with some disdain, "perfectly well. I have a
woman's heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a
comrade's constancy; a fellow-soldier's frankness, fidelity, fraternity,
if you like; a neophyte's respect and submission to his hierophant:
nothing more--don't fear."
"It is what I want," he said, speaking to himself; "it is just what I
want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane,
you would not repent marrying me--be certain of that; we _must_ be
married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of
love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your
eyes."
"I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and
stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the
counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you
offer it."
He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so.
Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell:
he could command his countenance thoroughly.
"I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you," he said: "I think
I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn."
I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien.
"Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have
been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on
which our natures are at variance--a topic we should never discuss: the
very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were
required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin,
abandon your scheme of marriage--forget it."
"No," said he; "it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which can
secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present.
To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom
I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight--take that
space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject
it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a
noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my
wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and
barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with
those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!"
He had done. Turning from me, he once more
"Looked to river, looked to hill."
But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy
to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in
his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere
and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected
submission--the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has
detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to
sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into
obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with
my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.
That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget
even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence. I--who,
though I had no love, had much friendship for him--was hurt by the marked
omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes.
"I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane," said Diana, "during
your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the
passage expecting you--he will make it up."
I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be
happy than dignified; and I ran after him--he stood at the foot of the
stairs.
"Good-night, St. John," said I.
"Good-night, Jane," he replied calmly.
"Then shake hands," I added.
What a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply
displeased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would not warm, nor
tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him--no
cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient and
placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was
not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had
nothing to forgive, not having been offended.
And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me
down.
| By Christmas everything is settled. Jane has left the school to a substitute, and promises to visit and teach, as she sees that some of the students do like her. Mr. St. John asks Jane what she will do now, and she replies that she is going to get the house ready for Diana and Mary's return by cleaning it thoroughly and buying some new things. He says that this will not keep her busy long and she will have to do more after, and she wonders why he is trying to stir up restlessness in her. St. John arrives first on the day all are to come home. He does not speak much to Jane or say anything pleasurable about what she has done with the house. Jane realizes that he would not make a good husband, and that it is a good thing that he and Miss Oliver did not marry. Jane relates that he does not treat her like a sister as he said he would, but that the distance between them has grown. Diana and Mary arrive home, and all are happy to see each other. They compliment Jane on what she had done to the home. A few days later when they are all studying in the library, St. John tells Jane that he wants her to stop learning German and to learn Hindustani instead. He says that it is the language he is learning for his missionary work, and that it would be a help to him to remember how it was when he started learning the language. She complies, but soon feels that she is doing only what he wants and burying a part of herself. Jane often thinks of Mr. Rochester and even writes to the solicitor to see if he knows anything about him. When he writes back that he does not, Jane writes to Mrs. Fairfax. When she does not receive a reply, she writes again, thinking perhaps her letter was lost, but again she gets no reply. One day St. John tells Jane that she will take a walk with him. St. John asks Jane to come to India with him, and tells her that God had intended her to be a missionary's wife. Jane makes many excuses, but St. John has an answer for all of them, continuing to try to convince her. After a few thoughts, Jane tells him that she will go with him, but as his sister, not his wife. He replies that this is impossible, and that she must marry him. She continues to refuse, saying that they do not love each other, and he replies that she is not refusing him, but God. He tells her that he will be going away for a fortnight to bid farewell to friends and that she should think about it. Later in the evening, when Jane asks if he forgives her, he replies that he had not been offended | summary |
He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would. He
deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel
what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable
man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one overt act of
hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with
the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.
Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness--not
that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his
power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the
mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I scorned
him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as long as he
and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look, when he
turned to me, that they were always written on the air between me and
him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their
echo toned every answer he gave me.
He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual
each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within
him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in
evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently
just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of
interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere
charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in reality become no
longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his
tongue a speaking instrument--nothing more.
All this was torture to me--refined, lingering torture. It kept up a
slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed
and crushed me altogether. I felt how--if I were his wife, this good
man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing
from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal
conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I
made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. _He_
experienced no suffering from estrangement--no yearning after
reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears
blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect
on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To
his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid
that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I
was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast; and this I am
sure he did not by force, but on principle.
The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden
about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man,
alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were near
relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his friendship. I
went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate; I
spoke to the point at once.
"St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be
friends."
"I hope we are friends," was the unmoved reply; while he still watched
the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached.
"No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that."
"Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all
good."
"I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any
one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of
affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere
strangers."
"Of course," he said. "Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from
regarding you as a stranger."
This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling
enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should
immediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly
than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin's talent and
principle. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me
severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.
"Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you
leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?"
He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.
"When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go to
India?"
"You said I could not unless I married you."
"And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?"
Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into
the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in
their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?
"No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution."
The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet
crash down.
"Once more, why this refusal?" he asked.
"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me; now, I reply,
because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me.
You are killing me now."
His lips and cheeks turned white--quite white.
"_I should kill you_--_I am killing you_? Your words are such as ought
not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an
unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem
inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even
until seventy-and-seven times."
I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from
his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious
surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.
"Now you will indeed hate me," I said. "It is useless to attempt to
conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you."
A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched on
the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew the
steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.
"You utterly misinterpret my words," I said, at once seizing his hand: "I
have no intention to grieve or pain you--indeed, I have not."
Most bitterly he smiled--most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine.
"And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I
presume?" said he, after a considerable pause.
"Yes, I will, as your assistant," I answered.
A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between
Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams
scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face. He
spoke at last.
"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age
proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you
in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever
again alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret--for your
sake."
I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at
once. "Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You
pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked:
for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so
conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be your
curate, if you like, but never your wife."
Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion
perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly--
"A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me,
then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I
will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a
coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's
aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join."
Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or
entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and
much too despotic for the occasion. I replied--
"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case. I
am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with
strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,
confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go
when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate."
"Ah! you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip.
"I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish
me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.
Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know
for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by
leaving it."
"What do you mean?"
"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on
which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by
some means that doubt is removed."
"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you
cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have
crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr.
Rochester?"
It was true. I confessed it by silence.
"Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?"
"I must find out what is become of him."
"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers, and
to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed
become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.
But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done--"
He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen. He
was soon out of sight.
On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, looking
very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand
on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.
"Jane," she said, "you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure there
is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you have on
hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window; you must
forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly
know what. St. John is a strange being--"
She paused--I did not speak: soon she resumed--
"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting
you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he
never showed to any one else--to what end? I wish he loved you--does he,
Jane?"
I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; "No, Die, not one whit."
"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently
alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had
both concluded he wished you to marry him."
"He does--he has asked me to be his wife."
Diana clapped her hands. "That is just what we hoped and thought! And
you will marry him, Jane, won't you? And then he will stay in England."
"Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a
fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils."
"What! He wishes you to go to India?"
"Yes."
"Madness!" she exclaimed. "You would not live three months there, I am
certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane?"
"I have refused to marry him--"
"And have consequently displeased him?" she suggested.
"Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him
as his sister."
"It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you
undertook--one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong,
and you are weak. St. John--you know him--would urge you to
impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during the
hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you
force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to refuse
his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?"
"Not as a husband."
"Yet he is a handsome fellow."
"And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit."
"Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good,
to be grilled alive in Calcutta." And again she earnestly conjured me to
give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.
"I must indeed," I said; "for when just now I repeated the offer of
serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of
decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing
to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find
in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such."
"What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?"
"You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again
explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He
has told me I am formed for labour--not for love: which is true, no
doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that
I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be
chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?"
"Insupportable--unnatural--out of the question!"
"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection for him
now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of
conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him,
because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur
in his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would become
unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I showed
the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity,
unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would."
"And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana.
"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings
and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is
better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in
his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will leave
you, Diana." And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden.
But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he
appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak
to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial
scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed me
precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary
manner--one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the help of the
Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he
had forgiven me once more.
For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first
chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while from
his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at
once so sweet and full--never did his manner become so impressive in its
noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night
that voice took a more solemn tone--that manner a more thrilling
meaning--as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon
shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost
unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there,
bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision
of the new heaven and the new earth--told how God would come to dwell
with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised
that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any
more pain, because the former things were passed away.
The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially
as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in
uttering them, his eye had turned on me.
"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and
he shall be my son. But," was slowly, distinctly read, "the fearful, the
unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with
fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.
A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his
enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader
believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of life, and he
yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the
kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun
or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof.
In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered--all his
stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and resolved
on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance
for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh hour, for
those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from
the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand
snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as
I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and
rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed. He felt the greatness and
goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it,
could not but feel it too.
The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour
in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room--in
compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand,
and wished him a pleasant journey.
"Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I
listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me;
but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim--to do
all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so will I
be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath:
repent--resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work
while it is day--warned that 'the night cometh when no man shall work.'
Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God
give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken
from you!"
He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken
earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding
his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering
sheep--or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is
responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;
whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be
sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt
veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me
at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease
struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by
him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was
a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of
principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So
I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet
medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.
I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch. My refusals were
forgotten--my fears overcome--my wrestlings paralysed. The
Impossible--_i.e._, my marriage with St. John--was fast becoming the
Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion
called--Angels beckoned--God commanded--life rolled together like a
scroll--death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that
for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The
dim room was full of visions.
"Could you decide now?" asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in
gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far
more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John's wrath: I grew
pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I
yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my
former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn
prayer: it was only elevated.
"I could decide if I were but certain," I answered: "were I but convinced
that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here
and now--come afterwards what would!"
"My prayers are heard!" ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer
on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_
as if he loved me (I say _almost_--I knew the difference--for I had felt
what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the
question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness
of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply,
fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. "Show me, show me
the path!" I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever
been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader
shall judge.
All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself,
were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was
full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.
Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it
through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was
not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as
startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had
been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake.
They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my
bones.
"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I saw nothing,
but I heard a voice somewhere cry--
"Jane! Jane! Jane!"--nothing more.
"O God! what is it?" I gasped.
I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room--nor in
the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air--nor from
under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it--where, or whence,
for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being--a
known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester;
and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.
"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" I flew to the
door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the
garden: it was void.
"Where are you?" I exclaimed.
The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where are
you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland
loneliness and midnight hush.
"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft:
it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did--no miracle--but her
best."
I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It
was _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play and in
force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave
me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy
to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber;
locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way--a different way
to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate
very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His
feet. I rose from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down,
unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight.
| St. John does not leave for Cambridge the next day as he said he was going to, but he stays another week. During this time Jane sees that he had not forgotten all she said to him. The night before he was to leave for Cambridge, Jane asks him to be friends with her. He says that he thought they were friends, but is not moved. When Jane asks if he will leave her to go to India like this, he is startled, and asks then if she does not mean to go with him. She tells him again that she will not marry him, and when again he asks for a reason, she says that he almost hates her and that he should kill her if they were to be married. She tries to explain what she means, but he does not understand. He continues to try to talk her into marrying him and leaving with him, but she refuses, saying that there are things in England that she must find out about. He understands that she is talking about Rochester, and says he will pray for her so that she does not become a castaway. Diana has seen them talking and asks Jane if St. John is in love with her. Jane tells her no, but that he has asked her to marry him and be a companion to him on his voyage. Diana agrees that it would be out of the question to marry a man who regarded her only as a useful tool. After supper they say their good-byes, and St. John tells Jane that she should reflect while he is gone. He lays his hand on Jane's head, and at that moment she feels such veneration for him that she almost yields to him and forgets her refusals. But just at the moment that she would perhaps tell him so, her heart beats faster, and she gets a strange feeling. Suddenly she hears someone calling "Jane. Jane. Jane. She recognizes the voice and yells, "I am coming. Where are you. Of course she does not find Rochester, but bids goodbye to St. John and goes to her room | summary |
The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two
with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the
order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.
Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I
feared he would knock--no, but a slip of paper was passed under the door.
I took it up. It bore these words--
"You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little
longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the
angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day
fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation:
the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall
pray for you hourly.--Yours, ST. JOHN."
"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right; and my
flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when
once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be
strong enough to search--inquire--to grope an outlet from this cloud of
doubt, and find the open day of certainty."
It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain
beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John pass
out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He took
the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross--there he
would meet the coach.
"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin," thought
I: "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and
ask after in England, before I depart for ever."
It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in
walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had
given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I
had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence
it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_--not in the external
world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion? I could
not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous
shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations
of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell
and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it
sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my
startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which
neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of
one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous
body.
"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
have proved of no avail--personal inquiry shall replace them."
At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,
and should be absent at least four days.
"Alone, Jane?" they asked.
"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some
time been uneasy."
They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had
believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often
said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from
comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to
travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that nothing ailed
me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.
It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no
inquiries--no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not
now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the
silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free
action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.
I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at
the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach
which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those
solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great
distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one
summer evening on this very spot--how desolate, and hopeless, and
objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered--not now obliged to
part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more
on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.
It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross
on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the
coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst
of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills
(how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-
Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once
familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure
we were near my bourne.
"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler.
"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."
"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the coach,
gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I called for
it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening
day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, "The
Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up: I was already on my master's very
lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:--
"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you
know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,
who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do
with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost
your labour--you had better go no farther," urged the monitor. "Ask
information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:
they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if
Mr. Rochester be at home."
The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on
it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong
doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the
ray of her star. There was the stile before me--the very fields through
which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury
tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I
well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them.
How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch
the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed
single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between
them!
At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke
the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.
Another field crossed--a lane threaded--and there were the courtyard
walls--the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. "My
first view of it shall be in front," I determined, "where its bold
battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out
my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it--he rises
early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in
front. Could I but see him!--but a moment! Surely, in that case, I
should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell--I am not certain.
And if I did--what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt
by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps
at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the
tideless sea of the south."
I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard--turned its angle:
there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone
pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep
round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with
precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet
drawn up: battlements, windows, long front--all from this sheltered
station were at my command.
The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I
wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very careful
and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A
peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a
straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the
great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it. "What
affectation of diffidence was this at first?" they might have demanded;
"what stupid regardlessness now?"
Hear an illustration, reader.
A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a
glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the
grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses--fancying she has stirred: he
withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again
advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he
lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty--warm,
and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance!
But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps
in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his
finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it
wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears
to waken by any sound he can utter--by any movement he can make. He
thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened
ruin.
No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!--to peep up at chamber
lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for
doors opening--to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The
lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The
front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very
high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof,
no battlements, no chimneys--all had crashed in.
And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome
wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received
an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The
grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen--by
conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this disaster?
What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it?
Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful
question: there was no one here to answer it--not even dumb sign, mute
token.
In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch,
winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the
drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and
weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh!
where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under
what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower
near the gates, and I asked, "Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the
shelter of his narrow marble house?"
Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but
at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought
my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit
down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely
knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet
the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for
a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.
"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.
"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once."
"Did you?" Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.
"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler," he added.
The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been
trying to evade.
"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?"
"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained. I
breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words
that Mr. Edward--_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!)--was
at least alive: was, in short, "the present gentleman." Gladdening
words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come--whatever the
disclosures might be--with comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in
the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the
Antipodes.
"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing, of
course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
direct question as to where he really was.
"No, ma'am--oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a
stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
autumn,--Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about
harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable
property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire
broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote,
the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I
witnessed it myself."
"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality
at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I demanded.
"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he continued,
edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "that there
was a lady--a--a lunatic, kept in the house?"
"I have heard something of it."
"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for some
years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they
only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what
she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought
her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress. But a
queer thing happened a year since--a very queer thing."
I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the
main fact.
"And this lady?"
"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's wife!
The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young
lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in--"
"But the fire," I suggested.
"I'm coming to that, ma'am--that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The
servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was
after her continually. They used to watch him--servants will, you know,
ma'am--and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him
thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say,
almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I've heard Leah, the
house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was
about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen
of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were
bewitched. Well, he would marry her."
"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said; "but now
I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was
it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?"
"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and nobody but
her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs.
Poole--an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one
fault--a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons--she _kept a
private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much. It
is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous;
for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad
lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her
pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house,
doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly
burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know about that. However,
on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her
own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the
chamber that had been the governess's--(she was like as if she knew
somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)--and she kindled
the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The
governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester
sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the
world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage--quite
savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got
dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs.
Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did
it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she
deserved it--she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he had, was
put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut
himself up like a hermit at the Hall."
"What! did he not leave England?"
"Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of
the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the
grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses--which it is my
opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was
before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am. He
was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was
not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever
man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often
wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to
Thornfield Hall."
"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"
"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning
above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them
down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And
then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was
standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till
they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes.
She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming
against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more
witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we
heard him call 'Bertha!' We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she
yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the
pavement."
{The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement: p413.jpg}
"Dead?"
"Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
scattered."
"Good God!"
"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!"
He shuddered.
"And afterwards?" I urged.
"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are
only some bits of walls standing now."
"Were any other lives lost?"
"No--perhaps it would have been better if there had."
"What do you mean?"
"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have seen it!
Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage
secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I
pity him, for my part."
"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead."
"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I
demanded. "Is he in England?"
"Ay--ay--he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy--he's a
fixture now."
What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.
"He is stone-blind," he said at last. "Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr.
Edward."
I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to
ask what had caused this calamity.
"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way,
ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out before
him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester
had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash--all
fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a
beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was
knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to
amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that
also. He is now helpless, indeed--blind and a cripple."
"Where is he? Where does he now live?"
"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:
quite a desolate spot."
"Who is with him?"
"Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken
down, they say."
"Have you any sort of conveyance?"
"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise."
"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to
Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice the hire
you usually demand."
| Early in the morning Jane hears St. John leave while she is getting ready for her own journey. She tells Diana and Mary that she must go on a trip and in the afternoon goes to meet the coach. It takes thirty-six hours to get near Thornfield, and at the coach stop Jane starts to walk to the Hall. Jane is quite excited about being near Thornfield again, and walks so that her first view of the Hall will be from the front. She peeps out from the gates in case someone is looking from the windows, but then gapes at what she sees. Thornfield is no longer a stately house, but a blackened ruin. All of the walls are crashed in, and it had obviously happened a while ago. Jane returns to the inn at the coach stop to try to find out what happened. She learns from the waiter that there was a lunatic living at the Hall who was Rochester's wife, and she burned it down. He relates that Rochester tried to get her out, but that she jumped from the top of the house, killing herself. Rochester was injured in the fire, and has lost his left hand and is blind. He tells her that Mrs. Fairfax was sent away and that Adele was sent to school. He tells her that he now lives at Ferndean, a manor house that he owns about thirty miles from there. He lives there with John and his wife. Jane calls for a coach, and sets out for Ferndean | summary |
The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity,
moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. I
had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes
went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game
covers. He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in
consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferndean then
remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or
three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went
there in the season to shoot.
To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the
characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating
rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and
driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when within a
very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so
thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it. Iron gates
between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through
them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees. There
was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and
knotty shafts and under branched arches. I followed it, expecting soon
to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it wound far and
farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.
I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness of
natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round in
search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem,
columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening anywhere.
I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently
I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light,
distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying
walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a
space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle.
There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling
a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house
presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and
narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole
looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate
spot." It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on
the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.
"Can there be life here?" I asked.
Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement--that narrow
front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the
grange.
It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the
step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel
whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him--it was my
master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.
I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him--to examine
him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a sudden meeting,
and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had no
difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty
advance.
His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port
was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features
altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow, could his
athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his
countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that
reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to
approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes
cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.
And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?--if you do,
you little know me. A soft hope blest with my sorrow that soon I should
dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly
sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.
He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the
grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, as if he
knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids;
gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the
amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness. He
stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden
in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay
around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees were some yards off
where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and
stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head.
At this moment John approached him from some quarter.
"Will you take my arm, sir?" he said; "there is a heavy shower coming on:
had you not better go in?"
"Let me alone," was the answer.
John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried to
walk about: vainly,--all was too uncertain. He groped his way back to
the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.
I now drew near and knocked: John's wife opened for me. "Mary," I said,
"how are you?"
She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her hurried "Is
it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?" I
answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kitchen,
where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them, in few words,
that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that
I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John to go down to the turn-
pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I
had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I
questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House
for the night; and finding that arrangements to that effect, though
difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay. Just
at this moment the parlour-bell rang.
"When you go in," said I, "tell your master that a person wishes to speak
to him, but do not give my name."
"I don't think he will see you," she answered; "he refuses everybody."
When she returned, I inquired what he had said. "You are to send in your
name and your business," she replied. She then proceeded to fill a glass
with water, and place it on a tray, together with candles.
"Is that what he rang for?" I asked.
"Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind."
"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in."
I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray
shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my
ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.
This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the
grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high,
old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room. His
old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as
if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up his ears
when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded
towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it on the
table; then patted him, and said softly, "Lie down!" Mr. Rochester
turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as he _saw_
nothing, he returned and sighed.
"Give me the water, Mary," he said.
I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me,
still excited.
"What is the matter?" he inquired.
"Down, Pilot!" I again said. He checked the water on its way to his
lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. "This is
you, Mary, is it not?"
"Mary is in the kitchen," I answered.
He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood,
he did not touch me. "Who is this? Who is this?" he demanded, trying,
as it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes--unavailing and
distressing attempt! "Answer me--speak again!" he ordered, imperiously
and aloud.
"Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the
glass," I said.
"_Who_ is it? _What_ is it? Who speaks?"
"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this
evening," I answered.
"Great God!--what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has
seized me?"
"No delusion--no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion,
your health too sound for frenzy."
"And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but
I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever--whoever
you are--be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!"
He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.
"Her very fingers!" he cried; "her small, slight fingers! If so there
must be more of her."
The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my
shoulder--neck--waist--I was entwined and gathered to him.
"Is it Jane? _What_ is it? This is her shape--this is her size--"
"And this her voice," I added. "She is all here: her heart, too. God
bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again."
"Jane Eyre!--Jane Eyre," was all he said.
"My dear master," I answered, "I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out--I am
come back to you."
"In truth?--in the flesh? My living Jane?"
"You touch me, sir,--you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a
corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?"
"My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her
features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream;
such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to
my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus--and felt that she loved
me, and trusted that she would not leave me."
"Which I never will, sir, from this day."
"Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty
mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned--my life dark, lonely,
hopeless--my soul athirst and forbidden to drink--my heart famished and
never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will
fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before
you go--embrace me, Jane."
"There, sir--and there!"'
I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept his
hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to arouse
himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.
"It is you--is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?"
"I am."
"And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you are
not a pining outcast amongst strangers?"
"No, sir! I am an independent woman now."
"Independent! What do you mean, Jane?"
"My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds."
"Ah! this is practical--this is real!" he cried: "I should never dream
that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and
piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into
it.--What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?"
"If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close
up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want
company of an evening."
"But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look
after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like
me?"
"I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own
mistress."
"And you will stay with me?"
"Certainly--unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse,
your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion--to read
to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and
hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not
be left desolate, so long as I live."
He replied not: he seemed serious--abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened
his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little
embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and
he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had indeed
made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his
wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had
buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to
that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I
suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps
playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from
his arms--but he eagerly snatched me closer.
"No--no--Jane; you must not go. No--I have touched you, heard you, felt
the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot
give up these joys. I have little left in myself--I must have you. The
world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify. My
very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly
vengeance on its frame."
"Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so."
"Yes--but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand
another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and
chair--to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate
heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for
those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no doubt. I suppose I
should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you: do you think so?
Come--tell me."
"I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if
you think it better."
"But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young--you must marry
one day."
"I don't care about being married."
"You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make
you care--but--a sightless block!"
He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more cheerful,
and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where
the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite
relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of
conversation.
"It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you," said I, parting his
thick and long uncut locks; "for I see you are being metamorphosed into a
lion, or something of that sort. You have a 'faux air' of Nebuchadnezzar
in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles'
feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds' claws or not, I have
not yet noticed."
"On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails," he said, drawing the
mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. "It is a mere
stump--a ghastly sight! Don't you think so, Jane?"
"It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes--and the scar of
fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving
you too well for all this; and making too much of you."
"I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my
cicatrised visage."
"Did you? Don't tell me so--lest I should say something disparaging to
your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire,
and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire?"
"Yes; with the right eye I see a glow--a ruddy haze."
"And you see the candles?"
"Very dimly--each is a luminous cloud."
"Can you see me?"
"No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you."
"When do you take supper?"
"I never take supper."
"But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I daresay,
only you forget."
Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared
him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with
pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time
after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and
vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I
suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him.
Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature:
in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he
was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his
lineaments softened and warmed.
After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been,
what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very
partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night.
Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord--to open no fresh well
of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him. Cheered,
as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits. If a moment's silence broke
the conversation, he would turn restless, touch me, then say, "Jane."
"You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?"
{You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?:
p422.jpg}
"I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester."
"Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on
my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a
hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting
John's wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear."
"Because I had come in, in Mary's stead, with the tray."
"And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you.
Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for
months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day;
feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger
when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very
delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I
longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane
is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as
she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more."
A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed
ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this
frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that
they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make
them grow as broad and black as ever.
"Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when,
at some fatal moment, you will again desert me--passing like a shadow,
whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards
undiscoverable?
"Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?"
"What for, Jane?"
"Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming,
when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am
sure, you are more like a brownie."
"Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know."
"Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have
sojourned."
"Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times
better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your
life: quite more refined and exalted."
"Who the deuce have you been with?"
"If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your
head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my
substantiality."
"Who have you been with, Jane?"
"You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till
to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of
security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By
the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of
water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried
ham."
"You mocking changeling--fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as
I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his
David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the
harp."
"There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I'll leave you: I have
been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired. Good
night."
"Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have
been?"
I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. "A good
idea!" I thought with glee. "I see I have the means of fretting him out
of his melancholy for some time to come."
Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one
room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question: "Is
Miss Eyre here?" Then: "Which room did you put her into? Was it dry? Is
she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will come down."
I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.
Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered
my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that
vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his chair--still,
but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness
marking his strong features. His countenance reminded one of a lamp
quenched, waiting to be re-lit--and alas! it was not himself that could
now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another
for that office! I had meant to be gay and careless, but the
powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I
accosted him with what vivacity I could.
"It is a bright, sunny morning, sir," I said. "The rain is over and
gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk
soon."
I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.
"Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone:
not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over
the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun
had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to
my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I
can feel is in her presence."
The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as
if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a
sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed
off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.
Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet
and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how
brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed;
how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in a hidden
and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when
seated, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both he and I were
happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet. He broke
out suddenly while clasping me in his arms--
"Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you
had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after
examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor
anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had
given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left
corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What
could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what did
she do? Let me hear now."
Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I
softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and
starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict
unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart
deeper than I wished.
I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my
way: I should have told him my intention. I should have confided in him:
he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he had
seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too
tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his
fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I
should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured, he
was certain, more than I had confessed to him.
"Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short," I
answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at
Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c. The
accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due
order. Of course, St. John Rivers' name came in frequently in the
progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately taken
up.
"This St. John, then, is your cousin?"
"Yes."
"You have spoken of him often: do you like him?"
"He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him."
"A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty?
Or what does it mean?"
"St John was only twenty-nine, sir."
"'_Jeune encore_,' as the French say. Is he a person of low stature,
phlegmatic, and plain. A person whose goodness consists rather in his
guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue."
"He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to
perform."
"But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but you
shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?"
"He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain
is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous."
"Is he an able man, then?"
"Truly able."
"A thoroughly educated man?"
"St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar."
"His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?--priggish and
parsonic?"
"I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste, they
must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike."
"His appearance,--I forget what description you gave of his appearance;--a
sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted
up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?"
"St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue
eyes, and a Grecian profile."
(Aside.) "Damn him!"--(To me.) "Did you like him, Jane?"
"Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before."
I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got
hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him
respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore,
immediately charm the snake.
"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?" was
the next somewhat unexpected observation.
"Why not, Mr. Rochester?"
"The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too
overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a
graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,--tall, fair, blue-
eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,--a real
blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the
bargain."
"I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vulcan,
sir."
"Well, you can leave me, ma'am: but before you go" (and he retained me by
a firmer grasp than ever), "you will be pleased just to answer me a
question or two." He paused.
"What questions, Mr. Rochester?"
Then followed this cross-examination.
"St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his
cousin?"
"Yes."
"You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?"
"Daily."
"He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, for
you are a talented creature!"
"He approved of them--yes."
"He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find?
Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary."
"I don't know about that."
"You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come
there to see you?"
"Now and then?"
"Of an evening?"
"Once or twice."
A pause.
"How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship
was discovered?"
"Five months."
"Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?"
"Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the
window, and we by the table."
"Did he study much?"
"A good deal."
"What?"
"Hindostanee."
"And what did you do meantime?"
"I learnt German, at first."
"Did he teach you?"
"He did not understand German."
"Did he teach you nothing?"
"A little Hindostanee."
"Rivers taught you Hindostanee?"
"Yes, sir."
"And his sisters also?"
"No."
"Only you?"
"Only me."
"Did you ask to learn?"
"No."
"He wished to teach you?"
"Yes."
A second pause.
"Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?"
"He intended me to go with him to India."
"Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?"
"He asked me to marry him."
"That is a fiction--an impudent invention to vex me."
"I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once,
and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be."
"Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the
same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I
have given you notice to quit?"
"Because I am comfortable there."
"No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not with
me: it is with this cousin--this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I
thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even
when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we
have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never
thought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another! But it is
useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers."
"Shake me off, then, sir,--push me away, for I'll not leave you of my own
accord."
"Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds so
truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I forget that you
have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool--go--"
"Where must I go, sir?"
"Your own way--with the husband you have chosen."
"Who is that?"
"You know--this St. John Rivers."
"He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I do not
love him. He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a
beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me only because
he thought I should make a suitable missionary's wife, which she would
not have done. He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an
iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near
him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me--no fondness. He sees
nothing attractive in me; not even youth--only a few useful mental
points.--Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?"
I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind but
beloved master. He smiled.
"What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between
you and Rivers?"
"Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a
little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief.
But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I _do_ love
you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir: it
belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest
of me from your presence for ever."
Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.
"My seared vision! My crippled strength!" he murmured regretfully.
I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, and
wanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his face a
minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle down
the manly cheek. My heart swelled.
"I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield
orchard," he remarked ere long. "And what right would that ruin have to
bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?"
"You are no ruin, sir--no lightning-struck tree: you are green and
vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or
not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow
they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength
offers them so safe a prop."
Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.
"You speak of friends, Jane?" he asked.
"Yes, of friends," I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant
more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ. He
helped me.
"Ah! Jane. But I want a wife."
"Do you, sir?"
"Yes: is it news to you?"
"Of course: you said nothing about it before."
"Is it unwelcome news?"
"That depends on circumstances, sir--on your choice."
"Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision."
"Choose then, sir--_her who loves you best_."
"I will at least choose--_her I love best_. Jane, will you marry me?"
"Yes, sir."
"A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?"
"Yes, sir."
"A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait
on?"
"Yes, sir."
"Truly, Jane?"
"Most truly, sir."
"Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!"
"Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life--if ever I thought a
good thought--if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer--if ever I
wished a righteous wish,--I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me,
to be as happy as I can be on earth."
"Because you delight in sacrifice."
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for
content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value--to press my
lips to what I love--to repose on what I trust: is that to make a
sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."
"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies."
"Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be
useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you
disdained every part but that of the giver and protector."
"Hitherto I have hated to be helped--to be led: henceforth, I feel I
shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling's,
but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little fingers. I
preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but
Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit
her?"
"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."
"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be
married instantly."
He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.
"We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the
licence to get--then we marry."
"Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its
meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at
your watch."
"Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no
use for it."
"It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, sir. Don't you feel
hungry?"
"The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine
clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip."
"The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it
is quite hot."
"Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment
fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since the
day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her."
"We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way."
He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.
"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells
with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not
as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more
wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed
guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-
necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to
the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters
came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow
of death. _His_ chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has
humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it
now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its
weakness? Of late, Jane--only--only of late--I began to see and
acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse,
repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to
pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.
"Some days since: nay, I can number them--four; it was last Monday night,
a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy--sorrow,
sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere
find you, you must be dead. Late that night--perhaps it might be between
eleven and twelve o'clock--ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated
God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this
life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of
rejoining Jane.
"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it
soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and
only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed
for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I
asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long
enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and
peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged--that I
could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my
heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words--'Jane!
Jane! Jane!'"
"Did you speak these words aloud?"
"I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me
mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy."
"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"
"Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange
point. You will think me superstitious,--some superstition I have in my
blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true--true at least it is
that I heard what I now relate.
"As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice--I cannot tell whence the
voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, 'I am coming: wait
for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words--'Where
are you?'
"I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my
mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is
buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies
unreverberating. 'Where are you?' seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I
heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the
moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some
wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must
have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane:
perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were
your accents--as certain as I live--they were yours!"
Reader, it was on Monday night--near midnight--that I too had received
the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to
it. I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, but made no disclosure in
return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be
communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as
must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and
that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the
deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered
them in my heart.
"You cannot now wonder," continued my master, "that when you rose upon me
so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other
than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and
annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted
before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank
God!"
He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his
brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute
devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.
"I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered
mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead
henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!"
Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it
a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much
lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We
entered the wood, and wended homeward.
| Jane travels the last mile to Ferndean on foot so that the coach does not draw attention. It is about to get dark, and she sees Mr. Rochester come out of the house and try to feel his way around. She sees that his figure and appearance are the same, but that he walks slowly and hides his left hand. John comes out, and after the two of them go in, Jane knocks at the door. John's wife, Mary, answers, and she recognizes Jane. Rochester rings for some water, and Jane takes it in instead of Mary. When Jane speaks Rochester realizes it is not Mary, but does not believe it is Jane. Jane says that it is she, and that she will never leave him again. She kisses him and tells him that she is now rich, and that if she does not let him live with him, she will build a house near. Rochester gets gloomy when Jane again says she will stay with him, as he feels himself to be unworthy of her companionship now that he is blind. Jane makes a better fire and some supper, and soon things are more cheerful. Jane tells Rochester some of where she has been, but he becomes jealous when she says she has been with good people, and he asks if any men were there. She laughs at him and bids him goodnight. The next day Jane comes down to breakfast, and Rochester is relieved that she has not left in the night. They go for a walk, and he tells her how horrible he felt when he realized that she had left Thornfield and had taken no money or goods. Jane tells him how she had been received at Moor House and about St. John. He asks many questions about him, finally telling Jane that she can go and be with him. She convinces him that her heart is with him, not St. John, and that she will take care of him. Rochester asks Jane to marry him, and she accepts. He then relates a story from a few nights before. He says that he was feeling very sad and longing for her and called out "Jane. Jane. Jane. and that he heard someone answer, "I am coming. Where are you. Jane decides that Rochester has been through enough, and so does not tell him of the fantastic coincidence | summary |
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and
clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the
kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John
cleaning the knives, and I said--
"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning." The
housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of
people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece
of news without incurring the danger of having one's ears pierced by some
shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy
wonderment. Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle with
which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did for
some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of time
John's knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending
again over the roast, said only--
"Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!"
A short time after she pursued--"I seed you go out with the master, but I
didn't know you were gone to church to be wed;" and she basted away.
John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.
"I telled Mary how it would be," he said: "I knew what Mr. Edward" (John
was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the
house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)--"I knew what Mr.
Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and
he's done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!" and he
politely pulled his forelock.
"Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this." I
put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I
left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after, I
caught the words--
"She'll happen do better for him nor ony o't' grand ladies." And again,
"If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and varry
good-natured; and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody may see that."
I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had
done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary
approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just give
me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me.
"She had better not wait till then, Jane," said Mr. Rochester, when I
read her letter to him; "if she does, she will be too late, for our
honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your
grave or mine."
How St. John received the news, I don't know: he never answered the
letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me,
without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester's name or alluding to my
marriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind. He
has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever since:
he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live without God in
the world, and only mind earthly things.
You have not quite forgotten little Adele, have you, reader? I had not;
I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and see her at
the school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at beholding me
again moved me much. She looked pale and thin: she said she was not
happy. I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its
course of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with
me. I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this
impracticable; my time and cares were now required by another--my husband
needed them all. So I sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent
system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often, and bringing
her home sometimes. I took care she should never want for anything that
could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her new abode,
became very happy there, and made fair progress in her studies. As she
grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her
French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a pleasing and
obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and well-principled. By her
grateful attention to me and mine, she has long since well repaid any
little kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her.
My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of married
life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most
frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done.
I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely
for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely
blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's
life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I
am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know
no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than
we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate
bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to
be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I
believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and
an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his
confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character--perfect
concord is the result.
Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps
it was that circumstance that drew us so very near--that knit us so very
close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.
Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw
nature--he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his
behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river,
cloud, sunbeam--of the landscape before us; of the weather round us--and
impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his
eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of
conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to
be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most
exquisite, even though sad--because he claimed these services without
painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew
no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so
fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.
One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his
dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--"Jane, have you a
glittering ornament round your neck?"
I had a gold watch-chain: I answered "Yes."
"And have you a pale blue dress on?"
{And have you a pale blue dress on?: p435.jpg}
I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the
obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was
sure of it.
He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist; and
he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now see
very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his way
without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to him--the
earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his arms, he
could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once
were--large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with a
full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy.
My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most
love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both married:
alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see them.
Diana's husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a good
man. Mary's is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother's, and, from
his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection. Both Captain
Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved by them.
As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He entered on
the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more
resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers.
Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he
labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews
down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He
may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the
sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from
the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who
speaks but for Christ, when he says--"Whosoever will come after me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." His is the
ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the
first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without
fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of
the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.
St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto
sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun
hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my
eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated
his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger's hand
will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been
called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No
fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be
unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith
steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this--
"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me. Daily He announces more
distinctly,--'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly
respond,--'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'"
| Jane and Rochester have a quiet wedding three days after that. Diana and Mary are happy for her and say they will come to visit. St. John did not reply to the letter Jane sent to him regarding the wedding; however, he has since maintained a correspondence with her. Jane goes to see Adele and changes her school for a better and closer one. Jane then tells the reader that it has been ten years now that she has been married as she sits to write about her life. She and Rochester are always together, and after two years, he had regained sight in one of his eyes, enough to see his first-born son. Diana and Mary are both married and come to visit Jane, and she visits them. St. John went to India and is still there. He remained unmarried, and Jane relates that he feels that he will soon die and join God | summary |
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes
to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is
what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the
end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge,
carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the
eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.
The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors
and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike
pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of
the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to
the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the
transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the
fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall.
On a heap of those soft shavings a rough, grey shepherd dog had
made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his
fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the
tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of
a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone
belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing--
Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth...
Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated
attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it
presently broke out again with renewed vigour--
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear.
Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest
belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a
back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up
to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier
standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm
that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long
supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of
skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his
name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast
with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that
shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows,
indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly
hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an
expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.
It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam's brother. He is
nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair
and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to
render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in
form and face. Seth's broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes
are grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his
brother's; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and
benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is
not thick and straight, like Adam's, but thin and wavy, allowing you
to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very
decidedly over the brow.
The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they
scarcely ever spoke to Adam.
The concert of the tools and Adam's voice was at last broken by Seth,
who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed
it against the wall, and said, "There! I've finished my door to-day,
anyhow."
The workmen all looked up; Jim Salt, a burly, red-haired man known as
Sandy Jim, paused from his planing, and Adam said to Seth, with a sharp
glance of surprise, "What! Dost think thee'st finished the door?"
"Aye, sure," said Seth, with answering surprise; "what's awanting to't?"
A loud roar of laughter from the other three workmen made Seth look
round confusedly. Adam did not join in the laughter, but there was a
slight smile on his face as he said, in a gentler tone than before,
"Why, thee'st forgot the panels."
The laughter burst out afresh as Seth clapped his hands to his head, and
coloured over brow and crown.
"Hoorray!" shouted a small lithe fellow called Wiry Ben, running forward
and seizing the door. "We'll hang up th' door at fur end o' th' shop an'
write on't 'Seth Bede, the Methody, his work.' Here, Jim, lend's hould
o' th' red pot."
"Nonsense!" said Adam. "Let it alone, Ben Cranage. You'll mayhap be
making such a slip yourself some day; you'll laugh o' th' other side o'
your mouth then."
"Catch me at it, Adam. It'll be a good while afore my head's full o' th'
Methodies," said Ben.
"Nay, but it's often full o' drink, and that's worse."
Ben, however, had now got the "red pot" in his hand, and was about
to begin writing his inscription, making, by way of preliminary, an
imaginary S in the air.
"Let it alone, will you?" Adam called out, laying down his tools,
striding up to Ben, and seizing his right shoulder. "Let it alone, or
I'll shake the soul out o' your body."
Ben shook in Adam's iron grasp, but, like a plucky small man as he was,
he didn't mean to give in. With his left hand he snatched the brush from
his powerless right, and made a movement as if he would perform the feat
of writing with his left. In a moment Adam turned him round, seized his
other shoulder, and, pushing him along, pinned him against the wall. But
now Seth spoke.
"Let be, Addy, let be. Ben will be joking. Why, he's i' the right to
laugh at me--I canna help laughing at myself."
"I shan't loose him till he promises to let the door alone," said Adam.
"Come, Ben, lad," said Seth, in a persuasive tone, "don't let's have a
quarrel about it. You know Adam will have his way. You may's well try
to turn a waggon in a narrow lane. Say you'll leave the door alone, and
make an end on't."
"I binna frighted at Adam," said Ben, "but I donna mind sayin' as I'll
let 't alone at your askin', Seth."
"Come, that's wise of you, Ben," said Adam, laughing and relaxing his
grasp.
They all returned to their work now; but Wiry Ben, having had the worst
in the bodily contest, was bent on retrieving that humiliation by a
success in sarcasm.
"Which was ye thinkin' on, Seth," he began--"the pretty parson's face or
her sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?"
"Come and hear her, Ben," said Seth, good-humouredly; "she's going to
preach on the Green to-night; happen ye'd get something to think on
yourself then, instead o' those wicked songs you're so fond on. Ye might
get religion, and that 'ud be the best day's earnings y' ever made."
"All i' good time for that, Seth; I'll think about that when I'm a-goin'
to settle i' life; bachelors doesn't want such heavy earnin's. Happen
I shall do the coortin' an' the religion both together, as YE do, Seth;
but ye wouldna ha' me get converted an' chop in atween ye an' the pretty
preacher, an' carry her aff?"
"No fear o' that, Ben; she's neither for you nor for me to win, I doubt.
Only you come and hear her, and you won't speak lightly on her again."
"Well, I'm half a mind t' ha' a look at her to-night, if there isn't
good company at th' Holly Bush. What'll she take for her text? Happen ye
can tell me, Seth, if so be as I shouldna come up i' time for't. Will't
be--what come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and
more than a prophetess--a uncommon pretty young woman."
"Come, Ben," said Adam, rather sternly, "you let the words o' the Bible
alone; you're going too far now."
"What! Are YE a-turnin' roun', Adam? I thought ye war dead again th'
women preachin', a while agoo?"
"Nay, I'm not turnin' noway. I said nought about the women preachin'.
I said, You let the Bible alone: you've got a jest-book, han't you, as
you're rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that."
"Why, y' are gettin' as big a saint as Seth. Y' are goin' to th'
preachin' to-night, I should think. Ye'll do finely t' lead the singin'.
But I don' know what Parson Irwine 'ull say at his gran' favright Adam
Bede a-turnin' Methody."
"Never do you bother yourself about me, Ben. I'm not a-going to turn
Methodist any more nor you are--though it's like enough you'll turn
to something worse. Mester Irwine's got more sense nor to meddle wi'
people's doing as they like in religion. That's between themselves and
God, as he's said to me many a time."
"Aye, aye; but he's none so fond o' your dissenters, for all that."
"Maybe; I'm none so fond o' Josh Tod's thick ale, but I don't hinder you
from making a fool o' yourself wi't."
There was a laugh at this thrust of Adam's, but Seth said, very
seriously. "Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody's religion's
like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the
Methodists have got the root o' the matter as well as the church folks."
"Nay, Seth, lad; I'm not for laughing at no man's religion. Let 'em
follow their consciences, that's all. Only I think it 'ud be better if
their consciences 'ud let 'em stay quiet i' the church--there's a deal
to be learnt there. And there's such a thing as being oversperitial; we
must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an'
th' aqueduc's, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at
Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I
reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be
doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's agoing
on inside him. I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and
the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God
put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do
all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my
way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all
times--weekday as well as Sunday--and i' the great works and inventions,
and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our
headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does
bits o' jobs out o' working hours--builds a oven for 's wife to save her
from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes
two potatoes grow istead o' one, he's doin' more good, and he's just as
near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and
a-groaning."
"Well done, Adam!" said Sandy Jim, who had paused from his planing to
shift his planks while Adam was speaking; "that's the best sarmunt I've
heared this long while. By th' same token, my wife's been a-plaguin' on
me to build her a oven this twelvemont."
"There's reason in what thee say'st, Adam," observed Seth, gravely. "But
thee know'st thyself as it's hearing the preachers thee find'st so much
fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un. It's
the preacher as empties th' alehouse; and if a man gets religion, he'll
do his work none the worse for that."
"On'y he'll lave the panels out o' th' doors sometimes, eh, Seth?" said
Wiry Ben.
"Ah, Ben, you've got a joke again' me as 'll last you your life. But it
isna religion as was i' fault there; it was Seth Bede, as was allays a
wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, the more's the pity."
"Ne'er heed me, Seth," said Wiry Ben, "y' are a down-right good-hearted
chap, panels or no panels; an' ye donna set up your bristles at every
bit o' fun, like some o' your kin, as is mayhap cliverer."
"Seth, lad," said Adam, taking no notice of the sarcasm against himself,
"thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I said just
now. Some 's got one way o' looking at things and some 's got another."
"Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean'st me no unkindness," said Seth, "I know that
well enough. Thee't like thy dog Gyp--thee bark'st at me sometimes, but
thee allays lick'st my hand after."
All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock
began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim
had loosed his plane and was reaching his jacket; Wiry Ben had left a
screw half driven in, and thrown his screwdriver into his tool-basket;
Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept silence throughout the
previous conversation, had flung down his hammer as he was in the act
of lifting it; and Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was putting
out his hand towards his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on with his work
as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the tools, he
looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation, "Look there, now! I can't
abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the
clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work and
was afraid o' doing a stroke too much."
Seth looked a little conscious, and began to be slower in his
preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence, and said, "Aye, aye,
Adam lad, ye talk like a young un. When y' are six-an'-forty like me,
istid o' six-an'-twenty, ye wonna be so flush o' workin' for nought."
"Nonsense," said Adam, still wrathful; "what's age got to do with it, I
wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms
drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as
if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very grindstone
'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it."
"Bodderation, Adam!" exclaimed Wiry Ben; "lave a chap aloon, will 'ee?
Ye war afinding faut wi' preachers a while agoo--y' are fond enough o'
preachin' yoursen. Ye may like work better nor play, but I like play
better nor work; that'll 'commodate ye--it laves ye th' more to do."
With this exit speech, which he considered effective, Wiry Ben
shouldered his basket and left the workshop, quickly followed by Mum
Taft and Sandy Jim. Seth lingered, and looked wistfully at Adam, as if
he expected him to say something.
"Shalt go home before thee go'st to the preaching?" Adam asked, looking
up.
"Nay; I've got my hat and things at Will Maskery's. I shan't be home
before going for ten. I'll happen see Dinah Morris safe home, if she's
willing. There's nobody comes with her from Poyser's, thee know'st."
"Then I'll tell mother not to look for thee," said Adam.
"Thee artna going to Poyser's thyself to-night?" said Seth rather
timidly, as he turned to leave the workshop.
"Nay, I'm going to th' school."
Hitherto Gyp had kept his comfortable bed, only lifting up his head and
watching Adam more closely as he noticed the other workmen departing.
But no sooner did Adam put his ruler in his pocket, and begin to twist
his apron round his waist, than Gyp ran forward and looked up in his
master's face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would
doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his
emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear
more phlegmatic than nature had made him.
"What! Art ready for the basket, eh, Gyp?" said Adam, with the same
gentle modulation of voice as when he spoke to Seth.
Gyp jumped and gave a short bark, as much as to say, "Of course." Poor
fellow, he had not a great range of expression.
The basket was the one which on workdays held Adam's and Seth's dinner;
and no official, walking in procession, could look more resolutely
unconscious of all acquaintances than Gyp with his basket, trotting at
his master's heels.
On leaving the workshop Adam locked the door, took the key out, and
carried it to the house on the other side of the woodyard. It was a
low house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant
and mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and
speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb
tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen
gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls
which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation
of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman's sight seemed to be dim, for
she did not recognize Adam till he said, "Here's the key, Dolly; lay it
down for me in the house, will you?"
"Aye, sure; but wunna ye come in, Adam? Miss Mary's i' th' house, and
Mester Burge 'ull be back anon; he'd be glad t' ha' ye to supper wi'm,
I'll be's warrand."
"No, Dolly, thank you; I'm off home. Good evening."
Adam hastened with long strides, Gyp close to his heels, out of the
workyard, and along the highroad leading away from the village and down
to the valley. As he reached the foot of the slope, an elderly horseman,
with his portmanteau strapped behind him, stopped his horse when Adam
had passed him, and turned round to have another long look at the
stalwart workman in paper cap, leather breeches, and dark-blue worsted
stockings.
Adam, unconscious of the admiration he was exciting, presently struck
across the fields, and now broke out into the tune which had all day
long been running in his head:
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
For God's all-seeing eye surveys
Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways.
| On June 18, 1799, there are five workmen in the carpenter's shop of Mr. Jonathan Burge in the village of Hayslope. The tallest worker, Adam Bede, is singing. He is a fine, large man with Celtic blood. His brother, Seth, has a different aspect. He looks more shy and less robust. Seth says that he has finished the door that he is working on, and the rest laugh at him because he has forgotten the panels. They joke about hanging the door in the shop as a joke, but Adam persuades them to stop making fun of his brother. Wiry Ben jokes that Seth was absent-minded in finishing the door because he was dreaming about a female Methodist preacher. Seth invites Ben to come and see the preacher for himself so that he can get religion. Adam reveals that he is not so keen on women being allowed to preach, and he disputes Ben's suggestion that Parson Irwine will be upset at him for attending a Methodist meeting. Adam objects to Methodist philosophy, saying that it is too inward-looking; God put his spirit into the worker to build the tabernacle, and there is holiness in mills and aqueducts as well as in a church. Ben teases Seth once again about the unfinished doors, and Seth concedes that he has a good joke. Ben says that it is better that he does not bristle at every joke like his brother does. The clock strikes six, and all of the men prepare to go except Adam, who is indignant that the men give up work so quickly, as though they do not enjoy it. Seth says that he will be home late after the preaching, especially since he will see Dinah Morris home if she will allow it. Adam leaves the workshop with his dog Gyp and passes a nearby house, where an old woman named Dolly invites him in to dinner, saying that Miss Mary is there and that Mister Burge will be there soon as well. Adam declines and walks on. An elderly horseman turns around to look at Adam, but Adam does not see him | summary |
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes
to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is
what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the
end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge,
carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the
eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.
The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors
and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike
pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of
the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to
the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the
transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the
fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall.
On a heap of those soft shavings a rough, grey shepherd dog had
made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his
fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the
tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of
a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone
belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing--
Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth...
Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated
attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it
presently broke out again with renewed vigour--
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear.
Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest
belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a
back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up
to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier
standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm
that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long
supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of
skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his
name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast
with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that
shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows,
indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly
hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an
expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.
It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam's brother. He is
nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair
and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to
render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in
form and face. Seth's broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes
are grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his
brother's; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and
benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is
not thick and straight, like Adam's, but thin and wavy, allowing you
to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very
decidedly over the brow.
The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they
scarcely ever spoke to Adam.
The concert of the tools and Adam's voice was at last broken by Seth,
who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed
it against the wall, and said, "There! I've finished my door to-day,
anyhow."
The workmen all looked up; Jim Salt, a burly, red-haired man known as
Sandy Jim, paused from his planing, and Adam said to Seth, with a sharp
glance of surprise, "What! Dost think thee'st finished the door?"
"Aye, sure," said Seth, with answering surprise; "what's awanting to't?"
A loud roar of laughter from the other three workmen made Seth look
round confusedly. Adam did not join in the laughter, but there was a
slight smile on his face as he said, in a gentler tone than before,
"Why, thee'st forgot the panels."
The laughter burst out afresh as Seth clapped his hands to his head, and
coloured over brow and crown.
"Hoorray!" shouted a small lithe fellow called Wiry Ben, running forward
and seizing the door. "We'll hang up th' door at fur end o' th' shop an'
write on't 'Seth Bede, the Methody, his work.' Here, Jim, lend's hould
o' th' red pot."
"Nonsense!" said Adam. "Let it alone, Ben Cranage. You'll mayhap be
making such a slip yourself some day; you'll laugh o' th' other side o'
your mouth then."
"Catch me at it, Adam. It'll be a good while afore my head's full o' th'
Methodies," said Ben.
"Nay, but it's often full o' drink, and that's worse."
Ben, however, had now got the "red pot" in his hand, and was about
to begin writing his inscription, making, by way of preliminary, an
imaginary S in the air.
"Let it alone, will you?" Adam called out, laying down his tools,
striding up to Ben, and seizing his right shoulder. "Let it alone, or
I'll shake the soul out o' your body."
Ben shook in Adam's iron grasp, but, like a plucky small man as he was,
he didn't mean to give in. With his left hand he snatched the brush from
his powerless right, and made a movement as if he would perform the feat
of writing with his left. In a moment Adam turned him round, seized his
other shoulder, and, pushing him along, pinned him against the wall. But
now Seth spoke.
"Let be, Addy, let be. Ben will be joking. Why, he's i' the right to
laugh at me--I canna help laughing at myself."
"I shan't loose him till he promises to let the door alone," said Adam.
"Come, Ben, lad," said Seth, in a persuasive tone, "don't let's have a
quarrel about it. You know Adam will have his way. You may's well try
to turn a waggon in a narrow lane. Say you'll leave the door alone, and
make an end on't."
"I binna frighted at Adam," said Ben, "but I donna mind sayin' as I'll
let 't alone at your askin', Seth."
"Come, that's wise of you, Ben," said Adam, laughing and relaxing his
grasp.
They all returned to their work now; but Wiry Ben, having had the worst
in the bodily contest, was bent on retrieving that humiliation by a
success in sarcasm.
"Which was ye thinkin' on, Seth," he began--"the pretty parson's face or
her sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?"
"Come and hear her, Ben," said Seth, good-humouredly; "she's going to
preach on the Green to-night; happen ye'd get something to think on
yourself then, instead o' those wicked songs you're so fond on. Ye might
get religion, and that 'ud be the best day's earnings y' ever made."
"All i' good time for that, Seth; I'll think about that when I'm a-goin'
to settle i' life; bachelors doesn't want such heavy earnin's. Happen
I shall do the coortin' an' the religion both together, as YE do, Seth;
but ye wouldna ha' me get converted an' chop in atween ye an' the pretty
preacher, an' carry her aff?"
"No fear o' that, Ben; she's neither for you nor for me to win, I doubt.
Only you come and hear her, and you won't speak lightly on her again."
"Well, I'm half a mind t' ha' a look at her to-night, if there isn't
good company at th' Holly Bush. What'll she take for her text? Happen ye
can tell me, Seth, if so be as I shouldna come up i' time for't. Will't
be--what come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and
more than a prophetess--a uncommon pretty young woman."
"Come, Ben," said Adam, rather sternly, "you let the words o' the Bible
alone; you're going too far now."
"What! Are YE a-turnin' roun', Adam? I thought ye war dead again th'
women preachin', a while agoo?"
"Nay, I'm not turnin' noway. I said nought about the women preachin'.
I said, You let the Bible alone: you've got a jest-book, han't you, as
you're rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that."
"Why, y' are gettin' as big a saint as Seth. Y' are goin' to th'
preachin' to-night, I should think. Ye'll do finely t' lead the singin'.
But I don' know what Parson Irwine 'ull say at his gran' favright Adam
Bede a-turnin' Methody."
"Never do you bother yourself about me, Ben. I'm not a-going to turn
Methodist any more nor you are--though it's like enough you'll turn
to something worse. Mester Irwine's got more sense nor to meddle wi'
people's doing as they like in religion. That's between themselves and
God, as he's said to me many a time."
"Aye, aye; but he's none so fond o' your dissenters, for all that."
"Maybe; I'm none so fond o' Josh Tod's thick ale, but I don't hinder you
from making a fool o' yourself wi't."
There was a laugh at this thrust of Adam's, but Seth said, very
seriously. "Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody's religion's
like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the
Methodists have got the root o' the matter as well as the church folks."
"Nay, Seth, lad; I'm not for laughing at no man's religion. Let 'em
follow their consciences, that's all. Only I think it 'ud be better if
their consciences 'ud let 'em stay quiet i' the church--there's a deal
to be learnt there. And there's such a thing as being oversperitial; we
must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an'
th' aqueduc's, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at
Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I
reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be
doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's agoing
on inside him. I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and
the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God
put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do
all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my
way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all
times--weekday as well as Sunday--and i' the great works and inventions,
and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our
headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does
bits o' jobs out o' working hours--builds a oven for 's wife to save her
from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes
two potatoes grow istead o' one, he's doin' more good, and he's just as
near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and
a-groaning."
"Well done, Adam!" said Sandy Jim, who had paused from his planing to
shift his planks while Adam was speaking; "that's the best sarmunt I've
heared this long while. By th' same token, my wife's been a-plaguin' on
me to build her a oven this twelvemont."
"There's reason in what thee say'st, Adam," observed Seth, gravely. "But
thee know'st thyself as it's hearing the preachers thee find'st so much
fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un. It's
the preacher as empties th' alehouse; and if a man gets religion, he'll
do his work none the worse for that."
"On'y he'll lave the panels out o' th' doors sometimes, eh, Seth?" said
Wiry Ben.
"Ah, Ben, you've got a joke again' me as 'll last you your life. But it
isna religion as was i' fault there; it was Seth Bede, as was allays a
wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, the more's the pity."
"Ne'er heed me, Seth," said Wiry Ben, "y' are a down-right good-hearted
chap, panels or no panels; an' ye donna set up your bristles at every
bit o' fun, like some o' your kin, as is mayhap cliverer."
"Seth, lad," said Adam, taking no notice of the sarcasm against himself,
"thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I said just
now. Some 's got one way o' looking at things and some 's got another."
"Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean'st me no unkindness," said Seth, "I know that
well enough. Thee't like thy dog Gyp--thee bark'st at me sometimes, but
thee allays lick'st my hand after."
All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock
began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim
had loosed his plane and was reaching his jacket; Wiry Ben had left a
screw half driven in, and thrown his screwdriver into his tool-basket;
Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept silence throughout the
previous conversation, had flung down his hammer as he was in the act
of lifting it; and Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was putting
out his hand towards his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on with his work
as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the tools, he
looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation, "Look there, now! I can't
abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the
clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work and
was afraid o' doing a stroke too much."
Seth looked a little conscious, and began to be slower in his
preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence, and said, "Aye, aye,
Adam lad, ye talk like a young un. When y' are six-an'-forty like me,
istid o' six-an'-twenty, ye wonna be so flush o' workin' for nought."
"Nonsense," said Adam, still wrathful; "what's age got to do with it, I
wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms
drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as
if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very grindstone
'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it."
"Bodderation, Adam!" exclaimed Wiry Ben; "lave a chap aloon, will 'ee?
Ye war afinding faut wi' preachers a while agoo--y' are fond enough o'
preachin' yoursen. Ye may like work better nor play, but I like play
better nor work; that'll 'commodate ye--it laves ye th' more to do."
With this exit speech, which he considered effective, Wiry Ben
shouldered his basket and left the workshop, quickly followed by Mum
Taft and Sandy Jim. Seth lingered, and looked wistfully at Adam, as if
he expected him to say something.
"Shalt go home before thee go'st to the preaching?" Adam asked, looking
up.
"Nay; I've got my hat and things at Will Maskery's. I shan't be home
before going for ten. I'll happen see Dinah Morris safe home, if she's
willing. There's nobody comes with her from Poyser's, thee know'st."
"Then I'll tell mother not to look for thee," said Adam.
"Thee artna going to Poyser's thyself to-night?" said Seth rather
timidly, as he turned to leave the workshop.
"Nay, I'm going to th' school."
Hitherto Gyp had kept his comfortable bed, only lifting up his head and
watching Adam more closely as he noticed the other workmen departing.
But no sooner did Adam put his ruler in his pocket, and begin to twist
his apron round his waist, than Gyp ran forward and looked up in his
master's face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would
doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his
emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear
more phlegmatic than nature had made him.
"What! Art ready for the basket, eh, Gyp?" said Adam, with the same
gentle modulation of voice as when he spoke to Seth.
Gyp jumped and gave a short bark, as much as to say, "Of course." Poor
fellow, he had not a great range of expression.
The basket was the one which on workdays held Adam's and Seth's dinner;
and no official, walking in procession, could look more resolutely
unconscious of all acquaintances than Gyp with his basket, trotting at
his master's heels.
On leaving the workshop Adam locked the door, took the key out, and
carried it to the house on the other side of the woodyard. It was a
low house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant
and mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and
speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb
tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen
gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls
which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation
of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman's sight seemed to be dim, for
she did not recognize Adam till he said, "Here's the key, Dolly; lay it
down for me in the house, will you?"
"Aye, sure; but wunna ye come in, Adam? Miss Mary's i' th' house, and
Mester Burge 'ull be back anon; he'd be glad t' ha' ye to supper wi'm,
I'll be's warrand."
"No, Dolly, thank you; I'm off home. Good evening."
Adam hastened with long strides, Gyp close to his heels, out of the
workyard, and along the highroad leading away from the village and down
to the valley. As he reached the foot of the slope, an elderly horseman,
with his portmanteau strapped behind him, stopped his horse when Adam
had passed him, and turned round to have another long look at the
stalwart workman in paper cap, leather breeches, and dark-blue worsted
stockings.
Adam, unconscious of the admiration he was exciting, presently struck
across the fields, and now broke out into the tune which had all day
long been running in his head:
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
For God's all-seeing eye surveys
Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement
in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its
little street, from the Donnithorne Arms to the churchyard gate, the
inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something
more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The
Donnithorne Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small
farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a
pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise
of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him
for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the
heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson,
the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands
in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking
towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the middle of it,
which he knew to be the destination of certain grave-looking men and
women whom he had observed passing at intervals.
Mr. Casson's person was by no means of that common type which can be
allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to
consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to
each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere
might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the
upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and
tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Casson's head was
not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a "spotty globe,"
as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head and
face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression--which was
chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight
knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth
mention--was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of
personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and
bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in
a man who had been butler to "the family" for fifteen years, and who, in
his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with
his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of his
curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr. Casson
had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but when
he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets, and
thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his
head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous
indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were
diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to
have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door
of the Donnithorne Arms.
"Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler," said the traveller
to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound
of the horse's hoofs.
"Why, what's up in your pretty village, landlord?" he continued, getting
down. "There seems to be quite a stir."
"It's a Methodis' preaching, sir; it's been gev hout as a young woman's
a-going to preach on the Green," answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and
wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. "Will you please to step
in, sir, an' tek somethink?"
"No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my horse.
And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman preaching just
under his nose?"
"Parson Irwine, sir, doesn't live here; he lives at Brox'on, over the
hill there. The parsonage here's a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for
gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir,
an' puts up his hoss here. It's a grey cob, sir, an' he sets great store
by't. He's allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I hed the
Donnithorne Arms. I'm not this countryman, you may tell by my tongue,
sir. They're cur'ous talkers i' this country, sir; the gentry's hard
work to hunderstand 'em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an'
got the turn o' their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think
the folks here says for 'hevn't you?'--the gentry, you know, says,
'hevn't you'--well, the people about here says 'hanna yey.' It's what
they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That's what I've heared
Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it's the dileck, says he."
"Aye, aye," said the stranger, smiling. "I know it very well. But you've
not got many Methodists about here, surely--in this agricultural spot? I
should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a Methodist to
be found about here. You're all farmers, aren't you? The Methodists can
seldom lay much hold on THEM."
"Why, sir, there's a pretty lot o' workmen round about, sir. There's
Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good bit
o' building an' repairs. An' there's the stone-pits not far off. There's
plenty of emply i' this countryside, sir. An' there's a fine batch o'
Methodisses at Treddles'on--that's the market town about three mile
off--you'll maybe ha' come through it, sir. There's pretty nigh a score
of 'em on the Green now, as come from there. That's where our people
gets it from, though there's only two men of 'em in all Hayslope: that's
Will Maskery, the wheelwright, and Seth Bede, a young man as works at
the carpenterin'."
"The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?"
"Nay, sir, she comes out o' Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off.
But she's a-visitin' hereabout at Mester Poyser's at the Hall Farm--it's
them barns an' big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She's own
niece to Poyser's wife, an' they'll be fine an' vexed at her for making
a fool of herself i' that way. But I've heared as there's no holding
these Methodisses when the maggit's once got i' their head: many of 'em
goes stark starin' mad wi' their religion. Though this young woman's
quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I've not seen her
myself."
"Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I've
been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that
place in the valley. It's Squire Donnithorne's, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, that's Donnithorne Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn't
there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I've lived butler there
a-going i' fifteen year. It's Captain Donnithorne as is th' heir,
sir--Squire Donnithorne's grandson. He'll be comin' of hage this
'ay-'arvest, sir, an' we shall hev fine doin's. He owns all the land
about here, sir, Squire Donnithorne does."
"Well, it's a pretty spot, whoever may own it," said the traveller,
mounting his horse; "and one meets some fine strapping fellows about
too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about
half an hour ago, before I came up the hill--a carpenter, a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along
like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French."
"Aye, sir, that's Adam Bede, that is, I'll be bound--Thias Bede's son
everybody knows him hereabout. He's an uncommon clever stiddy fellow,
an' wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir--if you'll hexcuse me for
saying so--he can walk forty mile a-day, an' lift a matter o' sixty
ston'. He's an uncommon favourite wi' the gentry, sir: Captain
Donnithorne and Parson Irwine meks a fine fuss wi' him. But he's a
little lifted up an' peppery-like."
"Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on."
"Your servant, sir; good evenin'."
The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when
he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right
hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with
the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity
to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to get
to the end of his journey, and he paused.
The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road
branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the
church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the
side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of
thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on
the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view
of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of distant
hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which Hayslope
belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire, overlooked by its
barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in
the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother; and in two or three hours'
ride the traveller might exchange a bleak treeless region, intersected
by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the
shelter of woods, or up swelling hills, muffled with hedgerows and long
meadow-grass and thick corn; and where at every turn he came upon some
fine old country-seat nestled in the valley or crowning the slope, some
homestead with its long length of barn and its cluster of golden ricks,
some grey steeple looking out from a pretty confusion of trees and
thatch and dark-red tiles. It was just such a picture as this last
that Hayslope Church had made to the traveller as he began to mount the
gentle slope leading to its pleasant uplands, and now from his station
near the Green he had before him in one view nearly all the other
typical features of this pleasant land. High up against the horizon were
the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify
this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the
north; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with
sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep, whose motion was only
revealed by memory, not detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the
changing hours, but responding with no change in themselves--left for
ever grim and sullen after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of
the April noonday, the parting crimson glory of the ripening summer
sun. And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of
hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops,
and not yet deepened into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but
still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of
the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker,
as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left
smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall
mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke
among them. Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy
pool in front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would
not let our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead
a foreground which was just as lovely--the level sunlight lying like
transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of
the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.
He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned
a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge's
pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
from old "Feyther Taft" in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long while,
leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little round
heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there was a
new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his supper,
came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze, willing
to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no means
excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join the
Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with the
expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not have
disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the "preacher
woman"--they had only come out to see "what war a-goin' on, like." The
men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith's shop.
But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never swarm: a
whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as incapable of an
undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns his back on his
interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as if he meant to
run away from the answer, and walking a step or two farther off when the
interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group in the vicinity of the
blacksmith's door was by no means a close one, and formed no screen in
front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself, who stood with his black
brawny arms folded, leaning against the door-post, and occasionally
sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own jokes, giving them a
marked preference over the sarcasms of Wiry Ben, who had renounced the
pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of seeing life under a new
form. But both styles of wit were treated with equal contempt by Mr.
Joshua Rann. Mr. Rann's leathern apron and subdued griminess can leave
no one in any doubt that he is the village shoemaker; the thrusting out
of his chin and stomach and the twirling of his thumbs are more subtle
indications, intended to prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that
they are in the presence of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he
is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering
indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a
resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon,
King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King
of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"--a quotation which may seem
to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other
anomaly, adequate knowledge will show it to be a natural sequence. Mr.
Rann was inwardly maintaining the dignity of the Church in the face of
this scandalous irruption of Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up
with his own sonorous utterance of the responses, his argument naturally
suggested a quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday
afternoon.
The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright's to serve
as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs had
been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their
eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
Cranage, the blacksmith's buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
Chad's Bess, who wondered "why the folks war amakin' faces a that'ns."
Chad's Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
red cheeks--namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
cousin and namesake Timothy's Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
often wished "them ear-rings" might come to good.
Timothy's Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome
set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy
baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in
knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by
way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad's small terrier.
This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy's Bess's
Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty,
had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking
round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide
open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical
accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by
the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy's Bess's Ben
first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge
behind his father's legs.
"Ye gallows young dog," said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, "if
ye donna keep that stick quiet, I'll tek it from ye. What dy'e mane by
kickin' foulks?"
"Here! Gie him here to me, Jim," said Chad Cranage; "I'll tie hirs up
an' shoe him as I do th' hosses. Well, Mester Casson," he continued,
as that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, "how are ye
t' naight? Are ye coom t' help groon? They say folks allays groon when
they're hearkenin' to th' Methodys, as if they war bad i' th' inside.
I mane to groon as loud as your cow did th' other naight, an' then the
praicher 'ull think I'm i' th' raight way."
"I'd advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad," said Mr. Casson,
with some dignity; "Poyser wouldn't like to hear as his wife's niece was
treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn't be fond of her taking
on herself to preach."
"Aye, an' she's a pleasant-looked un too," said Wiry Ben. "I'll stick
up for the pretty women preachin'; I know they'd persuade me over a deal
sooner nor th' ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore the
night's out, an' begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede."
"Why, Seth's looking rether too high, I should think," said Mr. Casson.
"This woman's kin wouldn't like her to demean herself to a common
carpenter."
"Tchu!" said Ben, with a long treble intonation, "what's folks's kin got
to do wi't? Not a chip. Poyser's wife may turn her nose up an' forget
bygones, but this Dinah Morris, they tell me, 's as poor as iver she
was--works at a mill, an's much ado to keep hersen. A strappin' young
carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Seth, wouldna be a bad match
for her. Why, Poysers make as big a fuss wi' Adam Bede as if he war a
nevvy o' their own."
"Idle talk! idle talk!" said Mr. Joshua Rann. "Adam an' Seth's two men;
you wunna fit them two wi' the same last."
"Maybe," said Wiry Ben, contemptuously, "but Seth's the lad for me,
though he war a Methody twice o'er. I'm fair beat wi' Seth, for I've
been teasin' him iver sin' we've been workin' together, an' he bears me
no more malice nor a lamb. An' he's a stout-hearted feller too, for when
we saw the old tree all afire a-comin' across the fields one night, an'
we thought as it war a boguy, Seth made no more ado, but he up to't
as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o' Will Maskery's; an'
there's Will hisself, lookin' as meek as if he couldna knock a nail o'
the head for fear o' hurtin't. An' there's the pretty preacher woman! My
eye, she's got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit nearer."
Several of the men followed Ben's lead, and the traveller pushed his
horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly and in advance of
her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was near
Seth's tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart,
and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of
woman, though in reality she did not exceed it--an effect which was due
to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her black stuff
dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and
mount the cart--surprise, not so much at the feminine delicacy of
her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her
demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured
step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her
face would be mantled with the smile of conscious saintship, or
else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of
Methodist--the ecstatic and the bilious. But Dinah walked as simply as
if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward
appearance as a little boy: there was no blush, no tremulousness, which
said, "I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach"; no
casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no
attitude of the arms that said, "But you must think of me as a saint."
She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly
crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people.
There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding
love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that
the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by
external objects. She stood with her left hand towards the descending
sun, and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but in this sober
light the delicate colouring of her face seemed to gather a calm
vividness, like flowers at evening. It was a small oval face, of a
uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like line of cheek and chin,
a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and a low perpendicular brow,
surmounted by a rising arch of parting between smooth locks of pale
reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight back behind the ears, and
covered, except for an inch or two above the brow, by a net Quaker cap.
The eyebrows, of the same colour as the hair, were perfectly horizontal
and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes, though no darker, were long and
abundant--nothing was left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those
faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour
on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of
expression; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that
no accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their
glance. Joshua Rann gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat
in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage
lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben
wondered how Seth had the pluck to think of courting her.
"A sweet woman," the stranger said to himself, "but surely nature never
meant her for a preacher."
Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical
properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and
psychology, "makes up," her characters, so that there may be no mistake
about them. But Dinah began to speak.
"Dear friends," she said in a clear but not loud voice "let us pray for
a blessing."
She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in the
same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her: "Saviour
of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the well to
draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee not; she
had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy. But Thou
didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her that her
life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her that
blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst of us,
and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor woman--if
their minds are dark, their lives unholy--if they have come out not
seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according to the
free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord, open their
ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and make them
thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.
"Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the
night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with
them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee:
open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them,
and saying 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life'--see Thee
hanging on the cross and saying, 'Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do'--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to
judge them at the last. Amen."
Dinah opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of
villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.
"Dear friends," she began, raising her voice a little, "you have all of
you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman
read these words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.' Jesus Christ spoke those
words--he said he came TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. I don't know
whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you
when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of
evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up
took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I
remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white
hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had
ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and
this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody
I had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from
the sky to preach to us, and I said, 'Aunt, will he go back to the sky
to-night, like the picture in the Bible?'
"That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our
blessed Lord did--preaching the Gospel to the poor--and he entered into
his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after, but
I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one thing
he told us in his sermon. He told us as 'Gospel' meant 'good news.' The
Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.
"Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as
I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down
for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear
friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have
been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven't been to school
much, nor read books, and we don't know much about anything but what
happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to
hear good news. For when anybody's well off, they don't much mind about
hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman's in trouble
and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a letter to
tell 'em they've got a friend as will help 'em. To be sure, we can't
help knowing something about God, even if we've never heard the Gospel,
the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know everything comes
from God: don't you say almost every day, 'This and that will happen,
please God,' and 'We shall begin to cut the grass soon, please God to
send us a little more sunshine'? We know very well we are altogether
in the hands of God. We didn't bring ourselves into the world, we can't
keep ourselves alive while we're sleeping; the daylight, and the wind,
and the corn, and the cows to give us milk--everything we have comes
from God. And he gave us our souls and put love between parents and
children, and husband and wife. But is that as much as we want to know
about God? We see he is great and mighty, and can do what he will: we
are lost, as if we was struggling in great waters, when we try to think
of him.
"But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
and the wise and the rich. It doesn't cost him much to give us our
little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and
helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight
come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and
trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he
seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?
"Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else
comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?"
Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind
of God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.
"So you see, dear friends," she went on, "Jesus spent his time almost
all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
their sins.
"Ah, wouldn't you love such a man if you saw him--if he were here in
this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.
"Well, dear friends, who WAS this man? Was he only a good man--a very
good man, and no more--like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
us?...He was the Son of God--'in the image of the Father,' the Bible
says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
things--the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that
Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think what
God was before--the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder
and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the things he
had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might
well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour has showed
us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can understand; he has
showed us what God's heart is, what are his feelings towards us.
"But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.
Another time he said, 'I came to seek and to save that which was lost';
and another time, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance.'
"The LOST!...SINNERS!...Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and me?"
Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will
by the charm of Dinah's mellow treble tones, which had a variety of
modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious
skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like
novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear
it sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of
conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the
truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her
hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no
longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly,
though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any
transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the
effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her
voice, and when she came to the question, "Will God take care of us
when we die?" she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that
the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased
to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the
attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she
could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which
must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher,
until she came to the words, "Lost!--Sinners!" when there was a great
change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the
exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts
that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became paler;
the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears half-gather
without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an expression of appalled
pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a destroying angel hovering over
the heads of the people. Her voice became deep and muffled, but there
was still no gesture. Nothing could be less like the ordinary type of
the Ranter than Dinah. She was not preaching as she heard others preach,
but speaking directly from her own emotions and under the inspiration of
her own simple faith.
But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner became
less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried to bring
home to the people their guilt, their wilful darkness, their state of
disobedience to God--as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin, the Divine
holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour, by which a way had been
opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her yearning
desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied by
addressing her hearers as a body. She appealed first to one and then to
another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was
yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin,
feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their
Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching
for their return.
There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow-Methodists,
but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little smouldering
vague anxiety that might easily die out again was the utmost effect
Dinah's preaching had wrought in them at present. Yet no one had
retired, except the children and "old Feyther Taft," who being too deaf
to catch many words, had some time ago gone back to his inglenook. Wiry
Ben was feeling very uncomfortable, and almost wishing he had not come
to hear Dinah; he thought what she said would haunt him somehow. Yet he
couldn't help liking to look at her and listen to her, though he dreaded
every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and address him in
particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was now holding the
baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man had rubbed away
some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of being a better
fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the Stone-pits, and
cleaning himself more regularly of a Sunday.
In front of Sandy Jim stood Chad's Bess, who had shown an unwonted
quietude and fixity of attention ever since Dinah had begun to speak.
Not that the matter of the discourse had arrested her at once, for she
was lost in a puzzling speculation as to what pleasure and satisfaction
there could be in life to a young woman who wore a cap like Dinah's.
Giving up this inquiry in despair, she took to studying Dinah's nose,
eyes, mouth, and hair, and wondering whether it was better to have such
a sort of pale face as that, or fat red cheeks and round black eyes like
her own. But gradually the influence of the general gravity told upon
her, and she became conscious of what Dinah was saying. The gentle
tones, the loving persuasion, did not touch her, but when the more
severe appeals came she began to be frightened. Poor Bessy had always
been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was
necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She
couldn't find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often
been tittering when she "curcheyed" to Mr. Irwine; and these religious
deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor
morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class of
feminine characters with whom you may venture to "eat an egg, an apple,
or a nut." All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto had not
been greatly ashamed of it. But now she began to feel very much as if
the constable had come to take her up and carry her before the justice
for some undefined offence. She had a terrified sense that God, whom she
had always thought of as very far off, was very near to her, and that
Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see him. For
Dinah had that belief in visible manifestations of Jesus, which is
common among the Methodists, and she communicated it irresistibly to her
hearers: she made them feel that he was among them bodily, and might at
any moment show himself to them in some way that would strike anguish
and penitence into their hearts.
"See!" she exclaimed, turning to the left, with her eyes fixed on a
point above the heads of the people. "See where our blessed Lord stands
and weeps and stretches out his arms towards you. Hear what he says:
'How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!'...and ye would not," she repeated,
in a tone of pleading reproach, turning her eyes on the people again.
"See the print of the nails on his dear hands and feet. It is your sins
that made them! Ah! How pale and worn he looks! He has gone through all
that great agony in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful
even unto death, and the great drops of sweat fell like blood to the
ground. They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they
mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders. Then
they nailed him up. Ah, what pain! His lips are parched with thirst, and
they mock him still in this great agony; yet with those parched lips he
prays for them, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
Then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and he felt what sinners
feel when they are for ever shut out from God. That was the last drop
in the cup of bitterness. 'My God, my God!' he cries, 'why hast Thou
forsaken me?'
"All this he bore for you! For you--and you never think of him; for
you--and you turn your backs on him; you don't care what he has gone
through for you. Yet he is not weary of toiling for you: he has risen
from the dead, he is praying for you at the right hand of God--'Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And he is upon this earth
too; he is among us; he is there close to you now; I see his wounded
body and his look of love."
Here Dinah turned to Bessy Cranage, whose bonny youth and evident vanity
had touched her with pity.
"Poor child! Poor child! He is beseeching you, and you don't listen to
him. You think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never think
of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. Your cheeks will be
shrivelled one day, your hair will be grey, your poor body will be thin
and tottering! Then you will begin to feel that your soul is not saved;
then you will have to stand before God dressed in your sins, in your
evil tempers and vain thoughts. And Jesus, who stands ready to help you
now, won't help you then; because you won't have him to be your Saviour,
he will be your judge. Now he looks at you with love and mercy and says,
'Come to me that you may have life'; then he will turn away from you,
and say, 'Depart from me into ever-lasting fire!'"
Poor Bessy's wide-open black eyes began to fill with tears, her great
red cheeks and lips became quite pale, and her face was distorted like a
little child's before a burst of crying.
"Ah, poor blind child!" Dinah went on, "think if it should happen to you
as it once happened to a servant of God in the days of her vanity. SHE
thought of her lace caps and saved all her money to buy 'em; she thought
nothing about how she might get a clean heart and a right spirit--she
only wanted to have better lace than other girls. And one day when she
put her new cap on and looked in the glass, she saw a bleeding Face
crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you now"--here Dinah
pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy--"Ah, tear off those follies!
Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging adders. They ARE
stinging you--they are poisoning your soul--they are dragging you down
into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for ever, and for ever,
and for ever, further away from light and God."
Bessy could bear it no longer: a great terror was upon her, and
wrenching her ear-rings from her ears, she threw them down before her,
sobbing aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be "laid hold
on" too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as nothing
less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at his anvil
by way of reassuring himself. "Folks mun ha' hoss-shoes, praichin' or
no praichin': the divil canna lay hould o' me for that," he muttered to
himself.
But now Dinah began to tell of the joys that were in store for the
penitent, and to describe in her simple way the divine peace and love
with which the soul of the believer is filled--how the sense of God's
love turns poverty into riches and satisfies the soul so that no uneasy
desire vexes it, no fear alarms it: how, at last, the very temptation
to sin is extinguished, and heaven is begun upon earth, because no cloud
passes between the soul and God, who is its eternal sun.
"Dear friends," she said at last, "brothers and sisters, whom I love
as those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great
blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too. I am
poor, like you: I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor
lady can be so happy as me, if they haven't got the love of God in their
souls. Think what it is--not to hate anything but sin; to be full of
love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that all
things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father's
will; to know that nothing--no, not if the earth was to be burnt up, or
the waters come and drown us--nothing could part us from God who loves
us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that
whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.
"Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it
is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like
the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest
can have. God is without end; his love is without end--"
Its streams the whole creation reach,
So plenteous is the store;
Enough for all, enough for each,
Enough for evermore.
Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of the
parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words. The
stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if
it had been the development of a drama--for there is this sort of
fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one
the inward drama of the speaker's emotions--now turned his horse aside
and pursued his way, while Dinah said, "Let us sing a little, dear
friends"; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the
Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of
exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.
| At a quarter to seven, the village of Hayslope shows unusual signs of excitement. Mr. Casson, the landlord of the town inn, stands at the entrance to his property. Although his face looks quite healthy, he is enormously fat. The horseman who stopped to look at Adam pulls up at the door on his horse. Mr. Casson explains that the town is busy because a female Methodist is about to preach on the green. Their parson lives in the next town. The stranger expresses surprise that there are Methodists in such a rural area, and Mr. Casson explains that there are really only two: Will Maskery and Seth Bede. Mr. Casson explains that he is the butler to Squire Donnithorne, and now his grandson, Captain Donnithorne, lives on their property called Donnithorne Chase. The stranger mentions seeing Adam Bede, who he says would be good for helping to "lick the French. Mr. Casson says that he is extremely strong and is popular with the gentry. The stranger rides to the green, where he is interested in the beauty of the landscape and the crowd of curious townpeople who are staring at the green but who are careful not to enter onto it so that they are not mistaken for Methodists. A group of men are gathered around the blacksmith's shop, where the blacksmith, Chad Cranage, laughs at his own jokes. Mr. Joshua Rann, called "Old Joshway" by his neighbors, stands silently with disapproval. The women are more curious, and they draw closer to the green. Bessy Cranage, the blacksmith's busty daughter, wonders why the Methodists make such funny faces. She is known locally as "Chad's Bess. She also wears fake-garnet earrings, of which Methodists disapprove. Timothy's Bess" is the wife of Sandy Jim, who has two children. Her little boy goes by "Timothy's Bess's Ben," and he struggles against being held back from inspecting the Methodists. Mr. Casson says that Seth is wasting his time trying to court the female preacher, because she is too high-class for him, being the niece of the Poysers. As Dinah approaches, the stranger is surprised by her unselfconsciousness, and the other townsmen are surprised by her prettiness. Dinah gives a prayer, and then she talks about hearing Jesus's prayer to preach to the poor at a Methodist revival when she was a young girl--she decided then that this is what she should do. She assures her listeners that although they are poor, the poor were Jesus's main beneficiaries during his lifetime, and they will continue to benefit after they die. The stranger notes that Dinah, unlike other "Ranters," does not preach by shouting and gesturing, but simply by modulating her voice to her changing emotions. Chad's Bess is made vaguely uncomfortable by the preaching, knowing that she could be considered a "bad girl" for having loose morals. Dinah beseeches Chad's Bess to think of God rather than of earrings, and the girl, in a fit, throws her earrings off. As the service ends, the horseman rides away to the sound of Methodist hymns | summary |
About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement
in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its
little street, from the Donnithorne Arms to the churchyard gate, the
inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something
more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The
Donnithorne Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small
farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a
pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise
of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him
for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the
heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson,
the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands
in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking
towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the middle of it,
which he knew to be the destination of certain grave-looking men and
women whom he had observed passing at intervals.
Mr. Casson's person was by no means of that common type which can be
allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to
consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to
each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere
might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the
upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and
tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Casson's head was
not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a "spotty globe,"
as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head and
face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression--which was
chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight
knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth
mention--was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of
personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and
bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in
a man who had been butler to "the family" for fifteen years, and who, in
his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with
his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of his
curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr. Casson
had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but when
he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets, and
thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his
head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous
indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were
diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to
have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door
of the Donnithorne Arms.
"Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler," said the traveller
to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound
of the horse's hoofs.
"Why, what's up in your pretty village, landlord?" he continued, getting
down. "There seems to be quite a stir."
"It's a Methodis' preaching, sir; it's been gev hout as a young woman's
a-going to preach on the Green," answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and
wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. "Will you please to step
in, sir, an' tek somethink?"
"No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my horse.
And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman preaching just
under his nose?"
"Parson Irwine, sir, doesn't live here; he lives at Brox'on, over the
hill there. The parsonage here's a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for
gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir,
an' puts up his hoss here. It's a grey cob, sir, an' he sets great store
by't. He's allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I hed the
Donnithorne Arms. I'm not this countryman, you may tell by my tongue,
sir. They're cur'ous talkers i' this country, sir; the gentry's hard
work to hunderstand 'em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an'
got the turn o' their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think
the folks here says for 'hevn't you?'--the gentry, you know, says,
'hevn't you'--well, the people about here says 'hanna yey.' It's what
they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That's what I've heared
Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it's the dileck, says he."
"Aye, aye," said the stranger, smiling. "I know it very well. But you've
not got many Methodists about here, surely--in this agricultural spot? I
should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a Methodist to
be found about here. You're all farmers, aren't you? The Methodists can
seldom lay much hold on THEM."
"Why, sir, there's a pretty lot o' workmen round about, sir. There's
Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good bit
o' building an' repairs. An' there's the stone-pits not far off. There's
plenty of emply i' this countryside, sir. An' there's a fine batch o'
Methodisses at Treddles'on--that's the market town about three mile
off--you'll maybe ha' come through it, sir. There's pretty nigh a score
of 'em on the Green now, as come from there. That's where our people
gets it from, though there's only two men of 'em in all Hayslope: that's
Will Maskery, the wheelwright, and Seth Bede, a young man as works at
the carpenterin'."
"The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?"
"Nay, sir, she comes out o' Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off.
But she's a-visitin' hereabout at Mester Poyser's at the Hall Farm--it's
them barns an' big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She's own
niece to Poyser's wife, an' they'll be fine an' vexed at her for making
a fool of herself i' that way. But I've heared as there's no holding
these Methodisses when the maggit's once got i' their head: many of 'em
goes stark starin' mad wi' their religion. Though this young woman's
quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I've not seen her
myself."
"Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I've
been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that
place in the valley. It's Squire Donnithorne's, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, that's Donnithorne Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn't
there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I've lived butler there
a-going i' fifteen year. It's Captain Donnithorne as is th' heir,
sir--Squire Donnithorne's grandson. He'll be comin' of hage this
'ay-'arvest, sir, an' we shall hev fine doin's. He owns all the land
about here, sir, Squire Donnithorne does."
"Well, it's a pretty spot, whoever may own it," said the traveller,
mounting his horse; "and one meets some fine strapping fellows about
too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about
half an hour ago, before I came up the hill--a carpenter, a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along
like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French."
"Aye, sir, that's Adam Bede, that is, I'll be bound--Thias Bede's son
everybody knows him hereabout. He's an uncommon clever stiddy fellow,
an' wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir--if you'll hexcuse me for
saying so--he can walk forty mile a-day, an' lift a matter o' sixty
ston'. He's an uncommon favourite wi' the gentry, sir: Captain
Donnithorne and Parson Irwine meks a fine fuss wi' him. But he's a
little lifted up an' peppery-like."
"Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on."
"Your servant, sir; good evenin'."
The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when
he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right
hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with
the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity
to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to get
to the end of his journey, and he paused.
The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road
branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the
church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the
side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of
thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on
the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view
of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of distant
hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which Hayslope
belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire, overlooked by its
barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in
the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother; and in two or three hours'
ride the traveller might exchange a bleak treeless region, intersected
by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the
shelter of woods, or up swelling hills, muffled with hedgerows and long
meadow-grass and thick corn; and where at every turn he came upon some
fine old country-seat nestled in the valley or crowning the slope, some
homestead with its long length of barn and its cluster of golden ricks,
some grey steeple looking out from a pretty confusion of trees and
thatch and dark-red tiles. It was just such a picture as this last
that Hayslope Church had made to the traveller as he began to mount the
gentle slope leading to its pleasant uplands, and now from his station
near the Green he had before him in one view nearly all the other
typical features of this pleasant land. High up against the horizon were
the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify
this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the
north; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with
sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep, whose motion was only
revealed by memory, not detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the
changing hours, but responding with no change in themselves--left for
ever grim and sullen after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of
the April noonday, the parting crimson glory of the ripening summer
sun. And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of
hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops,
and not yet deepened into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but
still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of
the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker,
as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left
smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall
mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke
among them. Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy
pool in front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would
not let our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead
a foreground which was just as lovely--the level sunlight lying like
transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of
the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.
He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned
a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge's
pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
from old "Feyther Taft" in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long while,
leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little round
heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there was a
new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his supper,
came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze, willing
to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no means
excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join the
Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with the
expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not have
disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the "preacher
woman"--they had only come out to see "what war a-goin' on, like." The
men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith's shop.
But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never swarm: a
whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as incapable of an
undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns his back on his
interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as if he meant to
run away from the answer, and walking a step or two farther off when the
interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group in the vicinity of the
blacksmith's door was by no means a close one, and formed no screen in
front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself, who stood with his black
brawny arms folded, leaning against the door-post, and occasionally
sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own jokes, giving them a
marked preference over the sarcasms of Wiry Ben, who had renounced the
pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of seeing life under a new
form. But both styles of wit were treated with equal contempt by Mr.
Joshua Rann. Mr. Rann's leathern apron and subdued griminess can leave
no one in any doubt that he is the village shoemaker; the thrusting out
of his chin and stomach and the twirling of his thumbs are more subtle
indications, intended to prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that
they are in the presence of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he
is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering
indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a
resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon,
King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King
of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"--a quotation which may seem
to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other
anomaly, adequate knowledge will show it to be a natural sequence. Mr.
Rann was inwardly maintaining the dignity of the Church in the face of
this scandalous irruption of Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up
with his own sonorous utterance of the responses, his argument naturally
suggested a quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday
afternoon.
The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright's to serve
as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs had
been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their
eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
Cranage, the blacksmith's buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
Chad's Bess, who wondered "why the folks war amakin' faces a that'ns."
Chad's Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
red cheeks--namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
cousin and namesake Timothy's Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
often wished "them ear-rings" might come to good.
Timothy's Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome
set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy
baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in
knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by
way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad's small terrier.
This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy's Bess's
Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty,
had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking
round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide
open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical
accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by
the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy's Bess's Ben
first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge
behind his father's legs.
"Ye gallows young dog," said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, "if
ye donna keep that stick quiet, I'll tek it from ye. What dy'e mane by
kickin' foulks?"
"Here! Gie him here to me, Jim," said Chad Cranage; "I'll tie hirs up
an' shoe him as I do th' hosses. Well, Mester Casson," he continued,
as that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, "how are ye
t' naight? Are ye coom t' help groon? They say folks allays groon when
they're hearkenin' to th' Methodys, as if they war bad i' th' inside.
I mane to groon as loud as your cow did th' other naight, an' then the
praicher 'ull think I'm i' th' raight way."
"I'd advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad," said Mr. Casson,
with some dignity; "Poyser wouldn't like to hear as his wife's niece was
treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn't be fond of her taking
on herself to preach."
"Aye, an' she's a pleasant-looked un too," said Wiry Ben. "I'll stick
up for the pretty women preachin'; I know they'd persuade me over a deal
sooner nor th' ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore the
night's out, an' begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede."
"Why, Seth's looking rether too high, I should think," said Mr. Casson.
"This woman's kin wouldn't like her to demean herself to a common
carpenter."
"Tchu!" said Ben, with a long treble intonation, "what's folks's kin got
to do wi't? Not a chip. Poyser's wife may turn her nose up an' forget
bygones, but this Dinah Morris, they tell me, 's as poor as iver she
was--works at a mill, an's much ado to keep hersen. A strappin' young
carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Seth, wouldna be a bad match
for her. Why, Poysers make as big a fuss wi' Adam Bede as if he war a
nevvy o' their own."
"Idle talk! idle talk!" said Mr. Joshua Rann. "Adam an' Seth's two men;
you wunna fit them two wi' the same last."
"Maybe," said Wiry Ben, contemptuously, "but Seth's the lad for me,
though he war a Methody twice o'er. I'm fair beat wi' Seth, for I've
been teasin' him iver sin' we've been workin' together, an' he bears me
no more malice nor a lamb. An' he's a stout-hearted feller too, for when
we saw the old tree all afire a-comin' across the fields one night, an'
we thought as it war a boguy, Seth made no more ado, but he up to't
as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o' Will Maskery's; an'
there's Will hisself, lookin' as meek as if he couldna knock a nail o'
the head for fear o' hurtin't. An' there's the pretty preacher woman! My
eye, she's got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit nearer."
Several of the men followed Ben's lead, and the traveller pushed his
horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly and in advance of
her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was near
Seth's tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart,
and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of
woman, though in reality she did not exceed it--an effect which was due
to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her black stuff
dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and
mount the cart--surprise, not so much at the feminine delicacy of
her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her
demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured
step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her
face would be mantled with the smile of conscious saintship, or
else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of
Methodist--the ecstatic and the bilious. But Dinah walked as simply as
if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward
appearance as a little boy: there was no blush, no tremulousness, which
said, "I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach"; no
casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no
attitude of the arms that said, "But you must think of me as a saint."
She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly
crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people.
There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding
love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that
the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by
external objects. She stood with her left hand towards the descending
sun, and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but in this sober
light the delicate colouring of her face seemed to gather a calm
vividness, like flowers at evening. It was a small oval face, of a
uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like line of cheek and chin,
a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and a low perpendicular brow,
surmounted by a rising arch of parting between smooth locks of pale
reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight back behind the ears, and
covered, except for an inch or two above the brow, by a net Quaker cap.
The eyebrows, of the same colour as the hair, were perfectly horizontal
and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes, though no darker, were long and
abundant--nothing was left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those
faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour
on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of
expression; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that
no accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their
glance. Joshua Rann gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat
in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage
lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben
wondered how Seth had the pluck to think of courting her.
"A sweet woman," the stranger said to himself, "but surely nature never
meant her for a preacher."
Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical
properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and
psychology, "makes up," her characters, so that there may be no mistake
about them. But Dinah began to speak.
"Dear friends," she said in a clear but not loud voice "let us pray for
a blessing."
She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in the
same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her: "Saviour
of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the well to
draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee not; she
had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy. But Thou
didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her that her
life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her that
blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst of us,
and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor woman--if
their minds are dark, their lives unholy--if they have come out not
seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according to the
free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord, open their
ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and make them
thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.
"Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the
night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with
them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee:
open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them,
and saying 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life'--see Thee
hanging on the cross and saying, 'Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do'--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to
judge them at the last. Amen."
Dinah opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of
villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.
"Dear friends," she began, raising her voice a little, "you have all of
you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman
read these words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.' Jesus Christ spoke those
words--he said he came TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. I don't know
whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you
when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of
evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up
took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I
remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white
hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had
ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and
this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody
I had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from
the sky to preach to us, and I said, 'Aunt, will he go back to the sky
to-night, like the picture in the Bible?'
"That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our
blessed Lord did--preaching the Gospel to the poor--and he entered into
his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after, but
I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one thing
he told us in his sermon. He told us as 'Gospel' meant 'good news.' The
Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.
"Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as
I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down
for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear
friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have
been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven't been to school
much, nor read books, and we don't know much about anything but what
happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to
hear good news. For when anybody's well off, they don't much mind about
hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman's in trouble
and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a letter to
tell 'em they've got a friend as will help 'em. To be sure, we can't
help knowing something about God, even if we've never heard the Gospel,
the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know everything comes
from God: don't you say almost every day, 'This and that will happen,
please God,' and 'We shall begin to cut the grass soon, please God to
send us a little more sunshine'? We know very well we are altogether
in the hands of God. We didn't bring ourselves into the world, we can't
keep ourselves alive while we're sleeping; the daylight, and the wind,
and the corn, and the cows to give us milk--everything we have comes
from God. And he gave us our souls and put love between parents and
children, and husband and wife. But is that as much as we want to know
about God? We see he is great and mighty, and can do what he will: we
are lost, as if we was struggling in great waters, when we try to think
of him.
"But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
and the wise and the rich. It doesn't cost him much to give us our
little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and
helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight
come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and
trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he
seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?
"Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else
comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?"
Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind
of God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.
"So you see, dear friends," she went on, "Jesus spent his time almost
all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
their sins.
"Ah, wouldn't you love such a man if you saw him--if he were here in
this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.
"Well, dear friends, who WAS this man? Was he only a good man--a very
good man, and no more--like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
us?...He was the Son of God--'in the image of the Father,' the Bible
says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
things--the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that
Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think what
God was before--the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder
and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the things he
had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might
well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour has showed
us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can understand; he has
showed us what God's heart is, what are his feelings towards us.
"But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.
Another time he said, 'I came to seek and to save that which was lost';
and another time, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance.'
"The LOST!...SINNERS!...Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and me?"
Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will
by the charm of Dinah's mellow treble tones, which had a variety of
modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious
skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like
novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear
it sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of
conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the
truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her
hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no
longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly,
though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any
transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the
effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her
voice, and when she came to the question, "Will God take care of us
when we die?" she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that
the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased
to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the
attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she
could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which
must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher,
until she came to the words, "Lost!--Sinners!" when there was a great
change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the
exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts
that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became paler;
the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears half-gather
without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an expression of appalled
pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a destroying angel hovering over
the heads of the people. Her voice became deep and muffled, but there
was still no gesture. Nothing could be less like the ordinary type of
the Ranter than Dinah. She was not preaching as she heard others preach,
but speaking directly from her own emotions and under the inspiration of
her own simple faith.
But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner became
less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried to bring
home to the people their guilt, their wilful darkness, their state of
disobedience to God--as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin, the Divine
holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour, by which a way had been
opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her yearning
desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied by
addressing her hearers as a body. She appealed first to one and then to
another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was
yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin,
feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their
Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching
for their return.
There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow-Methodists,
but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little smouldering
vague anxiety that might easily die out again was the utmost effect
Dinah's preaching had wrought in them at present. Yet no one had
retired, except the children and "old Feyther Taft," who being too deaf
to catch many words, had some time ago gone back to his inglenook. Wiry
Ben was feeling very uncomfortable, and almost wishing he had not come
to hear Dinah; he thought what she said would haunt him somehow. Yet he
couldn't help liking to look at her and listen to her, though he dreaded
every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and address him in
particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was now holding the
baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man had rubbed away
some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of being a better
fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the Stone-pits, and
cleaning himself more regularly of a Sunday.
In front of Sandy Jim stood Chad's Bess, who had shown an unwonted
quietude and fixity of attention ever since Dinah had begun to speak.
Not that the matter of the discourse had arrested her at once, for she
was lost in a puzzling speculation as to what pleasure and satisfaction
there could be in life to a young woman who wore a cap like Dinah's.
Giving up this inquiry in despair, she took to studying Dinah's nose,
eyes, mouth, and hair, and wondering whether it was better to have such
a sort of pale face as that, or fat red cheeks and round black eyes like
her own. But gradually the influence of the general gravity told upon
her, and she became conscious of what Dinah was saying. The gentle
tones, the loving persuasion, did not touch her, but when the more
severe appeals came she began to be frightened. Poor Bessy had always
been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was
necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She
couldn't find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often
been tittering when she "curcheyed" to Mr. Irwine; and these religious
deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor
morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class of
feminine characters with whom you may venture to "eat an egg, an apple,
or a nut." All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto had not
been greatly ashamed of it. But now she began to feel very much as if
the constable had come to take her up and carry her before the justice
for some undefined offence. She had a terrified sense that God, whom she
had always thought of as very far off, was very near to her, and that
Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see him. For
Dinah had that belief in visible manifestations of Jesus, which is
common among the Methodists, and she communicated it irresistibly to her
hearers: she made them feel that he was among them bodily, and might at
any moment show himself to them in some way that would strike anguish
and penitence into their hearts.
"See!" she exclaimed, turning to the left, with her eyes fixed on a
point above the heads of the people. "See where our blessed Lord stands
and weeps and stretches out his arms towards you. Hear what he says:
'How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!'...and ye would not," she repeated,
in a tone of pleading reproach, turning her eyes on the people again.
"See the print of the nails on his dear hands and feet. It is your sins
that made them! Ah! How pale and worn he looks! He has gone through all
that great agony in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful
even unto death, and the great drops of sweat fell like blood to the
ground. They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they
mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders. Then
they nailed him up. Ah, what pain! His lips are parched with thirst, and
they mock him still in this great agony; yet with those parched lips he
prays for them, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
Then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and he felt what sinners
feel when they are for ever shut out from God. That was the last drop
in the cup of bitterness. 'My God, my God!' he cries, 'why hast Thou
forsaken me?'
"All this he bore for you! For you--and you never think of him; for
you--and you turn your backs on him; you don't care what he has gone
through for you. Yet he is not weary of toiling for you: he has risen
from the dead, he is praying for you at the right hand of God--'Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And he is upon this earth
too; he is among us; he is there close to you now; I see his wounded
body and his look of love."
Here Dinah turned to Bessy Cranage, whose bonny youth and evident vanity
had touched her with pity.
"Poor child! Poor child! He is beseeching you, and you don't listen to
him. You think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never think
of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. Your cheeks will be
shrivelled one day, your hair will be grey, your poor body will be thin
and tottering! Then you will begin to feel that your soul is not saved;
then you will have to stand before God dressed in your sins, in your
evil tempers and vain thoughts. And Jesus, who stands ready to help you
now, won't help you then; because you won't have him to be your Saviour,
he will be your judge. Now he looks at you with love and mercy and says,
'Come to me that you may have life'; then he will turn away from you,
and say, 'Depart from me into ever-lasting fire!'"
Poor Bessy's wide-open black eyes began to fill with tears, her great
red cheeks and lips became quite pale, and her face was distorted like a
little child's before a burst of crying.
"Ah, poor blind child!" Dinah went on, "think if it should happen to you
as it once happened to a servant of God in the days of her vanity. SHE
thought of her lace caps and saved all her money to buy 'em; she thought
nothing about how she might get a clean heart and a right spirit--she
only wanted to have better lace than other girls. And one day when she
put her new cap on and looked in the glass, she saw a bleeding Face
crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you now"--here Dinah
pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy--"Ah, tear off those follies!
Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging adders. They ARE
stinging you--they are poisoning your soul--they are dragging you down
into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for ever, and for ever,
and for ever, further away from light and God."
Bessy could bear it no longer: a great terror was upon her, and
wrenching her ear-rings from her ears, she threw them down before her,
sobbing aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be "laid hold
on" too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as nothing
less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at his anvil
by way of reassuring himself. "Folks mun ha' hoss-shoes, praichin' or
no praichin': the divil canna lay hould o' me for that," he muttered to
himself.
But now Dinah began to tell of the joys that were in store for the
penitent, and to describe in her simple way the divine peace and love
with which the soul of the believer is filled--how the sense of God's
love turns poverty into riches and satisfies the soul so that no uneasy
desire vexes it, no fear alarms it: how, at last, the very temptation
to sin is extinguished, and heaven is begun upon earth, because no cloud
passes between the soul and God, who is its eternal sun.
"Dear friends," she said at last, "brothers and sisters, whom I love
as those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great
blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too. I am
poor, like you: I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor
lady can be so happy as me, if they haven't got the love of God in their
souls. Think what it is--not to hate anything but sin; to be full of
love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that all
things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father's
will; to know that nothing--no, not if the earth was to be burnt up, or
the waters come and drown us--nothing could part us from God who loves
us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that
whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.
"Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it
is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like
the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest
can have. God is without end; his love is without end--"
Its streams the whole creation reach,
So plenteous is the store;
Enough for all, enough for each,
Enough for evermore.
Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of the
parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words. The
stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if
it had been the development of a drama--for there is this sort of
fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one
the inward drama of the speaker's emotions--now turned his horse aside
and pursued his way, while Dinah said, "Let us sing a little, dear
friends"; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the
Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of
exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
IN less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah's
side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in
her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly as
he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say to
her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity--of absorption
in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her
own personality--an expression that is most of all discouraging to a
lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that quiet elasticity that
asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he said to himself, "She's
too good and holy for any man, let alone me," and the words he had
been summoning rushed back again before they had reached his lips. But
another thought gave him courage: "There's no man could love her better
and leave her freer to follow the Lord's work." They had been silent for
many minutes now, since they had done talking about Bessy Cranage;
Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth's presence, and her pace
was becoming so much quicker that the sense of their being only a few
minutes' walk from the yard-gates of the Hall Farm at last gave Seth
courage to speak.
"You've quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o' Saturday,
Dinah?"
"Yes," said Dinah, quietly. "I'm called there. It was borne in upon my
mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who's in a
decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of thin
white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me. And this
morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words my
eyes fell on were, 'And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
endeavoured to go into Macedonia.' If it wasn't for that clear showing
of the Lord's will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
I've been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
a token that there may be mercy in store for her."
"God grant it," said Seth. "For I doubt Adam's heart is so set on her,
he'll never turn to anybody else; and yet it 'ud go to my heart if he
was to marry her, for I canna think as she'd make him happy. It's a deep
mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest
he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year
for HER, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for
th' asking. I often think of them words, 'And Jacob served seven years
for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had
to her.' I know those words 'ud come true with me, Dinah, if so be you'd
give me hope as I might win you after seven years was over. I know you
think a husband 'ud be taking up too much o' your thoughts, because St.
Paul says, 'She that's married careth for the things of the world how
she may please her husband'; and may happen you'll think me overbold to
speak to you about it again, after what you told me o' your mind last
Saturday. But I've been thinking it over again by night and by day, and
I've prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what's only
good for me must be good for you too. And it seems to me there's more
texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. For St. Paul
says as plain as can be in another place, 'I will that the younger
women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the
adversary to speak reproachfully'; and then 'two are better than one';
and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we
should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. We both serve the same
Master, and are striving after the same gifts; and I'd never be the
husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the
work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out,
to give you more liberty--more than you can have now, for you've got to
get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both."
When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
flushed as he went on his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, "Seth Bede, I thank
you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but 'as God has distributed to
every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.' God has
called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave the
brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very little of
this world's good; where the trees are few, so that a child might count
them, and there's very hard living for the poor in the winter. It has
been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the little flock there
and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled with these things
from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too short, and God's
work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this
world. I've not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth, for when I saw as
your love was given to me, I thought it might be a leading of Providence
for me to change my way of life, and that we should be fellow-helpers;
and I spread the matter before the Lord. But whenever I tried to fix my
mind on marriage, and our living together, other thoughts always came
in--the times when I've prayed by the sick and dying, and the happy
hours I've had preaching, when my heart was filled with love, and the
Word was given to me abundantly. And when I've opened the Bible for
direction, I've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my
work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that you would try to be a help
and not a hindrance to my work; but I see that our marriage is not God's
will--He draws my heart another way. I desire to live and die without
husband or children. I seem to have no room in my soul for wants and
fears of my own, it has pleased God to fill my heart so full with the
wants and sufferings of his poor people."
Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, "Well, Dinah, I must seek
for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
I could never joy in anything any more. I think it's something passing
the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you.
I trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I feel
more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often can't
help saying of you what the hymn says--
In darkest shades if she appear,
My dawning is begun;
She is my soul's bright morning-star,
And she my rising sun.
That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn't be
displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this country
and go to live at Snowfield?"
"No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord's clear
bidding. It's a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
Goshen you've been used to. We mustn't be in a hurry to fix and choose
our own lot; we must wait to be guided."
"But you'd let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
wanted to tell you?"
"Yes, sure; let me know if you're in any trouble. You'll be continually
in my prayers."
They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, "I won't go in,
Dinah, so farewell." He paused and hesitated after she had given him
her hand, and then said, "There's no knowing but what you may see things
different after a while. There may be a new leading."
"Let us leave that, Seth. It's good to live only a moment at a time, as
I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't for you and me to lay
plans; we've nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell."
Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk lingeringly
home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to turn back along
the fields through which he and Dinah had already passed; and I think
his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears long before he
had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his face steadily
homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what
it is to love--to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a
woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this
sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and
worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our
caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence
of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or
Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are
mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our
emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our
love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in
the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love
has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for
us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a
Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering
after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the
hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs
in carrying a divine message to the poor.
That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough
men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
and hypocritical jargon--elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.
That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
anything else than Methodists--not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith,
hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a
sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible--thank Heaven!--to
have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon
which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry
it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.
Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our
sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.
Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to "hold on tight"; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less
bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah does.
| As Seth walks Dinah home, he wants to talk to her about their relationship, but he feels discouraged because she seems too holy to need a husband. She tells him that she has made up her mind to go back to Snowfield on Monday, although she would prefer not to leave, especially since she is worried about Hetty Sorrel, in whom Adam is interested. Seth again asks Dinah to marry him, arguing that the Bible says that this is natural; furthermore, he would be the only man in the world likely to leave her free to continue preaching. Dinah thanks him but says that the Bible also calls upon each man to walk as he will, and she has been called upon to be a minister rather than to have any joys or sorrows of her own. Seth says that he will have to pray to bear it--and his faith must be weak, because he cannot imagine life without her. Dinah counsels him not to follow her to Snowfield. Seth cries as he walks home, and Eliot observes that he is only twenty-three and that to love as he loves Dinah is almost like a religious feeling, because he feels that she is better than he is. Eliot writes that at this time, Methodism was still a rural, grassroots movement, rather than being associated with low-hanging churches and a hypocritical middle class. Seth and Dinah are still somewhat unthinking in their religious understanding: they believe in modern miracles, open the Bible at random for advice, and often misread and misquote the Bible. Even so, we read, they are still worth the reader's sympathy | summary |
IN less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah's
side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in
her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly as
he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say to
her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity--of absorption
in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her
own personality--an expression that is most of all discouraging to a
lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that quiet elasticity that
asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he said to himself, "She's
too good and holy for any man, let alone me," and the words he had
been summoning rushed back again before they had reached his lips. But
another thought gave him courage: "There's no man could love her better
and leave her freer to follow the Lord's work." They had been silent for
many minutes now, since they had done talking about Bessy Cranage;
Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth's presence, and her pace
was becoming so much quicker that the sense of their being only a few
minutes' walk from the yard-gates of the Hall Farm at last gave Seth
courage to speak.
"You've quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o' Saturday,
Dinah?"
"Yes," said Dinah, quietly. "I'm called there. It was borne in upon my
mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who's in a
decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of thin
white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me. And this
morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words my
eyes fell on were, 'And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
endeavoured to go into Macedonia.' If it wasn't for that clear showing
of the Lord's will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
I've been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
a token that there may be mercy in store for her."
"God grant it," said Seth. "For I doubt Adam's heart is so set on her,
he'll never turn to anybody else; and yet it 'ud go to my heart if he
was to marry her, for I canna think as she'd make him happy. It's a deep
mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest
he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year
for HER, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for
th' asking. I often think of them words, 'And Jacob served seven years
for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had
to her.' I know those words 'ud come true with me, Dinah, if so be you'd
give me hope as I might win you after seven years was over. I know you
think a husband 'ud be taking up too much o' your thoughts, because St.
Paul says, 'She that's married careth for the things of the world how
she may please her husband'; and may happen you'll think me overbold to
speak to you about it again, after what you told me o' your mind last
Saturday. But I've been thinking it over again by night and by day, and
I've prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what's only
good for me must be good for you too. And it seems to me there's more
texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. For St. Paul
says as plain as can be in another place, 'I will that the younger
women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the
adversary to speak reproachfully'; and then 'two are better than one';
and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we
should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. We both serve the same
Master, and are striving after the same gifts; and I'd never be the
husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the
work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out,
to give you more liberty--more than you can have now, for you've got to
get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both."
When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
flushed as he went on his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, "Seth Bede, I thank
you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but 'as God has distributed to
every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.' God has
called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave the
brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very little of
this world's good; where the trees are few, so that a child might count
them, and there's very hard living for the poor in the winter. It has
been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the little flock there
and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled with these things
from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too short, and God's
work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this
world. I've not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth, for when I saw as
your love was given to me, I thought it might be a leading of Providence
for me to change my way of life, and that we should be fellow-helpers;
and I spread the matter before the Lord. But whenever I tried to fix my
mind on marriage, and our living together, other thoughts always came
in--the times when I've prayed by the sick and dying, and the happy
hours I've had preaching, when my heart was filled with love, and the
Word was given to me abundantly. And when I've opened the Bible for
direction, I've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my
work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that you would try to be a help
and not a hindrance to my work; but I see that our marriage is not God's
will--He draws my heart another way. I desire to live and die without
husband or children. I seem to have no room in my soul for wants and
fears of my own, it has pleased God to fill my heart so full with the
wants and sufferings of his poor people."
Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, "Well, Dinah, I must seek
for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
I could never joy in anything any more. I think it's something passing
the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you.
I trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I feel
more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often can't
help saying of you what the hymn says--
In darkest shades if she appear,
My dawning is begun;
She is my soul's bright morning-star,
And she my rising sun.
That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn't be
displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this country
and go to live at Snowfield?"
"No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord's clear
bidding. It's a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
Goshen you've been used to. We mustn't be in a hurry to fix and choose
our own lot; we must wait to be guided."
"But you'd let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
wanted to tell you?"
"Yes, sure; let me know if you're in any trouble. You'll be continually
in my prayers."
They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, "I won't go in,
Dinah, so farewell." He paused and hesitated after she had given him
her hand, and then said, "There's no knowing but what you may see things
different after a while. There may be a new leading."
"Let us leave that, Seth. It's good to live only a moment at a time, as
I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't for you and me to lay
plans; we've nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell."
Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk lingeringly
home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to turn back along
the fields through which he and Dinah had already passed; and I think
his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears long before he
had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his face steadily
homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what
it is to love--to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a
woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this
sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and
worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our
caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence
of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or
Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are
mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our
emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our
love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in
the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love
has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for
us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a
Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering
after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the
hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs
in carrying a divine message to the poor.
That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough
men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
and hypocritical jargon--elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.
That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
anything else than Methodists--not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith,
hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a
sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible--thank Heaven!--to
have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon
which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry
it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.
Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our
sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.
Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to "hold on tight"; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less
bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah does.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket;
evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber
by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.
The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of
blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips,
from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat.
For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong
likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim
now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are
still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and
unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright
an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the
spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of
temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his
well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great
tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us
by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion;
and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every
movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the
thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted
from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with
the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long
years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical
instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the
modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the
long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and
irrational persistence.
It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says,
"Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the
last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Seth?
Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?"
"Aye, aye, Seth's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's
father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the
room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the
coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this
morning."
"Done the coffin?" said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting
uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. "Eh, my
lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I
doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again."
A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam's face. He said nothing,
but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.
"What art goin' to do, Adam?" said the mother, with a tone and look
of alarm. "Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o'
supper?"
Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw
down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and
said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee
munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em,
just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha'
thy supper, come."
"Let be!" said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of
the planks that stood against the wall. "It's fine talking about having
supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven
o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a
nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals."
"Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready," said Lisbeth. "Thee't work
thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't."
"What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can
they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner
than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think
on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of
'em."
Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had
been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next
hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk
to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench
and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice
very piteous, she burst out into words.
"Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's
heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to
th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave
if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm
a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Seth belike gone
arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin',
besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee
munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he
took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade,
remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no,
not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own
feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost
as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at
the breast."
Lisbeth's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail,
the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and
real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently.
"Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me
without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too
much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for
the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where
it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking."
"I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't
allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Adam. Thee think'st nothing too much
to do for Seth: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But
thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else."
"That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way,
I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o'
stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be
done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running
headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no
harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with
the work."
Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking
to console herself somewhat for Adam's refusal of the supper she had
spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it,
by feeding Adam's dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his
master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course
of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him, and
moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to
supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his
haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam noticed
Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender
than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as
usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us
than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?
"Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and
Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed
Lisbeth into the house-place.
But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his
master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women
who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and
if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when
he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy
day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and
selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but
in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make
uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing
on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example--at once patient and
complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day
over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow,
and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain
awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when he said,
"Leave me alone," she was always silenced.
So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the
sound of Adam's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught
of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth
ventured to say as she took it in, "Thy supper stan's ready for thee,
when thee lik'st."
"Donna thee sit up, mother," said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked
off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his
mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which
at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. "I'll see to Father
when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be
easier if thee't i' bed."
"Nay, I'll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon."
It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of
the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth
entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.
"Why, Mother," he said, "how is it as Father's working so late?"
"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well
anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does
iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'."
Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and usually
poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her
awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his
mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle.
But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said,
"Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?"
"Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up
and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. "Why, what's
the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble."
Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
mild face.
"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why,
thee'st never been to the school, then?"
"School? No, that screw can wait," said Adam, hammering away again.
"Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed," said Seth.
"No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry
it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat
thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk."
Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be
persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy
heart, into the house-place.
"Adam's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come," said
Lisbeth. "I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks."
"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "I've had no supper yet."
"Come, then," said Lisbeth, "but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam
'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters
an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for
all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin'
to go away again," she went on, whimpering, "an' I'm fast sure he'll go
some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll
niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha'
had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th'
handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like
a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more."
"Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain," said Seth, in a soothing
voice. "Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Adam 'ull go away
as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in
wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart
'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none
so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an'
turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses
for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and
settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work,
and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by."
"Donna talk to me about's marr'in'," said Lisbeth, crying afresh. "He's
set's heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull
toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary
Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him,
like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna
as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the
gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not
to know no better nor that!"
"But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have
us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha'
wished myself as Adam could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't
reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries
to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to
about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him."
"Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee
gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side
Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for
all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee."
"It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother," said Seth, mildly;
"Adam's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him.
God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee
mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us
what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with
God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God
to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy
about things."
"Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what
it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be
unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Adam had been
as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take
no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays
sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Adam has to take thought for thee."
"Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother," said Seth. "They don't
mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and
worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and
leave the rest to God's will."
"Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own
words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as
'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's
such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the
texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so
much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the
tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'"
"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of
a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by
a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly
true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God."
"Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi'
th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more
nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new
bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?"
"Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at
Adam again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin."
"Ha' a drop o' warm broth?" said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now got
the better of her "nattering" habit. "I'll set two-three sticks a-light
in a minute."
"Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good," said Seth, gratefully; and
encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: "Let me pray a
bit with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us--it'll comfort thee,
happen, more than thee thinkst."
"Well, I've nothin' to say again' it."
Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her
conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort
and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her
from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.
So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor
wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And
when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set
up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and
comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth's
ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.
When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, "Wilt
only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?"
"No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself."
Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had
cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a
bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water."
"Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty."
In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but
the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools.
The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at
twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling
stars; every blade of grass was asleep.
Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam.
While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a
spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad
future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift
succession.
He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin
to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father
perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down,
looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before,
and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth
would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had
slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter
the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his
father.
"So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no
slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun
to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little
fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out
to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o'
carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction
as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody
knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton
parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three
years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a
teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when
Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of
shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish,
shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the "Waggon
Overthrown." He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making
his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over
his shoulder, and his "mensuration book" in his pocket, and saying
to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no
longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the
crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got
to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure
everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution
failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his
mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.
"No!" Adam said to himself to-night, "that must never happen again. It
'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my
poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and
strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave
the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are
strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to
please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines
by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this
life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things
easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough
and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and
soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the
rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the
yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore
cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?
I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it."
At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the
house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected,
gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door
and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it
an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars
showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of
visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except
a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again,
wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it
called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not
help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told
him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam
was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of
the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no
more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help
trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination
which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region
of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as
his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal
religion, and he often checked Seth's argumentative spiritualism by
saying, "Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it." And
so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a
new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine
judgment, he would have said, "May be; but the bearing o' the roof and
walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed
in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a
little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I
tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural
elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our
hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity
for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer
was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any,
might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take
up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled.
Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was
still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden
grass in front of the cottage.
Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late
years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and
there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his
drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam, the conception
of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father
that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply
infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that
occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread
lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his
mother were breathing regularly.
Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, "I won't open
the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound.
Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker
than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think
they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not
much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to
see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost."
Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight
quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red
sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of
the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow
wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise
redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving
overhead, and presently came downstairs.
"Now, lad," said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, "the coffin's done,
and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after
six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off."
The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers,
and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little
woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile
and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very
pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and
the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering
and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely
mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its
Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers
in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders.
They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the
village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed
down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter
way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in
front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in
the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself
to say, "Seth, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our
breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on
and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never
mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost
say?"
"I'm willing," said Seth. "But see what clouds have gathered since we
set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for
th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and
full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to
go round by the road."
They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture
through which the brook ran.
"Why, what's that sticking against the willow?" continued Seth,
beginning to walk faster. Adam's heart rose to his mouth: the vague
anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no
answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark
uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.
This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom
he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to
live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with
that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through
Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out
the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and
when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and
looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need
for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before
them. Adam was the first to speak.
"I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee
in a minute."
Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge
was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.
"The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred
the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er
the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob
Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this
mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate
much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o'
por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a
time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon,
he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that."
But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the
turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking
so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him
before he had time to speak.
"Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened.
Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
the fire."
In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there
was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than
by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.
He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe
and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but
Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
that we repent of, but our severity.
| Adam makes his way home, where his mother, Lisbeth Bede, is waiting at the door. Eliot observes that there is sadness in family resemblances because we are forced to see faces very like our own as they utter sentiments that we do not agree with. After learning that his father has gone to Treddles without finishing work on a coffin, Adam grows angry and goes into the workshop to do it himself, while his mother entreats him to have dinner. Adam is very upset that his father has promised to do work but has not completed it, and he threatens to go away, which makes his mother cry. She says that his father was not so bad before he took to drinking. His mother gets up and calls to Adam's dog Gyp, intending to feed him extra food because she cannot feed her son, and Adam encourages him to go with her. Adam works off some of his anger and tells his mother to go to bed, with his native dialect deepening when he is kind to his mother. Seth comes home at ten and goes to help Adam, who asks him what is the matter. Seth will not tell him, and Lisbeth worries to Seth that Adam might leave, but Seth reassures her that he will not. Lisbeth complains that he has his heart set on Hetty Sorrel, though he could have had Mary Burge, who is much richer. She reproaches Seth for praying too much and for giving away all of his earnings. She says that Seth over-interprets the Bible, while Adam always says "God helps them that help themselves. As Adam works, he imagines how awful it will be when his mother reproaches his father when he returns tomorrow morning; the cycle will continue. He remembers that when his father, Thias Bede, was younger Adam used to be proud to learn carpentry from him. When his father began to drink when Adam was eighteen, however, Adam ran away once, returning in two days because he was worried about his family. His mother has been haunted by this memory ever since. Someone taps at the door, and Gyp howls. When he sees that there is no one there, Adam cannot help feeling a little superstitious. But the morning comes without incident. The two boys carry the coffin to Broxton, and Adam suggests that they look for their father. They find him drowned in a stream. Adam runs home to tell his mother. Looking at his dead father, Adam pities him even though he had been so hard on Adam | summary |
A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket;
evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber
by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.
The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of
blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips,
from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat.
For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong
likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim
now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are
still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and
unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright
an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the
spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of
temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his
well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great
tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us
by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion;
and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every
movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the
thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted
from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with
the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long
years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical
instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the
modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the
long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and
irrational persistence.
It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says,
"Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the
last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Seth?
Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?"
"Aye, aye, Seth's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's
father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the
room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the
coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this
morning."
"Done the coffin?" said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting
uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. "Eh, my
lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I
doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again."
A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam's face. He said nothing,
but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.
"What art goin' to do, Adam?" said the mother, with a tone and look
of alarm. "Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o'
supper?"
Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw
down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and
said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee
munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em,
just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha'
thy supper, come."
"Let be!" said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of
the planks that stood against the wall. "It's fine talking about having
supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven
o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a
nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals."
"Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready," said Lisbeth. "Thee't work
thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't."
"What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can
they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner
than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think
on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of
'em."
Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had
been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next
hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk
to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench
and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice
very piteous, she burst out into words.
"Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's
heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to
th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave
if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm
a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Seth belike gone
arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin',
besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee
munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he
took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade,
remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no,
not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own
feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost
as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at
the breast."
Lisbeth's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail,
the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and
real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently.
"Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me
without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too
much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for
the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where
it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking."
"I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't
allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Adam. Thee think'st nothing too much
to do for Seth: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But
thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else."
"That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way,
I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o'
stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be
done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running
headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no
harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with
the work."
Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking
to console herself somewhat for Adam's refusal of the supper she had
spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it,
by feeding Adam's dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his
master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course
of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him, and
moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to
supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his
haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam noticed
Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender
than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as
usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us
than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?
"Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and
Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed
Lisbeth into the house-place.
But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his
master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women
who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and
if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when
he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy
day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and
selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but
in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make
uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing
on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example--at once patient and
complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day
over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow,
and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain
awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when he said,
"Leave me alone," she was always silenced.
So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the
sound of Adam's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught
of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth
ventured to say as she took it in, "Thy supper stan's ready for thee,
when thee lik'st."
"Donna thee sit up, mother," said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked
off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his
mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which
at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. "I'll see to Father
when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be
easier if thee't i' bed."
"Nay, I'll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon."
It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of
the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth
entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.
"Why, Mother," he said, "how is it as Father's working so late?"
"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well
anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does
iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'."
Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and usually
poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her
awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his
mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle.
But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said,
"Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?"
"Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up
and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. "Why, what's
the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble."
Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
mild face.
"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why,
thee'st never been to the school, then?"
"School? No, that screw can wait," said Adam, hammering away again.
"Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed," said Seth.
"No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry
it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat
thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk."
Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be
persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy
heart, into the house-place.
"Adam's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come," said
Lisbeth. "I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks."
"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "I've had no supper yet."
"Come, then," said Lisbeth, "but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam
'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters
an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for
all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin'
to go away again," she went on, whimpering, "an' I'm fast sure he'll go
some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll
niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha'
had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th'
handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like
a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more."
"Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain," said Seth, in a soothing
voice. "Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Adam 'ull go away
as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in
wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart
'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none
so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an'
turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses
for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and
settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work,
and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by."
"Donna talk to me about's marr'in'," said Lisbeth, crying afresh. "He's
set's heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull
toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary
Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him,
like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna
as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the
gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not
to know no better nor that!"
"But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have
us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha'
wished myself as Adam could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't
reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries
to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to
about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him."
"Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee
gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side
Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for
all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee."
"It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother," said Seth, mildly;
"Adam's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him.
God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee
mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us
what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with
God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God
to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy
about things."
"Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what
it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be
unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Adam had been
as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take
no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays
sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Adam has to take thought for thee."
"Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother," said Seth. "They don't
mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and
worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and
leave the rest to God's will."
"Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own
words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as
'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's
such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the
texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so
much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the
tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'"
"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of
a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by
a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly
true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God."
"Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi'
th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more
nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new
bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?"
"Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at
Adam again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin."
"Ha' a drop o' warm broth?" said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now got
the better of her "nattering" habit. "I'll set two-three sticks a-light
in a minute."
"Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good," said Seth, gratefully; and
encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: "Let me pray a
bit with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us--it'll comfort thee,
happen, more than thee thinkst."
"Well, I've nothin' to say again' it."
Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her
conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort
and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her
from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.
So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor
wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And
when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set
up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and
comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth's
ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.
When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, "Wilt
only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?"
"No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself."
Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had
cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a
bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water."
"Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty."
In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but
the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools.
The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at
twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling
stars; every blade of grass was asleep.
Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam.
While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a
spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad
future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift
succession.
He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin
to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father
perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down,
looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before,
and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth
would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had
slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter
the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his
father.
"So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no
slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun
to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little
fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out
to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o'
carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction
as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody
knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton
parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three
years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a
teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when
Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of
shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish,
shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the "Waggon
Overthrown." He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making
his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over
his shoulder, and his "mensuration book" in his pocket, and saying
to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no
longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the
crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got
to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure
everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution
failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his
mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.
"No!" Adam said to himself to-night, "that must never happen again. It
'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my
poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and
strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave
the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are
strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to
please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines
by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this
life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things
easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough
and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and
soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the
rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the
yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore
cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?
I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it."
At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the
house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected,
gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door
and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it
an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars
showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of
visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except
a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again,
wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it
called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not
help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told
him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam
was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of
the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no
more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help
trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination
which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region
of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as
his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal
religion, and he often checked Seth's argumentative spiritualism by
saying, "Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it." And
so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a
new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine
judgment, he would have said, "May be; but the bearing o' the roof and
walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed
in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a
little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I
tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural
elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our
hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity
for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer
was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any,
might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take
up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled.
Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was
still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden
grass in front of the cottage.
Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late
years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and
there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his
drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam, the conception
of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father
that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply
infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that
occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread
lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his
mother were breathing regularly.
Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, "I won't open
the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound.
Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker
than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think
they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not
much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to
see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost."
Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight
quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red
sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of
the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow
wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise
redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving
overhead, and presently came downstairs.
"Now, lad," said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, "the coffin's done,
and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after
six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off."
The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers,
and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little
woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile
and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very
pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and
the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering
and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely
mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its
Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers
in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders.
They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the
village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed
down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter
way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in
front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in
the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself
to say, "Seth, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our
breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on
and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never
mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost
say?"
"I'm willing," said Seth. "But see what clouds have gathered since we
set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for
th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and
full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to
go round by the road."
They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture
through which the brook ran.
"Why, what's that sticking against the willow?" continued Seth,
beginning to walk faster. Adam's heart rose to his mouth: the vague
anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no
answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark
uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.
This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom
he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to
live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with
that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through
Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out
the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and
when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and
looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need
for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before
them. Adam was the first to speak.
"I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee
in a minute."
Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge
was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.
"The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred
the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er
the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob
Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this
mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate
much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o'
por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a
time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon,
he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that."
But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the
turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking
so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him
before he had time to speak.
"Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened.
Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
the fire."
In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there
was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than
by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.
He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe
and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but
Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
that we repent of, but our severity.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the
water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the garden
of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed
by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed border
flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy
morning--because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and
instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.
But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would
never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr.
Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his
mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass
some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that
dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton,
Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest
Church reformer would have found it difficult to look sour. We will
enter very softly and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking
the glossy-brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her
two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black muzzle
aloft, like a sleepy president.
The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window
at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the
furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty,
and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the
large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly
enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth
there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the
same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard
with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once
that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth,
and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely cut
nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a
broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward
and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of conservatism in costume
which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round
by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his
mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well
set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about
her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue
of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud
mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its
expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the
chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand
with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and
turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the
crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds
about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the
morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she
is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their
right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it.
"There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!" says this magnificent old lady,
as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. "I should be
sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings."
"Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a
game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before
we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, so don't pretend
it."
"Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors.
But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more
clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give
you another chance?"
"No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's clearing
up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't we, Juno?" This
was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the
voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. "But
I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholer's
funeral just when I was going before."
"It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of
her worst headaches this morning."
"Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too ill
to care about that."
If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or
habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection
had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many hundred
times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irwine's sister Anne
had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long time to dress
in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters.
But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and
stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, "If
you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you are at
liberty."
"Let him be shown in here," said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her knitting.
"I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be
dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll."
In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential bows,
which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp bark
and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's legs; while the
two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf and ribbed worsted
stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over
them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair and
said, "Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you've come
over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give
them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!"
It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden
rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk.
Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to
his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the
face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the
expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face
might have been called jolly; but that was not the right word for its
mixture of bonhomie and distinction.
"Thank Your Reverence," answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the
puppies; "I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see you
an' Mrs. Irwine well, an' Miss Irwine--an' Miss Anne, I hope's as well
as usual."
"Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats
us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?"
"Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I thought
it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there's been i'
the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and I've lived in it man
and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th' Easter dues for
Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the
ringin' o' every bell, and the diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the
choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi' his
counter-singin' and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one
takin' it up after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know
what belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin'
i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t' allow
such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an' knowed
nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd
lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour this night as is past
an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but nightmare, as tired me worse nor
wakin'."
"Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at
the church lead again?"
"Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-thievin'
the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand
i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour, Squire Donnithorne,
doesna think well to say the word an' forbid it. Not as I'm a-dictatin'
to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself so far as to be wise above my
betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there,
but what I've got to say I say--as the young Methodis woman as is at
Mester Poyser's was a-preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night,
as sure as I'm a-stannin' afore Your Reverence now."
"Preaching on the Green!" said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite
serene. "What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at Poyser's? I saw
she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her dress,
but I didn't know she was a preacher."
"It's a true word as I say, sir," rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing his
mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate three
notes of exclamation. "She preached on the Green last night; an' she's
laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been i' fits welly iver sin'."
"Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll come
round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?"
"No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll come,
if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery week--there'll
be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses make folks believe
as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make theirselves a bit
comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as sure as they're born.
I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--nobody can say it on me--but I
like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're
goin' the rounds a-singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or
when I'm a-collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a
neighbourly chat at Mester Casson's now an' then, for I was brought
up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk this
two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is."
"Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done?"
"Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the young
woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an' I hear as
she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Poyser's
own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways disrespectful o' th'
family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for shoes, little an' big,
welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But there's that Will Maskery,
sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an' I make no doubt it
was him as stirred up th' young woman to preach last night, an' he'll be
a-bringin' other folks to preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't
cut a bit; an' I think as he should be let know as he isna t' have the
makin' an' mendin' o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i'
that house an' yard as is Squire Donnithorne's."
"Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one come to
preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll come again? The
Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hayslope, where
there's only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them. They
might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will Maskery is
no preacher himself, I think."
"Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book;
he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough
to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind
Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as
are his elders an' betters!--and what's worse, he's been heard to say
very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as
'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll
forgi'e me for sayin' such things over again."
"Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they're
spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He
used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his
wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife
look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he
interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall
think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it
wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about
trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery
lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a
serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let
live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing
your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done
it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things
won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it."
"Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you not
livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders."
"To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes
by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua. I shall
trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what Will
Maskery says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can go on
taking your pot of beer soberly, when you've done your day's work, like
good churchmen; and if Will Maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go
to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business
of yours, so long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And
as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that,
any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about
it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his
wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does
that he must be let alone."
"Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his head, an'
looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I should like to fetch
him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--an' Mrs. Irwine, an' Your
Reverence too, for speakin' so afore you. An' he said as our Christmas
singin' was no better nor the cracklin' o' thorns under a pot."
"Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden
heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in
Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you
do."
"Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture misused i'
that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as he does, an' could
say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you was to pinch me; but I
know better nor to take 'em to say my own say wi'. I might as well take
the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals."
"That's a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
before----"
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink
of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and Joshua
Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some one who
paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,
"Godson Arthur--may he come in?"
"Come in, come in, godson!" Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep
half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there
entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in
a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing
interjections, and hand-shakings, and "How are you's?" mingled with
joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine
members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best terms
with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne, known
in Hayslope, variously, as "the young squire," "the heir," and "the
captain." He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to the
Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young
gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them
as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know
more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some
tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman
whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a
fellow-countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as
if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I
will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the
difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed
coat, and low top-boots.
Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, "But don't let
me interrupt Joshua's business--he has something to say."
"Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon," said Joshua, bowing low, "there
was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove
out o' my head."
"Out with it, Joshua, quickly!" said Mr. Irwine.
"Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede's dead--drownded this
morning, or more like overnight, i' the Willow Brook, again' the bridge
right i' front o' the house."
"Ah!" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal
interested in the information.
"An' Seth Bede's been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell
Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t' allow his
father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother's set
her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an' they'd ha'
come theirselves to ask you, but they've so much to see after with the
crowner, an' that; an' their mother's took on so, an' wants 'em to make
sure o' the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An' if Your
Reverence sees well and good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I
get home; an' that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour
being present."
"To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride round to
Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall
have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good
morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale."
"Poor old Thias!" said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. "I'm afraid
the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for the
load to have been taken off my friend Adam's shoulders in a less painful
way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the
last five or six years."
"He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When I was
a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of
pocket-money, I'll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods
for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any
man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them
that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage,
who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned
the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or
other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But come, Your
Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now.
We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but I want to call at the
Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is keeping for me."
"You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine. "It's
nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly."
"I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have another
look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
was preaching on the Green last night."
"Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as
quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I
positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting
stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode
up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin
Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just
said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt
quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St.
Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among
our common people."
"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine. "Make
her come here on some pretext or other."
"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me
to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of
his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the
wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say,
to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to
interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of
hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in
the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to
persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that
they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when
I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after
their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as
any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last
thirty years."
"It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle
shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'" said Mrs. Irwine. "I should be inclined to
check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin."
"Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my
dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will
Maskery? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions. I AM a lazy
fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I'm
always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that
I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those poor
lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting
out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day's
work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have our
luncheon. Isn't Kate coming to lunch?"
"Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs," said Carroll;
"she can't leave Miss Anne."
"Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne
presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur," Mr.
Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm
out of the sling.
"Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for
some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment,
though, in the beginning of August. It's a desperately dull business
being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither
hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the
evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My
grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the
entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see
the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty
throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in
the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian
goddess."
"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I shall see your poor
mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like
a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after;
and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She
had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your
mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I
wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would
turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested,
loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett."
"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said Mr.
Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups?
One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three
of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat
even you, Mother."
"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff.
You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their
outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never
like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable,
any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they
make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly,
piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad
smell."
"Talking of eyes," said Captain Donnithorne, "that reminds me that I've
got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel from
London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories.
It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.' Most of them seem to be
twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style--'The Ancient
Mariner' is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story,
but it's a strange, striking thing. I'll send it over to you; and there
are some other books that you may like to see, Irwine--pamphlets about
Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think
what the fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him
to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on
anything that ends in ISM."
"Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may as well
look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I've a little
matter to attend to, Arthur," continued Mr. Irwine, rising to leave the
room, "and then I shall be ready to set out with you."
The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old
stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause
before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a woman's
voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that
Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not
have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which
lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what
required only the dimmest light--sponging the aching head that lay on
the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor
sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and
sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, "Don't speak
to her; she can't bear to be spoken to to-day." Anne's eyes were closed,
and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine went to the
bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight
pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have
come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He lingered a moment, looking
at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently--he
had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs.
Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for
himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his
boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.
And Mr. Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of
Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women!
It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such
commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten
miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her
old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in
turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses,
the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor
Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss
Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them
as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as "the
gentlefolks." If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his
flannel jacket, he would have answered, "the gentlefolks, last
winter"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the "stuff" the
gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were used
with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at
the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a
terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours,
and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to
hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a
less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous
existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without
adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have
been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have
had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either
been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was
quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids
for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer.
Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant
people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to
affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil
tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and,
in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And if that
handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, had not
had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped
quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely wife in his
youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the powder, would
have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such possessions, in short,
as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under
the sun. As it was--having with all his three livings no more than seven
hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his
sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of
without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth
and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own--he
remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not
making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one
alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indulgences which a
wife would never have allowed him. And perhaps he was the only person in
the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous;
for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never
know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no
enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen,
of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness
for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted
indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her
daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting
fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable
faults.
See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you
walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the
figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the
eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system
or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the "travelling preacher"
stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general statement
concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he
described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of
life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?--careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks,
preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and
trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the
pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the
faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian,
too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable
members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for
the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less
melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that
Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned
him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I
were closely questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt
no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have
thought it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening
manner to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith.
If he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would perhaps
have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds
was that of certain dim but strong emotions, suffusing themselves as a
hallowing influence over the family affections and neighbourly duties.
He thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine, and
that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his
fathers worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried
were but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or
the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an
"earnest" man: he was fonder of church history than of divinity, and had
much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions;
he was neither laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious
in alms-giving, and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental
palate, indeed, was rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation
from Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in
Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how
can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in
after-life? And Mr. Irwine's recollections of young enthusiasm and
ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from
the Bible.
On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality
towards the rector's memory, that he was not vindictive--and some
philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant--and there is a
rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from
that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his
body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all
his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes
been lacking to very illustrious virtue--he was tender to other men's
failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men,
and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by
following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which
they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and
witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not
as a subject for panegyric.
Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished, and
have sometimes even been the living representatives of the abuses.
That is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite
fact--that it is better sometimes NOT to follow great reformers of
abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.
But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that
June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
him--portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay mare,
you must have felt that, however ill he harmonized with sound theories
of the clerical office, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that
peaceful landscape.
See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by
rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton side,
where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the
grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and
farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
Farm.
| The rain was also strong at Broxton Parsonage, where Mr. Irwine has been playing chess with his mother. The home is pleasant but not opulent. The vicar wears a powdered wig, and his mother is elegant, wearing a number of rings. She has just won the chess game. The vicar's sister, Anne, is an invalid. Mr. Rann comes to tell the vicar about the happenings in Hayslope. He warns the vicar that the Methodists are likely to get the upper hand in the town if he is not careful, although he does not want to advise him too much because that would mean "getting above his station. Mr. Rann says that Dinah is about to leave, but he is more worried about Will Maskery, who has no skill as a preacher, yet who insults the townspeople. The vicar says to leave well enough alone; since Maskery has found religion, he has become more responsible, stopped beating his wife, and stopped drinking. Arthur Donnithorne bursts on the scene. He is a well-dressed, handsome young man. Mr. Rann finally comes out with the news that Thias Bede has been found dead. Adam asks the vicar if his father can be buried by the White Thorn because of a dream that his mother had. The vicar agrees. Captain Donnithorne says that he respects Adam greatly and would like to have him manage the woods on his estate, but for some reason his grandfather dislikes him. He has also seen Dinah and was quite stuck by her appearance. The vicar says that he would like to see her. The Captain's arm is in a sling, explaining why he is not with his regiment, but he expects to return in August. The vicar's mother, Mrs. Irwine, says that she would never have been godmother to the Captain except that when he was a baby he took after his mother's side. The Captain has brought Mrs. Irwine a few books including Lyrical Ballads. The vicar visits his invalid sister upstairs. Eliot remarks that aristocratic families thought that it was a pity that such a magnificent mother should have such insignificant girls, while the townspeople think that they are good at medicine and call them "the gentlefolks. It is thought that the vicar would have taken a wife if he had not needed to take care of his mother and two spinster sisters. Eliot says that the vicar has no particular religious fervor, although he is a good man. The vicar sets off with Mr. Rann | summary |
BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the
water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the garden
of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed
by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed border
flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy
morning--because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and
instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.
But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would
never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr.
Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his
mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass
some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that
dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton,
Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest
Church reformer would have found it difficult to look sour. We will
enter very softly and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking
the glossy-brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her
two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black muzzle
aloft, like a sleepy president.
The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window
at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the
furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty,
and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the
large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly
enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth
there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the
same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard
with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once
that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth,
and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely cut
nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a
broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward
and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of conservatism in costume
which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round
by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his
mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well
set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about
her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue
of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud
mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its
expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the
chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand
with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and
turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the
crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds
about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the
morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she
is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their
right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it.
"There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!" says this magnificent old lady,
as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. "I should be
sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings."
"Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a
game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before
we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, so don't pretend
it."
"Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors.
But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more
clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give
you another chance?"
"No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's clearing
up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't we, Juno?" This
was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the
voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. "But
I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholer's
funeral just when I was going before."
"It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of
her worst headaches this morning."
"Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too ill
to care about that."
If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or
habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection
had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many hundred
times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irwine's sister Anne
had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long time to dress
in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters.
But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and
stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, "If
you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you are at
liberty."
"Let him be shown in here," said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her knitting.
"I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be
dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll."
In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential bows,
which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp bark
and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's legs; while the
two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf and ribbed worsted
stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over
them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair and
said, "Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you've come
over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give
them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!"
It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden
rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk.
Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to
his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the
face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the
expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face
might have been called jolly; but that was not the right word for its
mixture of bonhomie and distinction.
"Thank Your Reverence," answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the
puppies; "I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see you
an' Mrs. Irwine well, an' Miss Irwine--an' Miss Anne, I hope's as well
as usual."
"Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats
us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?"
"Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I thought
it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there's been i'
the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and I've lived in it man
and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th' Easter dues for
Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the
ringin' o' every bell, and the diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the
choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi' his
counter-singin' and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one
takin' it up after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know
what belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin'
i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t' allow
such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an' knowed
nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd
lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour this night as is past
an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but nightmare, as tired me worse nor
wakin'."
"Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at
the church lead again?"
"Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-thievin'
the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand
i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour, Squire Donnithorne,
doesna think well to say the word an' forbid it. Not as I'm a-dictatin'
to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself so far as to be wise above my
betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there,
but what I've got to say I say--as the young Methodis woman as is at
Mester Poyser's was a-preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night,
as sure as I'm a-stannin' afore Your Reverence now."
"Preaching on the Green!" said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite
serene. "What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at Poyser's? I saw
she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her dress,
but I didn't know she was a preacher."
"It's a true word as I say, sir," rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing his
mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate three
notes of exclamation. "She preached on the Green last night; an' she's
laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been i' fits welly iver sin'."
"Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll come
round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?"
"No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll come,
if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery week--there'll
be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses make folks believe
as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make theirselves a bit
comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as sure as they're born.
I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--nobody can say it on me--but I
like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're
goin' the rounds a-singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or
when I'm a-collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a
neighbourly chat at Mester Casson's now an' then, for I was brought
up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk this
two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is."
"Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done?"
"Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the young
woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an' I hear as
she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Poyser's
own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways disrespectful o' th'
family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for shoes, little an' big,
welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But there's that Will Maskery,
sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an' I make no doubt it
was him as stirred up th' young woman to preach last night, an' he'll be
a-bringin' other folks to preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't
cut a bit; an' I think as he should be let know as he isna t' have the
makin' an' mendin' o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i'
that house an' yard as is Squire Donnithorne's."
"Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one come to
preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll come again? The
Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hayslope, where
there's only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them. They
might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will Maskery is
no preacher himself, I think."
"Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book;
he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough
to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind
Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as
are his elders an' betters!--and what's worse, he's been heard to say
very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as
'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll
forgi'e me for sayin' such things over again."
"Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they're
spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He
used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his
wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife
look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he
interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall
think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it
wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about
trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery
lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a
serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let
live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing
your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done
it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things
won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it."
"Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you not
livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders."
"To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes
by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua. I shall
trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what Will
Maskery says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can go on
taking your pot of beer soberly, when you've done your day's work, like
good churchmen; and if Will Maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go
to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business
of yours, so long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And
as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that,
any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about
it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his
wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does
that he must be let alone."
"Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his head, an'
looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I should like to fetch
him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--an' Mrs. Irwine, an' Your
Reverence too, for speakin' so afore you. An' he said as our Christmas
singin' was no better nor the cracklin' o' thorns under a pot."
"Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden
heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in
Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you
do."
"Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture misused i'
that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as he does, an' could
say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you was to pinch me; but I
know better nor to take 'em to say my own say wi'. I might as well take
the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals."
"That's a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
before----"
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink
of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and Joshua
Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some one who
paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,
"Godson Arthur--may he come in?"
"Come in, come in, godson!" Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep
half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there
entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in
a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing
interjections, and hand-shakings, and "How are you's?" mingled with
joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine
members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best terms
with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne, known
in Hayslope, variously, as "the young squire," "the heir," and "the
captain." He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to the
Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young
gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them
as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know
more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some
tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman
whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a
fellow-countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as
if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I
will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the
difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed
coat, and low top-boots.
Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, "But don't let
me interrupt Joshua's business--he has something to say."
"Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon," said Joshua, bowing low, "there
was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove
out o' my head."
"Out with it, Joshua, quickly!" said Mr. Irwine.
"Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede's dead--drownded this
morning, or more like overnight, i' the Willow Brook, again' the bridge
right i' front o' the house."
"Ah!" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal
interested in the information.
"An' Seth Bede's been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell
Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t' allow his
father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother's set
her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an' they'd ha'
come theirselves to ask you, but they've so much to see after with the
crowner, an' that; an' their mother's took on so, an' wants 'em to make
sure o' the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An' if Your
Reverence sees well and good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I
get home; an' that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour
being present."
"To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride round to
Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall
have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good
morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale."
"Poor old Thias!" said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. "I'm afraid
the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for the
load to have been taken off my friend Adam's shoulders in a less painful
way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the
last five or six years."
"He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When I was
a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of
pocket-money, I'll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods
for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any
man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them
that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage,
who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned
the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or
other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But come, Your
Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now.
We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but I want to call at the
Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is keeping for me."
"You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine. "It's
nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly."
"I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have another
look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
was preaching on the Green last night."
"Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as
quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I
positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting
stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode
up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin
Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just
said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt
quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St.
Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among
our common people."
"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine. "Make
her come here on some pretext or other."
"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me
to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of
his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the
wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say,
to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to
interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of
hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in
the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to
persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that
they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when
I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after
their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as
any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last
thirty years."
"It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle
shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'" said Mrs. Irwine. "I should be inclined to
check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin."
"Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my
dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will
Maskery? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions. I AM a lazy
fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I'm
always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that
I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those poor
lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting
out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day's
work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have our
luncheon. Isn't Kate coming to lunch?"
"Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs," said Carroll;
"she can't leave Miss Anne."
"Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne
presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur," Mr.
Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm
out of the sling.
"Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for
some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment,
though, in the beginning of August. It's a desperately dull business
being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither
hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the
evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My
grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the
entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see
the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty
throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in
the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian
goddess."
"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I shall see your poor
mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like
a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after;
and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She
had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your
mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I
wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would
turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested,
loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett."
"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said Mr.
Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups?
One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three
of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat
even you, Mother."
"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff.
You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their
outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never
like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable,
any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they
make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly,
piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad
smell."
"Talking of eyes," said Captain Donnithorne, "that reminds me that I've
got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel from
London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories.
It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.' Most of them seem to be
twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style--'The Ancient
Mariner' is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story,
but it's a strange, striking thing. I'll send it over to you; and there
are some other books that you may like to see, Irwine--pamphlets about
Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think
what the fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him
to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on
anything that ends in ISM."
"Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may as well
look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I've a little
matter to attend to, Arthur," continued Mr. Irwine, rising to leave the
room, "and then I shall be ready to set out with you."
The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old
stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause
before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a woman's
voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that
Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not
have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which
lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what
required only the dimmest light--sponging the aching head that lay on
the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor
sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and
sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, "Don't speak
to her; she can't bear to be spoken to to-day." Anne's eyes were closed,
and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine went to the
bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight
pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have
come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He lingered a moment, looking
at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently--he
had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs.
Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for
himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his
boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.
And Mr. Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of
Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women!
It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such
commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten
miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her
old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in
turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses,
the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor
Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss
Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them
as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as "the
gentlefolks." If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his
flannel jacket, he would have answered, "the gentlefolks, last
winter"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the "stuff" the
gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were used
with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at
the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a
terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours,
and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to
hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a
less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous
existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without
adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have
been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have
had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either
been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was
quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids
for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer.
Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant
people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to
affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil
tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and,
in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And if that
handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, had not
had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped
quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely wife in his
youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the powder, would
have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such possessions, in short,
as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under
the sun. As it was--having with all his three livings no more than seven
hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his
sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of
without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth
and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own--he
remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not
making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one
alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indulgences which a
wife would never have allowed him. And perhaps he was the only person in
the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous;
for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never
know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no
enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen,
of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness
for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted
indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her
daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting
fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable
faults.
See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you
walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the
figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the
eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system
or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the "travelling preacher"
stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general statement
concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he
described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of
life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?--careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks,
preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and
trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the
pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the
faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian,
too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable
members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for
the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less
melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that
Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned
him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I
were closely questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt
no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have
thought it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening
manner to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith.
If he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would perhaps
have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds
was that of certain dim but strong emotions, suffusing themselves as a
hallowing influence over the family affections and neighbourly duties.
He thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine, and
that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his
fathers worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried
were but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or
the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an
"earnest" man: he was fonder of church history than of divinity, and had
much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions;
he was neither laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious
in alms-giving, and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental
palate, indeed, was rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation
from Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in
Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how
can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in
after-life? And Mr. Irwine's recollections of young enthusiasm and
ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from
the Bible.
On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality
towards the rector's memory, that he was not vindictive--and some
philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant--and there is a
rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from
that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his
body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all
his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes
been lacking to very illustrious virtue--he was tender to other men's
failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men,
and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by
following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which
they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and
witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not
as a subject for panegyric.
Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished, and
have sometimes even been the living representatives of the abuses.
That is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite
fact--that it is better sometimes NOT to follow great reformers of
abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.
But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that
June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
him--portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay mare,
you must have felt that, however ill he harmonized with sound theories
of the clerical office, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that
peaceful landscape.
See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by
rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton side,
where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the
grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and
farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
Farm.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great
hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty
that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to
pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two
stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above
a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough,
by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick
wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the
rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but
the very corners of the grassy enclosure.
It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery
lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as
to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the
limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the
door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door,
I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and
grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy,
handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a
sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and
mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair.
But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a
chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of
walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among
the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing
from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that
have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the
left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark,
doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk.
Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for
imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may
climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face
to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A
large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor;
at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor,
some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And
what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion,
a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured
rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so
far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest
Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it
there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed
whip.
The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of
a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere
spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It
was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some
coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the
genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses
busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no
longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard.
Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too,
for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs.
Poyser's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense
of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring
down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting
up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and
turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the
drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the
opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible.
There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against
the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach
of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering
bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite
cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among
the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins
them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as
to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves
are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns
the continuous hum of human voices.
For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy
there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby,
the "whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest
Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that
Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the
morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty
strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought
into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her
equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since
dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as
everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of
collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer,
and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering
brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time
of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or
at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you
have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an
oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand:
genuine "elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God
she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel
often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking
at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for
the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for
ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great
round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long
deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like
jasper.
Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun
shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces
pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and
on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on
Dinah's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn,
as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her
aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was
ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had
not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and
fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her
blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making
up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was
taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs.
Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking
woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy
hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her
attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her
skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap
and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than
feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family
likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast
between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression,
might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and
Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of
the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the
black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed
himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser's glance. Her tongue
was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within
earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ
takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off.
The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was
inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs.
Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret
indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up
to Molly's view with cutting eloquence.
"Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and
let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To
think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men!
I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you.
And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you
at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might
be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew
no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i'
the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was.
Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave
the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been
brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted
as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin.
And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as
thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the
whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the
way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin.
You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as
yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay,
and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to
cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are
a-snatching at."
"I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering,
and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we
allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just
axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
never stir if I do."
"Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr.
Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws
for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as
I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know
what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to
that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha'
left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the
dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs
after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy
I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and
been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to,
neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run
down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting
down to your work a little while after it's time to put by."
"Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm."
The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little
sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair
at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of
a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an
assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as
anatomy would allow.
"Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!" said Mrs. Poyser, who
was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her
official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. "Never
mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing
things away."
"Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd."
"No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet," said Mrs. Poyser, carrying
away her iron. "Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the
butter."
"I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be
provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the
opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl
of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable
completeness on to the ironing sheet.
"Did ever anybody see the like?" screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards
the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. "The child's
allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to
you, you naughty, naughty gell?"
Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and
was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run,
and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like
the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig.
The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing
apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay
ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry
it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat
down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she
knitted her grey worsted stocking.
"You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I
could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done
the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big
rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in
another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only
her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader
i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the
very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to
take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at
Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight
any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same
from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as
I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit
different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life
spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent."
"She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving,
self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very
fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same
sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven
years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt
Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure
I've found it so."
"I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you,
I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how.
I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come
and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for
man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry
a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some
decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave
off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith
ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering
Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your
uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been
good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to
the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do
for Hetty, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house
as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and
table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o'
sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare
girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her;
and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen
wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking,
if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her
senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching,
and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against
sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe,
'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because
you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the
Catechism and the Prayer-book."
"But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt," said Dinah.
"Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter," Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather
sharply; "else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the
parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same
as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like
you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to
do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was
allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I
should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the
best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread
made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else
to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by
against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right
religion."
"Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to
forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should
be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things
of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their
families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the
Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are
caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is
cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us
for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying
to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if
you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice
would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or
in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort
her."
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, "I know it
'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me
the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook
and tell it to stan' still."
The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Poyser
to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard,
the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the
while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before
she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken
tone, "If there isn't Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine a-coming into
the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching
on the Green, Dinah; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said
enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's
family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own
niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own
noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine
being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought
him no fortin but my savin's----"
"Nay, dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah gently, "you've no cause for such
fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my
uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without
direction."
"Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction," said Mrs.
Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. "When there's a bigger
maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing
can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on
church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I
hanna common patience with you."
By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got
down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser
advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between
anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety
on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a
whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when
they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.
"Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?" said Mr.
Irwine, with his stately cordiality. "Our feet are quite dry; we shall
not soil your beautiful floor."
"Oh, sir, don't mention it," said Mrs. Poyser. "Will you and the captain
please to walk into the parlour?"
"No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, looking eagerly
round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not
find. "I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room
I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a
pattern."
"Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat," said Mrs.
Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident
good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw,
was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her.
"Poyser is not at home, is he?" said Captain Donnithorne, seating
himself where he could see along the short passage to the open
dairy-door.
"No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor,
about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any
use."
"No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about
them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I
want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's
likely to be at liberty?"
"Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on
market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the
farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands,
we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if
ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things
allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral
thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in
another."
"Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially
as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the
prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if I
were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and
do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself."
"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, "you wouldn't like it at
all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your
right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's
raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself
and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as
wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you
liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though
I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than
anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had
lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said
my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more
about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as
you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you
through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and
the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything."
"Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing
you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance
of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a
stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part
with such good tenants as you."
"Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you
could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five
closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to
think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed
him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and
often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't
be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the
power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear
sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and
hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese
may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green
again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like
as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your
pains."
Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along
without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence
she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that
overcame all resistance.
"I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak
about the gates, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, "though I assure you
there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your
husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within
ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen," he added, smiling, "I don't
believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never
seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser."
"Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Hetty's in the middle
o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite
ashamed." This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the captain
was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of
her to the appearance of her dairy.
"Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in," said the captain,
himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.
| Neither the door nor the gate of the Hall farm has been opened in a great many years, and the inside contains rags and a big wooden doll with no nose. It used to be the home of a squire, but it is now reduced to a working farm. Mrs. Poyser keeps the kitchen spotless and the surfaces polished, and her niece, Hetty Sorrel, often looks at her reflection in these surfaces. Mrs. Poyser is ironing and scolding the maid, Hetty is making butter, and Dinah is sewing. A young, fair-haired child named Totty is ironing miniature rags. Mrs. Poyser says that Dinah looks like her mother's other sister, Judith, who brought her up after she was orphaned. She says that if Dinah marries she will give her a dowry. She is alarmed by the sight of the vicar and the Captain approaching, afraid that they have come to speak to Dinah about her preaching and that she will be thrown out of her house. But the men claim that they have come only to speak to her husband. The Captain compliments her farm and says that if he ever married and settled down, he would love to settle down on this farm. Mrs. Poyser hurriedly explains the farm's demerits, afraid that she will be kicked off of the land where she is a tenant. The Captain asks to see the dairy, and Mrs. Poyser takes him in | summary |
EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great
hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty
that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to
pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two
stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above
a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough,
by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick
wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the
rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but
the very corners of the grassy enclosure.
It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery
lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as
to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the
limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the
door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door,
I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and
grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy,
handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a
sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and
mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair.
But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a
chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of
walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among
the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing
from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that
have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the
left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark,
doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk.
Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for
imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may
climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face
to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A
large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor;
at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor,
some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And
what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion,
a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured
rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so
far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest
Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it
there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed
whip.
The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of
a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere
spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It
was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some
coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the
genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses
busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no
longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard.
Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too,
for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs.
Poyser's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense
of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring
down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting
up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and
turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the
drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the
opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible.
There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against
the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach
of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering
bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite
cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among
the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins
them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as
to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves
are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns
the continuous hum of human voices.
For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy
there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby,
the "whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest
Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that
Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the
morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty
strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought
into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her
equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since
dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as
everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of
collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer,
and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering
brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time
of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or
at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you
have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an
oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand:
genuine "elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God
she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel
often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking
at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for
the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for
ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great
round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long
deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like
jasper.
Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun
shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces
pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and
on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on
Dinah's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn,
as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her
aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was
ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had
not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and
fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her
blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making
up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was
taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs.
Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking
woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy
hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her
attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her
skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap
and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than
feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family
likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast
between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression,
might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and
Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of
the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the
black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed
himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser's glance. Her tongue
was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within
earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ
takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off.
The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was
inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs.
Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret
indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up
to Molly's view with cutting eloquence.
"Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and
let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To
think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men!
I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you.
And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you
at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might
be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew
no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i'
the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was.
Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave
the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been
brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted
as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin.
And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as
thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the
whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the
way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin.
You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as
yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay,
and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to
cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are
a-snatching at."
"I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering,
and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we
allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just
axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
never stir if I do."
"Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr.
Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws
for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as
I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know
what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to
that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha'
left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the
dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs
after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy
I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and
been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to,
neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run
down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting
down to your work a little while after it's time to put by."
"Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm."
The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little
sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair
at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of
a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an
assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as
anatomy would allow.
"Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!" said Mrs. Poyser, who
was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her
official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. "Never
mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing
things away."
"Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd."
"No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet," said Mrs. Poyser, carrying
away her iron. "Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the
butter."
"I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be
provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the
opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl
of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable
completeness on to the ironing sheet.
"Did ever anybody see the like?" screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards
the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. "The child's
allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to
you, you naughty, naughty gell?"
Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and
was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run,
and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like
the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig.
The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing
apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay
ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry
it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat
down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she
knitted her grey worsted stocking.
"You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I
could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done
the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big
rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in
another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only
her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader
i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the
very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to
take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at
Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight
any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same
from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as
I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit
different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life
spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent."
"She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving,
self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very
fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same
sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven
years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt
Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure
I've found it so."
"I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you,
I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how.
I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come
and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for
man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry
a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some
decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave
off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith
ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering
Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your
uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been
good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to
the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do
for Hetty, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house
as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and
table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o'
sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare
girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her;
and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen
wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking,
if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her
senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching,
and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against
sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe,
'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because
you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the
Catechism and the Prayer-book."
"But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt," said Dinah.
"Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter," Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather
sharply; "else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the
parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same
as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like
you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to
do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was
allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I
should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the
best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread
made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else
to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by
against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right
religion."
"Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to
forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should
be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things
of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their
families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the
Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are
caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is
cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us
for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying
to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if
you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice
would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or
in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort
her."
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, "I know it
'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me
the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook
and tell it to stan' still."
The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Poyser
to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard,
the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the
while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before
she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken
tone, "If there isn't Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine a-coming into
the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching
on the Green, Dinah; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said
enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's
family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own
niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own
noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine
being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought
him no fortin but my savin's----"
"Nay, dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah gently, "you've no cause for such
fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my
uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without
direction."
"Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction," said Mrs.
Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. "When there's a bigger
maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing
can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on
church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I
hanna common patience with you."
By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got
down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser
advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between
anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety
on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a
whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when
they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.
"Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?" said Mr.
Irwine, with his stately cordiality. "Our feet are quite dry; we shall
not soil your beautiful floor."
"Oh, sir, don't mention it," said Mrs. Poyser. "Will you and the captain
please to walk into the parlour?"
"No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, looking eagerly
round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not
find. "I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room
I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a
pattern."
"Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat," said Mrs.
Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident
good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw,
was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her.
"Poyser is not at home, is he?" said Captain Donnithorne, seating
himself where he could see along the short passage to the open
dairy-door.
"No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor,
about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any
use."
"No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about
them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I
want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's
likely to be at liberty?"
"Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on
market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the
farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands,
we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if
ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things
allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral
thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in
another."
"Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially
as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the
prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if I
were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and
do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself."
"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, "you wouldn't like it at
all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your
right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's
raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself
and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as
wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you
liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though
I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than
anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had
lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said
my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more
about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as
you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you
through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and
the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything."
"Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing
you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance
of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a
stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part
with such good tenants as you."
"Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you
could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five
closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to
think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed
him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and
often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't
be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the
power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear
sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and
hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese
may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green
again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like
as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your
pains."
Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along
without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence
she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that
overcame all resistance.
"I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak
about the gates, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, "though I assure you
there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your
husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within
ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen," he added, smiling, "I don't
believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never
seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser."
"Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Hetty's in the middle
o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite
ashamed." This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the captain
was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of
her to the appearance of her dairy.
"Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in," said the captain,
himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.
| Chapter One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such
purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of
wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of
red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey
limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they
surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little
pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
the scale.
Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under
long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him
about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and
cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity
but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had
been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be
interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty
tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of
themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only
of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty
like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and
to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the
state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel's was that sort
of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal
attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually
gazed at Hetty's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and
after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety
to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold
her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were
safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, "the naughtier the little
huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked."
It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at
work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her
white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely
was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with
its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it
fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled
buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have
had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have
seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you
had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes
after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when
the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like
that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a
false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in
the middle of a bog.
And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty
girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a
charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white
neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand,
and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected
without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then
the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure,
so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful
firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Hetty was
particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance
of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she
handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery.
"I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
Mrs. Poyser," said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently admired
the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and
shorthorns. "You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you
to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Will you
promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don't get your
promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart
young farmers will take care to secure you."
Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire
could be excluded by any meaner partners.
"Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm
sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and
thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening."
"Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who
can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?" the captain
continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him.
Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
half-coquettish glance at him as she said, "Yes, thank you, sir."
"And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your
little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on
the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women
when I'm a bald old fellow."
"Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first," said Mrs. Poyser, quite
overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and
thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this
remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to
be "very full of his jokes," and was a great favourite throughout the
estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure
things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there
was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and
returns of ten per cent.
"But where is Totty to-day?" he said. "I want to see her."
"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,
passed 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 butter 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-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea
with her to-morrow afternoon."
The reason why there had been space 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.
| Hetty blushes when the Captain talks to her, and he is captivated by her kitten-like charm. The activity of butter-churning is perfectly suited to showing off her well-shaped arms. He invites the women to a dance on the 30th of June and asks for two dances from Hetty. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it will be much easier to be a tenant of the Captain than of his grandfather, because he is so good-natured that everyone will get new fences and good returns. The Captain gets Hetty alone by sending her mother off to look for Totty. The Captain asks Hetty if she ever goes out walking. Hetty says that she sometimes walks to see Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, who is teaching her to mend lace. She adds that she is going to tea with Mrs. Pomfret next afternoon. Mrs. Poyser returns with Totty, and the Captain asks her if she has a pocket. Totty lifts up her dress to show him that she has one but that it is empty. The Captain gives her five sixpence and returns to find the vicar | summary |
THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such
purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of
wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of
red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey
limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they
surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little
pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
the scale.
Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under
long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him
about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and
cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity
but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had
been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be
interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty
tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of
themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only
of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty
like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and
to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the
state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel's was that sort
of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal
attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually
gazed at Hetty's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and
after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety
to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold
her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were
safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, "the naughtier the little
huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked."
It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at
work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her
white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely
was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with
its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it
fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled
buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have
had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have
seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you
had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes
after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when
the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like
that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a
false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in
the middle of a bog.
And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty
girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a
charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white
neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand,
and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected
without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then
the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure,
so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful
firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Hetty was
particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance
of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she
handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery.
"I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
Mrs. Poyser," said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently admired
the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and
shorthorns. "You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you
to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Will you
promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don't get your
promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart
young farmers will take care to secure you."
Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire
could be excluded by any meaner partners.
"Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm
sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and
thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening."
"Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who
can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?" the captain
continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him.
Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
half-coquettish glance at him as she said, "Yes, thank you, sir."
"And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your
little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on
the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women
when I'm a bald old fellow."
"Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first," said Mrs. Poyser, quite
overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and
thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this
remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to
be "very full of his jokes," and was a great favourite throughout the
estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure
things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there
was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and
returns of ten per cent.
"But where is Totty to-day?" he said. "I want to see her."
"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,
passed 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 butter 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-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea
with her to-morrow afternoon."
The reason why there had been space 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 One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
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 grass 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 God'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 God'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 God'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 class, 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 God 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 circumstances--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
assembled 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 passed 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 embarrassment 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 God 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 pass 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 assurance to her that the farm-yard was well guarded, and that
no loiterers could enter unobserved; 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--God 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 butter'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 glass 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 passed 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.
| The vicar converses with Dinah about her hometown of Snowfield, which has changed since a new mill was built there, which brought in more residents. Dinah says that she is a member of the Society , which does not prohibit women from preaching. The first time that she preached was in Hetton-Deeps, a mining town without a preacher or minister. Mr. Irwine feels that it would be useless to try to convince her not to preach, since it would be like telling a tree not to grow in its own shape. He asks her if she ever feels self-conscious knowing that so many young men are looking at her while she preaches, and Dinah says that she does not think that the men are aware of her appearance. She adds that Moses did not notice the burning bush but instead the brightness of God shining out of it. The vicar tells Dinah that Thias Bede has died. She starts to fold up her work to see if she can be of any assistance to Seth's mother. The Captain returns briefly, and the men leave. Dinah explains that the vicar was quite pleasant to her, and she tells the news about Thias Bede. Mrs. Poyser says that it is a good riddance to the Bede family, because he almost ruined them. Hetty does not look seriously affected when she hears the news | summary |
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 grass 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 God'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 God'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 God'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 class, 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 God 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 circumstances--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
assembled 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 passed 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 embarrassment 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 God 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 pass 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 assurance to her that the farm-yard was well guarded, and that
no loiterers could enter unobserved; 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--God 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 butter'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 glass 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 passed 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 One mainly serves to introduce the namesake character of the book and to show off certain of his characteristics as he interacts with others. An interesting aspect of the author's description of the main character is her characterization of him as having "Celtic blood." While this might refer to Welsh or Scottish or Irish descent, by including this detail, Eliot signals to her audience that Adam might tend towards the poetic or towards the violent, both common stereotypes of the Celts at the time that she was writing this novel. Adam Bede and his brother, Seth, although they work at the same trade, are set up as opposites in many ways, especially with their divergent opinions about religion. Religion is first brought up by Wiry Ben, who paraphrases Matthew 11:9, saying, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess-an uncommon pretty young woman." Adam rebukes Ben for taking the Bible lightly in referring to a pretty young Methodist preacher in their town, showing that he is indeed a religious man. Yet, he follows this rebuke by extolling modern progress and technology, rather than the inward-looking practices of the Methodists. He mentions Arkwright's mills in particular, referring to the spinning frame which Sir Richard Arkwright invented. In some ways like Adam, Arkwright was a self-taught mechanic who, after working all day, at night studied the mathematics that was needed for his inventions. Chapter Two introduces Dinah as a very charismatic young woman. The view of the Methodist meeting on the Green is filtered through the eyes of the horseman, who has the advantages of being an outsider to the community and having some previous knowledge of Methodism. Given his ability to compare Dinah to other Methodist preachers, whom he has seen thump the Bible, mock holiness, or rant, the reader realizes that this is not the first Methodist meeting that he has attended. The reference to "licking the French" sets the novel in the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which began in February 1793. The French fought against the self-proclaimed emperor, Napoleon, to try to prevent his imperialistic sweep through Europe. It is possible that the horseman is a recruiter for the British Army. In her sermon, Dinah mentions the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley, as her inspiration. Methodism is a denomination of Christianity founded in Britain in the eighteenth century that emphasized the idea that anyone can be saved. Along with his younger brother Charles, John Wesley launched a religious movement known for its open-air revivals. The preachers at these revivals were often so animated that they were accused of fanaticism. We see in Chapter Three that the novel not only examines the working class but demonstrates a way to write a novel about the working class. In this chapter, for the first time, the voice of the narrator comes forth in first-person. The narrator seems to overlap enough with Eliot herself that this ClassicNote will refer to the narrator as Eliot, even though the narrator does not necessarily represent Eliot's views precisely. Eliot's strong voice in the novel is an acknowledgment of the fact that she is writing a new type of novel. Her heroes are not handsome horsemen, and her heroines do not languish in fancy dresses. Rather, Adam Bede is the beginning of a great tradition of social realism in novels. Eliot advocates strongly for this new type of novel, arguing that "we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy." In Chapter Four, the night that Adam spends alone making the coffin involves elements of the gothic. First, when the rapping on the door first occurs, Gyp howls instead of barking as usual. Second, Eliot is careful to point out that Adam is uneasy and imagines a number of supernatural occurrences when he does not find anyone at the door. Eliot describes superstition as an unavoidable part of Adam's peasant nature. Although this may seem condescending, it is justified when Adam and Seth find their father dead the next morning--although it is as yet unclear what connection the two events might have. Although Adam Bede is quite clearly a novel, it also contains more direct commentary on human nature in general than is common in most fiction. This means that, at times, it reads rather more like a treatise than like a novel. This is another sign of Eliot's own views coming through. For example, when Adam stays up all night, he feels a great deal of resentment towards his father, and he thinks rather bitterly that the man will be a "thorn in his side" for many years to come. But when he finds his father dead, Eliot observes that "when death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity." By generalizing in this statement, Eliot indicates that a certain way of feeling not only applies to Adam but also to most humans. This is a successful way of convincing readers that a story about the working class can have implications for, or shed light on, their own lives as well. In Chapter Five, the vicar's powdered wig is a signal of old age and conservatism in his society. Eliot is careful to describe his place in the community precisely. He is well liked, but he has no burning immediate concern about the souls of his parishioners. He cannot, or will not, work himself up into an emotional state in the manner of some of the most famous Methodist preachers. By characterizing him in this way, Eliot demonstrates that there is a space left in the community for the role of leading some of the more thoughtful, religious townspeople. The scene between the vicar, his mother, and Mr. Rann has some qualities of a farce. Mr. Rann delays telling the most important news as a result of his eagerness to talk about what is most important to him. Mr. Rann wastes a great deal of time ranting and raving about the fact that a Methodist has insulted him by calling him irreligious, and he forgets to inform the vicar that a death has just occurred in his vicarage. As in a traditional farce, the characters are exaggerated according to stereotypes: the rigid, class-conscious matron; the jolly, accommodating vicar; the bumbling rustic, eager to show off his own holiness or intelligence to persons of higher position. Chapter Six shows some interesting similarities among members of the Poyser family. It draws a familial relationship between Dinah and Hetty of which the reader was not previously aware. Their relationship is not one of blood; Hetty is Mr. Poyser's niece, while Dinah is Mrs. Poyser's niece. The two girls, both love interests of the respective Bede brothers, act as foils for one another. Dinah is serious and unromantic, while Hetty is flighty and beautiful, using the surfaces that her aunt has polished to admire her own reflection. Mrs. Poyser's nervousness at seeing the grandson of her landlord approach reflects on her position in the social hierarchy. In late eighteenth-century England, the social hierarchy was quite rigid, and everyone from the poorest farmer to the richest aristocrat knew his place in the pecking order. The Poysers have been viewed in previous chapters as quite high-class given their large farm. It has even been suggested that a marriage between Dinah and Seth would not quite be acceptable given the difference in social status. Problems of love and marriage across socioeconomic boundaries constitute a common theme among early female novelists, including Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, who influenced George Eliot. Chapter Seven begins a flirtation between the Captain and Hetty. The story of a beautiful milk-maid seduced by a squire dates back to the days of Chaucer, and Eliot updates it by making the unequal nature of the interest clear from the very start. It is obvious that the seduction will succeed if the Captain wants it to, not only because he is young and attractive, but also because he is coming from such a position of power over the Poyser family. It is in his power not only to invite the family to a ball, but also to evict them from his land if he so desires. That this unequal distribution of power might affect his relationship with Hetty is demonstrated by the unquestioning acquiescence of Totty to the Captain's questions. When he asks her if she has a pocket, she "immediately and with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket." Totty's action has a distinctly sexual undertone of obedience, and it may foreshadow Hetty's future actions. In Chapter Eight the narrator's visible interjections become less visible. It is possible that Eliot is willing to generalize expansively about human nature, but she wants to keep her feelings about religion to herself. Critiquing religious thought and practice can be dangerous, but perhaps she is choosing to let the reader see for himself what is going on in Methodism and how it affects the rural poor. Eliot does not come down in favor of Methodism, but she gives it a very respectable and persuasive voice in the character of Dinah, which impresses even the local vicar. Although she only makes a brief appearance in this chapter, the reader must begin to wonder if Hetty is a suitable match for Adam. She is flirtatious and flighty in the previous chapters, which is forgivable in a pretty, young girl. But she now is thoughtless and uncaring to hear that Adam's father has died, which is somewhat shocking. | analysis |
WHILE she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant
butter 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 lasses,
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 assembled 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 assent. "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 passion
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 passing 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 god. 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 nobody 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 butterflies
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 butter, 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 anticipations, 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 butter-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
family 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.
| Hetty has been extremely flattered by the Captain's attentions. She knows that many men like to look at her including Adam Bede, whom she finds quite manly, She also knows that her father would like her to marry Adam. Although Hetty did not like it when his attentions to her slipped, she is not in love with him-especially because he cannot provide her with any luxuries. She is aware that the Captain went to great trouble to see her, but she does not even conceive of marrying him. She is in awe of him and finds him "as dazzling as an Olympian God. On the way home, the Captain confesses to the vicar that he finds Hetty attractive, but the vicar responds that the Captain should not give her airs because he therefore will spoil her for an honest man like Adam. The Captain says that Adam would make a better match with Mary Burge, because then he could take over her father's business. The vicar tells the Captain to look at Mary less, because then he will want her less | summary |
WHILE she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant
butter 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 lasses,
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 assembled 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 assent. "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 passion
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 passing 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 god. 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 nobody 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 butterflies
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 butter, 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 anticipations, 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 butter-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
family 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.
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
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 exactitude 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.
There was no one in the kitchen when Lisbeth entered and threw herself
into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and
confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was
all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind--that confusion which
belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul
is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of a vast
city, and wakes up in dreary amazement, not knowing whether it is
the growing or the dying day--not knowing why and whence came this
illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds himself desolate in
the midst of it.
At another time Lisbeth's first thought would have been, "Where is
Adam?" but the sudden death of her husband had restored him in
these hours to that first place in her affections which he had held
six-and-twenty years ago. She had forgotten his faults as we forget the
sorrows of our departed childhood, and thought of nothing but the young
husband's kindness and the old man's patience. Her eyes continued
to wander blankly until Seth came in and began to remove some of the
scattered things, and clear the small round deal table that he might set
out his mother's tea upon it.
"What art goin' to do?" she said, rather peevishly.
"I want thee to have a cup of tea, Mother," answered Seth, tenderly.
"It'll do thee good; and I'll put two or three of these things away, and
make the house look more comfortable."
"Comfortable! How canst talk o' ma'in' things comfortable? Let a-be, let
a-be. There's no comfort for me no more," she went on, the tears coming
when she began to speak, "now thy poor feyther's gone, as I'n washed for
and mended, an' got's victual for him for thirty 'ear, an' him allays
so pleased wi' iverything I done for him, an' used to be so handy an' do
the jobs for me when I war ill an' cumbered wi' th' babby, an' made me
the posset an' brought it upstairs as proud as could be, an' carried the
lad as war as heavy as two children for five mile an' ne'er grumbled,
all the way to Warson Wake, 'cause I wanted to go an' see my sister, as
war dead an' gone the very next Christmas as e'er come. An' him to be
drownded in the brook as we passed o'er the day we war married an'
come home together, an' he'd made them lots o' shelves for me to put my
plates an' things on, an' showed 'em me as proud as could be, 'cause he
know'd I should be pleased. An' he war to die an' me not to know, but to
be a-sleepin' i' my bed, as if I caredna nought about it. Eh! An' me to
live to see that! An' us as war young folks once, an' thought we should
do rarely when we war married. Let a-be, lad, let a-be! I wonna ha'
no tay. I carena if I ne'er ate nor drink no more. When one end o' th'
bridge tumbles down, where's th' use o' th' other stannin'? I may's well
die, an' foller my old man. There's no knowin' but he'll want me."
Here Lisbeth broke from words into moans, swaying herself backwards and
forwards on her chair. Seth, always timid in his behaviour towards his
mother, from the sense that he had no influence over her, felt it was
useless to attempt to persuade or soothe her till this passion was past;
so he contented himself with tending the back kitchen fire and folding
up his father's clothes, which had been hanging out to dry since
morning--afraid to move about in the room where his mother was, lest he
should irritate her further.
But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some minutes,
she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, "I'll go an' see arter
Adam, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I want him to go upstairs
wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to look at the corpse is like
the meltin' snow."
Seth overheard this, and coming into the kitchen again, as his mother
rose from her chair, he said, "Adam's asleep in the workshop, mother.
Thee'dst better not wake him. He was o'erwrought with work and trouble."
"Wake him? Who's a-goin' to wake him? I shanna wake him wi' lookin' at
him. I hanna seen the lad this two hour--I'd welly forgot as he'd e'er
growed up from a babby when's feyther carried him."
Adam was seated on a rough bench, his head supported by his arm, which
rested from the shoulder to the elbow on the long planing-table in
the middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few
minutes' rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first
attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday,
looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his
forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon
watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an
expression of weariness and pain. Gyp was evidently uneasy, for he sat
on his haunches, resting his nose on his master's stretched-out leg, and
dividing the time between licking the hand that hung listlessly down and
glancing with a listening air towards the door. The poor dog was
hungry and restless, but would not leave his master, and was waiting
impatiently for some change in the scene. It was owing to this feeling
on Gyp's part that, when Lisbeth came into the workshop and advanced
towards Adam as noiselessly as she could, her intention not to awaken
him was immediately defeated; for Gyp's excitement was too great to find
vent in anything short of a sharp bark, and in a moment Adam opened his
eyes and saw his mother standing before him. It was not very unlike his
dream, for his sleep had been little more than living through again, in
a fevered delirious way, all that had happened since daybreak, and his
mother with her fretful grief was present to him through it all. The
chief difference between the reality and the vision was that in
his dream Hetty was continually coming before him in bodily
presence--strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which
she had nothing to do. She was even by the Willow Brook; she made his
mother angry by coming into the house; and he met her with her smart
clothes quite wet through, as he walked in the rain to Treddleston, to
tell the coroner. But wherever Hetty came, his mother was sure to follow
soon; and when he opened his eyes, it was not at all startling to see
her standing near him.
"Eh, my lad, my lad!" Lisbeth burst out immediately, her wailing impulse
returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its
loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident, "thee'st
got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee and be a burden to
thee. Thy poor feyther 'ull ne'er anger thee no more; an' thy mother
may's well go arter him--the sooner the better--for I'm no good to
nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for
nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy
victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber,
a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he
dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if
thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for
another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor one side o' the
scissars can do wi'out th' other. Eh, we should ha' been both flung away
together, an' then I shouldna ha' seen this day, an' one buryin' 'ud ha'
done for us both."
Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence--he could not speak
otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help
being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Lisbeth to
know how it affected Adam any more than it is possible for a wounded
dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all
complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed,
and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more
bitterly.
"I know thee couldst do better wi'out me, for thee couldst go where thee
likedst an' marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say thee
nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I'd ne'er open my lips to find
faut, for when folks is old an' o' no use, they may think theirsens well
off to get the bit an' the sup, though they'n to swallow ill words wi't.
An' if thee'st set thy heart on a lass as'll bring thee nought and waste
all, when thee mightst ha' them as 'ud make a man on thee, I'll say
nought, now thy feyther's dead an' drownded, for I'm no better nor an
old haft when the blade's gone."
Adam, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and
walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Lisbeth followed him.
"Thee wutna go upstairs an' see thy feyther then? I'n done everythin'
now, an' he'd like thee to go an' look at him, for he war allays so
pleased when thee wast mild to him."
Adam turned round at once and said, "Yes, mother; let us go upstairs.
Come, Seth, let us go together."
They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key
was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But
Adam did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to encounter
more of his mother's querulous grief, and he went to rest on his bed.
Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her
apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock herself as
before. Seth thought, "She will be quieter by and by, now we have been
upstairs"; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend his little
fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have some tea.
Lisbeth had been rocking herself in this way for more than five minutes,
giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body, when she
suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble voice
said to her, "Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can be a
comfort to you."
Lisbeth paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron from
her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister's spirit
come back to her from the dead after all those years? She trembled and
dared not look.
Dinah, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for
the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her
bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Seth, who, on hearing her voice,
had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of Lisbeth's
chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a friendly
presence.
Slowly Lisbeth drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim
dark eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face--a pure, pale face, with
loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder increased;
perhaps it WAS an angel. But in the same instant Dinah had laid her hand
on Lisbeth's again, and the old woman looked down at it. It was a much
smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and delicate, for Dinah
had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand bore the traces of
labour from her childhood upwards. Lisbeth looked earnestly at the hand
for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on Dinah's face, said,
with something of restored courage, but in a tone of surprise, "Why,
ye're a workin' woman!"
"Yes, I am Dinah Morris, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at
home."
"Ah!" said Lisbeth slowly, still wondering; "ye comed in so light, like
the shadow on the wall, an' spoke i' my ear, as I thought ye might be a
sperrit. Ye've got a'most the face o' one as is a-sittin' on the grave
i' Adam's new Bible."
"I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Poyser--she's my aunt, and
she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I'm come
to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your sons
Adam and Seth, and I know you have no daughter; and when the clergyman
told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went out
towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the place of
a daughter in this grief, if you will let me."
"Ah! I know who y' are now; y' are a Methody, like Seth; he's tould
me on you," said Lisbeth fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain
returning, now her wonder was gone. "Ye'll make it out as trouble's a
good thing, like HE allays does. But where's the use o' talkin' to me
a-that'n? Ye canna make the smart less wi' talkin'. Ye'll ne'er make me
believe as it's better for me not to ha' my old man die in's bed, if he
must die, an' ha' the parson to pray by him, an' me to sit by him, an'
tell him ne'er to mind th' ill words I've gi'en him sometimes when I war
angered, an' to gi' him a bit an' a sup, as long as a bit an' a sup
he'd swallow. But eh! To die i' the cold water, an' us close to him, an'
ne'er to know; an' me a-sleepin', as if I ne'er belonged to him no more
nor if he'd been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!"
Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, "Yes,
dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to
say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn't send me to you
to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me.
If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your
friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and
rejoice with you, because you'd think I should like to share those
good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your
labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won't
send me away? You're not angry with me for coming?"
"Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come.
An' Seth, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some
for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o' gettin' 't for them as
wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin', for
it's little wage ye get by walkin' through the wet fields to see an old
woman like me....Nay, I'n got no daughter o' my own--ne'er had one--an'
I warna sorry, for they're poor queechy things, gells is; I allays
wanted to ha' lads, as could fend for theirsens. An' the lads 'ull be
marryin'--I shall ha' daughters eno', an' too many. But now, do ye make
the tay as ye like it, for I'n got no taste i' my mouth this day--it's
all one what I swaller--it's all got the taste o' sorrow wi't."
Dinah took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted
Lisbeth's invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old
woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day
of hard work and fasting.
Seth was so happy now Dinah was in the house that he could not help
thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief
incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached
himself--it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father's sad
death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Dinah WOULD triumph--it was
like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And the
feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his mother's
notice, while she was drinking her tea.
"Thee may'st well talk o' trouble bein' a good thing, Seth, for thee
thriv'st on't. Thee look'st as if thee know'dst no more o' care an'
cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin' awake i' th' cradle. For
thee'dst allays lie still wi' thy eyes open, an' Adam ne'er 'ud lie
still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o' meal as
can ne'er be bruised--though, for the matter o' that, thy poor feyther
war just such another. But ye've got the same look too" (here Lisbeth
turned to Dinah). "I reckon it's wi' bein' a Methody. Not as I'm
a-findin' faut wi' ye for't, for ye've no call to be frettin', an'
somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o'
trouble, they're like to thrive: it's a pity they canna ha't all, an'
take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha' gi'en 'em plenty;
for when I'd gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and
now he's gone, I'd be glad for the worst o'er again."
"Yes," said Dinah, careful not to oppose any feeling of Lisbeth's, for
her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance,
always issued in that finest woman's tact which proceeds from acute and
ready sympathy; "yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed
for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence
that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup
of tea and eat a little more."
"What!" said Lisbeth, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous
tone, "had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about
your aunt?"
"No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a baby.
She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me up as
tenderly as if I'd been her own child."
"Eh, she'd fine work wi' ye, I'll warrant, bringin' ye up from a babby,
an' her a lone woman--it's ill bringin' up a cade lamb. But I daresay
ye warna franzy, for ye look as if ye'd ne'er been angered i' your life.
But what did ye do when your aunt died, an' why didna ye come to live in
this country, bein' as Mrs. Poyser's your aunt too?"
Dinah, seeing that Lisbeth's attention was attracted, told her the story
of her early life--how she had been brought up to work hard, and
what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life
there--all the details that she thought likely to interest Lisbeth. The
old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to
the soothing influence of Dinah's face and voice. After a while she was
persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this,
believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in
disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her
side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Dinah
would like to be left alone with his mother.
Lisbeth sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and
said at last, "Ye've got a notion o' cleanin' up. I wouldna mind ha'in
ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad's wage i' fine clothes
an' waste. Ye're not like the lasses o' this countryside. I reckon folks
is different at Snowfield from what they are here."
"They have a different sort of life, many of 'em," said Dinah; "they
work at different things--some in the mill, and many in the mines, in
the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere,
and there are the children of this world and the children of light there
as well as elsewhere. But we've many more Methodists there than in this
country."
"Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there's Will
Maskery's wife, as they say's a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at,
at all. I'd as lief look at a tooad. An' I'm thinkin' I wouldna mind if
ye'd stay an' sleep here, for I should like to see ye i' th' house i'
th' mornin'. But mayhappen they'll be lookin for ye at Mester Poyser's."
"No," said Dinah, "they don't expect me, and I should like to stay, if
you'll let me."
"Well, there's room; I'n got my bed laid i' th' little room o'er the
back kitchen, an' ye can lie beside me. I'd be glad to ha' ye wi' me to
speak to i' th' night, for ye've got a nice way o' talkin'. It puts me
i' mind o' the swallows as was under the thack last 'ear when they fust
begun to sing low an' soft-like i' th' mornin'. Eh, but my old man war
fond o' them birds! An' so war Adam, but they'n ne'er comed again this
'ear. Happen THEY'RE dead too."
"There," said Dinah, "now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear
Mother--for I'm your daughter to-night, you know--I should like you to
wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did,
when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive
he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor
drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child.
But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and
anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when
they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now
the child was dead, he said, 'While the child was yet alive, I fasted
and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me,
that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?
Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return
to me.'"
"Eh, that's a true word," said Lisbeth. "Yea, my old man wonna come back
to me, but I shall go to him--the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as
ye like wi' me: there's a clean cap i' that drawer, an' I'll go i' the
back kitchen an' wash my face. An' Seth, thee may'st reach down Adam's
new Bible wi' th' picters in, an' she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I
like them words--'I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.'"
Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater
quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had
been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence
from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among
the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through
poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the
mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness
to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Dinah expressed
it, "she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to
keep silence and when to speak." And do we not all agree to call rapid
thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest
analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that
our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
And so there was earnest prayer--there was faith, love, and hope pouring
forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful
Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any
course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love,
and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing
life. She couldn't understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under
the subduing influence of Dinah's spirit, she felt that she must be
patient and still.
| At five, Lisbeth comes downstairs with the key to the room where her husband lies dead. She performs small offices for him such as mending his shroud, thinking with a peasant's superstition that he is somehow still conscious before he is buried. She always assumed that she would die before her husband, since she is older, so she buries him under a tree that she has dreamed about being buried under herself. Seth wants to prepare her a cup of tea, which is a luxury that she seldom allows herself, but Lisbeth laments her husband, saying that she would rather follow him in death than have a cup of tea. Lisbeth gets up to look for Adam, but Seth says that he is asleep in the workshop and that she should not wake him. She goes into the shop just to have a look at him, but Gyp wakes him up by barking. Adam was dreaming about the day's events and adding Hetty into the picture. Lisbeth complains of her fear that Adam will marry, worrying that then she would become useless. Adam does not soothe her by saying that he will not marry, so she follows him around the house. When he goes back upstairs, she cries in the kitchen. Dinah enters, and Lisbeth thinks that she might be an angel, but she sees Dinah's rough hands and realizes that Dinah is a working woman. When Lisbeth finds out that Dinah is a Methodist, she is worried that Dinah will rejoice in the suffering. Dinah explains that she does not want to make light of Lisbeth's suffering but to help her bear it, and Lisbeth replies that she is welcome to stay for tea. Seth is so happy that Dinah is in the house that he has to reproach himself, because it is almost as if he were rejoicing that his father has died. Dinah remembers that she was very sad when her aunt died, and Lisbeth asks if she is an orphan. Dinah sees that her voice soothes the lady, so she tells her life story. As she does so, she cleans up the kitchen, thinking that a sense of order will help Lisbeth feel better. Lisbeth notes that she cleans well, adding that she would like Dinah for a daughter. She invites Dinah to stay the night so they can talk for a while longer. She agrees to clean her face and make herself tidy | summary |
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 exactitude 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.
There was no one in the kitchen when Lisbeth entered and threw herself
into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and
confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was
all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind--that confusion which
belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul
is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of a vast
city, and wakes up in dreary amazement, not knowing whether it is
the growing or the dying day--not knowing why and whence came this
illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds himself desolate in
the midst of it.
At another time Lisbeth's first thought would have been, "Where is
Adam?" but the sudden death of her husband had restored him in
these hours to that first place in her affections which he had held
six-and-twenty years ago. She had forgotten his faults as we forget the
sorrows of our departed childhood, and thought of nothing but the young
husband's kindness and the old man's patience. Her eyes continued
to wander blankly until Seth came in and began to remove some of the
scattered things, and clear the small round deal table that he might set
out his mother's tea upon it.
"What art goin' to do?" she said, rather peevishly.
"I want thee to have a cup of tea, Mother," answered Seth, tenderly.
"It'll do thee good; and I'll put two or three of these things away, and
make the house look more comfortable."
"Comfortable! How canst talk o' ma'in' things comfortable? Let a-be, let
a-be. There's no comfort for me no more," she went on, the tears coming
when she began to speak, "now thy poor feyther's gone, as I'n washed for
and mended, an' got's victual for him for thirty 'ear, an' him allays
so pleased wi' iverything I done for him, an' used to be so handy an' do
the jobs for me when I war ill an' cumbered wi' th' babby, an' made me
the posset an' brought it upstairs as proud as could be, an' carried the
lad as war as heavy as two children for five mile an' ne'er grumbled,
all the way to Warson Wake, 'cause I wanted to go an' see my sister, as
war dead an' gone the very next Christmas as e'er come. An' him to be
drownded in the brook as we passed o'er the day we war married an'
come home together, an' he'd made them lots o' shelves for me to put my
plates an' things on, an' showed 'em me as proud as could be, 'cause he
know'd I should be pleased. An' he war to die an' me not to know, but to
be a-sleepin' i' my bed, as if I caredna nought about it. Eh! An' me to
live to see that! An' us as war young folks once, an' thought we should
do rarely when we war married. Let a-be, lad, let a-be! I wonna ha'
no tay. I carena if I ne'er ate nor drink no more. When one end o' th'
bridge tumbles down, where's th' use o' th' other stannin'? I may's well
die, an' foller my old man. There's no knowin' but he'll want me."
Here Lisbeth broke from words into moans, swaying herself backwards and
forwards on her chair. Seth, always timid in his behaviour towards his
mother, from the sense that he had no influence over her, felt it was
useless to attempt to persuade or soothe her till this passion was past;
so he contented himself with tending the back kitchen fire and folding
up his father's clothes, which had been hanging out to dry since
morning--afraid to move about in the room where his mother was, lest he
should irritate her further.
But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some minutes,
she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, "I'll go an' see arter
Adam, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I want him to go upstairs
wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to look at the corpse is like
the meltin' snow."
Seth overheard this, and coming into the kitchen again, as his mother
rose from her chair, he said, "Adam's asleep in the workshop, mother.
Thee'dst better not wake him. He was o'erwrought with work and trouble."
"Wake him? Who's a-goin' to wake him? I shanna wake him wi' lookin' at
him. I hanna seen the lad this two hour--I'd welly forgot as he'd e'er
growed up from a babby when's feyther carried him."
Adam was seated on a rough bench, his head supported by his arm, which
rested from the shoulder to the elbow on the long planing-table in
the middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few
minutes' rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first
attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday,
looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his
forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon
watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an
expression of weariness and pain. Gyp was evidently uneasy, for he sat
on his haunches, resting his nose on his master's stretched-out leg, and
dividing the time between licking the hand that hung listlessly down and
glancing with a listening air towards the door. The poor dog was
hungry and restless, but would not leave his master, and was waiting
impatiently for some change in the scene. It was owing to this feeling
on Gyp's part that, when Lisbeth came into the workshop and advanced
towards Adam as noiselessly as she could, her intention not to awaken
him was immediately defeated; for Gyp's excitement was too great to find
vent in anything short of a sharp bark, and in a moment Adam opened his
eyes and saw his mother standing before him. It was not very unlike his
dream, for his sleep had been little more than living through again, in
a fevered delirious way, all that had happened since daybreak, and his
mother with her fretful grief was present to him through it all. The
chief difference between the reality and the vision was that in
his dream Hetty was continually coming before him in bodily
presence--strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which
she had nothing to do. She was even by the Willow Brook; she made his
mother angry by coming into the house; and he met her with her smart
clothes quite wet through, as he walked in the rain to Treddleston, to
tell the coroner. But wherever Hetty came, his mother was sure to follow
soon; and when he opened his eyes, it was not at all startling to see
her standing near him.
"Eh, my lad, my lad!" Lisbeth burst out immediately, her wailing impulse
returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its
loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident, "thee'st
got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee and be a burden to
thee. Thy poor feyther 'ull ne'er anger thee no more; an' thy mother
may's well go arter him--the sooner the better--for I'm no good to
nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for
nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy
victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber,
a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he
dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if
thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for
another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor one side o' the
scissars can do wi'out th' other. Eh, we should ha' been both flung away
together, an' then I shouldna ha' seen this day, an' one buryin' 'ud ha'
done for us both."
Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence--he could not speak
otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help
being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Lisbeth to
know how it affected Adam any more than it is possible for a wounded
dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all
complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed,
and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more
bitterly.
"I know thee couldst do better wi'out me, for thee couldst go where thee
likedst an' marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say thee
nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I'd ne'er open my lips to find
faut, for when folks is old an' o' no use, they may think theirsens well
off to get the bit an' the sup, though they'n to swallow ill words wi't.
An' if thee'st set thy heart on a lass as'll bring thee nought and waste
all, when thee mightst ha' them as 'ud make a man on thee, I'll say
nought, now thy feyther's dead an' drownded, for I'm no better nor an
old haft when the blade's gone."
Adam, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and
walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Lisbeth followed him.
"Thee wutna go upstairs an' see thy feyther then? I'n done everythin'
now, an' he'd like thee to go an' look at him, for he war allays so
pleased when thee wast mild to him."
Adam turned round at once and said, "Yes, mother; let us go upstairs.
Come, Seth, let us go together."
They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key
was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But
Adam did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to encounter
more of his mother's querulous grief, and he went to rest on his bed.
Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her
apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock herself as
before. Seth thought, "She will be quieter by and by, now we have been
upstairs"; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend his little
fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have some tea.
Lisbeth had been rocking herself in this way for more than five minutes,
giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body, when she
suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble voice
said to her, "Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can be a
comfort to you."
Lisbeth paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron from
her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister's spirit
come back to her from the dead after all those years? She trembled and
dared not look.
Dinah, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for
the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her
bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Seth, who, on hearing her voice,
had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of Lisbeth's
chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a friendly
presence.
Slowly Lisbeth drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim
dark eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face--a pure, pale face, with
loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder increased;
perhaps it WAS an angel. But in the same instant Dinah had laid her hand
on Lisbeth's again, and the old woman looked down at it. It was a much
smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and delicate, for Dinah
had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand bore the traces of
labour from her childhood upwards. Lisbeth looked earnestly at the hand
for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on Dinah's face, said,
with something of restored courage, but in a tone of surprise, "Why,
ye're a workin' woman!"
"Yes, I am Dinah Morris, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at
home."
"Ah!" said Lisbeth slowly, still wondering; "ye comed in so light, like
the shadow on the wall, an' spoke i' my ear, as I thought ye might be a
sperrit. Ye've got a'most the face o' one as is a-sittin' on the grave
i' Adam's new Bible."
"I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Poyser--she's my aunt, and
she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I'm come
to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your sons
Adam and Seth, and I know you have no daughter; and when the clergyman
told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went out
towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the place of
a daughter in this grief, if you will let me."
"Ah! I know who y' are now; y' are a Methody, like Seth; he's tould
me on you," said Lisbeth fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain
returning, now her wonder was gone. "Ye'll make it out as trouble's a
good thing, like HE allays does. But where's the use o' talkin' to me
a-that'n? Ye canna make the smart less wi' talkin'. Ye'll ne'er make me
believe as it's better for me not to ha' my old man die in's bed, if he
must die, an' ha' the parson to pray by him, an' me to sit by him, an'
tell him ne'er to mind th' ill words I've gi'en him sometimes when I war
angered, an' to gi' him a bit an' a sup, as long as a bit an' a sup
he'd swallow. But eh! To die i' the cold water, an' us close to him, an'
ne'er to know; an' me a-sleepin', as if I ne'er belonged to him no more
nor if he'd been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!"
Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, "Yes,
dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to
say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn't send me to you
to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me.
If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your
friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and
rejoice with you, because you'd think I should like to share those
good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your
labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won't
send me away? You're not angry with me for coming?"
"Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come.
An' Seth, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some
for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o' gettin' 't for them as
wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin', for
it's little wage ye get by walkin' through the wet fields to see an old
woman like me....Nay, I'n got no daughter o' my own--ne'er had one--an'
I warna sorry, for they're poor queechy things, gells is; I allays
wanted to ha' lads, as could fend for theirsens. An' the lads 'ull be
marryin'--I shall ha' daughters eno', an' too many. But now, do ye make
the tay as ye like it, for I'n got no taste i' my mouth this day--it's
all one what I swaller--it's all got the taste o' sorrow wi't."
Dinah took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted
Lisbeth's invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old
woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day
of hard work and fasting.
Seth was so happy now Dinah was in the house that he could not help
thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief
incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached
himself--it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father's sad
death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Dinah WOULD triumph--it was
like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And the
feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his mother's
notice, while she was drinking her tea.
"Thee may'st well talk o' trouble bein' a good thing, Seth, for thee
thriv'st on't. Thee look'st as if thee know'dst no more o' care an'
cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin' awake i' th' cradle. For
thee'dst allays lie still wi' thy eyes open, an' Adam ne'er 'ud lie
still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o' meal as
can ne'er be bruised--though, for the matter o' that, thy poor feyther
war just such another. But ye've got the same look too" (here Lisbeth
turned to Dinah). "I reckon it's wi' bein' a Methody. Not as I'm
a-findin' faut wi' ye for't, for ye've no call to be frettin', an'
somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o'
trouble, they're like to thrive: it's a pity they canna ha't all, an'
take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha' gi'en 'em plenty;
for when I'd gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and
now he's gone, I'd be glad for the worst o'er again."
"Yes," said Dinah, careful not to oppose any feeling of Lisbeth's, for
her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance,
always issued in that finest woman's tact which proceeds from acute and
ready sympathy; "yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed
for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence
that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup
of tea and eat a little more."
"What!" said Lisbeth, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous
tone, "had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about
your aunt?"
"No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a baby.
She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me up as
tenderly as if I'd been her own child."
"Eh, she'd fine work wi' ye, I'll warrant, bringin' ye up from a babby,
an' her a lone woman--it's ill bringin' up a cade lamb. But I daresay
ye warna franzy, for ye look as if ye'd ne'er been angered i' your life.
But what did ye do when your aunt died, an' why didna ye come to live in
this country, bein' as Mrs. Poyser's your aunt too?"
Dinah, seeing that Lisbeth's attention was attracted, told her the story
of her early life--how she had been brought up to work hard, and
what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life
there--all the details that she thought likely to interest Lisbeth. The
old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to
the soothing influence of Dinah's face and voice. After a while she was
persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this,
believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in
disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her
side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Dinah
would like to be left alone with his mother.
Lisbeth sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and
said at last, "Ye've got a notion o' cleanin' up. I wouldna mind ha'in
ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad's wage i' fine clothes
an' waste. Ye're not like the lasses o' this countryside. I reckon folks
is different at Snowfield from what they are here."
"They have a different sort of life, many of 'em," said Dinah; "they
work at different things--some in the mill, and many in the mines, in
the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere,
and there are the children of this world and the children of light there
as well as elsewhere. But we've many more Methodists there than in this
country."
"Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there's Will
Maskery's wife, as they say's a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at,
at all. I'd as lief look at a tooad. An' I'm thinkin' I wouldna mind if
ye'd stay an' sleep here, for I should like to see ye i' th' house i'
th' mornin'. But mayhappen they'll be lookin for ye at Mester Poyser's."
"No," said Dinah, "they don't expect me, and I should like to stay, if
you'll let me."
"Well, there's room; I'n got my bed laid i' th' little room o'er the
back kitchen, an' ye can lie beside me. I'd be glad to ha' ye wi' me to
speak to i' th' night, for ye've got a nice way o' talkin'. It puts me
i' mind o' the swallows as was under the thack last 'ear when they fust
begun to sing low an' soft-like i' th' mornin'. Eh, but my old man war
fond o' them birds! An' so war Adam, but they'n ne'er comed again this
'ear. Happen THEY'RE dead too."
"There," said Dinah, "now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear
Mother--for I'm your daughter to-night, you know--I should like you to
wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did,
when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive
he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor
drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child.
But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and
anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when
they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now
the child was dead, he said, 'While the child was yet alive, I fasted
and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me,
that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?
Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return
to me.'"
"Eh, that's a true word," said Lisbeth. "Yea, my old man wonna come back
to me, but I shall go to him--the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as
ye like wi' me: there's a clean cap i' that drawer, an' I'll go i' the
back kitchen an' wash my face. An' Seth, thee may'st reach down Adam's
new Bible wi' th' picters in, an' she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I
like them words--'I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.'"
Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater
quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had
been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence
from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among
the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through
poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the
mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness
to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Dinah expressed
it, "she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to
keep silence and when to speak." And do we not all agree to call rapid
thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest
analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that
our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
And so there was earnest prayer--there was faith, love, and hope pouring
forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful
Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any
course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love,
and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing
life. She couldn't understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under
the subduing influence of Dinah's spirit, she felt that she must be
patient and still.
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
IT was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying
awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the
little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very
quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was
astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog's
pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but Dinah
was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Seth,
for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night before.
Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening
door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last
by Dinah's unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily
weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so
when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of
tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning
sleep than was usual with him.
But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual
impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and
subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in
the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to
work again when he had had his breakfast.
"There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work," he said
to himself; "the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if
one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen,
and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as
true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working
is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot."
As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely
himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick
black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the
workshop to look out the wood for his father's coffin, intending that
he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge's and have the
coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not
see and hear the sad task going forward at home.
He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light
rapid foot on the stairs--certainly not his mother's. He had been in bed
and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered
whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him
strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to
be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the
clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he
had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted
for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a
timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed
by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the
lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and
Adam's imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish
smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning
a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought--it could not be
Hetty; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was
to go and see WHO it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to
belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to
the kitchen door.
"How do you do, Adam Bede?" said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing from
her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. "I trust you feel
rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day."
It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam
had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was
not very vividly conscious of any woman's presence except Hetty's, and
he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in
love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards
her for his brother's sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black
gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that
belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the
first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the
concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which
he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in her
life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark
penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and
timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which deepened as she
wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his forgetfulness.
"I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see
my mother in her trouble," he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his
quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. "I hope my mother
was thankful to have you," he added, wondering rather anxiously what had
been Dinah's reception.
"Yes," said Dinah, resuming her work, "she seemed greatly comforted
after a while, and she's had a good deal of rest in the night, by times.
She was fast asleep when I left her."
"Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?" said Adam, his thoughts
reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE had felt anything
about it.
"It was Mr. Irwine, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved
for your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my
uncle, I'm sure, now he's heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all
yesterday. They'll look for you there as soon as you've got time to go,
for there's nobody round that hearth but what's glad to see you."
Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was
longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was
too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived
to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way
of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary
hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while
disbelieves. Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was
directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when
Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done
before.
"But you won't be there yourself any longer?" he said to Dinah.
"No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to
Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must go
back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt and
her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would like
me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night."
"Ah, then, she's sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at
the beginning, she's sure to get fond of 'em; but she's a strange way of
not liking young women. Though, to be sure," Adam went on, smiling, "her
not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn't like you."
Hitherto Gyp had been assisting at this conversation in motionless
silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his
master's face to watch its expression and observing Dinah's movements
about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Adam uttered the last words
was apparently decisive with Gyp of the light in which the stranger
was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting aside her
sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle against her
hand in a friendly way.
"You see Gyp bids you welcome," said Adam, "and he's very slow to
welcome strangers."
"Poor dog!" said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, "I've a strange
feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a
trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the
dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more
in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half
what we feel, with all our words."
Seth came down now, and was pleased to find Adam talking with Dinah; he
wanted Adam to know how much better she was than all other women.
But after a few words of greeting, Adam drew him into the workshop to
consult about the coffin, and Dinah went on with her cleaning.
By six o'clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as
clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open,
and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood,
thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the
cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the
others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had
got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what
his mother gave them for breakfast. Lisbeth had been unusually silent
since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her
ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find
all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new sensations
seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last, after tasting
the porridge, she broke silence:
"Ye might ha' made the parridge worse," she said to Dinah; "I can ate it
wi'out its turnin' my stomach. It might ha' been a trifle thicker an' no
harm, an' I allays putten a sprig o' mint in mysen; but how's ye t' know
that? The lads arena like to get folks as 'll make their parridge as I'n
made it for 'em; it's well if they get onybody as 'll make parridge at
all. But ye might do, wi' a bit o' showin'; for ye're a stirrin' body
in a mornin', an' ye've a light heel, an' ye've cleaned th' house well
enough for a ma'shift."
"Makeshift, mother?" said Adam. "Why, I think the house looks beautiful.
I don't know how it could look better."
"Thee dostna know? Nay; how's thee to know? Th' men ne'er know whether
the floor's cleaned or cat-licked. But thee'lt know when thee gets thy
parridge burnt, as it's like enough to be when I'n gi'en o'er makin' it.
Thee'lt think thy mother war good for summat then."
"Dinah," said Seth, "do come and sit down now and have your breakfast.
We're all served now."
"Aye, come an' sit ye down--do," said Lisbeth, "an' ate a morsel; ye'd
need, arter bein' upo' your legs this hour an' half a'ready. Come,
then," she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Dinah sat down
by her side, "I'll be loath for ye t' go, but ye canna stay much longer,
I doubt. I could put up wi' ye i' th' house better nor wi' most folks."
"I'll stay till to-night if you're willing," said Dinah. "I'd stay
longer, only I'm going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be with
my aunt to-morrow."
"Eh, I'd ne'er go back to that country. My old man come from that
Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an' i' the right
on't too; for he said as there war no wood there, an' it 'ud ha' been a
bad country for a carpenter."
"Ah," said Adam, "I remember father telling me when I was a little lad
that he made up his mind if ever he moved it should be south'ard. But
I'm not so sure about it. Bartle Massey says--and he knows the South--as
the northern men are a finer breed than the southern, harder-headed and
stronger-bodied, and a deal taller. And then he says in some o' those
counties it's as flat as the back o' your hand, and you can see nothing
of a distance without climbing up the highest trees. I couldn't abide
that. I like to go to work by a road that'll take me up a bit of a hill,
and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town, or a bit
of a steeple here and there. It makes you feel the world's a big place,
and there's other men working in it with their heads and hands besides
yourself."
"I like th' hills best," said Seth, "when the clouds are over your head
and you see the sun shining ever so far off, over the Loamford way, as
I've often done o' late, on the stormy days. It seems to me as if that
was heaven where there's always joy and sunshine, though this life's
dark and cloudy."
"Oh, I love the Stonyshire side," said Dinah; "I shouldn't like to set
my face towards the countries where they're rich in corn and cattle, and
the ground so level and easy to tread; and to turn my back on the hills
where the poor people have to live such a hard life and the men spend
their days in the mines away from the sunlight. It's very blessed on a
bleak cold day, when the sky is hanging dark over the hill, to feel
the love of God in one's soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare, stone
houses, where there's nothing else to give comfort."
"Eh!" said Lisbeth, "that's very well for ye to talk, as looks welly
like the snowdrop-flowers as ha' lived for days an' days when I'n
gethered 'em, wi' nothin' but a drop o' water an' a peep o' daylight;
but th' hungry foulks had better leave th' hungry country. It makes less
mouths for the scant cake. But," she went on, looking at Adam, "donna
thee talk o' goin' south'ard or north'ard, an' leavin' thy feyther and
mother i' the churchyard, an' goin' to a country as they know nothin'
on. I'll ne'er rest i' my grave if I donna see thee i' the churchyard of
a Sunday."
"Donna fear, mother," said Adam. "If I hadna made up my mind not to go,
I should ha' been gone before now."
He had finished his breakfast now, and rose as he was speaking.
"What art goin' to do?" asked Lisbeth. "Set about thy feyther's coffin?"
"No, mother," said Adam; "we're going to take the wood to the village
and have it made there."
"Nay, my lad, nay," Lisbeth burst out in an eager, wailing tone; "thee
wotna let nobody make thy feyther's coffin but thysen? Who'd make it
so well? An' him as know'd what good work war, an's got a son as is the
head o' the village an' all Treddles'on too, for cleverness."
"Very well, mother, if that's thy wish, I'll make the coffin at home;
but I thought thee wouldstna like to hear the work going on."
"An' why shouldna I like 't? It's the right thing to be done. An' what's
liking got to do wi't? It's choice o' mislikings is all I'n got i' this
world. One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's out o' taste.
Thee mun set about it now this mornin' fust thing. I wonna ha' nobody to
touch the coffin but thee."
Adam's eyes met Seth's, which looked from Dinah to him rather wistfully.
"No, Mother," he said, "I'll not consent but Seth shall have a hand
in it too, if it's to be done at home. I'll go to the village this
forenoon, because Mr. Burge 'ull want to see me, and Seth shall stay at
home and begin the coffin. I can come back at noon, and then he can go."
"Nay, nay," persisted Lisbeth, beginning to cry, "I'n set my heart on't
as thee shalt ma' thy feyther's coffin. Thee't so stiff an' masterful,
thee't ne'er do as thy mother wants thee. Thee wast often angered wi'
thy feyther when he war alive; thee must be the better to him now he's
gone. He'd ha' thought nothin' on't for Seth to ma's coffin."
"Say no more, Adam, say no more," said Seth, gently, though his voice
told that he spoke with some effort; "Mother's in the right. I'll go to
work, and do thee stay at home."
He passed into the workshop immediately, followed by Adam; while
Lisbeth, automatically obeying her old habits, began to put away the
breakfast things, as if she did not mean Dinah to take her place any
longer. Dinah said nothing, but presently used the opportunity of
quietly joining the brothers in the workshop.
They had already got on their aprons and paper caps, and Adam was
standing with his left hand on Seth's shoulder, while he pointed with
the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at. Their
backs were turned towards the door by which Dinah entered, and she came
in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till they heard
her voice saying, "Seth Bede!" Seth started, and they both turned round.
Dinah looked as if she did not see Adam, and fixed her eyes on Seth's
face, saying with calm kindness, "I won't say farewell. I shall see you
again when you come from work. So as I'm at the farm before dark, it
will be quite soon enough."
"Thank you, Dinah; I should like to walk home with you once more. It'll
perhaps be the last time."
There was a little tremor in Seth's voice. Dinah put out her hand and
said, "You'll have sweet peace in your mind to-day, Seth, for your
tenderness and long-suffering towards your aged mother."
She turned round and left the workshop as quickly and quietly as she had
entered it. Adam had been observing her closely all the while, but she
had not looked at him. As soon as she was gone, he said, "I don't wonder
at thee for loving her, Seth. She's got a face like a lily."
Seth's soul rushed to his eyes and lips: he had never yet confessed his
secret to Adam, but now he felt a delicious sense of disburdenment,
as he answered, "Aye, Addy, I do love her--too much, I doubt. But she
doesna love me, lad, only as one child o' God loves another. She'll
never love any man as a husband--that's my belief."
"Nay, lad, there's no telling; thee mustna lose heart. She's made out
o' stuff with a finer grain than most o' the women; I can see that clear
enough. But if she's better than they are in other things, I canna think
she'll fall short of 'em in loving."
No more was said. Seth set out to the village, and Adam began his work
on the coffin.
"God help the lad, and me too," he thought, as he lifted the board.
"We're like enough to find life a tough job--hard work inside and out.
It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his
teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold
at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a
mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting
o' the seed, for that matter."
| Dinah wakes up at half past four and goes downstairs quietly, joined by Gyp. Adam has also woken up and gone to the workshop to pick out the wood for his father's coffin. Adam hears a light footstep on the stairs and imagines that it might be Hetty. Dinah greets him, Adam looks at her closely for the first time, and she feels self-conscious under his gaze. Gyp appears friendly to Dinah, and she says that she likes dogs. Seth and his mother come downstairs, and they have breakfast together as Dinah serves them. Lisbeth says that Dinah has made the porridge well. Dinah says that she can stay for one more night, but after that she has to go back to Snowfield, where the people have harder lives and need her more. Lisbeth asks her sons to make their father's coffin, saying that the noise will not bother her; no one else could make the coffin as well. She says that she wants Adam to make it, not Seth. Dinah says goodbye to Seth, adding that she will be in his house when he gets home from work, but she will have to go home soon after that. He says that he will walk her home, maybe for the last time. Adam says that he cannot blame his brother for loving her, and Seth is relieved that his secret has been found out so that he does not have to tell it. Adam thinks that it is a mystery that strong men like his brother and himself can be made weak by a woman | summary |
IT was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying
awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the
little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very
quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was
astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog's
pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but Dinah
was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Seth,
for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night before.
Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening
door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last
by Dinah's unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily
weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so
when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of
tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning
sleep than was usual with him.
But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual
impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and
subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in
the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to
work again when he had had his breakfast.
"There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work," he said
to himself; "the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if
one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen,
and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as
true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working
is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot."
As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely
himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick
black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the
workshop to look out the wood for his father's coffin, intending that
he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge's and have the
coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not
see and hear the sad task going forward at home.
He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light
rapid foot on the stairs--certainly not his mother's. He had been in bed
and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered
whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him
strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to
be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the
clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he
had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted
for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a
timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed
by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the
lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and
Adam's imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish
smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning
a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought--it could not be
Hetty; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was
to go and see WHO it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to
belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to
the kitchen door.
"How do you do, Adam Bede?" said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing from
her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. "I trust you feel
rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day."
It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam
had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was
not very vividly conscious of any woman's presence except Hetty's, and
he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in
love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards
her for his brother's sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black
gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that
belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the
first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the
concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which
he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in her
life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark
penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and
timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which deepened as she
wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his forgetfulness.
"I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see
my mother in her trouble," he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his
quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. "I hope my mother
was thankful to have you," he added, wondering rather anxiously what had
been Dinah's reception.
"Yes," said Dinah, resuming her work, "she seemed greatly comforted
after a while, and she's had a good deal of rest in the night, by times.
She was fast asleep when I left her."
"Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?" said Adam, his thoughts
reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE had felt anything
about it.
"It was Mr. Irwine, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved
for your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my
uncle, I'm sure, now he's heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all
yesterday. They'll look for you there as soon as you've got time to go,
for there's nobody round that hearth but what's glad to see you."
Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was
longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was
too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived
to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way
of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary
hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while
disbelieves. Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was
directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when
Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done
before.
"But you won't be there yourself any longer?" he said to Dinah.
"No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to
Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must go
back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt and
her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would like
me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night."
"Ah, then, she's sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at
the beginning, she's sure to get fond of 'em; but she's a strange way of
not liking young women. Though, to be sure," Adam went on, smiling, "her
not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn't like you."
Hitherto Gyp had been assisting at this conversation in motionless
silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his
master's face to watch its expression and observing Dinah's movements
about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Adam uttered the last words
was apparently decisive with Gyp of the light in which the stranger
was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting aside her
sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle against her
hand in a friendly way.
"You see Gyp bids you welcome," said Adam, "and he's very slow to
welcome strangers."
"Poor dog!" said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, "I've a strange
feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a
trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the
dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more
in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half
what we feel, with all our words."
Seth came down now, and was pleased to find Adam talking with Dinah; he
wanted Adam to know how much better she was than all other women.
But after a few words of greeting, Adam drew him into the workshop to
consult about the coffin, and Dinah went on with her cleaning.
By six o'clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as
clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open,
and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood,
thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the
cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the
others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had
got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what
his mother gave them for breakfast. Lisbeth had been unusually silent
since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her
ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find
all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new sensations
seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last, after tasting
the porridge, she broke silence:
"Ye might ha' made the parridge worse," she said to Dinah; "I can ate it
wi'out its turnin' my stomach. It might ha' been a trifle thicker an' no
harm, an' I allays putten a sprig o' mint in mysen; but how's ye t' know
that? The lads arena like to get folks as 'll make their parridge as I'n
made it for 'em; it's well if they get onybody as 'll make parridge at
all. But ye might do, wi' a bit o' showin'; for ye're a stirrin' body
in a mornin', an' ye've a light heel, an' ye've cleaned th' house well
enough for a ma'shift."
"Makeshift, mother?" said Adam. "Why, I think the house looks beautiful.
I don't know how it could look better."
"Thee dostna know? Nay; how's thee to know? Th' men ne'er know whether
the floor's cleaned or cat-licked. But thee'lt know when thee gets thy
parridge burnt, as it's like enough to be when I'n gi'en o'er makin' it.
Thee'lt think thy mother war good for summat then."
"Dinah," said Seth, "do come and sit down now and have your breakfast.
We're all served now."
"Aye, come an' sit ye down--do," said Lisbeth, "an' ate a morsel; ye'd
need, arter bein' upo' your legs this hour an' half a'ready. Come,
then," she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Dinah sat down
by her side, "I'll be loath for ye t' go, but ye canna stay much longer,
I doubt. I could put up wi' ye i' th' house better nor wi' most folks."
"I'll stay till to-night if you're willing," said Dinah. "I'd stay
longer, only I'm going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be with
my aunt to-morrow."
"Eh, I'd ne'er go back to that country. My old man come from that
Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an' i' the right
on't too; for he said as there war no wood there, an' it 'ud ha' been a
bad country for a carpenter."
"Ah," said Adam, "I remember father telling me when I was a little lad
that he made up his mind if ever he moved it should be south'ard. But
I'm not so sure about it. Bartle Massey says--and he knows the South--as
the northern men are a finer breed than the southern, harder-headed and
stronger-bodied, and a deal taller. And then he says in some o' those
counties it's as flat as the back o' your hand, and you can see nothing
of a distance without climbing up the highest trees. I couldn't abide
that. I like to go to work by a road that'll take me up a bit of a hill,
and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town, or a bit
of a steeple here and there. It makes you feel the world's a big place,
and there's other men working in it with their heads and hands besides
yourself."
"I like th' hills best," said Seth, "when the clouds are over your head
and you see the sun shining ever so far off, over the Loamford way, as
I've often done o' late, on the stormy days. It seems to me as if that
was heaven where there's always joy and sunshine, though this life's
dark and cloudy."
"Oh, I love the Stonyshire side," said Dinah; "I shouldn't like to set
my face towards the countries where they're rich in corn and cattle, and
the ground so level and easy to tread; and to turn my back on the hills
where the poor people have to live such a hard life and the men spend
their days in the mines away from the sunlight. It's very blessed on a
bleak cold day, when the sky is hanging dark over the hill, to feel
the love of God in one's soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare, stone
houses, where there's nothing else to give comfort."
"Eh!" said Lisbeth, "that's very well for ye to talk, as looks welly
like the snowdrop-flowers as ha' lived for days an' days when I'n
gethered 'em, wi' nothin' but a drop o' water an' a peep o' daylight;
but th' hungry foulks had better leave th' hungry country. It makes less
mouths for the scant cake. But," she went on, looking at Adam, "donna
thee talk o' goin' south'ard or north'ard, an' leavin' thy feyther and
mother i' the churchyard, an' goin' to a country as they know nothin'
on. I'll ne'er rest i' my grave if I donna see thee i' the churchyard of
a Sunday."
"Donna fear, mother," said Adam. "If I hadna made up my mind not to go,
I should ha' been gone before now."
He had finished his breakfast now, and rose as he was speaking.
"What art goin' to do?" asked Lisbeth. "Set about thy feyther's coffin?"
"No, mother," said Adam; "we're going to take the wood to the village
and have it made there."
"Nay, my lad, nay," Lisbeth burst out in an eager, wailing tone; "thee
wotna let nobody make thy feyther's coffin but thysen? Who'd make it
so well? An' him as know'd what good work war, an's got a son as is the
head o' the village an' all Treddles'on too, for cleverness."
"Very well, mother, if that's thy wish, I'll make the coffin at home;
but I thought thee wouldstna like to hear the work going on."
"An' why shouldna I like 't? It's the right thing to be done. An' what's
liking got to do wi't? It's choice o' mislikings is all I'n got i' this
world. One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's out o' taste.
Thee mun set about it now this mornin' fust thing. I wonna ha' nobody to
touch the coffin but thee."
Adam's eyes met Seth's, which looked from Dinah to him rather wistfully.
"No, Mother," he said, "I'll not consent but Seth shall have a hand
in it too, if it's to be done at home. I'll go to the village this
forenoon, because Mr. Burge 'ull want to see me, and Seth shall stay at
home and begin the coffin. I can come back at noon, and then he can go."
"Nay, nay," persisted Lisbeth, beginning to cry, "I'n set my heart on't
as thee shalt ma' thy feyther's coffin. Thee't so stiff an' masterful,
thee't ne'er do as thy mother wants thee. Thee wast often angered wi'
thy feyther when he war alive; thee must be the better to him now he's
gone. He'd ha' thought nothin' on't for Seth to ma's coffin."
"Say no more, Adam, say no more," said Seth, gently, though his voice
told that he spoke with some effort; "Mother's in the right. I'll go to
work, and do thee stay at home."
He passed into the workshop immediately, followed by Adam; while
Lisbeth, automatically obeying her old habits, began to put away the
breakfast things, as if she did not mean Dinah to take her place any
longer. Dinah said nothing, but presently used the opportunity of
quietly joining the brothers in the workshop.
They had already got on their aprons and paper caps, and Adam was
standing with his left hand on Seth's shoulder, while he pointed with
the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at. Their
backs were turned towards the door by which Dinah entered, and she came
in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till they heard
her voice saying, "Seth Bede!" Seth started, and they both turned round.
Dinah looked as if she did not see Adam, and fixed her eyes on Seth's
face, saying with calm kindness, "I won't say farewell. I shall see you
again when you come from work. So as I'm at the farm before dark, it
will be quite soon enough."
"Thank you, Dinah; I should like to walk home with you once more. It'll
perhaps be the last time."
There was a little tremor in Seth's voice. Dinah put out her hand and
said, "You'll have sweet peace in your mind to-day, Seth, for your
tenderness and long-suffering towards your aged mother."
She turned round and left the workshop as quickly and quietly as she had
entered it. Adam had been observing her closely all the while, but she
had not looked at him. As soon as she was gone, he said, "I don't wonder
at thee for loving her, Seth. She's got a face like a lily."
Seth's soul rushed to his eyes and lips: he had never yet confessed his
secret to Adam, but now he felt a delicious sense of disburdenment,
as he answered, "Aye, Addy, I do love her--too much, I doubt. But she
doesna love me, lad, only as one child o' God loves another. She'll
never love any man as a husband--that's my belief."
"Nay, lad, there's no telling; thee mustna lose heart. She's made out
o' stuff with a finer grain than most o' the women; I can see that clear
enough. But if she's better than they are in other things, I canna think
she'll fall short of 'em in loving."
No more was said. Seth set out to the village, and Adam began his work
on the coffin.
"God help the lad, and me too," he thought, as he lifted the board.
"We're like enough to find life a tough job--hard work inside and out.
It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his
teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold
at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a
mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting
o' the seed, for that matter."
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
THAT same Thursday morning, as Arthur Donnithorne was moving about in
his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in
the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green piece
of tapestry, by Pharaoh's daughter and her maidens, who ought to have
been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with himself,
which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling over his
shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution.
"I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so," he said aloud.
"I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready by
half-past eleven."
The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution,
here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he
hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar's Opera,
"When the heart of a man is oppressed with care." Not an heroic strain;
nevertheless Arthur felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the
stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was
necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite
gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never yet
forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his own
virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly; candour
was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man's candour be seen
in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had
an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous
kind--impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty,
reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything
mean, dastardly, or cruel. "No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting
myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on
my own shoulders." Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in
hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their
worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly
expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme
of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides
himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of
the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a
prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be the
model of an English gentleman--mansion in first-rate order, all elegance
and high taste--jolly housekeeping, finest stud in Loamshire--purse open
to all public objects--in short, everything as different as possible
from what was now associated with the name of Donnithorne. And one of
the first good actions he would perform in that future should be to
increase Irwine's income for the vicarage of Hayslope, so that he might
keep a carriage for his mother and sisters. His hearty affection for the
rector dated from the age of frocks and trousers. It was an affection
partly filial, partly fraternal--fraternal enough to make him like
Irwine's company better than that of most younger men, and filial enough
to make him shrink strongly from incurring Irwine's disapprobation.
You perceive that Arthur Donnithorne was "a good fellow"--all his
college friends thought him such. He couldn't bear to see any one
uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for
any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had
the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole
sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless
and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a
question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but twenty-one,
you remember, and we don't inquire too closely into character in the
case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough
to support numerous peccadilloes--who, if he should unfortunately
break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him
handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her,
will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed
by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic
in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a
confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about
a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition
which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see at once that
he is "nice." The chances are that he will go through life without
scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would refuse to
insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which sometimes make
terribly evident some flaw in their construction that would never have
been discoverable in smooth water; and many a "good fellow," through a
disastrous combination of circumstances, has undergone a like betrayal.
But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries
concerning Arthur Donnithorne, who this morning proves himself capable
of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear:
Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect
comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that
border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults
from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of
Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole.
It was about ten o'clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly;
everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday's rain. It is a
pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel on
one's way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of
the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among
the soothing influences of a man's life, always brought with it some
irritation to Arthur. There was no having his own way in the stables;
everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather
persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of
lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a
succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom
had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on
Arthur's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one
can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made
a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh
and blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of
misanthropy.
Old John's wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met
Arthur's eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for
him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could
never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead.
"You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past
eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do
you hear?"
"Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap'n," said old John very deliberately, following
the young master into the stable. John considered a young master as the
natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in general as a poor
contrivance for carrying on the world.
Arthur went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as possible
to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper before
breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables, and
turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a tiny
spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably curled
up on her back.
"Well, Meg, my pretty girl," said Arthur, patting her neck, "we'll have
a glorious canter this morning."
"Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be," said John.
"Not be? Why not?"
"Why, she's got lamed."
"Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?"
"Why, th' lad took her too close to Dalton's hosses, an' one on 'em
flung out at her, an' she's got her shank bruised o' the near foreleg."
The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued.
You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled
with soothing "who-ho's" while the leg was examined; that John stood
by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved
crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed
the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went.
He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was not
another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg and
Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the way
for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a
combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken
arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself
at Windsor--shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of
affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at
every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such
circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off the
irritation by some excess or other. "Salkeld would have drunk a bottle
of port every day," he muttered to himself, "but I'm not well seasoned
enough for that. Well, since I can't go to Eagledale, I'll have a gallop
on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with Gawaine."
Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he lunched
with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the Chase again
till nearly five, when Hetty would be safe out of his sight in the
housekeeper's room; and when she set out to go home, it would be his
lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way altogether.
There really would have been no harm in being kind to the little thing,
and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles only to look at
Hetty for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not take any more
notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as Irwine had hinted;
though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not by any means so soft
and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found them twice as cool
and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm in Hetty's case, it
was out of the question: Arthur Donnithorne accepted his own bond for
himself with perfect confidence.
So the twelve o'clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by
good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine
leaps for Rattler. Nothing like "taking" a few bushes and ditches for
exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs, with
their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a reputation in
history.
After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine
was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely
cleared the last stroke of three when Arthur returned through the
entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the
house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men
since his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then
galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite
stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round
upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.
"The cap'n's been ridin' the devil's own pace," said Dalton the
coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe
against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler.
"An' I wish he'd get the devil to do's grooming for'n," growled John.
"Aye; he'd hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now," observed
Dalton--and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon
the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth
in order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with
a silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the
beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants' hall.
When Arthur went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was
inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the
day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now
to dwell on the remembrance--impossible to recall the feelings and
reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to
recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he
first opened his window. The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like an
ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which this
trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as he
brushed his hair--pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was
because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of
it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing
Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all
Irwine's fault. "If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn't have thought
half so much of Hetty as of Meg's lameness." However, it was just the
sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish
Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in Fir-tree
Grove--the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall Farm.
So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a mere
circumstance of his walk, not its object.
Arthur's shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the Chase
than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a warm
afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o'clock when he stood before
the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine wood which
skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree Grove, not
because the firs were many, but because they were few. It was a wood
of beeches and limes, with here and there a light silver-stemmed
birch--just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their
white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or peeping from behind
the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you hear their soft liquid
laughter--but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious eye, they
vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their
voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves
into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost
bough. It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you
to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with
faint dashes of delicate moss--paths which look as if they were made
by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to
look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs.
It was along the broadest of these paths that Arthur Donnithorne passed,
under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still afternoon--the
golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only
glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of
faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold
awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy
wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Arthur strolled along
carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the ground
as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes WOULD fix themselves on the
distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely appear
before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of colour, like
a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure, with a round
hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a deep-blushing, almost
frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her curtsy with a fluttered
yet happy glance, as Arthur came up to her. If Arthur had had time
to think at all, he would have thought it strange that he should feel
fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too--in fact, look and feel as
foolish as if he had been taken by surprise instead of meeting just what
he expected. Poor things! It was a pity they were not in that golden age
of childhood when they would have stood face to face, eyeing each other
with timid liking, then given each other a little butterfly kiss,
and toddled off to play together. Arthur would have gone home to his
silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her home-spun pillow, and both would
have slept without dreams, and to-morrow would have been a life hardly
conscious of a yesterday.
Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty's side without giving a reason.
They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering
presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this
little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet
rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had
forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her
limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting
on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a
contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and confidence
from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of mind from what
he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full as he was of
vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of silence, for the
thought that his previous debates and scruples were needless.
"You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase," he
said at last, looking down at Hetty; "it is so much prettier as well as
shorter than coming by either of the lodges."
"Yes, sir," Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice.
She didn't know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur, and
her very vanity made her more coy of speech.
"Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?"
"Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she's got to go out with Miss
Donnithorne."
"And she's teaching you something, is she?"
"Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the
stocking-mending--it looks just like the stocking, you can't tell it's
been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too."
"What! are YOU going to be a lady's maid?"
"I should like to be one very much indeed." Hetty spoke more audibly
now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as
stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.
"I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?"
"She expects me at four o'clock. I'm rather late to-day, because my aunt
couldn't spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us
time before Miss Donnithorne's bell rings."
"Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the
Hermitage. Did you ever see it?"
"No, sir."
"This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I'll
show it you some other time, if you'd like to see it."
"Yes, please, sir."
"Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to
come so lonely a road?"
"Oh no, sir, it's never late; I always set out by eight o'clock, and
it's so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I
didn't get home before nine."
"Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?"
A deep blush overspread Hetty's face and neck. "I'm sure he doesn't;
I'm sure he never did; I wouldn't let him; I don't like him," she said
hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had
done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt
ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her
happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round her,
and a gentle voice said, "Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn't mean
to vex you. I wouldn't vex you for the world, you little blossom. Come,
don't cry; look at me, else I shall think you won't forgive me."
Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and
was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty lifted
her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a
sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments
were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love is such a
simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl
of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first
opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young
unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that
touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets
that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with
ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While Arthur
gazed into Hetty's dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him
what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been
in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that
Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.
But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on
the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty's basket; all her little
workwoman's matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing
a capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in
picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Arthur hung the basket
over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his look
and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and tone
that were almost chilling to her, "I have been hindering you; I must not
keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house. Good-bye."
Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried
back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Hetty to pursue
her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in bewildering
delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness. Would he
meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as if he were
displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She cried, hardly
knowing why.
Arthur too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a
more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood in
the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench, slammed
it after him, pitched Zeluco into the most distant corner, and thrusting
his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five times up and
down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated himself on
the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do when we wish
not to abandon ourselves to feeling.
He was getting in love with Hetty--that was quite plain. He was ready
to pitch everything else--no matter where--for the sake of surrendering
himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It
was no use blinking the fact now--they would get too fond of each other,
if he went on taking notice of her--and what would come of it? He should
have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be
miserable. He MUST NOT see her alone again; he must keep out of her way.
What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine's!
He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the
afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the
Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out
and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution
sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any longer.
He had made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he might
give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be if
circumstances were different--how pleasant it would have been to meet
her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and
look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were
thinking of him too--twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were
with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a
day with looking at them, and he MUST see her again--he must see her,
simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner
to her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her--just to
prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes,
that would be the best thing to do after all.
It was a long while--more than an hour before Arthur had brought his
meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no
longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until
he should see Hetty again. And it was already late enough to go and
dress for dinner, for his grandfather's dinner-hour was six.
| Captain Donnithorne resolves to go to Eagledale to fish for a week. His character is such that he gets into predicaments but always resolves to let the burden fall solely on his own shoulders. Eliot writes that he is a "nice" young gentleman, but that one should not question the actions of such men too deeply when, for example, one is rich enough to pay to keep a woman after he has ruined her. He goes into his stables and notices with irritation that his grandfather does not spend enough on the horses to make them truly splendid. He takes pleasure in seeing his horse, Meg, however, until the stableman informs him that she has been made lame by the kick of another horse. He makes new plans, now to see Gawaine for lunch, so that he will be out of the house when Hetty visits his housekeeper. He changes his mind, however, and dashes back on his horse to see if Hetty is still around. He decides to loll in a tree grove that she will be sure to walk through, reading Dr. Moore's Zeluco. Hetty comes along the path, they both blush, and the Captain begins to walk with her. He asks her why she is learning mending from his housekeeper, and Hetty replies that she would like to be a lady's maid. The Captain asks if sometimes her gardener comes to walk her back, and Hetty says that she does not like the old man. She begins to cry. The Captain puts his arm around her, and they have a loving moment until she drops her basket. After she retrieves all of the yarn, he says that he should probably let her go and then hurries away, confusing her. He hurries back to the Hermitage, knowing that he is falling in love with her and feeling angry for letting himself see her again. He resolves not to see her again, but then he decides that he must meet her once again, if only to explain his conduct earlier. The Captain dresses for dinner | summary |
THAT same Thursday morning, as Arthur Donnithorne was moving about in
his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in
the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green piece
of tapestry, by Pharaoh's daughter and her maidens, who ought to have
been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with himself,
which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling over his
shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution.
"I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so," he said aloud.
"I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready by
half-past eleven."
The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution,
here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he
hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar's Opera,
"When the heart of a man is oppressed with care." Not an heroic strain;
nevertheless Arthur felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the
stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was
necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite
gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never yet
forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his own
virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly; candour
was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man's candour be seen
in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had
an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous
kind--impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty,
reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything
mean, dastardly, or cruel. "No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting
myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on
my own shoulders." Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in
hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their
worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly
expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme
of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides
himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of
the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a
prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be the
model of an English gentleman--mansion in first-rate order, all elegance
and high taste--jolly housekeeping, finest stud in Loamshire--purse open
to all public objects--in short, everything as different as possible
from what was now associated with the name of Donnithorne. And one of
the first good actions he would perform in that future should be to
increase Irwine's income for the vicarage of Hayslope, so that he might
keep a carriage for his mother and sisters. His hearty affection for the
rector dated from the age of frocks and trousers. It was an affection
partly filial, partly fraternal--fraternal enough to make him like
Irwine's company better than that of most younger men, and filial enough
to make him shrink strongly from incurring Irwine's disapprobation.
You perceive that Arthur Donnithorne was "a good fellow"--all his
college friends thought him such. He couldn't bear to see any one
uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for
any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had
the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole
sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless
and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a
question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but twenty-one,
you remember, and we don't inquire too closely into character in the
case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough
to support numerous peccadilloes--who, if he should unfortunately
break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him
handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her,
will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed
by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic
in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a
confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about
a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition
which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see at once that
he is "nice." The chances are that he will go through life without
scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would refuse to
insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which sometimes make
terribly evident some flaw in their construction that would never have
been discoverable in smooth water; and many a "good fellow," through a
disastrous combination of circumstances, has undergone a like betrayal.
But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries
concerning Arthur Donnithorne, who this morning proves himself capable
of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear:
Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect
comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that
border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults
from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of
Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole.
It was about ten o'clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly;
everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday's rain. It is a
pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel on
one's way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of
the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among
the soothing influences of a man's life, always brought with it some
irritation to Arthur. There was no having his own way in the stables;
everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather
persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of
lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a
succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom
had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on
Arthur's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one
can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made
a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh
and blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of
misanthropy.
Old John's wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met
Arthur's eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for
him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could
never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead.
"You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past
eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do
you hear?"
"Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap'n," said old John very deliberately, following
the young master into the stable. John considered a young master as the
natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in general as a poor
contrivance for carrying on the world.
Arthur went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as possible
to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper before
breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables, and
turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a tiny
spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably curled
up on her back.
"Well, Meg, my pretty girl," said Arthur, patting her neck, "we'll have
a glorious canter this morning."
"Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be," said John.
"Not be? Why not?"
"Why, she's got lamed."
"Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?"
"Why, th' lad took her too close to Dalton's hosses, an' one on 'em
flung out at her, an' she's got her shank bruised o' the near foreleg."
The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued.
You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled
with soothing "who-ho's" while the leg was examined; that John stood
by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved
crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed
the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went.
He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was not
another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg and
Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the way
for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a
combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken
arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself
at Windsor--shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of
affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at
every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such
circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off the
irritation by some excess or other. "Salkeld would have drunk a bottle
of port every day," he muttered to himself, "but I'm not well seasoned
enough for that. Well, since I can't go to Eagledale, I'll have a gallop
on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with Gawaine."
Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he lunched
with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the Chase again
till nearly five, when Hetty would be safe out of his sight in the
housekeeper's room; and when she set out to go home, it would be his
lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way altogether.
There really would have been no harm in being kind to the little thing,
and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles only to look at
Hetty for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not take any more
notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as Irwine had hinted;
though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not by any means so soft
and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found them twice as cool
and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm in Hetty's case, it
was out of the question: Arthur Donnithorne accepted his own bond for
himself with perfect confidence.
So the twelve o'clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by
good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine
leaps for Rattler. Nothing like "taking" a few bushes and ditches for
exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs, with
their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a reputation in
history.
After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine
was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely
cleared the last stroke of three when Arthur returned through the
entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the
house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men
since his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then
galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite
stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round
upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.
"The cap'n's been ridin' the devil's own pace," said Dalton the
coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe
against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler.
"An' I wish he'd get the devil to do's grooming for'n," growled John.
"Aye; he'd hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now," observed
Dalton--and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon
the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth
in order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with
a silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the
beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants' hall.
When Arthur went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was
inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the
day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now
to dwell on the remembrance--impossible to recall the feelings and
reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to
recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he
first opened his window. The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like an
ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which this
trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as he
brushed his hair--pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was
because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of
it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing
Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all
Irwine's fault. "If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn't have thought
half so much of Hetty as of Meg's lameness." However, it was just the
sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish
Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in Fir-tree
Grove--the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall Farm.
So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a mere
circumstance of his walk, not its object.
Arthur's shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the Chase
than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a warm
afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o'clock when he stood before
the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine wood which
skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree Grove, not
because the firs were many, but because they were few. It was a wood
of beeches and limes, with here and there a light silver-stemmed
birch--just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their
white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or peeping from behind
the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you hear their soft liquid
laughter--but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious eye, they
vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their
voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves
into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost
bough. It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you
to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with
faint dashes of delicate moss--paths which look as if they were made
by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to
look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs.
It was along the broadest of these paths that Arthur Donnithorne passed,
under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still afternoon--the
golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only
glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of
faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold
awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy
wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Arthur strolled along
carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the ground
as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes WOULD fix themselves on the
distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely appear
before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of colour, like
a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure, with a round
hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a deep-blushing, almost
frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her curtsy with a fluttered
yet happy glance, as Arthur came up to her. If Arthur had had time
to think at all, he would have thought it strange that he should feel
fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too--in fact, look and feel as
foolish as if he had been taken by surprise instead of meeting just what
he expected. Poor things! It was a pity they were not in that golden age
of childhood when they would have stood face to face, eyeing each other
with timid liking, then given each other a little butterfly kiss,
and toddled off to play together. Arthur would have gone home to his
silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her home-spun pillow, and both would
have slept without dreams, and to-morrow would have been a life hardly
conscious of a yesterday.
Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty's side without giving a reason.
They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering
presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this
little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet
rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had
forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her
limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting
on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a
contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and confidence
from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of mind from what
he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full as he was of
vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of silence, for the
thought that his previous debates and scruples were needless.
"You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase," he
said at last, looking down at Hetty; "it is so much prettier as well as
shorter than coming by either of the lodges."
"Yes, sir," Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice.
She didn't know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur, and
her very vanity made her more coy of speech.
"Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?"
"Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she's got to go out with Miss
Donnithorne."
"And she's teaching you something, is she?"
"Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the
stocking-mending--it looks just like the stocking, you can't tell it's
been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too."
"What! are YOU going to be a lady's maid?"
"I should like to be one very much indeed." Hetty spoke more audibly
now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as
stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.
"I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?"
"She expects me at four o'clock. I'm rather late to-day, because my aunt
couldn't spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us
time before Miss Donnithorne's bell rings."
"Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the
Hermitage. Did you ever see it?"
"No, sir."
"This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I'll
show it you some other time, if you'd like to see it."
"Yes, please, sir."
"Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to
come so lonely a road?"
"Oh no, sir, it's never late; I always set out by eight o'clock, and
it's so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I
didn't get home before nine."
"Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?"
A deep blush overspread Hetty's face and neck. "I'm sure he doesn't;
I'm sure he never did; I wouldn't let him; I don't like him," she said
hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had
done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt
ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her
happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round her,
and a gentle voice said, "Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn't mean
to vex you. I wouldn't vex you for the world, you little blossom. Come,
don't cry; look at me, else I shall think you won't forgive me."
Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and
was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty lifted
her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a
sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments
were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love is such a
simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl
of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first
opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young
unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that
touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets
that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with
ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While Arthur
gazed into Hetty's dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him
what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been
in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that
Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.
But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on
the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty's basket; all her little
workwoman's matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing
a capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in
picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Arthur hung the basket
over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his look
and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and tone
that were almost chilling to her, "I have been hindering you; I must not
keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house. Good-bye."
Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried
back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Hetty to pursue
her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in bewildering
delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness. Would he
meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as if he were
displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She cried, hardly
knowing why.
Arthur too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a
more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood in
the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench, slammed
it after him, pitched Zeluco into the most distant corner, and thrusting
his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five times up and
down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated himself on
the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do when we wish
not to abandon ourselves to feeling.
He was getting in love with Hetty--that was quite plain. He was ready
to pitch everything else--no matter where--for the sake of surrendering
himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It
was no use blinking the fact now--they would get too fond of each other,
if he went on taking notice of her--and what would come of it? He should
have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be
miserable. He MUST NOT see her alone again; he must keep out of her way.
What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine's!
He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the
afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the
Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out
and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution
sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any longer.
He had made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he might
give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be if
circumstances were different--how pleasant it would have been to meet
her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and
look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were
thinking of him too--twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were
with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a
day with looking at them, and he MUST see her again--he must see her,
simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner
to her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her--just to
prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes,
that would be the best thing to do after all.
It was a long while--more than an hour before Arthur had brought his
meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no
longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until
he should see Hetty again. And it was already late enough to go and
dress for dinner, for his grandfather's dinner-hour was six.
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
IT happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight quarrel with Mrs.
Best, the housekeeper, on this Thursday morning--a fact which had two
consequences highly convenient to Hetty. It caused Mrs. Pomfret to have
tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired that exemplary lady's maid
with so lively a recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best's conduct,
and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly the inferiority as an
interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret, that Hetty required no more presence
of mind than was demanded for using her needle, and throwing in an
occasional "yes" or "no." She would have wanted to put on her hat
earlier than usual; only she had told Captain Donnithorne that she
usually set out about eight o'clock, and if he SHOULD go to the Grove
again expecting to see her, and she should be gone! Would he come? Her
little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious
expectation. At last the minute-hand of the old-fashioned brazen-faced
timepiece was on the last quarter to eight, and there was every reason
for its being time to get ready for departure. Even Mrs. Pomfret's
preoccupied mind did not prevent her from noticing what looked like a
new flush of beauty in the little thing as she tied on her hat before
the looking-glass.
"That child gets prettier and prettier every day, I do believe," was her
inward comment. "The more's the pity. She'll get neither a place nor
a husband any the sooner for it. Sober well-to-do men don't like such
pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired than if I had been
so very pretty. However, she's reason to be grateful to me for teaching
her something to get her bread with, better than farm-house work. They
always told me I was good-natured--and that's the truth, and to my hurt
too, else there's them in this house that wouldn't be here now to lord
it over me in the housekeeper's room."
Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which she
had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig, to whom she could hardly
have spoken civilly. How relieved she was when she had got safely under
the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even then she was as ready to
be startled as the deer that leaped away at her approach. She thought
nothing of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy alleys
between the fern, and made the beauty of their living green more visible
than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon: she thought of
nothing that was present. She only saw something that was possible: Mr.
Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove.
That was the foreground of Hetty's picture; behind it lay a bright hazy
something--days that were not to be as the other days of her life had
been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any
time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven. There was no
knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come.
If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some
unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was
going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy
would befall her? Hetty had never read a novel; if she had ever seen
one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could
she find a shape for her expectations? They were as formless as the
sweet languid odours of the garden at the Chase, which had floated past
her as she walked by the gate.
She is at another gate now--that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters
the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes, the
fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how dreary
it was--the thought of going out at the other end of the wood, into the
unsheltered road, without having seen him. She reaches the first turning
towards the Hermitage, walking slowly--he is not there. She hates the
leveret that runs across the path; she hates everything that is not what
she longs for. She walks on, happy whenever she is coming to a bend in
the road, for perhaps he is behind it. No. She is beginning to cry: her
heart has swelled so, the tears stand in her eyes; she gives one great
sob, while the corners of her mouth quiver, and the tears roll down.
She doesn't know that there is another turning to the Hermitage, that
she is close against it, and that Arthur Donnithorne is only a few yards
from her, full of one thought, and a thought of which she only is the
object. He is going to see Hetty again: that is the longing which has
been growing through the last three hours to a feverish thirst. Not,
of course, to speak in the caressing way into which he had unguardedly
fallen before dinner, but to set things right with her by a kindness
which would have the air of friendly civility, and prevent her from
running away with wrong notions about their mutual relation.
If Hetty had known he was there, she would not have cried; and it would
have been better, for then Arthur would perhaps have behaved as wisely
as he had intended. As it was, she started when he appeared at the end
of the side-alley, and looked up at him with two great drops rolling
down her cheeks. What else could he do but speak to her in a soft,
soothing tone, as if she were a bright-eyed spaniel with a thorn in her
foot?
"Has something frightened you, Hetty? Have you seen anything in the
wood? Don't be frightened--I'll take care of you now."
Hetty was blushing so, she didn't know whether she was happy or
miserable. To be crying again--what did gentlemen think of girls who
cried in that way? She felt unable even to say "no," but could only look
away from him and wipe the tears from her cheek. Not before a great drop
had fallen on her rose-coloured strings--she knew that quite well.
"Come, be cheerful again. Smile at me, and tell me what's the matter.
Come, tell me."
Hetty turned her head towards him, whispered, "I thought you wouldn't
come," and slowly got courage to lift her eyes to him. That look was too
much: he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too lovingly
in return.
"You little frightened bird! Little tearful rose! Silly pet! You won't
cry again, now I'm with you, will you?"
Ah, he doesn't know in the least what he is saying. This is not what
he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is
tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the
round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a
long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught
he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be
Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche--it is all one.
There was no speaking for minutes after. They walked along with beating
hearts till they came within sight of the gate at the end of the wood.
Then they looked at each other, not quite as they had looked before, for
in their eyes there was the memory of a kiss.
But already something bitter had begun to mingle itself with the
fountain of sweets: already Arthur was uncomfortable. He took his arm
from Hetty's waist, and said, "Here we are, almost at the end of the
Grove. I wonder how late it is," he added, pulling out his watch.
"Twenty minutes past eight--but my watch is too fast. However, I'd
better not go any further now. Trot along quickly with your little feet,
and get home safely. Good-bye."
He took her hand, and looked at her half-sadly, half with a constrained
smile. Hetty's eyes seemed to beseech him not to go away yet; but he
patted her cheek and said "Good-bye" again. She was obliged to turn away
from him and go on.
As for Arthur, he rushed back through the wood, as if he wanted to put
a wide space between himself and Hetty. He would not go to the Hermitage
again; he remembered how he had debated with himself there before
dinner, and it had all come to nothing--worse than nothing. He walked
right on into the Chase, glad to get out of the Grove, which surely was
haunted by his evil genius. Those beeches and smooth limes--there was
something enervating in the very sight of them; but the strong knotted
old oaks had no bending languor in them--the sight of them would give
a man some energy. Arthur lost himself among the narrow openings in
the fern, winding about without seeking any issue, till the twilight
deepened almost to night under the great boughs, and the hare looked
black as it darted across his path.
He was feeling much more strongly than he had done in the morning: it
was as if his horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute
his mastery. He was dissatisfied with himself, irritated, mortified. He
no sooner fixed his mind on the probable consequences of giving way to
the emotions which had stolen over him to-day--of continuing to notice
Hetty, of allowing himself any opportunity for such slight caresses as
he had been betrayed into already--than he refused to believe such a
future possible for himself. To flirt with Hetty was a very different
affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his own station: that was
understood to be an amusement on both sides, or, if it became serious,
there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be spoken
ill of directly, if she happened to be seen walking with him; and then
those excellent people, the Poysers, to whom a good name was as precious
as if they had the best blood in the land in their veins--he should hate
himself if he made a scandal of that sort, on the estate that was to be
his own some day, and among tenants by whom he liked, above all, to be
respected. He could no more believe that he should so fall in his own
esteem than that he should break both his legs and go on crutches all
the rest of his life. He couldn't imagine himself in that position; it
was too odious, too unlike him.
And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get too fond of
each other, and then there could be nothing but the misery of parting,
after all. No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's niece.
There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish.
And yet he had been so determined this morning, before he went to
Gawaine's; and while he was there something had taken hold of him and
made him gallop back. It seemed he couldn't quite depend on his own
resolution, as he had thought he could; he almost wished his arm would
get painful again, and then he should think of nothing but the comfort
it would be to get rid of the pain. There was no knowing what impulse
might seize him to-morrow, in this confounded place, where there was
nothing to occupy him imperiously through the livelong day. What could
he do to secure himself from any more of this folly?
There was but one resource. He would go and tell Irwine--tell him
everything. The mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial; the
temptation would vanish, as the charm of fond words vanishes when one
repeats them to the indifferent. In every way it would help him to tell
Irwine. He would ride to Broxton Rectory the first thing after breakfast
to-morrow.
Arthur had no sooner come to this determination than he began to think
which of the paths would lead him home, and made as short a walk thither
as he could. He felt sure he should sleep now: he had had enough to tire
him, and there was no more need for him to think.
| Hetty wonders fearfully whether the Captain will meet her again on her way home. The housekeeper notices her beauty and worries for her, thinking that a sensible man would not take her on either as a servant or as a wife. Hetty walks home, delighting in the expectation of meeting the Captain not only because she finds him attractive, but also because of what he could give her in the future. She begins to cry when she thinks that he is not there. When the Captain sees her, he forgets his resolve to behave coldly. He asks her if something has frightened her, and then, before he knows what he is doing, he puts his arms around her and kisses her. The Captain leaves her quickly, very upset with himself. He thinks that the trees in the grove hold some sort of evil sway over him. He reminds himself that flirting with Hetty is not as uncomplicated as flirting with someone of his own class. The Captain tries to think of a way to regain control over his own actions as he always has done before, and he decides to go confess to the vicar, with whom he has a close relationship | summary |
IT happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight quarrel with Mrs.
Best, the housekeeper, on this Thursday morning--a fact which had two
consequences highly convenient to Hetty. It caused Mrs. Pomfret to have
tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired that exemplary lady's maid
with so lively a recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best's conduct,
and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly the inferiority as an
interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret, that Hetty required no more presence
of mind than was demanded for using her needle, and throwing in an
occasional "yes" or "no." She would have wanted to put on her hat
earlier than usual; only she had told Captain Donnithorne that she
usually set out about eight o'clock, and if he SHOULD go to the Grove
again expecting to see her, and she should be gone! Would he come? Her
little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious
expectation. At last the minute-hand of the old-fashioned brazen-faced
timepiece was on the last quarter to eight, and there was every reason
for its being time to get ready for departure. Even Mrs. Pomfret's
preoccupied mind did not prevent her from noticing what looked like a
new flush of beauty in the little thing as she tied on her hat before
the looking-glass.
"That child gets prettier and prettier every day, I do believe," was her
inward comment. "The more's the pity. She'll get neither a place nor
a husband any the sooner for it. Sober well-to-do men don't like such
pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired than if I had been
so very pretty. However, she's reason to be grateful to me for teaching
her something to get her bread with, better than farm-house work. They
always told me I was good-natured--and that's the truth, and to my hurt
too, else there's them in this house that wouldn't be here now to lord
it over me in the housekeeper's room."
Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which she
had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig, to whom she could hardly
have spoken civilly. How relieved she was when she had got safely under
the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even then she was as ready to
be startled as the deer that leaped away at her approach. She thought
nothing of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy alleys
between the fern, and made the beauty of their living green more visible
than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon: she thought of
nothing that was present. She only saw something that was possible: Mr.
Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove.
That was the foreground of Hetty's picture; behind it lay a bright hazy
something--days that were not to be as the other days of her life had
been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any
time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven. There was no
knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come.
If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some
unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was
going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy
would befall her? Hetty had never read a novel; if she had ever seen
one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could
she find a shape for her expectations? They were as formless as the
sweet languid odours of the garden at the Chase, which had floated past
her as she walked by the gate.
She is at another gate now--that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters
the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes, the
fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how dreary
it was--the thought of going out at the other end of the wood, into the
unsheltered road, without having seen him. She reaches the first turning
towards the Hermitage, walking slowly--he is not there. She hates the
leveret that runs across the path; she hates everything that is not what
she longs for. She walks on, happy whenever she is coming to a bend in
the road, for perhaps he is behind it. No. She is beginning to cry: her
heart has swelled so, the tears stand in her eyes; she gives one great
sob, while the corners of her mouth quiver, and the tears roll down.
She doesn't know that there is another turning to the Hermitage, that
she is close against it, and that Arthur Donnithorne is only a few yards
from her, full of one thought, and a thought of which she only is the
object. He is going to see Hetty again: that is the longing which has
been growing through the last three hours to a feverish thirst. Not,
of course, to speak in the caressing way into which he had unguardedly
fallen before dinner, but to set things right with her by a kindness
which would have the air of friendly civility, and prevent her from
running away with wrong notions about their mutual relation.
If Hetty had known he was there, she would not have cried; and it would
have been better, for then Arthur would perhaps have behaved as wisely
as he had intended. As it was, she started when he appeared at the end
of the side-alley, and looked up at him with two great drops rolling
down her cheeks. What else could he do but speak to her in a soft,
soothing tone, as if she were a bright-eyed spaniel with a thorn in her
foot?
"Has something frightened you, Hetty? Have you seen anything in the
wood? Don't be frightened--I'll take care of you now."
Hetty was blushing so, she didn't know whether she was happy or
miserable. To be crying again--what did gentlemen think of girls who
cried in that way? She felt unable even to say "no," but could only look
away from him and wipe the tears from her cheek. Not before a great drop
had fallen on her rose-coloured strings--she knew that quite well.
"Come, be cheerful again. Smile at me, and tell me what's the matter.
Come, tell me."
Hetty turned her head towards him, whispered, "I thought you wouldn't
come," and slowly got courage to lift her eyes to him. That look was too
much: he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too lovingly
in return.
"You little frightened bird! Little tearful rose! Silly pet! You won't
cry again, now I'm with you, will you?"
Ah, he doesn't know in the least what he is saying. This is not what
he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is
tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the
round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a
long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught
he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be
Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche--it is all one.
There was no speaking for minutes after. They walked along with beating
hearts till they came within sight of the gate at the end of the wood.
Then they looked at each other, not quite as they had looked before, for
in their eyes there was the memory of a kiss.
But already something bitter had begun to mingle itself with the
fountain of sweets: already Arthur was uncomfortable. He took his arm
from Hetty's waist, and said, "Here we are, almost at the end of the
Grove. I wonder how late it is," he added, pulling out his watch.
"Twenty minutes past eight--but my watch is too fast. However, I'd
better not go any further now. Trot along quickly with your little feet,
and get home safely. Good-bye."
He took her hand, and looked at her half-sadly, half with a constrained
smile. Hetty's eyes seemed to beseech him not to go away yet; but he
patted her cheek and said "Good-bye" again. She was obliged to turn away
from him and go on.
As for Arthur, he rushed back through the wood, as if he wanted to put
a wide space between himself and Hetty. He would not go to the Hermitage
again; he remembered how he had debated with himself there before
dinner, and it had all come to nothing--worse than nothing. He walked
right on into the Chase, glad to get out of the Grove, which surely was
haunted by his evil genius. Those beeches and smooth limes--there was
something enervating in the very sight of them; but the strong knotted
old oaks had no bending languor in them--the sight of them would give
a man some energy. Arthur lost himself among the narrow openings in
the fern, winding about without seeking any issue, till the twilight
deepened almost to night under the great boughs, and the hare looked
black as it darted across his path.
He was feeling much more strongly than he had done in the morning: it
was as if his horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute
his mastery. He was dissatisfied with himself, irritated, mortified. He
no sooner fixed his mind on the probable consequences of giving way to
the emotions which had stolen over him to-day--of continuing to notice
Hetty, of allowing himself any opportunity for such slight caresses as
he had been betrayed into already--than he refused to believe such a
future possible for himself. To flirt with Hetty was a very different
affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his own station: that was
understood to be an amusement on both sides, or, if it became serious,
there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be spoken
ill of directly, if she happened to be seen walking with him; and then
those excellent people, the Poysers, to whom a good name was as precious
as if they had the best blood in the land in their veins--he should hate
himself if he made a scandal of that sort, on the estate that was to be
his own some day, and among tenants by whom he liked, above all, to be
respected. He could no more believe that he should so fall in his own
esteem than that he should break both his legs and go on crutches all
the rest of his life. He couldn't imagine himself in that position; it
was too odious, too unlike him.
And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get too fond of
each other, and then there could be nothing but the misery of parting,
after all. No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's niece.
There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish.
And yet he had been so determined this morning, before he went to
Gawaine's; and while he was there something had taken hold of him and
made him gallop back. It seemed he couldn't quite depend on his own
resolution, as he had thought he could; he almost wished his arm would
get painful again, and then he should think of nothing but the comfort
it would be to get rid of the pain. There was no knowing what impulse
might seize him to-morrow, in this confounded place, where there was
nothing to occupy him imperiously through the livelong day. What could
he do to secure himself from any more of this folly?
There was but one resource. He would go and tell Irwine--tell him
everything. The mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial; the
temptation would vanish, as the charm of fond words vanishes when one
repeats them to the indifferent. In every way it would help him to tell
Irwine. He would ride to Broxton Rectory the first thing after breakfast
to-morrow.
Arthur had no sooner come to this determination than he began to think
which of the paths would lead him home, and made as short a walk thither
as he could. He felt sure he should sleep now: he had had enough to tire
him, and there was no more need for him to think.
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
WHILE that parting in the wood was happening, there was a parting in the
cottage too, and Lisbeth had stood with Adam at the door, straining her
aged eyes to get the last glimpse of Seth and Dinah, as they mounted the
opposite slope.
"Eh, I'm loath to see the last on her," she said to Adam, as they turned
into the house again. "I'd ha' been willin' t' ha' her about me till
I died and went to lie by my old man. She'd make it easier dyin'--she
spakes so gentle an' moves about so still. I could be fast sure that
pictur' was drawed for her i' thy new Bible--th' angel a-sittin' on the
big stone by the grave. Eh, I wouldna mind ha'in a daughter like that;
but nobody ne'er marries them as is good for aught."
"Well, Mother, I hope thee WILT have her for a daughter; for Seth's got
a liking for her, and I hope she'll get a liking for Seth in time."
"Where's th' use o' talkin' a-that'n? She caresna for Seth. She's goin'
away twenty mile aff. How's she to get a likin' for him, I'd like to
know? No more nor the cake 'ull come wi'out the leaven. Thy figurin'
books might ha' tould thee better nor that, I should think, else thee
mightst as well read the commin print, as Seth allays does."
"Nay, Mother," said Adam, laughing, "the figures tell us a fine deal,
and we couldn't go far without 'em, but they don't tell us about folks's
feelings. It's a nicer job to calculate THEM. But Seth's as good-hearted
a lad as ever handled a tool, and plenty o' sense, and good-looking too;
and he's got the same way o' thinking as Dinah. He deserves to win her,
though there's no denying she's a rare bit o' workmanship. You don't see
such women turned off the wheel every day."
"Eh, thee't allays stick up for thy brother. Thee'st been just the
same, e'er sin' ye war little uns together. Thee wart allays for halving
iverything wi' him. But what's Seth got to do with marryin', as is on'y
three-an'-twenty? He'd more need to learn an' lay by sixpence. An' as
for his desarving her--she's two 'ear older nor Seth: she's pretty
near as old as thee. But that's the way; folks mun allays choose by
contrairies, as if they must be sorted like the pork--a bit o' good meat
wi' a bit o' offal."
To the feminine mind in some of its moods, all things that might be
receive a temporary charm from comparison with what is; and since Adam
did not want to marry Dinah himself, Lisbeth felt rather peevish on that
score--as peevish as she would have been if he HAD wanted to marry
her, and so shut himself out from Mary Burge and the partnership as
effectually as by marrying Hetty.
It was more than half-past eight when Adam and his mother were talking
in this way, so that when, about ten minutes later, Hetty reached the
turning of the lane that led to the farmyard gate, she saw Dinah and
Seth approaching it from the opposite direction, and waited for them to
come up to her. They, too, like Hetty, had lingered a little in their
walk, for Dinah was trying to speak words of comfort and strength to
Seth in these parting moments. But when they saw Hetty, they paused and
shook hands; Seth turned homewards, and Dinah came on alone.
"Seth Bede would have come and spoken to you, my dear," she said, as she
reached Hetty, "but he's very full of trouble to-night."
Hetty answered with a dimpled smile, as if she did not quite know what
had been said; and it made a strange contrast to see that sparkling
self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Dinah's calm pitying face, with
its open glance which told that her heart lived in no cherished secrets
of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world.
Hetty liked Dinah as well as she had ever liked any woman; how was it
possible to feel otherwise towards one who always put in a kind word for
her when her aunt was finding fault, and who was always ready to take
Totty off her hands--little tiresome Totty, that was made such a pet of
by every one, and that Hetty could see no interest in at all? Dinah
had never said anything disapproving or reproachful to Hetty during her
whole visit to the Hall Farm; she had talked to her a great deal in a
serious way, but Hetty didn't mind that much, for she never listened:
whatever Dinah might say, she almost always stroked Hetty's cheek after
it, and wanted to do some mending for her. Dinah was a riddle to her;
Hetty looked at her much in the same way as one might imagine a little
perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at
the swoop of the swallow or the mounting of the lark; but she did not
care to solve such riddles, any more than she cared to know what was
meant by the pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress, or in the old folio
Bible that Marty and Tommy always plagued her about on a Sunday.
Dinah took her hand now and drew it under her own arm.
"You look very happy to-night, dear child," she said. "I shall think of
you often when I'm at Snowfield, and see your face before me as it is
now. It's a strange thing--sometimes when I'm quite alone, sitting in
my room with my eyes closed, or walking over the hills, the people I've
seen and known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought before me,
and I hear their voices and see them look and move almost plainer than
I ever did when they were really with me so as I could touch them. And
then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if
it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and
resting in His love, on their behalf as well as my own. And so I feel
sure you will come before me."
She paused a moment, but Hetty said nothing.
"It has been a very precious time to me," Dinah went on, "last night
and to-day--seeing two such good sons as Adam and Seth Bede. They are so
tender and thoughtful for their aged mother. And she has been telling
me what Adam has done, for these many years, to help his father and his
brother; it's wonderful what a spirit of wisdom and knowledge he has,
and how he's ready to use it all in behalf of them that are feeble. And
I'm sure he has a loving spirit too. I've noticed it often among my
own people round Snowfield, that the strong, skilful men are often the
gentlest to the women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying
the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the
babies always seem to like the strong arm best. I feel sure it would be
so with Adam Bede. Don't you think so, Hetty?"
"Yes," said Hetty abstractedly, for her mind had been all the while
in the wood, and she would have found it difficult to say what she was
assenting to. Dinah saw she was not inclined to talk, but there would
not have been time to say much more, for they were now at the yard-gate.
The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint
struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a sound
to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the stable. It was
about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were all gone to roost,
and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw outside his kennel, with
the black-and-tan terrier by his side, when the falling-to of the gate
disturbed them and set them barking, like good officials, before they
had any distinct knowledge of the reason.
The barking had its effect in the house, for, as Dinah and Hetty
approached, the doorway was filled by a portly figure, with a ruddy
black-eyed face which bore in it the possibility of looking extremely
acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a
predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well
known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in
their criticism of other men's scholarship have yet been of a relenting
and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man
meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with
his right he inflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who
had betrayed a brutal ignorance of Hebrew. Weaknesses and errors must
be forgiven--alas! they are not alien to us--but the man who takes the
wrong side on the momentous subject of the Hebrew points must be treated
as the enemy of his race. There was the same sort of antithetic mixture
in Martin Poyser: he was of so excellent a disposition that he had been
kinder and more respectful than ever to his old father since he had made
a deed of gift of all his property, and no man judged his neighbours
more charitably on all personal matters; but for a farmer, like Luke
Britton, for example, whose fallows were not well cleaned, who didn't
know the rudiments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a small share
of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Martin Poyser was as hard
and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could not make a
remark, even on the weather, but Martin Poyser detected in it a taint
of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable in all his
farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the pewter pint to
his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day, and the mere
sight of him on the other side of the road brought a severe and critical
expression into his black eyes, as different as possible from the
fatherly glance he bent on his two nieces as they approached the door.
Mr. Poyser had smoked his evening pipe, and now held his hands in his
pockets, as the only resource of a man who continues to sit up after the
day's business is done.
"Why, lasses, ye're rather late to-night," he said, when they reached
the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget
about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the
old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but
a poor bargain to her this five year."
"She's been greatly distressed for the loss of him," said Dinah, "but
she's seemed more comforted to-day. Her son Adam's been at home all day,
working at his father's coffin, and she loves to have him at home. She's
been talking about him to me almost all the day. She has a loving heart,
though she's sorely given to fret and be fearful. I wish she had a surer
trust to comfort her in her old age."
"Adam's sure enough," said Mr. Poyser, misunderstanding Dinah's wish.
"There's no fear but he'll yield well i' the threshing. He's not one
o' them as is all straw and no grain. I'll be bond for him any day, as
he'll be a good son to the last. Did he say he'd be coming to see us
soon? But come in, come in," he added, making way for them; "I hadn't
need keep y' out any longer."
The tall buildings round the yard shut out a good deal of the sky,
but the large window let in abundant light to show every corner of the
house-place.
Mrs. Poyser, seated in the rocking-chair, which had been brought out of
the "right-hand parlour," was trying to soothe Totty to sleep. But Totty
was not disposed to sleep; and when her cousins entered, she raised
herself up and showed a pair of flushed cheeks, which looked fatter than
ever now they were defined by the edge of her linen night-cap.
In the large wicker-bottomed arm-chair in the left-hand chimney-nook sat
old Martin Poyser, a hale but shrunken and bleached image of his portly
black-haired son--his head hanging forward a little, and his elbows
pushed backwards so as to allow the whole of his forearm to rest on the
arm of the chair. His blue handkerchief was spread over his knees, as
was usual indoors, when it was not hanging over his head; and he sat
watching what went forward with the quiet OUTWARD glance of healthy old
age, which, disengaged from any interest in an inward drama, spies out
pins upon the floor, follows one's minutest motions with an unexpectant
purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the flame or the
sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor, watches even
the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a rhythm in the
tick.
"What a time o' night this is to come home, Hetty!" said Mrs. Poyser.
"Look at the clock, do; why, it's going on for half-past nine, and I've
sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they've
got to get up at half after four, and the mowers' bottles to fill, and
the baking; and here's this blessed child wi' the fever for what I know,
and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to give
her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there's been, and half of
it spilt on her night-gown--it's well if she's swallowed more nor 'ull
make her worse i'stead o' better. But folks as have no mind to be o' use
have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be
done."
"I did set out before eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with
a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at
the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll be when I get here."
"What! You'd be wanting the clock set by gentlefolks's time, would you?
An' sit up burnin' candle, an' lie a-bed wi' the sun a-bakin' you like a
cowcumber i' the frame? The clock hasn't been put forrard for the first
time to-day, I reckon."
The fact was, Hetty had really forgotten the difference of the clocks
when she told Captain Donnithorne that she set out at eight, and this,
with her lingering pace, had made her nearly half an hour later than
usual. But here her aunt's attention was diverted from this tender
subject by Totty, who, perceiving at length that the arrival of
her cousins was not likely to bring anything satisfactory to her in
particular, began to cry, "Munny, munny," in an explosive manner.
"Well, then, my pet, Mother's got her, Mother won't leave her; Totty be
a good dilling, and go to sleep now," said Mrs. Poyser, leaning back and
rocking the chair, while she tried to make Totty nestle against her.
But Totty only cried louder, and said, "Don't yock!" So the mother, with
that wondrous patience which love gives to the quickest temperament, sat
up again, and pressed her cheek against the linen night-cap and kissed
it, and forgot to scold Hetty any longer.
"Come, Hetty," said Martin Poyser, in a conciliatory tone, "go and get
your supper i' the pantry, as the things are all put away; an' then you
can come and take the little un while your aunt undresses herself, for
she won't lie down in bed without her mother. An' I reckon YOU could eat
a bit, Dinah, for they don't keep much of a house down there."
"No, thank you, Uncle," said Dinah; "I ate a good meal before I came
away, for Mrs. Bede would make a kettle-cake for me."
"I don't want any supper," said Hetty, taking off her hat. "I can hold
Totty now, if Aunt wants me."
"Why, what nonsense that is to talk!" said Mrs. Poyser. "Do you think
you can live wi'out eatin', an' nourish your inside wi' stickin' red
ribbons on your head? Go an' get your supper this minute, child; there's
a nice bit o' cold pudding i' the safe--just what you're fond of."
Hetty complied silently by going towards the pantry, and Mrs. Poyser
went on speaking to Dinah.
"Sit down, my dear, an' look as if you knowed what it was to make
yourself a bit comfortable i' the world. I warrant the old woman was
glad to see you, since you stayed so long."
"She seemed to like having me there at last; but her sons say she
doesn't like young women about her commonly; and I thought just at first
she was almost angry with me for going."
"Eh, it's a poor look-out when th' ould folks doesna like the young
uns," said old Martin, bending his head down lower, and seeming to trace
the pattern of the quarries with his eye.
"Aye, it's ill livin' in a hen-roost for them as doesn't like fleas,"
said Mrs. Poyser. "We've all had our turn at bein' young, I reckon, be't
good luck or ill."
"But she must learn to 'commodate herself to young women," said Mr.
Poyser, "for it isn't to be counted on as Adam and Seth 'ull keep
bachelors for the next ten year to please their mother. That 'ud be
unreasonable. It isn't right for old nor young nayther to make a bargain
all o' their own side. What's good for one's good all round i' the
long run. I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the
difference atween a crab an' a apple; but they may wait o'er long."
"To be sure," said Mrs. Poyser; "if you go past your dinner-time,
there'll be little relish o' your meat. You turn it o'er an' o'er wi'
your fork, an' don't eat it after all. You find faut wi' your meat, an'
the faut's all i' your own stomach."
Hetty now came back from the pantry and said, "I can take Totty now,
Aunt, if you like."
"Come, Rachel," said Mr. Poyser, as his wife seemed to hesitate, seeing
that Totty was at last nestling quietly, "thee'dst better let Hetty
carry her upstairs, while thee tak'st thy things off. Thee't tired. It's
time thee wast in bed. Thee't bring on the pain in thy side again."
"Well, she may hold her if the child 'ull go to her," said Mrs. Poyser.
Hetty went close to the rocking-chair, and stood without her usual
smile, and without any attempt to entice Totty, simply waiting for her
aunt to give the child into her hands.
"Wilt go to Cousin Hetty, my dilling, while mother gets ready to go to
bed? Then Totty shall go into Mother's bed, and sleep there all night."
Before her mother had done speaking, Totty had given her answer in
an unmistakable manner, by knitting her brow, setting her tiny teeth
against her underlip, and leaning forward to slap Hetty on the arm with
her utmost force. Then, without speaking, she nestled to her mother
again.
"Hey, hey," said Mr. Poyser, while Hetty stood without moving, "not go
to Cousin Hetty? That's like a babby. Totty's a little woman, an' not a
babby."
"It's no use trying to persuade her," said Mrs. Poyser. "She allays
takes against Hetty when she isn't well. Happen she'll go to Dinah."
Dinah, having taken off her bonnet and shawl, had hitherto kept quietly
seated in the background, not liking to thrust herself between Hetty and
what was considered Hetty's proper work. But now she came forward, and,
putting out her arms, said, "Come Totty, come and let Dinah carry her
upstairs along with Mother: poor, poor Mother! she's so tired--she wants
to go to bed."
Totty turned her face towards Dinah, and looked at her an instant, then
lifted herself up, put out her little arms, and let Dinah lift her from
her mother's lap. Hetty turned away without any sign of ill humour,
and, taking her hat from the table, stood waiting with an air of
indifference, to see if she should be told to do anything else.
"You may make the door fast now, Poyser; Alick's been come in this long
while," said Mrs. Poyser, rising with an appearance of relief from
her low chair. "Get me the matches down, Hetty, for I must have the
rushlight burning i' my room. Come, Father."
The heavy wooden bolts began to roll in the house doors, and old Martin
prepared to move, by gathering up his blue handkerchief, and reaching
his bright knobbed walnut-tree stick from the corner. Mrs. Poyser then
led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Dinah
with Totty in her arms--all going to bed by twilight, like the birds.
Mrs. Poyser, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay;
just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a
moment their light regular breathing.
"Come, Hetty, get to bed," said Mr. Poyser, in a soothing tone, as
he himself turned to go upstairs. "You didna mean to be late, I'll
be bound, but your aunt's been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench,
good-night."
| Lisbeth watches Seth leave with Dinah and then admits that she is sorry to see Dinah go. She wishes that Dinah would marry Seth, although she can see that Dinah does not really care for Seth since she is moving so far away. Adam says that she will fall in love with Seth eventually, and Lisbeth notes that he always sticks up for his brother. Seth and Dinah part just as Hetty is coming up the lane. Hetty likes Dinah as much as she can like another woman, although she does not understand her. Dinah is always quick to put in a good word for her to her aunt, or to take care of Totty for her. Dinah says that she has enjoyed visiting the Bedes and seeing their good relationship with their mother, noting that Adam has worked hard for his family. Mr. Poyser meets them at the gate. He is a great combination of gentleness in family life and competitiveness as a famer. He asks after the Bedes, and Dinah explains the situation. Mrs. Poyser is trying to get Totty to go to sleep as the older Mr. Martin Poyser looks on, and she scolds the girls for being so late. She tells Hetty that she can eat supper in the pantry, but Hetty says that she is not hungry. Upon Mrs. Poyser's asking, Dinah says that Lisbeth, although she does not generally like having young women around, got used to her presence quite easily. Hetty says that she will take Totty to bed, but Totty slaps her away. Mrs. Poyser asks Dinah if she can take her, which she does quite easily and without protest from Totty. Hetty is quite unconcerned at this event. Everyone goes to bed, and Mr. Poyser gently scolds Hetty once again, saying that her aunt was worried when she was so late | summary |
WHILE that parting in the wood was happening, there was a parting in the
cottage too, and Lisbeth had stood with Adam at the door, straining her
aged eyes to get the last glimpse of Seth and Dinah, as they mounted the
opposite slope.
"Eh, I'm loath to see the last on her," she said to Adam, as they turned
into the house again. "I'd ha' been willin' t' ha' her about me till
I died and went to lie by my old man. She'd make it easier dyin'--she
spakes so gentle an' moves about so still. I could be fast sure that
pictur' was drawed for her i' thy new Bible--th' angel a-sittin' on the
big stone by the grave. Eh, I wouldna mind ha'in a daughter like that;
but nobody ne'er marries them as is good for aught."
"Well, Mother, I hope thee WILT have her for a daughter; for Seth's got
a liking for her, and I hope she'll get a liking for Seth in time."
"Where's th' use o' talkin' a-that'n? She caresna for Seth. She's goin'
away twenty mile aff. How's she to get a likin' for him, I'd like to
know? No more nor the cake 'ull come wi'out the leaven. Thy figurin'
books might ha' tould thee better nor that, I should think, else thee
mightst as well read the commin print, as Seth allays does."
"Nay, Mother," said Adam, laughing, "the figures tell us a fine deal,
and we couldn't go far without 'em, but they don't tell us about folks's
feelings. It's a nicer job to calculate THEM. But Seth's as good-hearted
a lad as ever handled a tool, and plenty o' sense, and good-looking too;
and he's got the same way o' thinking as Dinah. He deserves to win her,
though there's no denying she's a rare bit o' workmanship. You don't see
such women turned off the wheel every day."
"Eh, thee't allays stick up for thy brother. Thee'st been just the
same, e'er sin' ye war little uns together. Thee wart allays for halving
iverything wi' him. But what's Seth got to do with marryin', as is on'y
three-an'-twenty? He'd more need to learn an' lay by sixpence. An' as
for his desarving her--she's two 'ear older nor Seth: she's pretty
near as old as thee. But that's the way; folks mun allays choose by
contrairies, as if they must be sorted like the pork--a bit o' good meat
wi' a bit o' offal."
To the feminine mind in some of its moods, all things that might be
receive a temporary charm from comparison with what is; and since Adam
did not want to marry Dinah himself, Lisbeth felt rather peevish on that
score--as peevish as she would have been if he HAD wanted to marry
her, and so shut himself out from Mary Burge and the partnership as
effectually as by marrying Hetty.
It was more than half-past eight when Adam and his mother were talking
in this way, so that when, about ten minutes later, Hetty reached the
turning of the lane that led to the farmyard gate, she saw Dinah and
Seth approaching it from the opposite direction, and waited for them to
come up to her. They, too, like Hetty, had lingered a little in their
walk, for Dinah was trying to speak words of comfort and strength to
Seth in these parting moments. But when they saw Hetty, they paused and
shook hands; Seth turned homewards, and Dinah came on alone.
"Seth Bede would have come and spoken to you, my dear," she said, as she
reached Hetty, "but he's very full of trouble to-night."
Hetty answered with a dimpled smile, as if she did not quite know what
had been said; and it made a strange contrast to see that sparkling
self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Dinah's calm pitying face, with
its open glance which told that her heart lived in no cherished secrets
of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world.
Hetty liked Dinah as well as she had ever liked any woman; how was it
possible to feel otherwise towards one who always put in a kind word for
her when her aunt was finding fault, and who was always ready to take
Totty off her hands--little tiresome Totty, that was made such a pet of
by every one, and that Hetty could see no interest in at all? Dinah
had never said anything disapproving or reproachful to Hetty during her
whole visit to the Hall Farm; she had talked to her a great deal in a
serious way, but Hetty didn't mind that much, for she never listened:
whatever Dinah might say, she almost always stroked Hetty's cheek after
it, and wanted to do some mending for her. Dinah was a riddle to her;
Hetty looked at her much in the same way as one might imagine a little
perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at
the swoop of the swallow or the mounting of the lark; but she did not
care to solve such riddles, any more than she cared to know what was
meant by the pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress, or in the old folio
Bible that Marty and Tommy always plagued her about on a Sunday.
Dinah took her hand now and drew it under her own arm.
"You look very happy to-night, dear child," she said. "I shall think of
you often when I'm at Snowfield, and see your face before me as it is
now. It's a strange thing--sometimes when I'm quite alone, sitting in
my room with my eyes closed, or walking over the hills, the people I've
seen and known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought before me,
and I hear their voices and see them look and move almost plainer than
I ever did when they were really with me so as I could touch them. And
then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if
it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and
resting in His love, on their behalf as well as my own. And so I feel
sure you will come before me."
She paused a moment, but Hetty said nothing.
"It has been a very precious time to me," Dinah went on, "last night
and to-day--seeing two such good sons as Adam and Seth Bede. They are so
tender and thoughtful for their aged mother. And she has been telling
me what Adam has done, for these many years, to help his father and his
brother; it's wonderful what a spirit of wisdom and knowledge he has,
and how he's ready to use it all in behalf of them that are feeble. And
I'm sure he has a loving spirit too. I've noticed it often among my
own people round Snowfield, that the strong, skilful men are often the
gentlest to the women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying
the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the
babies always seem to like the strong arm best. I feel sure it would be
so with Adam Bede. Don't you think so, Hetty?"
"Yes," said Hetty abstractedly, for her mind had been all the while
in the wood, and she would have found it difficult to say what she was
assenting to. Dinah saw she was not inclined to talk, but there would
not have been time to say much more, for they were now at the yard-gate.
The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint
struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a sound
to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the stable. It was
about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were all gone to roost,
and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw outside his kennel, with
the black-and-tan terrier by his side, when the falling-to of the gate
disturbed them and set them barking, like good officials, before they
had any distinct knowledge of the reason.
The barking had its effect in the house, for, as Dinah and Hetty
approached, the doorway was filled by a portly figure, with a ruddy
black-eyed face which bore in it the possibility of looking extremely
acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a
predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well
known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in
their criticism of other men's scholarship have yet been of a relenting
and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man
meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with
his right he inflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who
had betrayed a brutal ignorance of Hebrew. Weaknesses and errors must
be forgiven--alas! they are not alien to us--but the man who takes the
wrong side on the momentous subject of the Hebrew points must be treated
as the enemy of his race. There was the same sort of antithetic mixture
in Martin Poyser: he was of so excellent a disposition that he had been
kinder and more respectful than ever to his old father since he had made
a deed of gift of all his property, and no man judged his neighbours
more charitably on all personal matters; but for a farmer, like Luke
Britton, for example, whose fallows were not well cleaned, who didn't
know the rudiments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a small share
of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Martin Poyser was as hard
and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could not make a
remark, even on the weather, but Martin Poyser detected in it a taint
of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable in all his
farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the pewter pint to
his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day, and the mere
sight of him on the other side of the road brought a severe and critical
expression into his black eyes, as different as possible from the
fatherly glance he bent on his two nieces as they approached the door.
Mr. Poyser had smoked his evening pipe, and now held his hands in his
pockets, as the only resource of a man who continues to sit up after the
day's business is done.
"Why, lasses, ye're rather late to-night," he said, when they reached
the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget
about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the
old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but
a poor bargain to her this five year."
"She's been greatly distressed for the loss of him," said Dinah, "but
she's seemed more comforted to-day. Her son Adam's been at home all day,
working at his father's coffin, and she loves to have him at home. She's
been talking about him to me almost all the day. She has a loving heart,
though she's sorely given to fret and be fearful. I wish she had a surer
trust to comfort her in her old age."
"Adam's sure enough," said Mr. Poyser, misunderstanding Dinah's wish.
"There's no fear but he'll yield well i' the threshing. He's not one
o' them as is all straw and no grain. I'll be bond for him any day, as
he'll be a good son to the last. Did he say he'd be coming to see us
soon? But come in, come in," he added, making way for them; "I hadn't
need keep y' out any longer."
The tall buildings round the yard shut out a good deal of the sky,
but the large window let in abundant light to show every corner of the
house-place.
Mrs. Poyser, seated in the rocking-chair, which had been brought out of
the "right-hand parlour," was trying to soothe Totty to sleep. But Totty
was not disposed to sleep; and when her cousins entered, she raised
herself up and showed a pair of flushed cheeks, which looked fatter than
ever now they were defined by the edge of her linen night-cap.
In the large wicker-bottomed arm-chair in the left-hand chimney-nook sat
old Martin Poyser, a hale but shrunken and bleached image of his portly
black-haired son--his head hanging forward a little, and his elbows
pushed backwards so as to allow the whole of his forearm to rest on the
arm of the chair. His blue handkerchief was spread over his knees, as
was usual indoors, when it was not hanging over his head; and he sat
watching what went forward with the quiet OUTWARD glance of healthy old
age, which, disengaged from any interest in an inward drama, spies out
pins upon the floor, follows one's minutest motions with an unexpectant
purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the flame or the
sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor, watches even
the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a rhythm in the
tick.
"What a time o' night this is to come home, Hetty!" said Mrs. Poyser.
"Look at the clock, do; why, it's going on for half-past nine, and I've
sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they've
got to get up at half after four, and the mowers' bottles to fill, and
the baking; and here's this blessed child wi' the fever for what I know,
and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to give
her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there's been, and half of
it spilt on her night-gown--it's well if she's swallowed more nor 'ull
make her worse i'stead o' better. But folks as have no mind to be o' use
have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be
done."
"I did set out before eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with
a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at
the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll be when I get here."
"What! You'd be wanting the clock set by gentlefolks's time, would you?
An' sit up burnin' candle, an' lie a-bed wi' the sun a-bakin' you like a
cowcumber i' the frame? The clock hasn't been put forrard for the first
time to-day, I reckon."
The fact was, Hetty had really forgotten the difference of the clocks
when she told Captain Donnithorne that she set out at eight, and this,
with her lingering pace, had made her nearly half an hour later than
usual. But here her aunt's attention was diverted from this tender
subject by Totty, who, perceiving at length that the arrival of
her cousins was not likely to bring anything satisfactory to her in
particular, began to cry, "Munny, munny," in an explosive manner.
"Well, then, my pet, Mother's got her, Mother won't leave her; Totty be
a good dilling, and go to sleep now," said Mrs. Poyser, leaning back and
rocking the chair, while she tried to make Totty nestle against her.
But Totty only cried louder, and said, "Don't yock!" So the mother, with
that wondrous patience which love gives to the quickest temperament, sat
up again, and pressed her cheek against the linen night-cap and kissed
it, and forgot to scold Hetty any longer.
"Come, Hetty," said Martin Poyser, in a conciliatory tone, "go and get
your supper i' the pantry, as the things are all put away; an' then you
can come and take the little un while your aunt undresses herself, for
she won't lie down in bed without her mother. An' I reckon YOU could eat
a bit, Dinah, for they don't keep much of a house down there."
"No, thank you, Uncle," said Dinah; "I ate a good meal before I came
away, for Mrs. Bede would make a kettle-cake for me."
"I don't want any supper," said Hetty, taking off her hat. "I can hold
Totty now, if Aunt wants me."
"Why, what nonsense that is to talk!" said Mrs. Poyser. "Do you think
you can live wi'out eatin', an' nourish your inside wi' stickin' red
ribbons on your head? Go an' get your supper this minute, child; there's
a nice bit o' cold pudding i' the safe--just what you're fond of."
Hetty complied silently by going towards the pantry, and Mrs. Poyser
went on speaking to Dinah.
"Sit down, my dear, an' look as if you knowed what it was to make
yourself a bit comfortable i' the world. I warrant the old woman was
glad to see you, since you stayed so long."
"She seemed to like having me there at last; but her sons say she
doesn't like young women about her commonly; and I thought just at first
she was almost angry with me for going."
"Eh, it's a poor look-out when th' ould folks doesna like the young
uns," said old Martin, bending his head down lower, and seeming to trace
the pattern of the quarries with his eye.
"Aye, it's ill livin' in a hen-roost for them as doesn't like fleas,"
said Mrs. Poyser. "We've all had our turn at bein' young, I reckon, be't
good luck or ill."
"But she must learn to 'commodate herself to young women," said Mr.
Poyser, "for it isn't to be counted on as Adam and Seth 'ull keep
bachelors for the next ten year to please their mother. That 'ud be
unreasonable. It isn't right for old nor young nayther to make a bargain
all o' their own side. What's good for one's good all round i' the
long run. I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the
difference atween a crab an' a apple; but they may wait o'er long."
"To be sure," said Mrs. Poyser; "if you go past your dinner-time,
there'll be little relish o' your meat. You turn it o'er an' o'er wi'
your fork, an' don't eat it after all. You find faut wi' your meat, an'
the faut's all i' your own stomach."
Hetty now came back from the pantry and said, "I can take Totty now,
Aunt, if you like."
"Come, Rachel," said Mr. Poyser, as his wife seemed to hesitate, seeing
that Totty was at last nestling quietly, "thee'dst better let Hetty
carry her upstairs, while thee tak'st thy things off. Thee't tired. It's
time thee wast in bed. Thee't bring on the pain in thy side again."
"Well, she may hold her if the child 'ull go to her," said Mrs. Poyser.
Hetty went close to the rocking-chair, and stood without her usual
smile, and without any attempt to entice Totty, simply waiting for her
aunt to give the child into her hands.
"Wilt go to Cousin Hetty, my dilling, while mother gets ready to go to
bed? Then Totty shall go into Mother's bed, and sleep there all night."
Before her mother had done speaking, Totty had given her answer in
an unmistakable manner, by knitting her brow, setting her tiny teeth
against her underlip, and leaning forward to slap Hetty on the arm with
her utmost force. Then, without speaking, she nestled to her mother
again.
"Hey, hey," said Mr. Poyser, while Hetty stood without moving, "not go
to Cousin Hetty? That's like a babby. Totty's a little woman, an' not a
babby."
"It's no use trying to persuade her," said Mrs. Poyser. "She allays
takes against Hetty when she isn't well. Happen she'll go to Dinah."
Dinah, having taken off her bonnet and shawl, had hitherto kept quietly
seated in the background, not liking to thrust herself between Hetty and
what was considered Hetty's proper work. But now she came forward, and,
putting out her arms, said, "Come Totty, come and let Dinah carry her
upstairs along with Mother: poor, poor Mother! she's so tired--she wants
to go to bed."
Totty turned her face towards Dinah, and looked at her an instant, then
lifted herself up, put out her little arms, and let Dinah lift her from
her mother's lap. Hetty turned away without any sign of ill humour,
and, taking her hat from the table, stood waiting with an air of
indifference, to see if she should be told to do anything else.
"You may make the door fast now, Poyser; Alick's been come in this long
while," said Mrs. Poyser, rising with an appearance of relief from
her low chair. "Get me the matches down, Hetty, for I must have the
rushlight burning i' my room. Come, Father."
The heavy wooden bolts began to roll in the house doors, and old Martin
prepared to move, by gathering up his blue handkerchief, and reaching
his bright knobbed walnut-tree stick from the corner. Mrs. Poyser then
led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Dinah
with Totty in her arms--all going to bed by twilight, like the birds.
Mrs. Poyser, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay;
just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a
moment their light regular breathing.
"Come, Hetty, get to bed," said Mr. Poyser, in a soothing tone, as
he himself turned to go upstairs. "You didna mean to be late, I'll
be bound, but your aunt's been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench,
good-night."
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
HETTY and Dinah both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each
other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light,
which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of
the moon--more than enough strength to enable Hetty to move about and
undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the
old painted linen-press on which she hung her hat and gown; she could
see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin-cushion; she could see
a reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as
distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her hair
and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking-glass! Hetty got into an
ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been considered
a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the
Poyser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of genteel
household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for
it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm
mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided
jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners,
without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it had a
brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic
air to the very last. But Hetty objected to it because it had numerous
dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing would remove,
and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was fixed
in an upright position, so that she could only get one good view of
her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting down on a
low chair before her dressing-table. And the dressing-table was no
dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the most
awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass
handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at
all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences
to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this
evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual.
Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the
large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of
the lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax
candle--secretly bought at Treddleston--and stuck them in the two
brass sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the
candles; and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-glass,
without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look
first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning her
head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her brush
and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her hair,
and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia
Donnithorne's dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacinthine
curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling
hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate
rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form
a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put
down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before
her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help
sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty's stays
were not of white satin--such as I feel sure heroines must generally
wear--but of a dark greenish cotton texture.
Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thought so. Prettier
than anybody about Hayslope--prettier than any of the ladies she had
ever seen visiting at the Chase--indeed it seemed fine ladies were
rather old and ugly--and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's
daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Hetty looked at
herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had ever
felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her
like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over
again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round
her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still. The
vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she
is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting,
for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the
linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from
which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of rents,
but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off the
whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings
she had in her ears--oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her
ears bored!--and put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass
and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked
just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down again, with
the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round
her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier
down to a little way below the elbow--they were white and plump, and
dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the wrist, she thought with
vexation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that
ladies never did.
Captain Donnithorne couldn't like her to go on doing work: he would like
to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings, perhaps
with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much--no one else
had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He would want
to marry her and make a lady of her; she could hardly dare to shape
the thought--yet how else could it be? Marry her quite secretly, as Mr.
James, the doctor's assistant, married the doctor's niece, and nobody
ever found it out for a long while after, and then it was of no use to
be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in Hetty's hearing.
She didn't know how it would be, but it was quite plain the old Squire
could never be told anything about it, for Hetty was ready to faint with
awe and fright if she came across him at the Chase. He might have been
earth-born, for what she knew. It had never entered her mind that he
had been young like other men; he had always been the old Squire at whom
everybody was frightened. Oh, it was impossible to think how it would
be! But Captain Donnithorne would know; he was a great gentleman, and
could have his way in everything, and could buy everything he liked. And
nothing could be as it had been again: perhaps some day she should be
a grand lady, and ride in her coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded
silk, with feathers in her hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like
Miss Lydia and Lady Dacey, when she saw them going into the dining-room
one evening as she peeped through the little round window in the lobby;
only she should not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same
thickness like Lady Dacey, but very pretty, with her hair done in a
great many different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes
in a white one--she didn't know which she liked best; and Mary Burge and
everybody would perhaps see her going out in her carriage--or rather,
they would HEAR of it: it was impossible to imagine these things
happening at Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this
splendour, Hetty got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the
little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with
a bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision
to care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace
with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room,
in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf
round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears.
How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the
easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a
sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark
rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great
dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an
imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.
Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hetty! How the
men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging on
his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round,
soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just
as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes
wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he
likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little
darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he
wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and
movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise.
Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great
physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she
uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the
language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those
exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as
petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the
dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her
children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round
things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and
the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses,
to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet
wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage
such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and
majestic and the women all lovely and loving.
It was very much in this way that our friend Adam Bede thought about
Hetty; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she
behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only
because she doesn't love me well enough; and he was sure that her love,
whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could
possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration,
pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of
any pretty woman--if you ever COULD, without hard head-breaking
demonstration, believe evil of the ONE supremely pretty woman who has
bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of
the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.
Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so
far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a
dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering
tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and
if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself
being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so clingingly
fond of him. God made these dear women so--and it is a convenient
arrangement in case of sickness.
After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way
sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they
deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we
don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty
reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.
Long dark eyelashes, now--what can be more exquisite? I find it
impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with
a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that
they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in
the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has
been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length
that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or
else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's
grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.
No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty's; and now, while she
walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on
her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to
perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim ill-defined pictures that
her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future; but of every
picture she is the central figure in fine clothes; Captain Donnithorne
is very close to her, putting his arm round her, perhaps kissing her,
and everybody else is admiring and envying her--especially Mary Burge,
whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the side of Hetty's
resplendent toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle with this
dream of the future--any loving thought of her second parents--of the
children she had helped to tend--of any youthful companion, any pet
animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not one. There are some
plants that have hardly any roots: you may tear them from their native
nook of rock or wall, and just lay them over your ornamental flower-pot,
and they blossom none the worse. Hetty could have cast all her past life
behind her and never cared to be reminded of it again. I think she had
no feeling at all towards the old house, and did not like the Jacob's
Ladder and the long row of hollyhocks in the garden better than other
flowers--perhaps not so well. It was wonderful how little she seemed to
care about waiting on her uncle, who had been a good father to her--she
hardly ever remembered to reach him his pipe at the right time without
being told, unless a visitor happened to be there, who would have a
better opportunity of seeing her as she walked across the hearth. Hetty
did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people.
And as for those tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Totty, they had
been the very nuisance of her life--as bad as buzzing insects that will
come teasing you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the
eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm, for the children
born before him had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after
the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on
wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were
out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than
either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about
her. And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hetty
would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again;
they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always
bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs
WERE got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys,
Hetty would have hated the very word "hatching," if her aunt had not
bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds
of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under
their mother's wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was
not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the
prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston
Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled,
so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the
hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to
suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose
and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs.
Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid
face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown
earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies
hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty, so it is not surprising that
Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation,
should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected
from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had
sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband.
"She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and
spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was
dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even
when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear
cherub! And we found her wi' her little shoes stuck i' the mud an'
crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit. But Hetty never
minded it, I could see, though she's been at the nussin' o' the child
ever since it was a babby. It's my belief her heart's as hard as a
pebble."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, "thee mustn't judge Hetty too hard. Them
young gells are like the unripe grain; they'll make good meal by and by,
but they're squashy as yet. Thee't see Hetty 'll be all right when she's
got a good husband and children of her own."
"I don't want to be hard upo' the gell. She's got cliver fingers of her
own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi'
the butter, for she's got a cool hand. An' let be what may, I'd strive
to do my part by a niece o' yours--an' THAT I've done, for I've taught
her everything as belongs to a house, an' I've told her her duty often
enough, though, God knows, I've no breath to spare, an' that catchin'
pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi' them three gells in the house I'd
need have twice the strength to keep 'em up to their work. It's
like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one,
another's burnin'."
Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal
from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a
sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery
which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with
shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door,
and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked
in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she always
bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It was
well: for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping heart,
rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She dared
not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let
it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again. We shall know how
it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time
and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her
mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty's.
Dinah delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of that
tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of
the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she
could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering her
room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful
fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow
elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying,
and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in
silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be
only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a
long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene,
for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms. She thought of all
the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful
fields, and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance for
ever. She thought of the struggles and the weariness that might lie
before them in the rest of their life's journey, when she would be away
from them, and know nothing of what was befalling them; and the pressure
of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding
stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed her eyes, that she might
feel more intensely the presence of a Love and Sympathy deeper and more
tender than was breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah's
mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her eyes and to feel
herself enclosed by the Divine Presence; then gradually her fears, her
yearning anxieties for others, melted away like ice-crystals in a warm
ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still, with her hands crossed
on her lap and the pale light resting on her calm face, for at least ten
minutes when she was startled by a loud sound, apparently of something
falling in Hetty's room. But like all sounds that fall on our ears in a
state of abstraction, it had no distinct character, but was simply loud
and startling, so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted
it rightly. She rose and listened, but all was quiet afterwards, and she
reflected that Hetty might merely have knocked something down in getting
into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now, owing to the suggestions
of this sound, her thoughts became concentrated on Hetty--that sweet
young thing, with life and all its trials before her--the solemn daily
duties of the wife and mother--and her mind so unprepared for them all,
bent merely on little foolish, selfish pleasures, like a child hugging
its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in which it will
have to bear hunger and cold and unsheltered darkness. Dinah felt a
double care for Hetty, because she shared Seth's anxious interest in his
brother's lot, and she had not come to the conclusion that Hetty did not
love Adam well enough to marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of
any warm, self-devoting love in Hetty's nature to regard the coldness of
her behaviour towards Adam as any indication that he was not the man
she would like to have for a husband. And this blank in Hetty's nature,
instead of exciting Dinah's dislike, only touched her with a deeper
pity: the lovely face and form affected her as beauty always affects a
pure and tender mind, free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent
divine gift, that gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow
with which it was mingled, as the canker in a lily-white bud is more
grievous to behold than in a common pot-herb.
By the time Dinah had undressed and put on her night-gown, this feeling
about Hetty had gathered a painful intensity; her imagination had
created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow, in which she saw the poor
thing struggling torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and
finding none. It was in this way that Dinah's imagination and sympathy
acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a
deep longing to go now and pour into Hetty's ear all the words of tender
warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Hetty was
already asleep. Dinah put her ear to the partition and heard still some
slight noises, which convinced her that Hetty was not yet in bed. Still
she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction; the
voice that told her to go to Hetty seemed no stronger than the other
voice which said that Hetty was weary, and that going to her now in an
unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately.
Dinah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable guidance than those
inward voices. There was light enough for her, if she opened her Bible,
to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her. She
knew the physiognomy of every page, and could tell on what book she
opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number. It
was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges. Dinah laid it
sideways on the window ledge, where the light was strongest, and then
opened it with her forefinger. The first words she looked at were those
at the top of the left-hand page: "And they all wept sore, and fell on
Paul's neck and kissed him." That was enough for Dinah; she had opened
on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open
his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She hesitated no longer,
but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped on Hetty's. We know
she had to tap twice, because Hetty had to put out her candles and throw
off her black lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened
immediately. Dinah said, "Will you let me come in, Hetty?" and Hetty,
without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider
and let her in.
What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that
mingled twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed and her eyes
glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare,
her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in her
ears. Dinah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of
subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has
returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love. They were
nearly of the same height; Dinah evidently a little the taller as she
put her arm round Hetty's waist and kissed her forehead.
"I knew you were not in bed, my dear," she said, in her sweet clear
voice, which was irritating to Hetty, mingling with her own peevish
vexation like music with jangling chains, "for I heard you moving; and I
longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one that
I shall be here, and we don't know what may happen to-morrow to keep us
apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?"
"Oh yes," said Hetty, hastily turning round and reaching the second
chair in the room, glad that Dinah looked as if she did not notice her
ear-rings.
Dinah sat down, and Hetty began to brush together her hair before
twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which
belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Dinah's
eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details.
"Dear Hetty," she said, "It has been borne in upon my mind to-night that
you may some day be in trouble--trouble is appointed for us all here
below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help than
the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever you
are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and love
you, you have got that friend in Dinah Morris at Snowfield, and if you
come to her, or send for her, she'll never forget this night and the
words she is speaking to you now. Will you remember it, Hetty?"
"Yes," said Hetty, rather frightened. "But why should you think I shall
be in trouble? Do you know of anything?"
Hetty had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Dinah leaned
forwards and took her hands as she answered, "Because, dear, trouble
comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't
God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love
are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with
us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies;
we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our
fellow-men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some
of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen
to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek
for strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support
which will not fail you in the evil day."
Dinah paused and released Hetty's hands that she might not hinder her.
Hetty sat quite still; she felt no response within herself to Dinah's
anxious affection; but Dinah's words uttered with solemn pathetic
distinctness, affected her with a chill fear. Her flush had died away
almost to paleness; she had the timidity of a luxurious pleasure-seeking
nature, which shrinks from the hint of pain. Dinah saw the effect, and
her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest, till Hetty, full of
a vague fear that something evil was some time to befall her, began to
cry.
It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand
the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But
I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn
the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises
and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying
our space wider than it is. Dinah had never seen Hetty affected in this
way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it
was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing, and
began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Hetty was simply in that
excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the
feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she
became irritated under Dinah's caress. She pushed her away impatiently,
and said, with a childish sobbing voice, "Don't talk to me so, Dinah.
Why do you come to frighten me? I've never done anything to you. Why
can't you let me be?"
Poor Dinah felt a pang. She was too wise to persist, and only said
mildly, "Yes, my dear, you're tired; I won't hinder you any longer. Make
haste and get into bed. Good-night."
She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had
been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on
her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that
filled her heart.
As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again--her waking dreams being
merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.
| Hetty and Dinah sleep in two rooms adjoining each other which have no blinds to shut out the moonlight. Hetty is quite upset with her mirror for having so many spots on it; to get a good view of herself she must press her knees against some uncomfortable brass handles. She lights two candles, takes out a smaller, hand-held mirror, and lets down her hair to brush it. She knows that she is prettier than the other young ladies around, especially the ones who have visited the Chase. She puts large glass earrings on and throws a shawl around herself, but she feels vexed because her hands are coarse with work. She imagines that the Captain must want to marry her, because why else would he kiss her in that way. The doctor's assistant married the doctor's niece in secret, and then when everyone found out about it there was no use in being angry. Thus, she imagines that her own marriage must happen in the same way. She is so excited that she gets up in a hurry, and the small mirror crashes to the floor. Eliot observes that her figure is quite lovable in its innocence, and even though she is not wise, it is plain to see that she will love her children very much because she is almost a child herself. Adam feels this way about her, as does the Captain. Eliot notes that nature is tricky in this way, because it makes us believe that a girl with beautiful, long eyelashes is good, which she may or may not be. Eliot compares Hetty to a rootless plant that would be quite happy to be resettled into a new life and to forget the old one completely. She does not care much for her younger cousins as it is, and she takes no pleasure from tending to the hens, except that she can buy ribbons for herself out of the proceeds. The housemaid, who is quite ugly, possesses a much more maternal nature than Hetty. Mrs. Poyser has noted this cold-heartedness in the beautiful Hetty and feels troubled by it. Hetty is afraid of her aunt, so she always bolts the door when she struts around in this fashion, which is just as well, because someone now taps on her door. Hetty blows out the candles and throws off the scarf. Dinah knocks again, because she heard something fall in Hetty's room, began thinking about the self-absorption of the girl, and decided that Hetty was in need of guidance. She tries to tell Hetty that if she is ever in need, she can find her cousin Dinah available, but Hetty misunderstands her. She thinks that Dinah is predicting that something bad will happen to her soon, and she begins to cry. Dinah mistakes her tears for a religious reaction and, pleased, she goes back to her room to pray | summary |
HETTY and Dinah both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each
other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light,
which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of
the moon--more than enough strength to enable Hetty to move about and
undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the
old painted linen-press on which she hung her hat and gown; she could
see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin-cushion; she could see
a reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as
distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her hair
and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking-glass! Hetty got into an
ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been considered
a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the
Poyser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of genteel
household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for
it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm
mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided
jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners,
without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it had a
brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic
air to the very last. But Hetty objected to it because it had numerous
dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing would remove,
and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was fixed
in an upright position, so that she could only get one good view of
her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting down on a
low chair before her dressing-table. And the dressing-table was no
dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the most
awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass
handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at
all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences
to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this
evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual.
Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the
large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of
the lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax
candle--secretly bought at Treddleston--and stuck them in the two
brass sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the
candles; and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-glass,
without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look
first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning her
head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her brush
and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her hair,
and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia
Donnithorne's dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacinthine
curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling
hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate
rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form
a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put
down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before
her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help
sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty's stays
were not of white satin--such as I feel sure heroines must generally
wear--but of a dark greenish cotton texture.
Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thought so. Prettier
than anybody about Hayslope--prettier than any of the ladies she had
ever seen visiting at the Chase--indeed it seemed fine ladies were
rather old and ugly--and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's
daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Hetty looked at
herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had ever
felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her
like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over
again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round
her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still. The
vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she
is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting,
for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the
linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from
which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of rents,
but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off the
whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings
she had in her ears--oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her
ears bored!--and put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass
and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked
just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down again, with
the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round
her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier
down to a little way below the elbow--they were white and plump, and
dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the wrist, she thought with
vexation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that
ladies never did.
Captain Donnithorne couldn't like her to go on doing work: he would like
to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings, perhaps
with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much--no one else
had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He would want
to marry her and make a lady of her; she could hardly dare to shape
the thought--yet how else could it be? Marry her quite secretly, as Mr.
James, the doctor's assistant, married the doctor's niece, and nobody
ever found it out for a long while after, and then it was of no use to
be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in Hetty's hearing.
She didn't know how it would be, but it was quite plain the old Squire
could never be told anything about it, for Hetty was ready to faint with
awe and fright if she came across him at the Chase. He might have been
earth-born, for what she knew. It had never entered her mind that he
had been young like other men; he had always been the old Squire at whom
everybody was frightened. Oh, it was impossible to think how it would
be! But Captain Donnithorne would know; he was a great gentleman, and
could have his way in everything, and could buy everything he liked. And
nothing could be as it had been again: perhaps some day she should be
a grand lady, and ride in her coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded
silk, with feathers in her hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like
Miss Lydia and Lady Dacey, when she saw them going into the dining-room
one evening as she peeped through the little round window in the lobby;
only she should not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same
thickness like Lady Dacey, but very pretty, with her hair done in a
great many different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes
in a white one--she didn't know which she liked best; and Mary Burge and
everybody would perhaps see her going out in her carriage--or rather,
they would HEAR of it: it was impossible to imagine these things
happening at Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this
splendour, Hetty got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the
little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with
a bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision
to care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace
with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room,
in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf
round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears.
How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the
easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a
sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark
rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great
dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an
imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.
Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hetty! How the
men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging on
his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round,
soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just
as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes
wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he
likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little
darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he
wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and
movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise.
Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great
physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she
uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the
language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those
exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as
petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the
dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her
children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round
things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and
the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses,
to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet
wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage
such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and
majestic and the women all lovely and loving.
It was very much in this way that our friend Adam Bede thought about
Hetty; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she
behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only
because she doesn't love me well enough; and he was sure that her love,
whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could
possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration,
pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of
any pretty woman--if you ever COULD, without hard head-breaking
demonstration, believe evil of the ONE supremely pretty woman who has
bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of
the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.
Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so
far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a
dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering
tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and
if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself
being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so clingingly
fond of him. God made these dear women so--and it is a convenient
arrangement in case of sickness.
After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way
sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they
deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we
don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty
reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.
Long dark eyelashes, now--what can be more exquisite? I find it
impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with
a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that
they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in
the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has
been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length
that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or
else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's
grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.
No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty's; and now, while she
walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on
her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to
perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim ill-defined pictures that
her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future; but of every
picture she is the central figure in fine clothes; Captain Donnithorne
is very close to her, putting his arm round her, perhaps kissing her,
and everybody else is admiring and envying her--especially Mary Burge,
whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the side of Hetty's
resplendent toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle with this
dream of the future--any loving thought of her second parents--of the
children she had helped to tend--of any youthful companion, any pet
animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not one. There are some
plants that have hardly any roots: you may tear them from their native
nook of rock or wall, and just lay them over your ornamental flower-pot,
and they blossom none the worse. Hetty could have cast all her past life
behind her and never cared to be reminded of it again. I think she had
no feeling at all towards the old house, and did not like the Jacob's
Ladder and the long row of hollyhocks in the garden better than other
flowers--perhaps not so well. It was wonderful how little she seemed to
care about waiting on her uncle, who had been a good father to her--she
hardly ever remembered to reach him his pipe at the right time without
being told, unless a visitor happened to be there, who would have a
better opportunity of seeing her as she walked across the hearth. Hetty
did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people.
And as for those tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Totty, they had
been the very nuisance of her life--as bad as buzzing insects that will
come teasing you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the
eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm, for the children
born before him had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after
the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on
wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were
out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than
either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about
her. And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hetty
would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again;
they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always
bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs
WERE got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys,
Hetty would have hated the very word "hatching," if her aunt had not
bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds
of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under
their mother's wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was
not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the
prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston
Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled,
so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the
hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to
suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose
and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs.
Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid
face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown
earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies
hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty, so it is not surprising that
Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation,
should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected
from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had
sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband.
"She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and
spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was
dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even
when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear
cherub! And we found her wi' her little shoes stuck i' the mud an'
crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit. But Hetty never
minded it, I could see, though she's been at the nussin' o' the child
ever since it was a babby. It's my belief her heart's as hard as a
pebble."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, "thee mustn't judge Hetty too hard. Them
young gells are like the unripe grain; they'll make good meal by and by,
but they're squashy as yet. Thee't see Hetty 'll be all right when she's
got a good husband and children of her own."
"I don't want to be hard upo' the gell. She's got cliver fingers of her
own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi'
the butter, for she's got a cool hand. An' let be what may, I'd strive
to do my part by a niece o' yours--an' THAT I've done, for I've taught
her everything as belongs to a house, an' I've told her her duty often
enough, though, God knows, I've no breath to spare, an' that catchin'
pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi' them three gells in the house I'd
need have twice the strength to keep 'em up to their work. It's
like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one,
another's burnin'."
Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal
from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a
sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery
which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with
shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door,
and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked
in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she always
bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It was
well: for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping heart,
rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She dared
not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let
it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again. We shall know how
it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time
and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her
mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty's.
Dinah delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of that
tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of
the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she
could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering her
room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful
fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow
elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying,
and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in
silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be
only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a
long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene,
for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms. She thought of all
the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful
fields, and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance for
ever. She thought of the struggles and the weariness that might lie
before them in the rest of their life's journey, when she would be away
from them, and know nothing of what was befalling them; and the pressure
of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding
stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed her eyes, that she might
feel more intensely the presence of a Love and Sympathy deeper and more
tender than was breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah's
mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her eyes and to feel
herself enclosed by the Divine Presence; then gradually her fears, her
yearning anxieties for others, melted away like ice-crystals in a warm
ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still, with her hands crossed
on her lap and the pale light resting on her calm face, for at least ten
minutes when she was startled by a loud sound, apparently of something
falling in Hetty's room. But like all sounds that fall on our ears in a
state of abstraction, it had no distinct character, but was simply loud
and startling, so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted
it rightly. She rose and listened, but all was quiet afterwards, and she
reflected that Hetty might merely have knocked something down in getting
into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now, owing to the suggestions
of this sound, her thoughts became concentrated on Hetty--that sweet
young thing, with life and all its trials before her--the solemn daily
duties of the wife and mother--and her mind so unprepared for them all,
bent merely on little foolish, selfish pleasures, like a child hugging
its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in which it will
have to bear hunger and cold and unsheltered darkness. Dinah felt a
double care for Hetty, because she shared Seth's anxious interest in his
brother's lot, and she had not come to the conclusion that Hetty did not
love Adam well enough to marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of
any warm, self-devoting love in Hetty's nature to regard the coldness of
her behaviour towards Adam as any indication that he was not the man
she would like to have for a husband. And this blank in Hetty's nature,
instead of exciting Dinah's dislike, only touched her with a deeper
pity: the lovely face and form affected her as beauty always affects a
pure and tender mind, free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent
divine gift, that gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow
with which it was mingled, as the canker in a lily-white bud is more
grievous to behold than in a common pot-herb.
By the time Dinah had undressed and put on her night-gown, this feeling
about Hetty had gathered a painful intensity; her imagination had
created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow, in which she saw the poor
thing struggling torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and
finding none. It was in this way that Dinah's imagination and sympathy
acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a
deep longing to go now and pour into Hetty's ear all the words of tender
warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Hetty was
already asleep. Dinah put her ear to the partition and heard still some
slight noises, which convinced her that Hetty was not yet in bed. Still
she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction; the
voice that told her to go to Hetty seemed no stronger than the other
voice which said that Hetty was weary, and that going to her now in an
unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately.
Dinah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable guidance than those
inward voices. There was light enough for her, if she opened her Bible,
to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her. She
knew the physiognomy of every page, and could tell on what book she
opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number. It
was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges. Dinah laid it
sideways on the window ledge, where the light was strongest, and then
opened it with her forefinger. The first words she looked at were those
at the top of the left-hand page: "And they all wept sore, and fell on
Paul's neck and kissed him." That was enough for Dinah; she had opened
on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open
his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She hesitated no longer,
but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped on Hetty's. We know
she had to tap twice, because Hetty had to put out her candles and throw
off her black lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened
immediately. Dinah said, "Will you let me come in, Hetty?" and Hetty,
without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider
and let her in.
What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that
mingled twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed and her eyes
glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare,
her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in her
ears. Dinah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of
subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has
returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love. They were
nearly of the same height; Dinah evidently a little the taller as she
put her arm round Hetty's waist and kissed her forehead.
"I knew you were not in bed, my dear," she said, in her sweet clear
voice, which was irritating to Hetty, mingling with her own peevish
vexation like music with jangling chains, "for I heard you moving; and I
longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one that
I shall be here, and we don't know what may happen to-morrow to keep us
apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?"
"Oh yes," said Hetty, hastily turning round and reaching the second
chair in the room, glad that Dinah looked as if she did not notice her
ear-rings.
Dinah sat down, and Hetty began to brush together her hair before
twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which
belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Dinah's
eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details.
"Dear Hetty," she said, "It has been borne in upon my mind to-night that
you may some day be in trouble--trouble is appointed for us all here
below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help than
the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever you
are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and love
you, you have got that friend in Dinah Morris at Snowfield, and if you
come to her, or send for her, she'll never forget this night and the
words she is speaking to you now. Will you remember it, Hetty?"
"Yes," said Hetty, rather frightened. "But why should you think I shall
be in trouble? Do you know of anything?"
Hetty had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Dinah leaned
forwards and took her hands as she answered, "Because, dear, trouble
comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't
God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love
are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with
us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies;
we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our
fellow-men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some
of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen
to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek
for strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support
which will not fail you in the evil day."
Dinah paused and released Hetty's hands that she might not hinder her.
Hetty sat quite still; she felt no response within herself to Dinah's
anxious affection; but Dinah's words uttered with solemn pathetic
distinctness, affected her with a chill fear. Her flush had died away
almost to paleness; she had the timidity of a luxurious pleasure-seeking
nature, which shrinks from the hint of pain. Dinah saw the effect, and
her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest, till Hetty, full of
a vague fear that something evil was some time to befall her, began to
cry.
It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand
the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But
I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn
the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises
and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying
our space wider than it is. Dinah had never seen Hetty affected in this
way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it
was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing, and
began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Hetty was simply in that
excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the
feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she
became irritated under Dinah's caress. She pushed her away impatiently,
and said, with a childish sobbing voice, "Don't talk to me so, Dinah.
Why do you come to frighten me? I've never done anything to you. Why
can't you let me be?"
Poor Dinah felt a pang. She was too wise to persist, and only said
mildly, "Yes, my dear, you're tired; I won't hinder you any longer. Make
haste and get into bed. Good-night."
She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had
been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on
her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that
filled her heart.
As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again--her waking dreams being
merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
ARTHUR DONNITHORNE, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to
go and see Mr. Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing
so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after.
The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of
the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early
ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best
over a meal.
The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an
easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable
ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father
confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly
conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in
an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an
appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous
times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is
quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for
a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third
glasses of claret.
Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they
committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed:
when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and
are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more
likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you
were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with
a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing
particular to say.
However, Arthur Donnithorne, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on
horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open
his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he
passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest
purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now, for
getting in the hay, about which the farmers have been fearful; and there
is something so healthful in the sharing of a joy that is general and
not merely personal, that this thought about the hay-harvest reacts on
his state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A man
about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to be
felt out of a child's story-book; but when you are among the fields
and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to
simple natural pleasures.
Arthur had passed the village of Hayslope and was approaching the
Broxton side of the hill, when, at a turning in the road, he saw a
figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to
mistake for any one else than Adam Bede, even if there had been no grey,
tailless shepherd-dog at his heels. He was striding along at his usual
rapid pace, and Arthur pushed on his horse to overtake him, for he
retained too much of his boyish feeling for Adam to miss an opportunity
of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that good fellow
did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage: our friend
Arthur liked to do everything that was handsome, and to have his
handsome deeds recognized.
Adam looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's
heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head
with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam
would have done more for Arthur Donnithorne than for any other young man
in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have lost
than the two-feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket; it was
Arthur's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired
lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in
carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with
gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a
pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had
only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into
the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the
influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to
every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher
or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed clever
carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature, which inclined
him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for
questioning them. He had no theories about setting the world to rights,
but he saw there was a great deal of damage done by building with
ill-seasoned timber--by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for
outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of
things--by slovenly joiners' work, and by hasty contracts that could
never be fulfilled without ruining somebody; and he resolved, for his
part, to set his face against such doings. On these points he would
have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in
Loamshire or Stonyshire either; but he felt that beyond these it would
be better for him to defer to people who were more knowing than himself.
He saw as plainly as possible how ill the woods on the estate were
managed, and the shameful state of the farm-buildings; and if old Squire
Donnithorne had asked him the effect of this mismanagement, he would
have spoken his opinion without flinching, but the impulse to a
respectful demeanour towards a "gentleman" would have been strong within
him all the while. The word "gentleman" had a spell for Adam, and, as he
often said, he "couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine
by being coxy to's betters." I must remind you again that Adam had the
blood of the peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime
half a century ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be
obsolete.
Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Adam's was
assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that
he thought far more of Arthur's good qualities, and attached far more
value to very slight actions of his, than if they had been the qualities
and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it would be
a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young squire came into
the estate--such a generous open-hearted disposition as he had, and an
"uncommon" notion about improvements and repairs, considering he was
only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect and affection in
the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Arthur Donnithorne rode
up.
"Well, Adam, how are you?" said Arthur, holding out his hand. He never
shook hands with any of the farmers, and Adam felt the honour keenly. "I
could swear to your back a long way off. It's just the same back, only
broader, as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember?"
"Aye, sir, I remember. It 'ud be a poor look-out if folks didn't
remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no
more about old friends than we do about new uns, then."
"You're going to Broxton, I suppose?" said Arthur, putting his horse
on at a slow pace while Adam walked by his side. "Are you going to the
rectory?"
"No, sir, I'm going to see about Bradwell's barn. They're afraid of the
roof pushing the walls out, and I'm going to see what can be done with
it before we send the stuff and the workmen."
"Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Adam, doesn't he? I
should think he will make you his partner soon. He will, if he's wise."
"Nay, sir, I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A
foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his
business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for
a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for
it."
"I know that, Adam; I know you work for him as well as if you were
working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now,
and could turn the business to better account perhaps. The old man must
give up his business sometime, and he has no son; I suppose he'll want a
son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of his
own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into the
business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest some
money in that way, for the sake of having you settled on the estate. I'm
sure I should profit by it in the end. And perhaps I shall be better off
in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I'm of age; and
when I've paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look about me."
"You're very good to say so, sir, and I'm not unthankful. But"--Adam
continued, in a decided tone--"I shouldn't like to make any offers
to Mr. Burge, or t' have any made for me. I see no clear road to a
partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that 'ud
be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair interest
then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time."
"Very well, Adam," said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwine had said
about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge,
"we'll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be
buried?"
"On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine's coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad
when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It
cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working
it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered
tree."
"Ah, you've had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam.
I don't think you've ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like
other youngsters. You've always had some care on your mind."
"Why, yes, sir; but that's nothing to make a fuss about. If we're men
and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't
be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their
wings, and never know their kin when they see 'em, and get a fresh lot
every year. I've had enough to be thankful for: I've allays had health
and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it
a great thing as I've had Bartle Massey's night-school to go to. He's
helped me to knowledge I could never ha' got by myself."
"What a rare fellow you are, Adam!" said Arthur, after a pause, in which
he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. "I could
hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would
knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you."
"God forbid I should ever do that, sir," said Adam, looking round at
Arthur and smiling. "I used to fight for fun, but I've never done that
since I was the cause o' poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a fortnight.
I'll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel.
If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop
him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up."
Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that
made him say presently, "I should think now, Adam, you never have any
struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had
made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you
would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean,
you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won't do
a thing, and then doing it after all?"
"Well," said Adam, slowly, after a moment's hesitation, "no. I don't
remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I'd made my mind up, as
you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for
things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've
seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never
do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever
see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the
mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to
make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o' better. But there's a
difference between the things folks call wrong. I'm not for making a
sin of every little fool's trick, or bit o' nonsense anybody may be let
into, like some o' them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether
it isn't worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit o' fun.
But it isn't my way to be see-saw about anything: I think my fault lies
th' other way. When I've said a thing, if it's only to myself, it's hard
for me to go back."
"Yes, that's just what I expected of you," said Arthur. "You've got an
iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man's resolution
may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and then. We may
determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our
pockets, but we can't prevent our mouths from watering."
"That's true, sir, but there's nothing like settling with ourselves as
there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no use looking on
life as if it was Treddles'on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and
get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where's the use
o' me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do."
"I'm not so sure of that, Adam. You've had four or five years of
experience more than I've had, and I think your life has been a better
school to you than college has been to me."
"Why, sir, you seem to think o' college something like what Bartle
Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders--just
good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em. But he's
got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has--it never touches anything
but it cuts. Here's the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as
you're going to the rectory."
"Good-bye, Adam, good-bye."
Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked along
the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the
rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on the left
hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small low room,
belonging to the old part of the house--dark with the sombre covers of
the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning
as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on
the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola
pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the
side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room
enticing. In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that
radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning
toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno's
brown curly back; and close to Juno's tail, which was wagging with calm
matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an
ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat
Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities
as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of
observing. On the table, at Mr. Irwine's elbow, lay the first volume of
the Foulis AEschylus, which Arthur knew well by sight; and the silver
coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam
which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast.
"Hallo, Arthur, that's a good fellow! You're just in time," said Mr.
Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill.
"Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven't you got some
cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days,
Arthur; you haven't been to breakfast with me these five years."
"It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast," said Arthur;
"and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with
you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at
any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn't agree with
him."
Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose.
He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine's presence than the
confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared
the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of
shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make
Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little scenes
in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool?
And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine's, and doing the very
opposite of what he intended! Irwine would think him a shilly-shally
fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way;
the conversation might lead up to it.
"I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said
Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a
clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by
me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that
regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become
studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has
killed a hare, and when I've got through my 'justicing,' as Carroll
calls it, I'm inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back
I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a
mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I'm always the
same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the
stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D'Oyley left
Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should
have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn't run in
your family blood."
"No indeed. It's well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to
adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. 'Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor,' and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps
stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them.
But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to
a country gentleman; as far as I can see, he'd much better have a
knowledge of manures. I've been reading your friend Arthur Young's books
lately, and there's nothing I should like better than to carry out some
of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their
land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same
dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather
will never let me have any power while he lives, but there's nothing
I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire side of the
estate--it's in a dismal condition--and set improvements on foot, and
gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like
to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats to me with a
look of goodwill."
"Bravo, Arthur! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn't
make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing
the quantity of food to maintain scholars--and rectors who appreciate
scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may
I be there to see. You'll want a portly rector to complete the picture,
and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard
work. Only don't set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to
get in consequence. I'm not sure that men are the fondest of those who
try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the
whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make
it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old
boy--popularity or usefulness--else you may happen to miss both."
"Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn't make himself personally
agreeable to his tenants. I don't believe there's anything you can't
prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn't live in
a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved. And it's very
pleasant to go among the tenants here--they seem all so well inclined
to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little
lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances
were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one could persuade
them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are."
"Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don't get a wife who
will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My
mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says, 'I'll
never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he falls
in love with.' She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules
the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil you know,
and I maintain that you're not of that watery quality. So mind you don't
disgrace my judgment."
Arthur winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Irwine's opinion
about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be
sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and
getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this
point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination
to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and
lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning
himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate
friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such
serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own
belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a
thing to make a fuss about; and what could Irwine do for him that he
could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg's
lameness--go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the
old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the
next minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how
thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwine. No! He
would not be vacillating again--he WOULD do what he had meant to do,
this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the
conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics,
his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause
for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, "But I think
it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character
that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution
doesn't insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable
diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a
sort of witchery from a woman."
"Yes; but there's this difference between love and smallpox, or
bewitchment either--that if you detect the disease at an early stage and
try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any
further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative doses
which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences
before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass through which
you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline;
though I'm afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just
at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified
with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent
marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the
Prometheus."
The smile that flitted across Arthur's face was a faint one, and instead
of following Mr. Irwine's playful lead, he said, quite seriously--"Yes,
that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing, that after
all one's reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by
moods that one can't calculate on beforehand. I don't think a man ought
to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way, in
spite of his resolutions."
"Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his
reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with
his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional
action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any
particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we
carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
"Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of
circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise."
"Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note
lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest
man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way."
"But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation
into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at
all?"
"No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they
foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis.
Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences,
quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that
are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds
on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of
excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion,
Arthur? Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this
philosophical, general way?"
In asking this question, Mr. Irwine pushed his plate away, threw himself
back in his chair, and looked straight at Arthur. He really suspected
that Arthur wanted to tell him something, and thought of smoothing
the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought
suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Arthur shrank
back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had
taken a more serious tone than he had intended--it would quite mislead
Irwine--he would imagine there was a deep passion for Hetty, while there
was no such thing. He was conscious of colouring, and was annoyed at his
boyishness.
"Oh no, no danger," he said as indifferently as he could. "I don't know
that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are
little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might
happen in the future."
Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur's
which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our
mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business
of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not
acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a
small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of
the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent
secretly busy in Arthur's mind at this moment--possibly it was the fear
lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession to the
rector a serious annoyance, in case he should NOT be able quite to carry
out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was not so. The
human soul is a very complex thing.
The idea of Hetty had just crossed Mr. Irwine's mind as he looked
inquiringly at Arthur, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed
the thought which had quickly followed--that there could be nothing
serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever saw
her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Poyser;
and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no more
serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the
little chit's vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic drama of her
life. Arthur would soon join his regiment, and be far away: no, there
could be no danger in that quarter, even if Arthur's character had not
been a strong security against it. His honest, patronizing pride in
the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even
against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.
If there had been anything special on Arthur's mind in the previous
conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details,
and Mr. Irwine was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He
perceived a change of subject would be welcome, and said, "By the way,
Arthur, at your colonel's birthday fete there were some transparencies
that made a great effect in honour of Britannia, and Pitt, and the
Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the 'generous youth,' the hero of
the day. Don't you think you should get up something of the same sort to
astonish our weak minds?"
The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating, the rope to
which he might have clung had drifted away--he must trust now to his own
swimming.
In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Irwine was called for on business,
and Arthur, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense
of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off
for Eagledale without an hour's delay.
Book Two
| The Captain sets out to see the vicar early in the morning, so that he can discuss the affair of Hetty with him over breakfast. He knows that the vicar takes his breakfast alone. He runs into Adam Bede along the way, and he makes Adam very happy by shaking his hand. Adam taught the Captain some carpentry when he was a boy, which made him love the older man very much. He, too, advises Adam to enter into a partnership with Mr. Burge, but Adam makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with Mary Burge. They part ways. When the Captain arrives at the vicar's house, he finds it harder than he thought it would be to bring up the subject of Hetty. He resolves to do it, however, especially because he performed his last resolution so poorly. When he turns the conversation to the question of love, the vicar asks him directly if he is infatuated with someone. The Captain denies it, and soon the possibility to talk about Hetty passes; the breakfast is over | summary |
ARTHUR DONNITHORNE, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to
go and see Mr. Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing
so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after.
The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of
the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early
ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best
over a meal.
The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an
easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable
ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father
confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly
conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in
an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an
appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous
times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is
quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for
a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third
glasses of claret.
Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they
committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed:
when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and
are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more
likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you
were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with
a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing
particular to say.
However, Arthur Donnithorne, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on
horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open
his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he
passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest
purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now, for
getting in the hay, about which the farmers have been fearful; and there
is something so healthful in the sharing of a joy that is general and
not merely personal, that this thought about the hay-harvest reacts on
his state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A man
about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to be
felt out of a child's story-book; but when you are among the fields
and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to
simple natural pleasures.
Arthur had passed the village of Hayslope and was approaching the
Broxton side of the hill, when, at a turning in the road, he saw a
figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to
mistake for any one else than Adam Bede, even if there had been no grey,
tailless shepherd-dog at his heels. He was striding along at his usual
rapid pace, and Arthur pushed on his horse to overtake him, for he
retained too much of his boyish feeling for Adam to miss an opportunity
of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that good fellow
did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage: our friend
Arthur liked to do everything that was handsome, and to have his
handsome deeds recognized.
Adam looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's
heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head
with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam
would have done more for Arthur Donnithorne than for any other young man
in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have lost
than the two-feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket; it was
Arthur's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired
lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in
carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with
gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a
pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had
only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into
the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the
influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to
every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher
or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed clever
carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature, which inclined
him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for
questioning them. He had no theories about setting the world to rights,
but he saw there was a great deal of damage done by building with
ill-seasoned timber--by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for
outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of
things--by slovenly joiners' work, and by hasty contracts that could
never be fulfilled without ruining somebody; and he resolved, for his
part, to set his face against such doings. On these points he would
have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in
Loamshire or Stonyshire either; but he felt that beyond these it would
be better for him to defer to people who were more knowing than himself.
He saw as plainly as possible how ill the woods on the estate were
managed, and the shameful state of the farm-buildings; and if old Squire
Donnithorne had asked him the effect of this mismanagement, he would
have spoken his opinion without flinching, but the impulse to a
respectful demeanour towards a "gentleman" would have been strong within
him all the while. The word "gentleman" had a spell for Adam, and, as he
often said, he "couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine
by being coxy to's betters." I must remind you again that Adam had the
blood of the peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime
half a century ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be
obsolete.
Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Adam's was
assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that
he thought far more of Arthur's good qualities, and attached far more
value to very slight actions of his, than if they had been the qualities
and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it would be
a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young squire came into
the estate--such a generous open-hearted disposition as he had, and an
"uncommon" notion about improvements and repairs, considering he was
only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect and affection in
the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Arthur Donnithorne rode
up.
"Well, Adam, how are you?" said Arthur, holding out his hand. He never
shook hands with any of the farmers, and Adam felt the honour keenly. "I
could swear to your back a long way off. It's just the same back, only
broader, as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember?"
"Aye, sir, I remember. It 'ud be a poor look-out if folks didn't
remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no
more about old friends than we do about new uns, then."
"You're going to Broxton, I suppose?" said Arthur, putting his horse
on at a slow pace while Adam walked by his side. "Are you going to the
rectory?"
"No, sir, I'm going to see about Bradwell's barn. They're afraid of the
roof pushing the walls out, and I'm going to see what can be done with
it before we send the stuff and the workmen."
"Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Adam, doesn't he? I
should think he will make you his partner soon. He will, if he's wise."
"Nay, sir, I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A
foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his
business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for
a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for
it."
"I know that, Adam; I know you work for him as well as if you were
working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now,
and could turn the business to better account perhaps. The old man must
give up his business sometime, and he has no son; I suppose he'll want a
son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of his
own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into the
business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest some
money in that way, for the sake of having you settled on the estate. I'm
sure I should profit by it in the end. And perhaps I shall be better off
in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I'm of age; and
when I've paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look about me."
"You're very good to say so, sir, and I'm not unthankful. But"--Adam
continued, in a decided tone--"I shouldn't like to make any offers
to Mr. Burge, or t' have any made for me. I see no clear road to a
partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that 'ud
be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair interest
then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time."
"Very well, Adam," said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwine had said
about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge,
"we'll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be
buried?"
"On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine's coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad
when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It
cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working
it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered
tree."
"Ah, you've had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam.
I don't think you've ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like
other youngsters. You've always had some care on your mind."
"Why, yes, sir; but that's nothing to make a fuss about. If we're men
and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't
be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their
wings, and never know their kin when they see 'em, and get a fresh lot
every year. I've had enough to be thankful for: I've allays had health
and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it
a great thing as I've had Bartle Massey's night-school to go to. He's
helped me to knowledge I could never ha' got by myself."
"What a rare fellow you are, Adam!" said Arthur, after a pause, in which
he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. "I could
hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would
knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you."
"God forbid I should ever do that, sir," said Adam, looking round at
Arthur and smiling. "I used to fight for fun, but I've never done that
since I was the cause o' poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a fortnight.
I'll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel.
If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop
him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up."
Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that
made him say presently, "I should think now, Adam, you never have any
struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had
made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you
would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean,
you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won't do
a thing, and then doing it after all?"
"Well," said Adam, slowly, after a moment's hesitation, "no. I don't
remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I'd made my mind up, as
you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for
things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've
seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never
do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever
see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the
mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to
make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o' better. But there's a
difference between the things folks call wrong. I'm not for making a
sin of every little fool's trick, or bit o' nonsense anybody may be let
into, like some o' them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether
it isn't worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit o' fun.
But it isn't my way to be see-saw about anything: I think my fault lies
th' other way. When I've said a thing, if it's only to myself, it's hard
for me to go back."
"Yes, that's just what I expected of you," said Arthur. "You've got an
iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man's resolution
may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and then. We may
determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our
pockets, but we can't prevent our mouths from watering."
"That's true, sir, but there's nothing like settling with ourselves as
there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no use looking on
life as if it was Treddles'on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and
get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where's the use
o' me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do."
"I'm not so sure of that, Adam. You've had four or five years of
experience more than I've had, and I think your life has been a better
school to you than college has been to me."
"Why, sir, you seem to think o' college something like what Bartle
Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders--just
good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em. But he's
got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has--it never touches anything
but it cuts. Here's the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as
you're going to the rectory."
"Good-bye, Adam, good-bye."
Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked along
the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the
rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on the left
hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small low room,
belonging to the old part of the house--dark with the sombre covers of
the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning
as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on
the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola
pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the
side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room
enticing. In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that
radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning
toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno's
brown curly back; and close to Juno's tail, which was wagging with calm
matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an
ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat
Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities
as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of
observing. On the table, at Mr. Irwine's elbow, lay the first volume of
the Foulis AEschylus, which Arthur knew well by sight; and the silver
coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam
which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast.
"Hallo, Arthur, that's a good fellow! You're just in time," said Mr.
Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill.
"Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven't you got some
cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days,
Arthur; you haven't been to breakfast with me these five years."
"It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast," said Arthur;
"and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with
you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at
any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn't agree with
him."
Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose.
He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine's presence than the
confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared
the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of
shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make
Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little scenes
in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool?
And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine's, and doing the very
opposite of what he intended! Irwine would think him a shilly-shally
fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way;
the conversation might lead up to it.
"I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said
Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a
clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by
me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that
regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become
studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has
killed a hare, and when I've got through my 'justicing,' as Carroll
calls it, I'm inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back
I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a
mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I'm always the
same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the
stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D'Oyley left
Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should
have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn't run in
your family blood."
"No indeed. It's well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to
adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. 'Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor,' and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps
stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them.
But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to
a country gentleman; as far as I can see, he'd much better have a
knowledge of manures. I've been reading your friend Arthur Young's books
lately, and there's nothing I should like better than to carry out some
of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their
land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same
dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather
will never let me have any power while he lives, but there's nothing
I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire side of the
estate--it's in a dismal condition--and set improvements on foot, and
gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like
to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats to me with a
look of goodwill."
"Bravo, Arthur! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn't
make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing
the quantity of food to maintain scholars--and rectors who appreciate
scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may
I be there to see. You'll want a portly rector to complete the picture,
and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard
work. Only don't set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to
get in consequence. I'm not sure that men are the fondest of those who
try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the
whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make
it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old
boy--popularity or usefulness--else you may happen to miss both."
"Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn't make himself personally
agreeable to his tenants. I don't believe there's anything you can't
prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn't live in
a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved. And it's very
pleasant to go among the tenants here--they seem all so well inclined
to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little
lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances
were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one could persuade
them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are."
"Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don't get a wife who
will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My
mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says, 'I'll
never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he falls
in love with.' She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules
the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil you know,
and I maintain that you're not of that watery quality. So mind you don't
disgrace my judgment."
Arthur winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Irwine's opinion
about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be
sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and
getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this
point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination
to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and
lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning
himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate
friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such
serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own
belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a
thing to make a fuss about; and what could Irwine do for him that he
could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg's
lameness--go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the
old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the
next minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how
thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwine. No! He
would not be vacillating again--he WOULD do what he had meant to do,
this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the
conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics,
his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause
for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, "But I think
it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character
that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution
doesn't insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable
diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a
sort of witchery from a woman."
"Yes; but there's this difference between love and smallpox, or
bewitchment either--that if you detect the disease at an early stage and
try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any
further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative doses
which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences
before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass through which
you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline;
though I'm afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just
at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified
with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent
marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the
Prometheus."
The smile that flitted across Arthur's face was a faint one, and instead
of following Mr. Irwine's playful lead, he said, quite seriously--"Yes,
that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing, that after
all one's reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by
moods that one can't calculate on beforehand. I don't think a man ought
to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way, in
spite of his resolutions."
"Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his
reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with
his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional
action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any
particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we
carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
"Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of
circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise."
"Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note
lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest
man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way."
"But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation
into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at
all?"
"No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they
foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis.
Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences,
quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that
are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds
on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of
excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion,
Arthur? Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this
philosophical, general way?"
In asking this question, Mr. Irwine pushed his plate away, threw himself
back in his chair, and looked straight at Arthur. He really suspected
that Arthur wanted to tell him something, and thought of smoothing
the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought
suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Arthur shrank
back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had
taken a more serious tone than he had intended--it would quite mislead
Irwine--he would imagine there was a deep passion for Hetty, while there
was no such thing. He was conscious of colouring, and was annoyed at his
boyishness.
"Oh no, no danger," he said as indifferently as he could. "I don't know
that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are
little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might
happen in the future."
Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur's
which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our
mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business
of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not
acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a
small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of
the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent
secretly busy in Arthur's mind at this moment--possibly it was the fear
lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession to the
rector a serious annoyance, in case he should NOT be able quite to carry
out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was not so. The
human soul is a very complex thing.
The idea of Hetty had just crossed Mr. Irwine's mind as he looked
inquiringly at Arthur, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed
the thought which had quickly followed--that there could be nothing
serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever saw
her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Poyser;
and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no more
serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the
little chit's vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic drama of her
life. Arthur would soon join his regiment, and be far away: no, there
could be no danger in that quarter, even if Arthur's character had not
been a strong security against it. His honest, patronizing pride in
the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even
against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.
If there had been anything special on Arthur's mind in the previous
conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details,
and Mr. Irwine was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He
perceived a change of subject would be welcome, and said, "By the way,
Arthur, at your colonel's birthday fete there were some transparencies
that made a great effect in honour of Britannia, and Pitt, and the
Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the 'generous youth,' the hero of
the day. Don't you think you should get up something of the same sort to
astonish our weak minds?"
The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating, the rope to
which he might have clung had drifted away--he must trust now to his own
swimming.
In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Irwine was called for on business,
and Arthur, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense
of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off
for Eagledale without an hour's delay.
Book Two
| Although the narrator's opinions are not so evident in Chapter Nine, Eliot implicitly endorses some of the precepts of Methodism by showing Hetty's vanity in a negative light. All that she desires are material goods, and she prefers the Captain to Adam not because he is smarter or better-looking, but because he can provide her with these goods. This preference fits with her seeming vapidity in earlier chapters. The reader has not yet seen her interact with Adam, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that she is a good match for him. This chapter also connects the visual sense with attraction in a way that was common in the Victorian period. Sight was considered more of a masculine trait, while touch and smell were considered more feminine. This idea might help explain the vicar's logic in recommending that the Captain avoid looking at the object of his affections. In Chapter Ten, it is perhaps even more remarkable that Dinah is able to give spiritual guidance to one old lady in her own home than to preach to an entire village, because she now is in a personal setting that can hardly benefit from the stamp of authenticity given by an established audience. It is, therefore, a testament to her character that she is able to gain the trust of the old lady so quickly. This point is especially striking given Lisbeth's immediate mistrust of anyone who is Methodist. Adam's dream uses the literary device of foreshadowing to indicate a conflict that he believes to be beginning in his life. His dream superimposes the image of Hetty onto his everyday affairs, indicating that he would like to marry her. Yet, she always is quickly followed in his dream by the image of his mother, who seems to disapprove of her. This potential conflict is confirmed in his waking life, when his mother does indeed bemoan the idea that he might get married. Chapter Eleven foreshadows a number of possible avenues that the novel could follow. Dinah takes on the role of helping Lisbeth quite easily, making the porridge and cleaning the house to her satisfaction. This is in contradiction to the statement that Lisbeth has made on a number of occasions that her happiness and usefulness would be over if one of the boys brought another woman into the house by marrying. Eliot foreshadows the fact that Dinah could make a peaceful and harmonious addition to the Bede family, but this point raises the question of which Bede brother she might marry. Until this point, a reader could have assumed that Seth and Dinah are the right match because of their shared religion. But Adam seems to affect Dinah in a way that Seth cannot, and he expresses his interest in her, although the narrator claims that beholding her is like looking at moonlight after dreaming about sunlight. Chapter Twelve gives an unusual amount of depth to the usual tale of the squire seducing the milkmaid. Normally, the squire is careless if not evil, and he normally is aware of the power of his position over the milkmaid and is willing to take advantage of it. In this chapter, however, the fundamentally "nice" young man struggles with his conscience, aware of the fact that he could ruin Hetty's reputation or make her miserable. Still, his choice of reading while he waits for Hetty on the path is a subtle hint that his resolve to remain virtuous may not win out. Zeluco is a novel by Dr. John Moore about a rich Italian seducer. Despite his aspiration to have sound morals concerning Hetty, it is more than probable that the Captain will give in to temptation. In Chapter Thirteen, the Captain has a superstition regarding the fault of his actions--that the fault rests on the attractive grove of woods, rather than on himself. His idea is consistent with that of a spoiled aristocrat in that he looks to place responsibility on others before himself. Yet, superstition is a characteristic that Eliot has specifically identified with the peasantry . In any case, the Captain's lack of control over his actions should be cause for serious concern to Hetty, who is too wrapped up in her dreams of luxury to notice that she could be ruining her reputation. Eliot's main literary device for describing human nature is the extended metaphor. In Chapter Fourteen, she does not merely write that Hetty is much less intelligent than, or has a hard time comprehending her cousin Hetty, but she figuratively compares them to two different types of birds. "Hetty looked at in much the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow, or the mounting of the lark." The purpose of this extended metaphor is not only to clarify the difference between the two women, but also to attach their relationship to the descriptions of the British countryside that often serve as preludes to the action in Adam Bede. The detail at the end of the chapter about Totty's preference for Dinah over Hetty once again shows the superiority of the slightly less traditionally attractive niece. The fact that Hetty does not feel offended by this preference shows her insensitivity. It also shows the extent to which she is preoccupied with her memories of the Captain. In Chapter Fifteen, Eliot ironically describes Hetty's discomfort in using her old looking glass, writing that "devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual." The idea of the female toilette as a pagan, pseudo-religious rite is not unique to Eliot. She perhaps borrowed it from Alexander Pope's mock-epic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Pope's poem describes the assault on a woman's lock of hair as tantamount to a rape, and the poem criticizes as almost irreligious the heroine Belinda's self-absorption. The dichotomy separating Dinah and Hetty into two opposite poles is reinforced in this chapter. When Dinah enters into Hetty's room, the two are compared as opposites: Hetty has a rosy face, while Dinah's is pale; Hetty wears showy glass earrings and green stays, while Dinah wears a simple white nightdress. The difference between the two girls, however, is heightened to a misunderstanding at the end of this chapter. In Chapter Sixteen, the Captain has two strong male role models that could keep him on the straight and narrow path in life, but he is impeded from telling either man about Hetty. Adam, on the one hand, is much beloved by the Captain, but the Captain rightly judges that he has iron resolution, so it would be useless for him to seek advice about how to control his own resolution. In addition he knows that, as a young man, Adam may be a rival in the case of Hetty. Nevertheless, there should be no impediment to his telling the vicar about his predicament. Their relationship is balanced by the fact that the vicar behaves paternally towards him, while acknowledging that he is at the mercy of the younger man because he is richer. The Captain is impeded from telling the vicar about Hetty because, since he has mentioned her on a previous occasion, he is worried that the vicar will think that he is more in love with Hetty than he actually is. Also, he wants the vicar to think well of him, and he seems worried that the vicar might think less of him if he knows about the attraction to the rather silly Hetty. | analysis |
"THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!" I hear one of my
readers exclaim. "How much more edifying it would have been if you had
made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put
into his mouth the most beautiful things--quite as good as reading a
sermon."
Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist
to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then,
of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own
liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and
put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it
happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such
arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things
as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless
defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection
faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely
as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box,
narrating my experience on oath.
Sixty years ago--it is a long time, so no wonder things have
changed--all clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to
believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is
probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings
of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no
better than you like Mr. Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him
a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that
facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and
refined taste! Perhaps you will say, "Do improve the facts a little,
then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our
privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it
up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed
entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act
unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong
side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance
whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able
to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we
shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to
undoubting confidence."
But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner
who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar,
whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted
predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one
failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you
in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you
since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who
has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These
fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither
straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their
dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is
passed--that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is
these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of
goodness you should be able to admire--for whom you should cherish all
possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had
the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much
better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily
work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the
dusty streets and the common green fields--on the real breathing men
and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your
prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling,
your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things
seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity,
which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread.
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a
delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and
the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which
we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real
unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even
when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the
exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much harder than to
say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth.
It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in
many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source
of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous
homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my
fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic
suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from
cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an
old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner,
while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls
on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and
her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious
necessaries of life to her--or I turn to that village wedding, kept
between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance
with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged
friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably
with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable
contentment and goodwill. "Foh!" says my idealistic friend, "what vulgar
details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact
likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy,
ugly people!"
But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I
hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have
not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British,
squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not
startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst
us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the
Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet
to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their
miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in secret by
motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have
never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of
yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered
kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of
young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite
sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and
yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who
waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that
bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless
force and brings beauty with it.
All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate
it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our gardens and in our
houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret
of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an
angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the
celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face
upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not
impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of
Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those
heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs
and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done
the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their
brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In
this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have
no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should
remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of
our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit
a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them;
therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a
life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see
beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly
the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world;
few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all
my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those
feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the
foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I
touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are
picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your
common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but
creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should
have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who
weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with
the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers--more needful that
my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle
goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in
the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and
in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds
of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest
abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able
novelist.
And so I come back to Mr. Irwine, with whom I desire you to be in
perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the
clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not--as he ought to have
been--a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national
church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people
in Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their
clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it
can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love,
I must believe that Mr. Irwine's influence in his parish was a more
wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty
years afterwards, when Mr. Irwine had been gathered to his fathers. It
is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation,
visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe
in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh--put a stop, indeed, to the
Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness and
too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam Bede, to
whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could
be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr.
Ryde. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him, so
that almost every church-goer under fifty began to distinguish as well
between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that
standard, as if he had been born and bred a Dissenter; and for some time
after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that
quiet rural district. "But," said Adam, "I've seen pretty clear, ever
since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It
isn't notions sets people doing the right thing--it's feelings. It's the
same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics--a man may
be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire
and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he
must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than
his own ease. Somehow, the congregation began to fall off, and people
began to speak light o' Mr. Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom;
but, you see, he was sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices
with the people as worked for him; and his preaching wouldn't go down
well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i' the
parish, punishing folks for doing wrong; and he scolded 'em from
the pulpit as if he'd been a Ranter, and yet he couldn't abide the
Dissenters, and was a deal more set against 'em than Mr. Irwine was. And
then he didn't keep within his income, for he seemed to think at first
go-off that six hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr.
Donnithorne. That's a sore mischief I've often seen with the poor
curates jumping into a bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a
deal thought on at a distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for
math'matics and the natur o' things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He
was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call 'em the bulwarks of
the Reformation; but I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as
leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Irwine
was as different as could be: as quick!--he understood what you meant in
a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you'd made
a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and
th' old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never saw
HIM interfering and scolding, and trying to play th' emperor. Ah, he was
a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to's mother and sisters.
That poor sickly Miss Anne--he seemed to think more of her than of
anybody else in the world. There wasn't a soul in the parish had a word
to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so
old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work."
"Well," I said, "that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays;
but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to life again,
and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he
didn't preach better after all your praise of him."
"Nay, nay," said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in
his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, "nobody has ever
heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher. He didn't go into deep
speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man's inward life
as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that 'll
follow,' and, 'Do that and this 'll follow.' There's things go on in the
soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind,
as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so you look
back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you
can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that'; and I'll go so far with
the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep
speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about
it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn't go into those things--he preached
short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much
up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other
folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he
made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring
up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say--you know she
would have her word about everything--she said, Mr. Irwine was like a
good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on
it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted
you, and after all he left you much the same."
"But didn't Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part
of religion that you talk of, Adam? Couldn't you get more out of his
sermons than out of Mr. Irwine's?"
"Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty
clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides
doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding
names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never
known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names,
though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. I've
heard a deal o' doctrine i' my time, for I used to go after the
Dissenting preachers along wi' Seth, when I was a lad o' seventeen, and
got puzzling myself a deal about th' Arminians and the Calvinists. The
Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Seth, who could never
abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held fast by
the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a hole or
two in their notions, and I got disputing wi' one o' the class leaders
down at Treddles'on, and harassed him so, first o' this side and then
o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's the devil making use o'
your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the simplicity o'
the truth.' I couldn't help laughing then, but as I was going home, I
thought the man wasn't far wrong. I began to see as all this weighing
and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks
are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their
own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o'
these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and
conceited for't. So I took to going nowhere but to church, and hearing
nobody but Mr. Irwine, for he said nothing but what was good and what
you'd be the wiser for remembering. And I found it better for my soul
to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making
a clatter about what I could never understand. And they're poor foolish
questions after all; for what have we got either inside or outside of us
but what comes from God? If we've got a resolution to do right, He gave
it us, I reckon, first or last; but I see plain enough we shall never do
it without a resolution, and that's enough for me."
Adam, you perceive, was a warm admirer, perhaps a partial judge, of Mr.
Irwine, as, happily, some of us still are of the people we have known
familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty
order of minds who pant after the ideal, and are oppressed by a general
sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit
objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with
the confidence of these select natures, and find them to concur in
the experience that great men are overestimated and small men are
insupportable; that if you would love a woman without ever looking back
on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and if
you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never
make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk
from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own
experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical
assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our
illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature
can command at a moment's notice. Human converse, I think some wise
man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I herewith discharge my
conscience, and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of
admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, who were
occasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in a
higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer; and that
the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is
lovable--the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime
mysteries--has been by living a great deal among people more or less
commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very
surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighbourhoods where
they dwelt. Ten to one most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity
saw nothing at all in them. For I have observed this remarkable
coincidence, that the select natures who pant after the ideal, and
find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their
reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and
pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of
the Royal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbours in
the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the people in his own
parish--and they were all the people he knew--in these emphatic words:
"Aye, sir, I've said it often, and I'll say it again, they're a poor lot
i' this parish--a poor lot, sir, big and little." I think he had a
dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish, he might find
neighbours worthy of him; and indeed he did subsequently transfer
himself to the Saracen's Head, which was doing a thriving business in
the back street of a neighbouring market-town. But, oddly enough, he has
found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the
inhabitants of Shepperton--"a poor lot, sir, big and little, and them
as comes for a go o' gin are no better than them as comes for a pint o'
twopenny--a poor lot."
| Eliot anticipates that her reader will be shocked by the dullness of the vicar, perhaps hoping that the vicar would be given a fine sermon to offer. She reminds the reader that her goal, however, is a faithful reprint of life as it actually is. Eliot does not want to represent people as more clearly good and evil than is the norm in real life. She admires the Dutch painters who are realists more than those who paint angels. She believes in beauty of form, but she also thinks that realism has its own type of beauty and that there are so few true heroes and heroines in the world that it would be a waste of time to devote too much written material to them. Besides, it does not matter so much that the vicar is sound in terms of his doctrine as that he is loved. So the vicar is better, although he is not a very good preacher. Eliot observes that heroes are often not what they are built up to be | summary |
"THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!" I hear one of my
readers exclaim. "How much more edifying it would have been if you had
made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put
into his mouth the most beautiful things--quite as good as reading a
sermon."
Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist
to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then,
of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own
liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and
put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it
happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such
arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things
as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless
defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection
faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely
as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box,
narrating my experience on oath.
Sixty years ago--it is a long time, so no wonder things have
changed--all clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to
believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is
probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings
of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no
better than you like Mr. Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him
a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that
facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and
refined taste! Perhaps you will say, "Do improve the facts a little,
then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our
privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it
up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed
entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act
unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong
side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance
whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able
to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we
shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to
undoubting confidence."
But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner
who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar,
whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted
predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one
failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you
in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you
since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who
has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These
fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither
straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their
dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is
passed--that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is
these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of
goodness you should be able to admire--for whom you should cherish all
possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had
the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much
better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily
work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the
dusty streets and the common green fields--on the real breathing men
and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your
prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling,
your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things
seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity,
which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread.
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a
delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and
the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which
we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real
unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even
when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the
exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much harder than to
say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth.
It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in
many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source
of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous
homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my
fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic
suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from
cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an
old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner,
while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls
on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and
her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious
necessaries of life to her--or I turn to that village wedding, kept
between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance
with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged
friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably
with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable
contentment and goodwill. "Foh!" says my idealistic friend, "what vulgar
details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact
likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy,
ugly people!"
But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I
hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have
not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British,
squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not
startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst
us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the
Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet
to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their
miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in secret by
motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have
never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of
yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered
kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of
young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite
sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and
yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who
waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that
bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless
force and brings beauty with it.
All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate
it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our gardens and in our
houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret
of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an
angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the
celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face
upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not
impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of
Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those
heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs
and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done
the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their
brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In
this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have
no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should
remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of
our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit
a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them;
therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a
life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see
beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly
the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world;
few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all
my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those
feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the
foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I
touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are
picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your
common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but
creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should
have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who
weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with
the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers--more needful that
my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle
goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in
the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and
in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds
of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest
abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able
novelist.
And so I come back to Mr. Irwine, with whom I desire you to be in
perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the
clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not--as he ought to have
been--a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national
church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people
in Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their
clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it
can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love,
I must believe that Mr. Irwine's influence in his parish was a more
wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty
years afterwards, when Mr. Irwine had been gathered to his fathers. It
is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation,
visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe
in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh--put a stop, indeed, to the
Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness and
too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam Bede, to
whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could
be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr.
Ryde. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him, so
that almost every church-goer under fifty began to distinguish as well
between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that
standard, as if he had been born and bred a Dissenter; and for some time
after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that
quiet rural district. "But," said Adam, "I've seen pretty clear, ever
since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It
isn't notions sets people doing the right thing--it's feelings. It's the
same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics--a man may
be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire
and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he
must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than
his own ease. Somehow, the congregation began to fall off, and people
began to speak light o' Mr. Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom;
but, you see, he was sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices
with the people as worked for him; and his preaching wouldn't go down
well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i' the
parish, punishing folks for doing wrong; and he scolded 'em from
the pulpit as if he'd been a Ranter, and yet he couldn't abide the
Dissenters, and was a deal more set against 'em than Mr. Irwine was. And
then he didn't keep within his income, for he seemed to think at first
go-off that six hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr.
Donnithorne. That's a sore mischief I've often seen with the poor
curates jumping into a bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a
deal thought on at a distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for
math'matics and the natur o' things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He
was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call 'em the bulwarks of
the Reformation; but I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as
leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Irwine
was as different as could be: as quick!--he understood what you meant in
a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you'd made
a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and
th' old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never saw
HIM interfering and scolding, and trying to play th' emperor. Ah, he was
a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to's mother and sisters.
That poor sickly Miss Anne--he seemed to think more of her than of
anybody else in the world. There wasn't a soul in the parish had a word
to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so
old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work."
"Well," I said, "that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays;
but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to life again,
and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he
didn't preach better after all your praise of him."
"Nay, nay," said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in
his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, "nobody has ever
heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher. He didn't go into deep
speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man's inward life
as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that 'll
follow,' and, 'Do that and this 'll follow.' There's things go on in the
soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind,
as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so you look
back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you
can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that'; and I'll go so far with
the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep
speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about
it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn't go into those things--he preached
short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much
up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other
folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he
made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring
up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say--you know she
would have her word about everything--she said, Mr. Irwine was like a
good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on
it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted
you, and after all he left you much the same."
"But didn't Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part
of religion that you talk of, Adam? Couldn't you get more out of his
sermons than out of Mr. Irwine's?"
"Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty
clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides
doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding
names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never
known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names,
though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. I've
heard a deal o' doctrine i' my time, for I used to go after the
Dissenting preachers along wi' Seth, when I was a lad o' seventeen, and
got puzzling myself a deal about th' Arminians and the Calvinists. The
Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Seth, who could never
abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held fast by
the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a hole or
two in their notions, and I got disputing wi' one o' the class leaders
down at Treddles'on, and harassed him so, first o' this side and then
o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's the devil making use o'
your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the simplicity o'
the truth.' I couldn't help laughing then, but as I was going home, I
thought the man wasn't far wrong. I began to see as all this weighing
and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks
are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their
own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o'
these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and
conceited for't. So I took to going nowhere but to church, and hearing
nobody but Mr. Irwine, for he said nothing but what was good and what
you'd be the wiser for remembering. And I found it better for my soul
to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making
a clatter about what I could never understand. And they're poor foolish
questions after all; for what have we got either inside or outside of us
but what comes from God? If we've got a resolution to do right, He gave
it us, I reckon, first or last; but I see plain enough we shall never do
it without a resolution, and that's enough for me."
Adam, you perceive, was a warm admirer, perhaps a partial judge, of Mr.
Irwine, as, happily, some of us still are of the people we have known
familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty
order of minds who pant after the ideal, and are oppressed by a general
sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit
objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with
the confidence of these select natures, and find them to concur in
the experience that great men are overestimated and small men are
insupportable; that if you would love a woman without ever looking back
on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and if
you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never
make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk
from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own
experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical
assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our
illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature
can command at a moment's notice. Human converse, I think some wise
man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I herewith discharge my
conscience, and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of
admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, who were
occasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in a
higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer; and that
the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is
lovable--the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime
mysteries--has been by living a great deal among people more or less
commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very
surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighbourhoods where
they dwelt. Ten to one most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity
saw nothing at all in them. For I have observed this remarkable
coincidence, that the select natures who pant after the ideal, and
find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their
reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and
pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of
the Royal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbours in
the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the people in his own
parish--and they were all the people he knew--in these emphatic words:
"Aye, sir, I've said it often, and I'll say it again, they're a poor lot
i' this parish--a poor lot, sir, big and little." I think he had a
dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish, he might find
neighbours worthy of him; and indeed he did subsequently transfer
himself to the Saracen's Head, which was doing a thriving business in
the back street of a neighbouring market-town. But, oddly enough, he has
found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the
inhabitants of Shepperton--"a poor lot, sir, big and little, and them
as comes for a go o' gin are no better than them as comes for a pint o'
twopenny--a poor lot."
| Chapter Seventeen is crucial to the literary philosophy of the book. Eliot steps back to explain why she has chosen the subject matter that she has. This chapter could be referred to as meta-literary, because it does not advance the plot at all but instead airs the author's literary theories. The style of writing that Eliot supports is a sort of working-class realism. The most famous line in the novel is in this chapter: "And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up early in the morning to do our daily work." Eliot holds that literary integrity stems from an exact replication of real life. The Dutch masters whose paintings she so appreciates almost undoubtedly mean people including Rembrandt and Van Eyck, who took peasants as their subjects. In Chapter Eighteen, it is interesting that Eliot often puts her comments on human nature in the mouths of various characters, considering that she has already given herself a strong narrative voice in the novel. The characters who most often seem to hold Eliot's points of view are the female characters, especially Mrs. Poyser, whose commentary on old age seems to come straight from the author. This can be chalked up to the fact that while Adam Bede is a novel, it is also a treatise on both literary style and human nature. In Chapter Nineteen, Eliot gives Adam a healthy variety of virtues. On the one hand he is a strong and noble laborer, sure of his craft, able to imagine perfection, able to give advice to others. On the other hand he has the moral strength of an honest artisan who makes the most of his potential each day, almost to the awe of those who can appreciate his hardworking character. Moreover, Adam has risen above the virtue of the simple worker. He has advanced himself through schooling and through reading good books. He can think thoughts that the average laborer cannot think. Even so, during his three-mile walk, he chooses to think dreamily about the future and how he will be able to become a success in order to be worthy of marrying Hetty, rather than about the ideas he might have found in the writings of Bunyan or Franklin. Also, it is not clear that these virtues are given merely from Adam's own perspective of self-esteem rather than from the narrator's honest assessment of his character. Eliot observes in Chapter Twenty that often men mistake the signs that a woman is in love with someone else as the signs that she is in love with him. While she claims to be a realist, opinions such as these occasionally cause Eliot to come off as more of a cynic. She also writes that Adam has no way of knowing this general truth because he has not had the opportunity to read many novels and see how women act when they are in love. This is an unsubtle self-promotion of her own work, in that she claims that her novel is not only entertaining but also educational. The theme of costuming arises in this chapter, with Hetty's quick switch from wearing a flower behind her ear to wearing Dinah's Methodist cap. She makes the switch when she sees that Adam is displeased with her vanity; although she is not in love with him, she cannot bear to lose the attentions of any man. As transgressive as wearing a flower in her hair is, being reminiscent of prostitution, wearing Dinah's cap as mere adornment is even more transgressive because it has definite religious implications. A lot of Eliot's novel is taken up with sorting the young Bedes and the relatives of the Poysers into various possible matches. Dinah could marry Seth or possibly Adam; Hetty could marry Adam or possibly the Captain. Chapter Twenty-One, therefore, pulls short the notion that such alliances are necessary or even advisable. By showing a bachelor whose home functions at least as well or better than that of a married man, Eliot hints at the possibility that none of the matches might work out in the end. But even her depiction of a happy unmarried man has some flaws. First, there is the possibility that Bartle was married at some point in his life before, leaving the question of whether it is more likely to reach a happy bachelorhood only after having been married. Second, he is now in possession of a family of his own, whether he likes it or not. His female dog has given birth to pups, and because he calls her a "woman," he does have some elements of a family after all. | analysis |
"HETTY, Hetty, don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half
after one a'ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good
Sunday as poor old Thias Bede's to be put into the ground, and him
drownded i' th' dead o' the night, as it's enough to make one's back
run cold, but you must be 'dizening yourself as if there was a wedding
i'stid of a funeral?"
"Well, Aunt," said Hetty, "I can't be ready so soon as everybody else,
when I've got Totty's things to put on. And I'd ever such work to make
her stand still."
Hetty was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poyser, in her plain bonnet and
shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made
of roses, that girl was Hetty in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat
was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a
white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except
in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poyser
was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any
mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she
turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door,
followed by Hetty, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some
one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she
trod on.
And now the little procession set off. Mr. Poyser was in his Sunday suit
of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon having
a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from that
promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk handkerchief of a
yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted
by Mrs. Poyser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr.
Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the
growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the
nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human
calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round jolly face,
which was good humour itself as he said, "Come, Hetty--come, little
uns!" and giving his arm to his wife, led the way through the causeway
gate into the yard.
The "little uns" addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and seven,
in little fustian tailed coats and knee-breeches, relieved by rosy
cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very small
elephant is like a very large one. Hetty walked between them, and behind
came patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Totty through the yard
and over all the wet places on the road; for Totty, having speedily
recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to church
to-day, and especially on wearing her red-and-black necklace outside her
tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be carried over this
afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the morning, though now
the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering silvery masses on the
horizon.
You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the
farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning
subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would
have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed
to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on
the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together
with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow
stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an
excellent spring-bed on his mother's fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd,
in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting,
half-standing on the granary steps. Alick was of opinion that church,
like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who
had the weather and the ewes on his mind. "Church! Nay--I'n gotten
summat else to think on," was an answer which he often uttered in a tone
of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure
Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a
speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going
to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and "Whissuntide." But he had
a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies,
like other non-productive employments, were intended for people who had
leisure.
"There's Father a-standing at the yard-gate," said Martin Poyser. "I
reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It's wonderful what sight he
has, and him turned seventy-five."
"Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies,"
said Mrs. Poyser; "they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're
looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore
they go to sleep."
Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching,
and held it wide open, leaning on his stick--pleased to do this bit
of work; for, like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he
liked to feel that he was still useful--that there was a better crop of
onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing--and that the cows
would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon
to look on. He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, but not very
regularly at other times; on wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of
rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis instead.
"They'll ha' putten Thias Bede i' the ground afore ye get to the
churchyard," he said, as his son came up. "It 'ud ha' been better luck
if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin';
there's no likelihoods of a drop now; an' the moon lies like a boat
there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather--there's a many as
is false but that's sure."
"Aye, aye," said the son, "I'm in hopes it'll hold up now."
"Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my lads," said
Grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious of
a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling,
a little, secretly, during the sermon.
"Dood-bye, Dandad," said Totty. "Me doin' to church. Me dot my neklace
on. Dive me a peppermint."
Grandad, shaking with laughter at this "deep little wench," slowly
transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and
slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Totty had
fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation.
And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again,
watching them across the lane along the Home Close, and through the
far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the
hedgerows in those days shut out one's view, even on the better-managed
farms; and this afternoon, the dog-roses were tossing out their pink
wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale
honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and
over all an ash or a sycamore every now and then threw its shadow across
the path.
There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let
them pass: at the gate of the Home Close there was half the dairy of
cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that
their large bodies might be in the way; at the far gate there was the
mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured
foal with its head towards its mother's flank, apparently still much
embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely
through Mr. Poyser's own fields till they reached the main road leading
to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops
as they went along, while Mrs. Poyser was ready to supply a running
commentary on them all. The woman who manages a dairy has a large share
in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on
stock and their "keep"--an exercise which strengthens her understanding
so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most
other subjects.
"There's that shorthorned Sally," she said, as they entered the Home
Close, and she caught sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud
and looking at her with a sleepy eye. "I begin to hate the sight o' the
cow; and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of
her the better, for there's that little yallow cow as doesn't give half
the milk, and yet I've twice as much butter from her."
"Why, thee't not like the women in general," said Mr. Poyser; "they like
the shorthorns, as give such a lot o' milk. There's Chowne's wife wants
him to buy no other sort."
"What's it sinnify what Chowne's wife likes? A poor soft thing, wi' no
more head-piece nor a sparrow. She'd take a big cullender to strain
her lard wi', and then wonder as the scratchin's run through. I've
seen enough of her to know as I'll niver take a servant from her house
again--all hugger-mugger--and you'd niver know, when you went in,
whether it was Monday or Friday, the wash draggin' on to th' end o' the
week; and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in
a tin last year. And then she talks o' the weather bein' i' fault, as
there's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i'
their boots."
"Well, Chowne's been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if
thee lik'st," said Mr. Poyser, secretly proud of his wife's superior
power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days
he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of
shorthorns. "Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may's well buy up
the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may's
well go after it. Eh! Talk o' legs, there's legs for you," Mrs. Poyser
continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled
on in front of her father and mother. "There's shapes! An' she's got
such a long foot, she'll be her father's own child."
"Aye, she'll be welly such a one as Hetty i' ten years' time, on'y she's
got THY coloured eyes. I niver remember a blue eye i' my family; my
mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Hetty's."
"The child 'ull be none the worse for having summat as isn't like Hetty.
An' I'm none for having her so overpretty. Though for the matter o'
that, there's people wi' light hair an' blue eyes as pretty as them wi'
black. If Dinah had got a bit o' colour in her cheeks, an' didn't stick
that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows, folks 'ud
think her as pretty as Hetty."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, "thee
dostna know the pints of a woman. The men 'ud niver run after Dinah as
they would after Hetty."
"What care I what the men 'ud run after? It's well seen what choice the
most of 'em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o' wives you
see, like bits o' gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour's
gone."
"Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice
when I married thee," said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little
conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; "and thee wast twice as
buxom as Dinah ten year ago."
"I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a
house. There's Chowne's wife ugly enough to turn the milk an' save the
rennet, but she'll niver save nothing any other way. But as for Dinah,
poor child, she's niver likely to be buxom as long as she'll make her
dinner o' cake and water, for the sake o' giving to them as want. She
provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean
again' the Scriptur', for that says, 'Love your neighbour as yourself';
'but,' I said, 'if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do
yourself, Dinah, it's little enough you'd do for him. You'd be thinking
he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.' Eh, I wonder where she
is this blessed Sunday! Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she'd
set her heart on going to all of a sudden."
"Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when
she might ha' stayed wi' us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she
wanted, and it 'ud niver ha' been missed. She made no odds in th' house
at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and
was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty gets married,
theed'st like to ha' Dinah wi' thee constant."
"It's no use thinking o' that," said Mrs. Poyser. "You might as
well beckon to the flying swallow as ask Dinah to come an' live here
comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, I should ha'
turned her, for I've talked to her for a hour on end, and scolded her
too; for she's my own sister's child, and it behoves me to do what I can
for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon as she'd said us 'good-bye' an'
got into the cart, an' looked back at me with her pale face, as is welly
like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I begun to be frightened to
think o' the set-downs I'd given her; for it comes over you sometimes
as if she'd a way o' knowing the rights o' things more nor other folks
have. But I'll niver give in as that's 'cause she's a Methodist, no more
nor a white calf's white 'cause it eats out o' the same bucket wi' a
black un."
"Nay," said Mr. Poyser, with as near an approach to a snarl as his
good-nature would allow; "I'm no opinion o' the Methodists. It's on'y
tradesfolks as turn Methodists; you nuver knew a farmer bitten wi' them
maggots. There's maybe a workman now an' then, as isn't overclever at's
work, takes to preachin' an' that, like Seth Bede. But you see Adam, as
has got one o' the best head-pieces hereabout, knows better; he's a good
Churchman, else I'd never encourage him for a sweetheart for Hetty."
"Why, goodness me," said Mrs. Poyser, who had looked back while her
husband was speaking, "look where Molly is with them lads! They're the
field's length behind us. How COULD you let 'em do so, Hetty? Anybody
might as well set a pictur' to watch the children as you. Run back and
tell 'em to come on."
Mr. and Mrs. Poyser were now at the end of the second field, so they set
Totty on the top of one of the large stones forming the true Loamshire
stile, and awaited the loiterers Totty observing with complacency, "Dey
naughty, naughty boys--me dood."
The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with
great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on
in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping
than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite
sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while
he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which had
run across the path and was described with much fervour by the junior
Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering
along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it, till it
managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hetty could not be got
to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her ready
sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told, and said
"Lawks!" whenever she was expected to wonder.
Molly hastened on with some alarm when Hetty had come back and called to
them that her aunt was angry; but Marty ran on first, shouting,
"We've found the speckled turkey's nest, Mother!" with the instinctive
confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault.
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, really forgetting all discipline in this
pleasant surprise, "that's a good lad; why, where is it?"
"Down in ever such a hole, under the hedge. I saw it first, looking
after the greenfinch, and she sat on th' nest."
"You didn't frighten her, I hope," said the mother, "else she'll forsake
it."
"No, I went away as still as still, and whispered to Molly--didn't I,
Molly?"
"Well, well, now come on," said Mrs. Poyser, "and walk before Father and
Mother, and take your little sister by the hand. We must go straight on
now. Good boys don't look after the birds of a Sunday."
"But, Mother," said Marty, "you said you'd give half-a-crown to find
the speckled turkey's nest. Mayn't I have the half-crown put into my
money-box?"
"We'll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now, like a good boy."
The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at
their eldest-born's acuteness; but on Tommy's round face there was a
cloud.
"Mother," he said, half-crying, "Marty's got ever so much more money in
his box nor I've got in mine."
"Munny, me want half-a-toun in my bots," said Totty.
"Hush, hush, hush," said Mrs. Poyser, "did ever anybody hear such
naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money-boxes any more, if
they don't make haste and go on to church."
This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two
remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any
serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles,
alias "bullheads," which the lads looked at wistfully.
The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh to-morrow was
not a cheering sight to Mr. Poyser, who during hay and corn harvest had
often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest; but no
temptation would have induced him to carry on any field-work, however
early in the morning, on a Sunday; for had not Michael Holdsworth had a
pair of oxen "sweltered" while he was ploughing on Good Friday? That was
a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing; and with
wickedness of any sort Martin Poyser was quite clear that he would have
nothing to do, since money got by such means would never prosper.
"It a'most makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sun shines
so," he observed, as they passed through the "Big Meadow." "But it's
poor foolishness to think o' saving by going against your conscience.
There's that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call 'Gentleman Wakefield,'
used to do the same of a Sunday as o' weekdays, and took no heed to
right or wrong, as if there was nayther God nor devil. An' what's he
come to? Why, I saw him myself last market-day a-carrying a basket wi'
oranges in't."
"Ah, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, emphatically, "you make but a poor
trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi' wickedness. The money as is
got so's like to burn holes i' your pocket. I'd niver wish us to leave
our lads a sixpence but what was got i' the rightful way. And as for
the weather, there's One above makes it, and we must put up wi't: it's
nothing of a plague to what the wenches are."
Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit
which Mrs. Poyser's clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured
their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two,
though almost every one who meant to go to church was already within the
churchyard gates. Those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like
Timothy's Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling
as women feel in that position--that nothing else can be expected of
them.
It was not entirely to see Thias Bede's funeral that the people were
standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was
their common practice. The women, indeed, usually entered the church at
once, and the farmers' wives talked in an undertone to each other, over
the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor's
stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as
far preferable--about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to
wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year,
and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could
see her--about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer, was
giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to
his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman,
and they were all sorry for HER, for she had very good kin. Meantime the
men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had
a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church
until Mr. Irwine was in the desk. They saw no reason for that premature
entrance--what could they do in church if they were there before service
began?--and they did not conceive that any power in the universe
could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a little about
"bus'ness."
Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got
his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry
at him as a stranger. But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at
once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with
which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the
farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold
a candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself
on weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was,
after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had
horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher
sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn,
where the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the
farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off, as
fellow-mourners with the mother and sons. Others held a midway position,
sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the
conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door,
and were now joined by Martin Poyser, while his family passed into the
church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Casson, the landlord of
the Donnithorne Arms, in his most striking attitude--that is to say,
with the forefinger of his right hand thrust between the buttons of his
waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches pocket, and his head very
much on one side; looking, on the whole, like an actor who has only a
mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels sure that the audience
discern his fitness for the leading business; curiously in contrast with
old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward,
coughing asthmatically, with an inward scorn of all knowingness that
could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather a lower tone than
usual to-day, hushed a little by the sound of Mr. Irwine's voice reading
the final prayers of the burial-service. They had all had their word
of pity for poor Thias, but now they had got upon the nearer subject of
their own grievances against Satchell, the Squire's bailiff, who
played the part of steward so far as it was not performed by old Mr.
Donnithorne himself, for that gentleman had the meanness to receive
his own rents and make bargains about his own timber. This subject of
conversation was an additional reason for not being loud, since Satchell
himself might presently be walking up the paved road to the church door.
And soon they became suddenly silent; for Mr. Irwine's voice had ceased,
and the group round the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the
church.
They all moved aside, and stood with their hats off, while Mr. Irwine
passed. Adam and Seth were coming next, with their mother between them;
for Joshua Rann officiated as head sexton as well as clerk, and was not
yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause
before the three mourners came on: Lisbeth had turned round to look
again towards the grave! Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth
under the white thorn. Yet she cried less to-day than she had done any
day since her husband's death. Along with all her grief there was mixed
an unusual sense of her own importance in having a "burial," and in Mr.
Irwine's reading a special service for her husband; and besides, she
knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this
counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with
her sons towards the church door, and saw the friendly sympathetic nods
of their fellow-parishioners.
The mother and sons passed into the church, and one by one the
loiterers followed, though some still lingered without; the sight of Mr.
Donnithorne's carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill, perhaps
helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste.
But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth;
the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every
one must now enter and take his place.
I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for
anything except for the grey age of its oaken pews--great square pews
mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free, indeed,
from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to
themselves in the middle of the right-hand row, so that it was a short
process for Joshua Rann to take his place among them as principal bass,
and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk,
grey and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into
the chancel, which also had its grey square pews for Mr. Donnithorne's
family and servants. Yet I assure you these grey pews, with the
buff-washed walls, gave a very pleasing tone to this shabby interior,
and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoats.
And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for
the pulpit and Mr. Donnithorne's own pew had handsome crimson cloth
cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth,
embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own hand.
But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and
cheering when Mr. Irwine was in the desk, looking benignly round on
that simple congregation--on the hardy old men, with bent knees and
shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-clipping and
thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronzed faces of
the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers,
with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly
farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under
their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow,
folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held
books--why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a
few "good words" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved
silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension
indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and
bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing
up--the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey
pews, while good Bishop Ken's evening hymn was being sung to one of
those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of
rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of
Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Adam was not in
his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother
and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent
too--all the more agreeable for Mr. Joshua Rann, who gave out his bass
notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into
the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Will Maskery.
I beseech you to imagine Mr. Irwine looking round on this scene, in his
ample white surplice that became him so well, with his powdered hair
thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and
upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen
countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul
beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the
old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that
threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall.
I think, as Mr. Irwine looked round to-day, his eyes rested an instant
longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Martin Poyser and his
family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it impossible
not to wander thither, and rest on that round pink-and-white figure. But
Hetty was at that moment quite careless of any glances--she was absorbed
in the thought that Arthur Donnithorne would soon be coming into church,
for the carriage must surely be at the church-gate by this time. She
had never seen him since she parted with him in the wood on Thursday
evening, and oh, how long the time had seemed! Things had gone on just
the same as ever since that evening; the wonders that had happened then
had brought no changes after them; they were already like a dream. When
she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat so, she dared not
look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying; she curtsied herself.
That must be old Mr. Donnithorne--he always came first, the wrinkled
small old man, peering round with short-sighted glances at the bowing
and curtsying congregation; then she knew Miss Lydia was passing,
and though Hetty liked so much to look at her fashionable little
coal-scuttle bonnet, with the wreath of small roses round it, she didn't
mind it to-day. But there were no more curtsies--no, he was not come;
she felt sure there was nothing else passing the pew door but the
house-keeper's black bonnet and the lady's maid's beautiful straw hat
that had once been Miss Lydia's, and then the powdered heads of the
butler and footman. No, he was not there; yet she would look now--she
might be mistaken--for, after all, she had not looked. So she lifted
up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the cushioned pew in the
chancel--there was no one but old Mr. Donnithorne rubbing his spectacles
with his white handkerchief, and Miss Lydia opening the large gilt-edged
prayer-book. The chill disappointment was too hard to bear. She felt
herself turning pale, her lips trembling; she was ready to cry. Oh, what
SHOULD she do? Everybody would know the reason; they would know she was
crying because Arthur was not there. And Mr. Craig, with the wonderful
hothouse plant in his button-hole, was staring at her, she knew. It was
dreadfully long before the General Confession began, so that she could
kneel down. Two great drops WOULD fall then, but no one saw them except
good-natured Molly, for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs
towards her. Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church
except faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew
out of her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after
much labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck against
Hetty's nostrils. "It donna smell," she whispered, thinking this was a
great advantage which old salts had over fresh ones: they did you good
without biting your nose. Hetty pushed it away peevishly; but this
little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done--it roused
her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might
not to shed any more. Hetty had a certain strength in her vain little
nature: she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or
pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have
pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should
know a secret she did not want them to know.
What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while
Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and
through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to
disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her
small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the
supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her
again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all
the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with
a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches to
herself, saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain--she would
like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in
her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids
with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Bede thought so,
as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.
But Adam's thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they
rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church
service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness
of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our
moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the
best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and
resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts
of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of
its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could
have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their
childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have
seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the
streets. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but
in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes
the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to
discern odours.
But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the
service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village
nooks in the kingdom--a reason of which I am sure you have not the
slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann. Where
that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery
even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it
chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest
conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls
before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical
ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to
inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses.
The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence,
subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance,
like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to
nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the
wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking
about the reading of a parish clerk--a man in rusty spectacles, with
stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown. But that is
Nature's way: she will allow a gentleman of splendid physiognomy and
poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and not give him the
slightest hint of it; and takes care that some narrow-browed fellow,
trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house, shall be as true to his
intervals as a bird.
Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and it
was always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from the
desk to the choir. Still more to-day: it was a special occasion, for an
old man, familiar to all the parish, had died a sad death--not in his
bed, a circumstance the most painful to the mind of the peasant--and
now the funeral psalm was to be sung in memory of his sudden departure.
Moreover, Bartle Massey was not at church, and Joshua's importance in
the choir suffered no eclipse. It was a solemn minor strain they sang.
The old psalm-tunes have many a wail among them, and the words--
Thou sweep'st us off as with a flood;
We vanish hence like dreams--
seemed to have a closer application than usual in the death of poor
Thias. The mother and sons listened, each with peculiar feelings.
Lisbeth had a vague belief that the psalm was doing her husband good; it
was part of that decent burial which she would have thought it a greater
wrong to withhold from him than to have caused him many unhappy days
while he was living. The more there was said about her husband, the
more there was done for him, surely the safer he would be. It was poor
Lisbeth's blind way of feeling that human love and pity are a ground of
faith in some other love. Seth, who was easily touched, shed tears, and
tried to recall, as he had done continually since his father's death,
all that he had heard of the possibility that a single moment of
consciousness at the last might be a moment of pardon and reconcilement;
for was it not written in the very psalm they were singing that the
Divine dealings were not measured and circumscribed by time? Adam had
never been unable to join in a psalm before. He had known plenty of
trouble and vexation since he had been a lad, but this was the first
sorrow that had hemmed in his voice, and strangely enough it was sorrow
because the chief source of his past trouble and vexation was for ever
gone out of his reach. He had not been able to press his father's
hand before their parting, and say, "Father, you know it was all right
between us; I never forgot what I owed you when I was a lad; you forgive
me if I have been too hot and hasty now and then!" Adam thought but
little to-day of the hard work and the earnings he had spent on his
father: his thoughts ran constantly on what the old man's feelings had
been in moments of humiliation, when he had held down his head before
the rebukes of his son. When our indignation is borne in submissive
silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own
generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of our anger
has gone into everlasting silence, and we have seen his face for the
last time in the meekness of death!
"Ah! I was always too hard," Adam said to himself. "It's a sore fault in
me as I'm so hot and out o' patience with people when they do wrong, and
my heart gets shut up against 'em, so as I can't bring myself to forgive
'em. I see clear enough there's more pride nor love in my soul, for I
could sooner make a thousand strokes with th' hammer for my father than
bring myself to say a kind word to him. And there went plenty o' pride
and temper to the strokes, as the devil WILL be having his finger in
what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap the best thing I
ever did in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself. It's
allays been easier for me to work nor to sit still, but the real tough
job for me 'ud be to master my own will and temper and go right against
my own pride. It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home
to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing--perhaps
nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we
should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's
no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong
subtraction by doing your addition right."
This was the key-note to which Adam's thoughts had perpetually returned
since his father's death, and the solemn wail of the funeral psalm
was only an influence that brought back the old thoughts with stronger
emphasis. So was the sermon, which Mr. Irwine had chosen with reference
to Thias's funeral. It spoke briefly and simply of the words, "In the
midst of life we are in death"--how the present moment is all we can
call our own for works of mercy, of righteous dealing, and of family
tenderness. All very old truths--but what we thought the oldest truth
becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the
dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives. For when men want
to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid light, do
they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we may measure
its intensity by remembering the former dimness?
Then came the moment of the final blessing, when the forever sublime
words, "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding," seemed to
blend with the calm afternoon sunshine that fell on the bowed heads of
the congregation; and then the quiet rising, the mothers tying on the
bonnets of the little maidens who had slept through the sermon, the
fathers collecting the prayer-books, until all streamed out through the
old archway into the green churchyard and began their neighbourly talk,
their simple civilities, and their invitations to tea; for on a Sunday
every one was ready to receive a guest--it was the day when all must be
in their best clothes and their best humour.
Mr. and Mrs. Poyser paused a minute at the church gate: they were
waiting for Adam to come up, not being contented to go away without
saying a kind word to the widow and her sons.
"Well, Mrs. Bede," said Mrs. Poyser, as they walked on together, "you
must keep up your heart; husbands and wives must be content when they've
lived to rear their children and see one another's hair grey."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser; "they wonna have long to wait for one
another then, anyhow. And ye've got two o' the strapping'st sons i'
th' country; and well you may, for I remember poor Thias as fine a
broad-shouldered fellow as need to be; and as for you, Mrs. Bede, why
you're straighter i' the back nor half the young women now."
"Eh," said Lisbeth, "it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when
it's broke i' two. The sooner I'm laid under the thorn the better. I'm
no good to nobody now."
Adam never took notice of his mother's little unjust plaints; but Seth
said, "Nay, Mother, thee mustna say so. Thy sons 'ull never get another
mother."
"That's true, lad, that's true," said Mr. Poyser; "and it's wrong on us
to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede; for it's like the children cryin' when
the fathers and mothers take things from 'em. There's One above knows
better nor us."
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, "an' it's poor work allays settin' the dead
above the livin'. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon--it 'ud
be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforehand, i'stid o' beginnin'
when we're gone. It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last
year's crop."
"Well, Adam," said Mr. Poyser, feeling that his wife's words were,
as usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to
change the subject, "you'll come and see us again now, I hope. I hanna
had a talk with you this long while, and the missis here wants you to
see what can be done with her best spinning-wheel, for it's got broke,
and it'll be a nice job to mend it--there'll want a bit o' turning.
You'll come as soon as you can now, will you?"
Mr. Poyser paused and looked round while he was speaking, as if to see
where Hetty was; for the children were running on before. Hetty was not
without a companion, and she had, besides, more pink and white about
her than ever, for she held in her hand the wonderful pink-and-white
hot-house plant, with a very long name--a Scotch name, she supposed,
since people said Mr. Craig the gardener was Scotch. Adam took the
opportunity of looking round too; and I am sure you will not require of
him that he should feel any vexation in observing a pouting expression
on Hetty's face as she listened to the gardener's small talk. Yet in her
secret heart she was glad to have him by her side, for she would perhaps
learn from him how it was Arthur had not come to church. Not that she
cared to ask him the question, but she hoped the information would be
given spontaneously; for Mr. Craig, like a superior man, was very fond
of giving information.
Mr. Craig was never aware that his conversation and advances were
received coldly, for to shift one's point of view beyond certain limits
is impossible to the most liberal and expansive mind; we are none of
us aware of the impression we produce on Brazilian monkeys of feeble
understanding--it is possible they see hardly anything in us. Moreover,
Mr. Craig was a man of sober passions, and was already in his tenth
year of hesitation as to the relative advantages of matrimony and
bachelorhood. It is true that, now and then, when he had been a little
heated by an extra glass of grog, he had been heard to say of Hetty
that the "lass was well enough," and that "a man might do worse"; but on
convivial occasions men are apt to express themselves strongly.
Martin Poyser held Mr. Craig in honour, as a man who "knew his business"
and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was
less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in
confidence to her husband, "You're mighty fond o' Craig, but for my
part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose
to hear him crow." For the rest, Mr. Craig was an estimable gardener,
and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of himself. He
had also high shoulders and high cheek-bones and hung his head forward
a little, as he walked along with his hands in his breeches pockets. I
think it was his pedigree only that had the advantage of being Scotch,
and not his "bringing up"; for except that he had a stronger burr in
his accent, his speech differed little from that of the Loamshire people
about him. But a gardener is Scotch, as a French teacher is Parisian.
"Well, Mr. Poyser," he said, before the good slow farmer had time to
speak, "ye'll not be carrying your hay to-morrow, I'm thinking. The
glass sticks at 'change,' and ye may rely upo' my word as we'll ha' more
downfall afore twenty-four hours is past. Ye see that darkish-blue cloud
there upo' the 'rizon--ye know what I mean by the 'rizon, where the land
and sky seems to meet?"
"Aye, aye, I see the cloud," said Mr. Poyser, "'rizon or no 'rizon. It's
right o'er Mike Holdsworth's fallow, and a foul fallow it is."
"Well, you mark my words, as that cloud 'ull spread o'er the sky pretty
nigh as quick as you'd spread a tarpaulin over one o' your hay-ricks.
It's a great thing to ha' studied the look o' the clouds. Lord bless
you! Th' met'orological almanecks can learn me nothing, but there's a
pretty sight o' things I could let THEM up to, if they'd just come
to me. And how are you, Mrs. Poyser?--thinking o' getherin' the red
currants soon, I reckon. You'd a deal better gether 'em afore they're
o'erripe, wi' such weather as we've got to look forward to. How do ye
do, Mistress Bede?" Mr. Craig continued, without a pause, nodding by the
way to Adam and Seth. "I hope y' enjoyed them spinach and gooseberries
as I sent Chester with th' other day. If ye want vegetables while ye're
in trouble, ye know where to come to. It's well known I'm not giving
other folks' things away, for when I've supplied the house, the garden's
my own spekilation, and it isna every man th' old squire could get
as 'ud be equil to the undertaking, let alone asking whether he'd be
willing I've got to run my calkilation fine, I can tell you, to make
sure o' getting back the money as I pay the squire. I should like to see
some o' them fellows as make the almanecks looking as far before their
noses as I've got to do every year as comes."
"They look pretty fur, though," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one
side and speaking in rather a subdued reverential tone. "Why, what could
come truer nor that pictur o' the cock wi' the big spurs, as has got its
head knocked down wi' th' anchor, an' th' firin', an' the ships behind?
Why, that pictur was made afore Christmas, and yit it's come as true
as th' Bible. Why, th' cock's France, an' th' anchor's Nelson--an' they
told us that beforehand."
"Pee--ee-eh!" said Mr. Craig. "A man doesna want to see fur to know as
th' English 'ull beat the French. Why, I know upo' good authority as
it's a big Frenchman as reaches five foot high, an' they live upo'
spoon-meat mostly. I knew a man as his father had a particular knowledge
o' the French. I should like to know what them grasshoppers are to
do against such fine fellows as our young Captain Arthur. Why, it
'ud astonish a Frenchman only to look at him; his arm's thicker nor a
Frenchman's body, I'll be bound, for they pinch theirsells in wi' stays;
and it's easy enough, for they've got nothing i' their insides."
"Where IS the captain, as he wasna at church to-day?" said Adam. "I was
talking to him o' Friday, and he said nothing about his going away."
"Oh, he's only gone to Eagledale for a bit o' fishing; I reckon he'll be
back again afore many days are o'er, for he's to be at all th' arranging
and preparing o' things for the comin' o' age o' the 30th o' July.
But he's fond o' getting away for a bit, now and then. Him and th' old
squire fit one another like frost and flowers."
Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this last observation,
but the subject was not developed farther, for now they had reached the
turning in the road where Adam and his companions must say "good-bye."
The gardener, too, would have had to turn off in the same direction if
he had not accepted Mr. Poyser's invitation to tea. Mrs. Poyser duly
seconded the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace not
to make her neighbours welcome to her house: personal likes and dislikes
must not interfere with that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr. Craig had
always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm, and Mrs.
Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she had "nothing to say again'
him, on'y it was a pity he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched
different."
So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them, wound their way down
to the valley and up again to the old house, where a saddened memory had
taken the place of a long, long anxiety--where Adam would never have to
ask again as he entered, "Where's Father?"
And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company, went back to
the pleasant bright house-place at the Hall Farm--all with quiet minds,
except Hetty, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was only the
more puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared that his absence was quite
voluntary; he need not have gone--he would not have gone if he had
wanted to see her. She had a sickening sense that no lot could ever
be pleasant to her again if her Thursday night's vision was not to be
fulfilled; and in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment and
doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being with Arthur again,
of meeting his loving glance, and hearing his soft words with that eager
yearning which one may call the "growing pain" of passion.
| Mrs. Poyser criticizes Hetty for being late to Thias Bede's funeral, but she then sees how pretty she looks in her Sunday dress. The Poysers set off with Hetty, Totty, and their nine- and seven-year-old boys, Marty and Tommy. The grandfather stands by, and Mrs. Poyser remarks that the elderly are like babies, content with merely watching. As they walk to church, Mrs. Poyser comments on the quality of the cows, and Mr. Poyser delights in her knowledge and experience. They speculate about which side of the family Totty will look like, and then Mrs. Poyser says that if Dinah got some color in her cheeks and did not wear a Methodist's cap, people would think her as pretty as Hetty. But she cannot understand why her niece will not eat more and will not stop giving her money away. Mr. Poyser says that he dislikes Methodists; only tradespeople turn Methodist, never farmers. Mrs. Poyser notices that the boys are lagging behind, but she forgives them after Marty says that he has found a speckled turkey's nest. Mr. Poyser notices the fine weather and almost wishes that he could harvest his hay, but he knows that it is a Sabbath day. At the funeral the townspeople talk as much about local affairs as about the man to be buried. Hetty is crushed to see that the Captain is absent from the church, although she overhears that he is away at Eagledale, fishing | summary |
"HETTY, Hetty, don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half
after one a'ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good
Sunday as poor old Thias Bede's to be put into the ground, and him
drownded i' th' dead o' the night, as it's enough to make one's back
run cold, but you must be 'dizening yourself as if there was a wedding
i'stid of a funeral?"
"Well, Aunt," said Hetty, "I can't be ready so soon as everybody else,
when I've got Totty's things to put on. And I'd ever such work to make
her stand still."
Hetty was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poyser, in her plain bonnet and
shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made
of roses, that girl was Hetty in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat
was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a
white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except
in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poyser
was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any
mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she
turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door,
followed by Hetty, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some
one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she
trod on.
And now the little procession set off. Mr. Poyser was in his Sunday suit
of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon having
a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from that
promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk handkerchief of a
yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted
by Mrs. Poyser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr.
Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the
growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the
nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human
calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round jolly face,
which was good humour itself as he said, "Come, Hetty--come, little
uns!" and giving his arm to his wife, led the way through the causeway
gate into the yard.
The "little uns" addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and seven,
in little fustian tailed coats and knee-breeches, relieved by rosy
cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very small
elephant is like a very large one. Hetty walked between them, and behind
came patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Totty through the yard
and over all the wet places on the road; for Totty, having speedily
recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to church
to-day, and especially on wearing her red-and-black necklace outside her
tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be carried over this
afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the morning, though now
the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering silvery masses on the
horizon.
You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the
farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning
subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would
have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed
to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on
the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together
with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow
stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an
excellent spring-bed on his mother's fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd,
in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting,
half-standing on the granary steps. Alick was of opinion that church,
like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who
had the weather and the ewes on his mind. "Church! Nay--I'n gotten
summat else to think on," was an answer which he often uttered in a tone
of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure
Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a
speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going
to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and "Whissuntide." But he had
a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies,
like other non-productive employments, were intended for people who had
leisure.
"There's Father a-standing at the yard-gate," said Martin Poyser. "I
reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It's wonderful what sight he
has, and him turned seventy-five."
"Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies,"
said Mrs. Poyser; "they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're
looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore
they go to sleep."
Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching,
and held it wide open, leaning on his stick--pleased to do this bit
of work; for, like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he
liked to feel that he was still useful--that there was a better crop of
onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing--and that the cows
would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon
to look on. He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, but not very
regularly at other times; on wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of
rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis instead.
"They'll ha' putten Thias Bede i' the ground afore ye get to the
churchyard," he said, as his son came up. "It 'ud ha' been better luck
if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin';
there's no likelihoods of a drop now; an' the moon lies like a boat
there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather--there's a many as
is false but that's sure."
"Aye, aye," said the son, "I'm in hopes it'll hold up now."
"Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my lads," said
Grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious of
a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling,
a little, secretly, during the sermon.
"Dood-bye, Dandad," said Totty. "Me doin' to church. Me dot my neklace
on. Dive me a peppermint."
Grandad, shaking with laughter at this "deep little wench," slowly
transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and
slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Totty had
fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation.
And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again,
watching them across the lane along the Home Close, and through the
far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the
hedgerows in those days shut out one's view, even on the better-managed
farms; and this afternoon, the dog-roses were tossing out their pink
wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale
honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and
over all an ash or a sycamore every now and then threw its shadow across
the path.
There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let
them pass: at the gate of the Home Close there was half the dairy of
cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that
their large bodies might be in the way; at the far gate there was the
mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured
foal with its head towards its mother's flank, apparently still much
embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely
through Mr. Poyser's own fields till they reached the main road leading
to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops
as they went along, while Mrs. Poyser was ready to supply a running
commentary on them all. The woman who manages a dairy has a large share
in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on
stock and their "keep"--an exercise which strengthens her understanding
so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most
other subjects.
"There's that shorthorned Sally," she said, as they entered the Home
Close, and she caught sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud
and looking at her with a sleepy eye. "I begin to hate the sight o' the
cow; and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of
her the better, for there's that little yallow cow as doesn't give half
the milk, and yet I've twice as much butter from her."
"Why, thee't not like the women in general," said Mr. Poyser; "they like
the shorthorns, as give such a lot o' milk. There's Chowne's wife wants
him to buy no other sort."
"What's it sinnify what Chowne's wife likes? A poor soft thing, wi' no
more head-piece nor a sparrow. She'd take a big cullender to strain
her lard wi', and then wonder as the scratchin's run through. I've
seen enough of her to know as I'll niver take a servant from her house
again--all hugger-mugger--and you'd niver know, when you went in,
whether it was Monday or Friday, the wash draggin' on to th' end o' the
week; and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in
a tin last year. And then she talks o' the weather bein' i' fault, as
there's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i'
their boots."
"Well, Chowne's been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if
thee lik'st," said Mr. Poyser, secretly proud of his wife's superior
power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days
he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of
shorthorns. "Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may's well buy up
the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may's
well go after it. Eh! Talk o' legs, there's legs for you," Mrs. Poyser
continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled
on in front of her father and mother. "There's shapes! An' she's got
such a long foot, she'll be her father's own child."
"Aye, she'll be welly such a one as Hetty i' ten years' time, on'y she's
got THY coloured eyes. I niver remember a blue eye i' my family; my
mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Hetty's."
"The child 'ull be none the worse for having summat as isn't like Hetty.
An' I'm none for having her so overpretty. Though for the matter o'
that, there's people wi' light hair an' blue eyes as pretty as them wi'
black. If Dinah had got a bit o' colour in her cheeks, an' didn't stick
that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows, folks 'ud
think her as pretty as Hetty."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, "thee
dostna know the pints of a woman. The men 'ud niver run after Dinah as
they would after Hetty."
"What care I what the men 'ud run after? It's well seen what choice the
most of 'em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o' wives you
see, like bits o' gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour's
gone."
"Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice
when I married thee," said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little
conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; "and thee wast twice as
buxom as Dinah ten year ago."
"I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a
house. There's Chowne's wife ugly enough to turn the milk an' save the
rennet, but she'll niver save nothing any other way. But as for Dinah,
poor child, she's niver likely to be buxom as long as she'll make her
dinner o' cake and water, for the sake o' giving to them as want. She
provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean
again' the Scriptur', for that says, 'Love your neighbour as yourself';
'but,' I said, 'if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do
yourself, Dinah, it's little enough you'd do for him. You'd be thinking
he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.' Eh, I wonder where she
is this blessed Sunday! Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she'd
set her heart on going to all of a sudden."
"Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when
she might ha' stayed wi' us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she
wanted, and it 'ud niver ha' been missed. She made no odds in th' house
at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and
was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty gets married,
theed'st like to ha' Dinah wi' thee constant."
"It's no use thinking o' that," said Mrs. Poyser. "You might as
well beckon to the flying swallow as ask Dinah to come an' live here
comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, I should ha'
turned her, for I've talked to her for a hour on end, and scolded her
too; for she's my own sister's child, and it behoves me to do what I can
for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon as she'd said us 'good-bye' an'
got into the cart, an' looked back at me with her pale face, as is welly
like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I begun to be frightened to
think o' the set-downs I'd given her; for it comes over you sometimes
as if she'd a way o' knowing the rights o' things more nor other folks
have. But I'll niver give in as that's 'cause she's a Methodist, no more
nor a white calf's white 'cause it eats out o' the same bucket wi' a
black un."
"Nay," said Mr. Poyser, with as near an approach to a snarl as his
good-nature would allow; "I'm no opinion o' the Methodists. It's on'y
tradesfolks as turn Methodists; you nuver knew a farmer bitten wi' them
maggots. There's maybe a workman now an' then, as isn't overclever at's
work, takes to preachin' an' that, like Seth Bede. But you see Adam, as
has got one o' the best head-pieces hereabout, knows better; he's a good
Churchman, else I'd never encourage him for a sweetheart for Hetty."
"Why, goodness me," said Mrs. Poyser, who had looked back while her
husband was speaking, "look where Molly is with them lads! They're the
field's length behind us. How COULD you let 'em do so, Hetty? Anybody
might as well set a pictur' to watch the children as you. Run back and
tell 'em to come on."
Mr. and Mrs. Poyser were now at the end of the second field, so they set
Totty on the top of one of the large stones forming the true Loamshire
stile, and awaited the loiterers Totty observing with complacency, "Dey
naughty, naughty boys--me dood."
The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with
great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on
in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping
than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite
sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while
he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which had
run across the path and was described with much fervour by the junior
Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering
along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it, till it
managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hetty could not be got
to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her ready
sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told, and said
"Lawks!" whenever she was expected to wonder.
Molly hastened on with some alarm when Hetty had come back and called to
them that her aunt was angry; but Marty ran on first, shouting,
"We've found the speckled turkey's nest, Mother!" with the instinctive
confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault.
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, really forgetting all discipline in this
pleasant surprise, "that's a good lad; why, where is it?"
"Down in ever such a hole, under the hedge. I saw it first, looking
after the greenfinch, and she sat on th' nest."
"You didn't frighten her, I hope," said the mother, "else she'll forsake
it."
"No, I went away as still as still, and whispered to Molly--didn't I,
Molly?"
"Well, well, now come on," said Mrs. Poyser, "and walk before Father and
Mother, and take your little sister by the hand. We must go straight on
now. Good boys don't look after the birds of a Sunday."
"But, Mother," said Marty, "you said you'd give half-a-crown to find
the speckled turkey's nest. Mayn't I have the half-crown put into my
money-box?"
"We'll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now, like a good boy."
The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at
their eldest-born's acuteness; but on Tommy's round face there was a
cloud.
"Mother," he said, half-crying, "Marty's got ever so much more money in
his box nor I've got in mine."
"Munny, me want half-a-toun in my bots," said Totty.
"Hush, hush, hush," said Mrs. Poyser, "did ever anybody hear such
naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money-boxes any more, if
they don't make haste and go on to church."
This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two
remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any
serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles,
alias "bullheads," which the lads looked at wistfully.
The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh to-morrow was
not a cheering sight to Mr. Poyser, who during hay and corn harvest had
often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest; but no
temptation would have induced him to carry on any field-work, however
early in the morning, on a Sunday; for had not Michael Holdsworth had a
pair of oxen "sweltered" while he was ploughing on Good Friday? That was
a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing; and with
wickedness of any sort Martin Poyser was quite clear that he would have
nothing to do, since money got by such means would never prosper.
"It a'most makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sun shines
so," he observed, as they passed through the "Big Meadow." "But it's
poor foolishness to think o' saving by going against your conscience.
There's that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call 'Gentleman Wakefield,'
used to do the same of a Sunday as o' weekdays, and took no heed to
right or wrong, as if there was nayther God nor devil. An' what's he
come to? Why, I saw him myself last market-day a-carrying a basket wi'
oranges in't."
"Ah, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, emphatically, "you make but a poor
trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi' wickedness. The money as is
got so's like to burn holes i' your pocket. I'd niver wish us to leave
our lads a sixpence but what was got i' the rightful way. And as for
the weather, there's One above makes it, and we must put up wi't: it's
nothing of a plague to what the wenches are."
Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit
which Mrs. Poyser's clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured
their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two,
though almost every one who meant to go to church was already within the
churchyard gates. Those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like
Timothy's Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling
as women feel in that position--that nothing else can be expected of
them.
It was not entirely to see Thias Bede's funeral that the people were
standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was
their common practice. The women, indeed, usually entered the church at
once, and the farmers' wives talked in an undertone to each other, over
the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor's
stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as
far preferable--about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to
wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year,
and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could
see her--about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer, was
giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to
his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman,
and they were all sorry for HER, for she had very good kin. Meantime the
men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had
a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church
until Mr. Irwine was in the desk. They saw no reason for that premature
entrance--what could they do in church if they were there before service
began?--and they did not conceive that any power in the universe
could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a little about
"bus'ness."
Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got
his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry
at him as a stranger. But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at
once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with
which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the
farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold
a candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself
on weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was,
after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had
horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher
sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn,
where the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the
farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off, as
fellow-mourners with the mother and sons. Others held a midway position,
sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the
conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door,
and were now joined by Martin Poyser, while his family passed into the
church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Casson, the landlord of
the Donnithorne Arms, in his most striking attitude--that is to say,
with the forefinger of his right hand thrust between the buttons of his
waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches pocket, and his head very
much on one side; looking, on the whole, like an actor who has only a
mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels sure that the audience
discern his fitness for the leading business; curiously in contrast with
old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward,
coughing asthmatically, with an inward scorn of all knowingness that
could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather a lower tone than
usual to-day, hushed a little by the sound of Mr. Irwine's voice reading
the final prayers of the burial-service. They had all had their word
of pity for poor Thias, but now they had got upon the nearer subject of
their own grievances against Satchell, the Squire's bailiff, who
played the part of steward so far as it was not performed by old Mr.
Donnithorne himself, for that gentleman had the meanness to receive
his own rents and make bargains about his own timber. This subject of
conversation was an additional reason for not being loud, since Satchell
himself might presently be walking up the paved road to the church door.
And soon they became suddenly silent; for Mr. Irwine's voice had ceased,
and the group round the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the
church.
They all moved aside, and stood with their hats off, while Mr. Irwine
passed. Adam and Seth were coming next, with their mother between them;
for Joshua Rann officiated as head sexton as well as clerk, and was not
yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause
before the three mourners came on: Lisbeth had turned round to look
again towards the grave! Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth
under the white thorn. Yet she cried less to-day than she had done any
day since her husband's death. Along with all her grief there was mixed
an unusual sense of her own importance in having a "burial," and in Mr.
Irwine's reading a special service for her husband; and besides, she
knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this
counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with
her sons towards the church door, and saw the friendly sympathetic nods
of their fellow-parishioners.
The mother and sons passed into the church, and one by one the
loiterers followed, though some still lingered without; the sight of Mr.
Donnithorne's carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill, perhaps
helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste.
But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth;
the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every
one must now enter and take his place.
I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for
anything except for the grey age of its oaken pews--great square pews
mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free, indeed,
from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to
themselves in the middle of the right-hand row, so that it was a short
process for Joshua Rann to take his place among them as principal bass,
and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk,
grey and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into
the chancel, which also had its grey square pews for Mr. Donnithorne's
family and servants. Yet I assure you these grey pews, with the
buff-washed walls, gave a very pleasing tone to this shabby interior,
and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoats.
And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for
the pulpit and Mr. Donnithorne's own pew had handsome crimson cloth
cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth,
embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own hand.
But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and
cheering when Mr. Irwine was in the desk, looking benignly round on
that simple congregation--on the hardy old men, with bent knees and
shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-clipping and
thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronzed faces of
the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers,
with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly
farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under
their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow,
folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held
books--why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a
few "good words" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved
silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension
indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and
bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing
up--the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey
pews, while good Bishop Ken's evening hymn was being sung to one of
those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of
rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of
Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Adam was not in
his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother
and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent
too--all the more agreeable for Mr. Joshua Rann, who gave out his bass
notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into
the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Will Maskery.
I beseech you to imagine Mr. Irwine looking round on this scene, in his
ample white surplice that became him so well, with his powdered hair
thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and
upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen
countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul
beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the
old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that
threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall.
I think, as Mr. Irwine looked round to-day, his eyes rested an instant
longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Martin Poyser and his
family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it impossible
not to wander thither, and rest on that round pink-and-white figure. But
Hetty was at that moment quite careless of any glances--she was absorbed
in the thought that Arthur Donnithorne would soon be coming into church,
for the carriage must surely be at the church-gate by this time. She
had never seen him since she parted with him in the wood on Thursday
evening, and oh, how long the time had seemed! Things had gone on just
the same as ever since that evening; the wonders that had happened then
had brought no changes after them; they were already like a dream. When
she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat so, she dared not
look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying; she curtsied herself.
That must be old Mr. Donnithorne--he always came first, the wrinkled
small old man, peering round with short-sighted glances at the bowing
and curtsying congregation; then she knew Miss Lydia was passing,
and though Hetty liked so much to look at her fashionable little
coal-scuttle bonnet, with the wreath of small roses round it, she didn't
mind it to-day. But there were no more curtsies--no, he was not come;
she felt sure there was nothing else passing the pew door but the
house-keeper's black bonnet and the lady's maid's beautiful straw hat
that had once been Miss Lydia's, and then the powdered heads of the
butler and footman. No, he was not there; yet she would look now--she
might be mistaken--for, after all, she had not looked. So she lifted
up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the cushioned pew in the
chancel--there was no one but old Mr. Donnithorne rubbing his spectacles
with his white handkerchief, and Miss Lydia opening the large gilt-edged
prayer-book. The chill disappointment was too hard to bear. She felt
herself turning pale, her lips trembling; she was ready to cry. Oh, what
SHOULD she do? Everybody would know the reason; they would know she was
crying because Arthur was not there. And Mr. Craig, with the wonderful
hothouse plant in his button-hole, was staring at her, she knew. It was
dreadfully long before the General Confession began, so that she could
kneel down. Two great drops WOULD fall then, but no one saw them except
good-natured Molly, for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs
towards her. Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church
except faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew
out of her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after
much labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck against
Hetty's nostrils. "It donna smell," she whispered, thinking this was a
great advantage which old salts had over fresh ones: they did you good
without biting your nose. Hetty pushed it away peevishly; but this
little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done--it roused
her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might
not to shed any more. Hetty had a certain strength in her vain little
nature: she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or
pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have
pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should
know a secret she did not want them to know.
What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while
Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and
through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to
disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her
small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the
supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her
again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all
the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with
a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches to
herself, saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain--she would
like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in
her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids
with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Bede thought so,
as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.
But Adam's thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they
rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church
service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness
of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our
moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the
best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and
resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts
of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of
its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could
have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their
childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have
seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the
streets. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but
in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes
the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to
discern odours.
But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the
service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village
nooks in the kingdom--a reason of which I am sure you have not the
slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann. Where
that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery
even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it
chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest
conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls
before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical
ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to
inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses.
The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence,
subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance,
like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to
nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the
wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking
about the reading of a parish clerk--a man in rusty spectacles, with
stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown. But that is
Nature's way: she will allow a gentleman of splendid physiognomy and
poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and not give him the
slightest hint of it; and takes care that some narrow-browed fellow,
trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house, shall be as true to his
intervals as a bird.
Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and it
was always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from the
desk to the choir. Still more to-day: it was a special occasion, for an
old man, familiar to all the parish, had died a sad death--not in his
bed, a circumstance the most painful to the mind of the peasant--and
now the funeral psalm was to be sung in memory of his sudden departure.
Moreover, Bartle Massey was not at church, and Joshua's importance in
the choir suffered no eclipse. It was a solemn minor strain they sang.
The old psalm-tunes have many a wail among them, and the words--
Thou sweep'st us off as with a flood;
We vanish hence like dreams--
seemed to have a closer application than usual in the death of poor
Thias. The mother and sons listened, each with peculiar feelings.
Lisbeth had a vague belief that the psalm was doing her husband good; it
was part of that decent burial which she would have thought it a greater
wrong to withhold from him than to have caused him many unhappy days
while he was living. The more there was said about her husband, the
more there was done for him, surely the safer he would be. It was poor
Lisbeth's blind way of feeling that human love and pity are a ground of
faith in some other love. Seth, who was easily touched, shed tears, and
tried to recall, as he had done continually since his father's death,
all that he had heard of the possibility that a single moment of
consciousness at the last might be a moment of pardon and reconcilement;
for was it not written in the very psalm they were singing that the
Divine dealings were not measured and circumscribed by time? Adam had
never been unable to join in a psalm before. He had known plenty of
trouble and vexation since he had been a lad, but this was the first
sorrow that had hemmed in his voice, and strangely enough it was sorrow
because the chief source of his past trouble and vexation was for ever
gone out of his reach. He had not been able to press his father's
hand before their parting, and say, "Father, you know it was all right
between us; I never forgot what I owed you when I was a lad; you forgive
me if I have been too hot and hasty now and then!" Adam thought but
little to-day of the hard work and the earnings he had spent on his
father: his thoughts ran constantly on what the old man's feelings had
been in moments of humiliation, when he had held down his head before
the rebukes of his son. When our indignation is borne in submissive
silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own
generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of our anger
has gone into everlasting silence, and we have seen his face for the
last time in the meekness of death!
"Ah! I was always too hard," Adam said to himself. "It's a sore fault in
me as I'm so hot and out o' patience with people when they do wrong, and
my heart gets shut up against 'em, so as I can't bring myself to forgive
'em. I see clear enough there's more pride nor love in my soul, for I
could sooner make a thousand strokes with th' hammer for my father than
bring myself to say a kind word to him. And there went plenty o' pride
and temper to the strokes, as the devil WILL be having his finger in
what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap the best thing I
ever did in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself. It's
allays been easier for me to work nor to sit still, but the real tough
job for me 'ud be to master my own will and temper and go right against
my own pride. It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home
to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing--perhaps
nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we
should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's
no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong
subtraction by doing your addition right."
This was the key-note to which Adam's thoughts had perpetually returned
since his father's death, and the solemn wail of the funeral psalm
was only an influence that brought back the old thoughts with stronger
emphasis. So was the sermon, which Mr. Irwine had chosen with reference
to Thias's funeral. It spoke briefly and simply of the words, "In the
midst of life we are in death"--how the present moment is all we can
call our own for works of mercy, of righteous dealing, and of family
tenderness. All very old truths--but what we thought the oldest truth
becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the
dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives. For when men want
to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid light, do
they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we may measure
its intensity by remembering the former dimness?
Then came the moment of the final blessing, when the forever sublime
words, "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding," seemed to
blend with the calm afternoon sunshine that fell on the bowed heads of
the congregation; and then the quiet rising, the mothers tying on the
bonnets of the little maidens who had slept through the sermon, the
fathers collecting the prayer-books, until all streamed out through the
old archway into the green churchyard and began their neighbourly talk,
their simple civilities, and their invitations to tea; for on a Sunday
every one was ready to receive a guest--it was the day when all must be
in their best clothes and their best humour.
Mr. and Mrs. Poyser paused a minute at the church gate: they were
waiting for Adam to come up, not being contented to go away without
saying a kind word to the widow and her sons.
"Well, Mrs. Bede," said Mrs. Poyser, as they walked on together, "you
must keep up your heart; husbands and wives must be content when they've
lived to rear their children and see one another's hair grey."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser; "they wonna have long to wait for one
another then, anyhow. And ye've got two o' the strapping'st sons i'
th' country; and well you may, for I remember poor Thias as fine a
broad-shouldered fellow as need to be; and as for you, Mrs. Bede, why
you're straighter i' the back nor half the young women now."
"Eh," said Lisbeth, "it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when
it's broke i' two. The sooner I'm laid under the thorn the better. I'm
no good to nobody now."
Adam never took notice of his mother's little unjust plaints; but Seth
said, "Nay, Mother, thee mustna say so. Thy sons 'ull never get another
mother."
"That's true, lad, that's true," said Mr. Poyser; "and it's wrong on us
to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede; for it's like the children cryin' when
the fathers and mothers take things from 'em. There's One above knows
better nor us."
"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, "an' it's poor work allays settin' the dead
above the livin'. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon--it 'ud
be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforehand, i'stid o' beginnin'
when we're gone. It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last
year's crop."
"Well, Adam," said Mr. Poyser, feeling that his wife's words were,
as usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to
change the subject, "you'll come and see us again now, I hope. I hanna
had a talk with you this long while, and the missis here wants you to
see what can be done with her best spinning-wheel, for it's got broke,
and it'll be a nice job to mend it--there'll want a bit o' turning.
You'll come as soon as you can now, will you?"
Mr. Poyser paused and looked round while he was speaking, as if to see
where Hetty was; for the children were running on before. Hetty was not
without a companion, and she had, besides, more pink and white about
her than ever, for she held in her hand the wonderful pink-and-white
hot-house plant, with a very long name--a Scotch name, she supposed,
since people said Mr. Craig the gardener was Scotch. Adam took the
opportunity of looking round too; and I am sure you will not require of
him that he should feel any vexation in observing a pouting expression
on Hetty's face as she listened to the gardener's small talk. Yet in her
secret heart she was glad to have him by her side, for she would perhaps
learn from him how it was Arthur had not come to church. Not that she
cared to ask him the question, but she hoped the information would be
given spontaneously; for Mr. Craig, like a superior man, was very fond
of giving information.
Mr. Craig was never aware that his conversation and advances were
received coldly, for to shift one's point of view beyond certain limits
is impossible to the most liberal and expansive mind; we are none of
us aware of the impression we produce on Brazilian monkeys of feeble
understanding--it is possible they see hardly anything in us. Moreover,
Mr. Craig was a man of sober passions, and was already in his tenth
year of hesitation as to the relative advantages of matrimony and
bachelorhood. It is true that, now and then, when he had been a little
heated by an extra glass of grog, he had been heard to say of Hetty
that the "lass was well enough," and that "a man might do worse"; but on
convivial occasions men are apt to express themselves strongly.
Martin Poyser held Mr. Craig in honour, as a man who "knew his business"
and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was
less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in
confidence to her husband, "You're mighty fond o' Craig, but for my
part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose
to hear him crow." For the rest, Mr. Craig was an estimable gardener,
and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of himself. He
had also high shoulders and high cheek-bones and hung his head forward
a little, as he walked along with his hands in his breeches pockets. I
think it was his pedigree only that had the advantage of being Scotch,
and not his "bringing up"; for except that he had a stronger burr in
his accent, his speech differed little from that of the Loamshire people
about him. But a gardener is Scotch, as a French teacher is Parisian.
"Well, Mr. Poyser," he said, before the good slow farmer had time to
speak, "ye'll not be carrying your hay to-morrow, I'm thinking. The
glass sticks at 'change,' and ye may rely upo' my word as we'll ha' more
downfall afore twenty-four hours is past. Ye see that darkish-blue cloud
there upo' the 'rizon--ye know what I mean by the 'rizon, where the land
and sky seems to meet?"
"Aye, aye, I see the cloud," said Mr. Poyser, "'rizon or no 'rizon. It's
right o'er Mike Holdsworth's fallow, and a foul fallow it is."
"Well, you mark my words, as that cloud 'ull spread o'er the sky pretty
nigh as quick as you'd spread a tarpaulin over one o' your hay-ricks.
It's a great thing to ha' studied the look o' the clouds. Lord bless
you! Th' met'orological almanecks can learn me nothing, but there's a
pretty sight o' things I could let THEM up to, if they'd just come
to me. And how are you, Mrs. Poyser?--thinking o' getherin' the red
currants soon, I reckon. You'd a deal better gether 'em afore they're
o'erripe, wi' such weather as we've got to look forward to. How do ye
do, Mistress Bede?" Mr. Craig continued, without a pause, nodding by the
way to Adam and Seth. "I hope y' enjoyed them spinach and gooseberries
as I sent Chester with th' other day. If ye want vegetables while ye're
in trouble, ye know where to come to. It's well known I'm not giving
other folks' things away, for when I've supplied the house, the garden's
my own spekilation, and it isna every man th' old squire could get
as 'ud be equil to the undertaking, let alone asking whether he'd be
willing I've got to run my calkilation fine, I can tell you, to make
sure o' getting back the money as I pay the squire. I should like to see
some o' them fellows as make the almanecks looking as far before their
noses as I've got to do every year as comes."
"They look pretty fur, though," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one
side and speaking in rather a subdued reverential tone. "Why, what could
come truer nor that pictur o' the cock wi' the big spurs, as has got its
head knocked down wi' th' anchor, an' th' firin', an' the ships behind?
Why, that pictur was made afore Christmas, and yit it's come as true
as th' Bible. Why, th' cock's France, an' th' anchor's Nelson--an' they
told us that beforehand."
"Pee--ee-eh!" said Mr. Craig. "A man doesna want to see fur to know as
th' English 'ull beat the French. Why, I know upo' good authority as
it's a big Frenchman as reaches five foot high, an' they live upo'
spoon-meat mostly. I knew a man as his father had a particular knowledge
o' the French. I should like to know what them grasshoppers are to
do against such fine fellows as our young Captain Arthur. Why, it
'ud astonish a Frenchman only to look at him; his arm's thicker nor a
Frenchman's body, I'll be bound, for they pinch theirsells in wi' stays;
and it's easy enough, for they've got nothing i' their insides."
"Where IS the captain, as he wasna at church to-day?" said Adam. "I was
talking to him o' Friday, and he said nothing about his going away."
"Oh, he's only gone to Eagledale for a bit o' fishing; I reckon he'll be
back again afore many days are o'er, for he's to be at all th' arranging
and preparing o' things for the comin' o' age o' the 30th o' July.
But he's fond o' getting away for a bit, now and then. Him and th' old
squire fit one another like frost and flowers."
Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this last observation,
but the subject was not developed farther, for now they had reached the
turning in the road where Adam and his companions must say "good-bye."
The gardener, too, would have had to turn off in the same direction if
he had not accepted Mr. Poyser's invitation to tea. Mrs. Poyser duly
seconded the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace not
to make her neighbours welcome to her house: personal likes and dislikes
must not interfere with that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr. Craig had
always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm, and Mrs.
Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she had "nothing to say again'
him, on'y it was a pity he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched
different."
So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them, wound their way down
to the valley and up again to the old house, where a saddened memory had
taken the place of a long, long anxiety--where Adam would never have to
ask again as he entered, "Where's Father?"
And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company, went back to
the pleasant bright house-place at the Hall Farm--all with quiet minds,
except Hetty, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was only the
more puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared that his absence was quite
voluntary; he need not have gone--he would not have gone if he had
wanted to see her. She had a sickening sense that no lot could ever
be pleasant to her again if her Thursday night's vision was not to be
fulfilled; and in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment and
doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being with Arthur again,
of meeting his loving glance, and hearing his soft words with that eager
yearning which one may call the "growing pain" of passion.
| Chapter Seventeen is crucial to the literary philosophy of the book. Eliot steps back to explain why she has chosen the subject matter that she has. This chapter could be referred to as meta-literary, because it does not advance the plot at all but instead airs the author's literary theories. The style of writing that Eliot supports is a sort of working-class realism. The most famous line in the novel is in this chapter: "And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up early in the morning to do our daily work." Eliot holds that literary integrity stems from an exact replication of real life. The Dutch masters whose paintings she so appreciates almost undoubtedly mean people including Rembrandt and Van Eyck, who took peasants as their subjects. In Chapter Eighteen, it is interesting that Eliot often puts her comments on human nature in the mouths of various characters, considering that she has already given herself a strong narrative voice in the novel. The characters who most often seem to hold Eliot's points of view are the female characters, especially Mrs. Poyser, whose commentary on old age seems to come straight from the author. This can be chalked up to the fact that while Adam Bede is a novel, it is also a treatise on both literary style and human nature. In Chapter Nineteen, Eliot gives Adam a healthy variety of virtues. On the one hand he is a strong and noble laborer, sure of his craft, able to imagine perfection, able to give advice to others. On the other hand he has the moral strength of an honest artisan who makes the most of his potential each day, almost to the awe of those who can appreciate his hardworking character. Moreover, Adam has risen above the virtue of the simple worker. He has advanced himself through schooling and through reading good books. He can think thoughts that the average laborer cannot think. Even so, during his three-mile walk, he chooses to think dreamily about the future and how he will be able to become a success in order to be worthy of marrying Hetty, rather than about the ideas he might have found in the writings of Bunyan or Franklin. Also, it is not clear that these virtues are given merely from Adam's own perspective of self-esteem rather than from the narrator's honest assessment of his character. Eliot observes in Chapter Twenty that often men mistake the signs that a woman is in love with someone else as the signs that she is in love with him. While she claims to be a realist, opinions such as these occasionally cause Eliot to come off as more of a cynic. She also writes that Adam has no way of knowing this general truth because he has not had the opportunity to read many novels and see how women act when they are in love. This is an unsubtle self-promotion of her own work, in that she claims that her novel is not only entertaining but also educational. The theme of costuming arises in this chapter, with Hetty's quick switch from wearing a flower behind her ear to wearing Dinah's Methodist cap. She makes the switch when she sees that Adam is displeased with her vanity; although she is not in love with him, she cannot bear to lose the attentions of any man. As transgressive as wearing a flower in her hair is, being reminiscent of prostitution, wearing Dinah's cap as mere adornment is even more transgressive because it has definite religious implications. A lot of Eliot's novel is taken up with sorting the young Bedes and the relatives of the Poysers into various possible matches. Dinah could marry Seth or possibly Adam; Hetty could marry Adam or possibly the Captain. Chapter Twenty-One, therefore, pulls short the notion that such alliances are necessary or even advisable. By showing a bachelor whose home functions at least as well or better than that of a married man, Eliot hints at the possibility that none of the matches might work out in the end. But even her depiction of a happy unmarried man has some flaws. First, there is the possibility that Bartle was married at some point in his life before, leaving the question of whether it is more likely to reach a happy bachelorhood only after having been married. Second, he is now in possession of a family of his own, whether he likes it or not. His female dog has given birth to pups, and because he calls her a "woman," he does have some elements of a family after all. | analysis |
NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed
itself without having produced the threatened consequences. "The
weather"--as he observed the next morning--"the weather, you see, 's
a ticklish thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on't sometimes when a wise man
misses; that's why the almanecks get so much credit. It's one o' them
chancy things as fools thrive on."
This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no
one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in
the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and
daughters did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give
their help in tossing the hay; and when Adam was marching along the
lanes, with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound
of jocose talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose
talk of hay-makers is best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round
the cows' necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close,
and may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it
mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men's
muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though
their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the
merriment of birds.
And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when
the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness
of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness
to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason
Adam was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for
the rest of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which
was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he
had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors,
and chimney-pieces, in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while
Jonathan Burge himself had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await its
arrival and direct the workmen.
This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under
the charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw
Hetty in the sunshine--a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays
that tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought,
yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church,
that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he
had not seen before, and he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy
with his family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy came from
quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little
woman's face we love as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see
all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. It was impossible for Adam
not to feel that what had happened in the last week had brought the
prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had felt keenly the
danger that some other man might step in and get possession of Hetty's
heart and hand, while he himself was still in a position that made him
shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope
that she was fond of him--and his hope was far from being strong--he
had been too heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for
himself and Hetty--a home such as he could expect her to be content with
after the comfort and plenty of the Farm. Like all strong natures, Adam
had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future; he
felt sure he should some day, if he lived, be able to maintain a family
and make a good broad path for himself; but he had too cool a head not
to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to be overcome. And the
time would be so long! And there was Hetty, like a bright-cheeked apple
hanging over the orchard wall, within sight of everybody, and everybody
must long for her! To be sure, if she loved him very much, she would be
content to wait for him: but DID she love him? His hopes had never risen
so high that he had dared to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be
aware that her uncle and aunt would have looked kindly on his suit, and
indeed, without this encouragement he would never have persevered in
going to the Farm; but it was impossible to come to any but fluctuating
conclusions about Hetty's feelings. She was like a kitten, and had the
same distractingly pretty looks, that meant nothing, for everybody that
came near her.
But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of
his burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year
his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to
think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother,
he knew: she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had
set her mind especially against Hetty--perhaps for no other reason than
that she suspected Hetty to be the woman he HAD chosen. It would never
do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when
he was married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to
leave him! Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with
his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his
will was strong--it would be better for her in the end. For himself,
he would have liked that they should all live together till Seth was
married, and they might have built a bit themselves to the old house,
and made more room. He did not like "to part wi' th' lad": they had
hardly ever been separated for more than a day since they were born.
But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this
way--making arrangements for an uncertain future--than he checked
himself. "A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or
timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the
foundation." Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition, it
took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted
on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay
the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had too
little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen
consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough
patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the
long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong
determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound
round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward
consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long
and hard lesson, and Adam had at present only learned the alphabet of it
in his father's sudden death, which, by annihilating in an instant all
that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of thought
and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness.
But it was Adam's strength, not its correlative hardness, that
influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind
that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming
young girl, so long as he had no other prospect than that of growing
poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly
drawn upon (besides the terrible sweep of paying for Seth's substitute
in the militia) that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even
a small cottage, and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He
had good hope that he should be "firmer on his legs" by and by; but he
could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain; he
must have definite plans, and set about them at once. The partnership
with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present--there were
things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept; but Adam
thought that he and Seth might carry on a little business for themselves
in addition to their journeyman's work, by buying a small stock of
superior wood and making articles of household furniture, for which Adam
had no end of contrivances. Seth might gain more by working at separate
jobs under Adam's direction than by his journeyman's work, and Adam,
in his overhours, could do all the "nice" work that required peculiar
skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he received
as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the world,
so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this little
plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with exact
calculations about the wood to be bought and the particular article of
furniture that should be undertaken first--a kitchen cupboard of his
own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of sliding-doors and
bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household provender, and such
a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good housewife would be
in raptures with it, and fall through all the gradations of melancholy
longing till her husband promised to buy it for her. Adam pictured to
himself Mrs. Poyser examining it with her keen eye and trying in vain to
find out a deficiency; and, of course, close to Mrs. Poyser stood Hetty,
and Adam was again beguiled from calculations and contrivances into
dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go and see her this evening--it was so
long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would have liked to go
to the night-school, to see why Bartle Massey had not been at church
yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill; but, unless he could
manage both visits, this last must be put off till to-morrow--the desire
to be near Hetty and to speak to her again was too strong.
As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of
his walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of
the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work
is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who
has to bear his part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their
accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or
ambition, begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength
when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the
labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still,
creative activity of our thought. Look at Adam through the rest of the
day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in
his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a
floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of
the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of
timber, saying, "Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy
bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a
workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances
are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular
arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden
meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong
barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn
psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet
presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which
jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in
the secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories what warm
affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in this athletic
body with the broken finger-nails--in this rough man, who knew no better
lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional
hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history; and for
whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the
changes of the seasons lay in the region of mystery just made visible by
fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and
work in overhours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his
handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the
nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by
inborn inherited faculty--to get the mastery of his pen, and write a
plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be
attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to
any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes
and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including
the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and
Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great
deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History
of Babylon, which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many
more books from Bartle Massey, but he had no time for reading "the
commin print," as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in
all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry.
Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly
speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary
character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion
that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over
his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and
the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our
friend Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared
here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an
inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common
need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained
in skilful courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as
geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and
conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have
no discernible echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you
are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building,
some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming
practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are
associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were
the richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the work
of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about
in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust
or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are
seen in a place of honour at church and at market, and they tell their
well-dressed sons and daughters, seated round the bright hearth on
winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned their
twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and never put off the
workman's coat on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting rich,
but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out
of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the
master who employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?"
| As Adam walks along the farming lanes to work at a country house about three miles away, he hears the joyful sounds of the hay makers, which seem from a distance to be a part of the natural world. People work better to song, Eliot writes, though they do not move as smoothly as birds. Meanwhile, Jonathan Burge has gone ahead on horseback. Adam also enjoys the charming weather as he walks and thinks; "it was summer morning in his heart, and he saw Hetty in the sunshine. He remembers that when he touched her hand a day ago outside the church, there was a new melancholy kindness in her face. Although she was melancholy for other reasons, to him this is a sign that she has felt sympathy with his family trouble--and that marriage is now a better prospect. Besides, Adam feels confident in his future success and ability to maintain a family, perhaps in just a year. Still, he realizes that there will be obstacles including other suitors and his mother, and she must love him if she is going to wait for him to be successful. Adam enjoys thinking about his future until he realizes how much work is ahead. He is building a house before he has set the foundation. Moreover, he needs to become more sympathetic about human weakness and error in order to share and understand the human suffering that moderates one's goals. Clearly, he does not yet have enough money, and he needs to make serious plans for success, such as adding a little business with Seth in making furniture. The extra money would help him raise himself up. Adam starts calculating what would be done, and he again turns to dreams and hopes. Adam nears the work site and feels the energy of the laborers. He supervises and works with the laborers with the splendid energy of industry. The laborers do not know much beyond their physical reality, while Adam knows some things "over and above the secrets of his handicraft. He has been learning well in night school, can write fairly well, and has read a few books in addition to the entire Bible, including John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. He also tends to remain busy with calculations and extra carpentry. He has "strong conscience and. strong sense,. blended susceptibility and self-command. He is an honest workman with some of the virtues of the true gentleman | summary |
NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed
itself without having produced the threatened consequences. "The
weather"--as he observed the next morning--"the weather, you see, 's
a ticklish thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on't sometimes when a wise man
misses; that's why the almanecks get so much credit. It's one o' them
chancy things as fools thrive on."
This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no
one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in
the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and
daughters did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give
their help in tossing the hay; and when Adam was marching along the
lanes, with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound
of jocose talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose
talk of hay-makers is best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round
the cows' necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close,
and may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it
mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men's
muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though
their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the
merriment of birds.
And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when
the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness
of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness
to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason
Adam was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for
the rest of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which
was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he
had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors,
and chimney-pieces, in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while
Jonathan Burge himself had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await its
arrival and direct the workmen.
This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under
the charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw
Hetty in the sunshine--a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays
that tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought,
yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church,
that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he
had not seen before, and he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy
with his family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy came from
quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little
woman's face we love as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see
all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. It was impossible for Adam
not to feel that what had happened in the last week had brought the
prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had felt keenly the
danger that some other man might step in and get possession of Hetty's
heart and hand, while he himself was still in a position that made him
shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope
that she was fond of him--and his hope was far from being strong--he
had been too heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for
himself and Hetty--a home such as he could expect her to be content with
after the comfort and plenty of the Farm. Like all strong natures, Adam
had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future; he
felt sure he should some day, if he lived, be able to maintain a family
and make a good broad path for himself; but he had too cool a head not
to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to be overcome. And the
time would be so long! And there was Hetty, like a bright-cheeked apple
hanging over the orchard wall, within sight of everybody, and everybody
must long for her! To be sure, if she loved him very much, she would be
content to wait for him: but DID she love him? His hopes had never risen
so high that he had dared to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be
aware that her uncle and aunt would have looked kindly on his suit, and
indeed, without this encouragement he would never have persevered in
going to the Farm; but it was impossible to come to any but fluctuating
conclusions about Hetty's feelings. She was like a kitten, and had the
same distractingly pretty looks, that meant nothing, for everybody that
came near her.
But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of
his burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year
his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to
think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother,
he knew: she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had
set her mind especially against Hetty--perhaps for no other reason than
that she suspected Hetty to be the woman he HAD chosen. It would never
do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when
he was married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to
leave him! Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with
his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his
will was strong--it would be better for her in the end. For himself,
he would have liked that they should all live together till Seth was
married, and they might have built a bit themselves to the old house,
and made more room. He did not like "to part wi' th' lad": they had
hardly ever been separated for more than a day since they were born.
But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this
way--making arrangements for an uncertain future--than he checked
himself. "A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or
timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the
foundation." Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition, it
took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted
on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay
the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had too
little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen
consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough
patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the
long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong
determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound
round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward
consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long
and hard lesson, and Adam had at present only learned the alphabet of it
in his father's sudden death, which, by annihilating in an instant all
that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of thought
and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness.
But it was Adam's strength, not its correlative hardness, that
influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind
that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming
young girl, so long as he had no other prospect than that of growing
poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly
drawn upon (besides the terrible sweep of paying for Seth's substitute
in the militia) that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even
a small cottage, and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He
had good hope that he should be "firmer on his legs" by and by; but he
could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain; he
must have definite plans, and set about them at once. The partnership
with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present--there were
things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept; but Adam
thought that he and Seth might carry on a little business for themselves
in addition to their journeyman's work, by buying a small stock of
superior wood and making articles of household furniture, for which Adam
had no end of contrivances. Seth might gain more by working at separate
jobs under Adam's direction than by his journeyman's work, and Adam,
in his overhours, could do all the "nice" work that required peculiar
skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he received
as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the world,
so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this little
plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with exact
calculations about the wood to be bought and the particular article of
furniture that should be undertaken first--a kitchen cupboard of his
own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of sliding-doors and
bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household provender, and such
a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good housewife would be
in raptures with it, and fall through all the gradations of melancholy
longing till her husband promised to buy it for her. Adam pictured to
himself Mrs. Poyser examining it with her keen eye and trying in vain to
find out a deficiency; and, of course, close to Mrs. Poyser stood Hetty,
and Adam was again beguiled from calculations and contrivances into
dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go and see her this evening--it was so
long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would have liked to go
to the night-school, to see why Bartle Massey had not been at church
yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill; but, unless he could
manage both visits, this last must be put off till to-morrow--the desire
to be near Hetty and to speak to her again was too strong.
As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of
his walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of
the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work
is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who
has to bear his part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their
accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or
ambition, begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength
when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the
labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still,
creative activity of our thought. Look at Adam through the rest of the
day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in
his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a
floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of
the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of
timber, saying, "Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy
bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a
workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances
are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular
arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden
meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong
barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn
psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet
presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which
jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in
the secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories what warm
affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in this athletic
body with the broken finger-nails--in this rough man, who knew no better
lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional
hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history; and for
whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the
changes of the seasons lay in the region of mystery just made visible by
fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and
work in overhours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his
handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the
nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by
inborn inherited faculty--to get the mastery of his pen, and write a
plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be
attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to
any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes
and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including
the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and
Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great
deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History
of Babylon, which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many
more books from Bartle Massey, but he had no time for reading "the
commin print," as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in
all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry.
Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly
speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary
character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion
that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over
his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and
the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our
friend Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared
here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an
inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common
need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained
in skilful courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as
geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and
conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have
no discernible echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you
are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building,
some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming
practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are
associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were
the richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the work
of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about
in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust
or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are
seen in a place of honour at church and at market, and they tell their
well-dressed sons and daughters, seated round the bright hearth on
winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned their
twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and never put off the
workman's coat on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting rich,
but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out
of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the
master who employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?"
| Chapter Seventeen is crucial to the literary philosophy of the book. Eliot steps back to explain why she has chosen the subject matter that she has. This chapter could be referred to as meta-literary, because it does not advance the plot at all but instead airs the author's literary theories. The style of writing that Eliot supports is a sort of working-class realism. The most famous line in the novel is in this chapter: "And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up early in the morning to do our daily work." Eliot holds that literary integrity stems from an exact replication of real life. The Dutch masters whose paintings she so appreciates almost undoubtedly mean people including Rembrandt and Van Eyck, who took peasants as their subjects. In Chapter Eighteen, it is interesting that Eliot often puts her comments on human nature in the mouths of various characters, considering that she has already given herself a strong narrative voice in the novel. The characters who most often seem to hold Eliot's points of view are the female characters, especially Mrs. Poyser, whose commentary on old age seems to come straight from the author. This can be chalked up to the fact that while Adam Bede is a novel, it is also a treatise on both literary style and human nature. In Chapter Nineteen, Eliot gives Adam a healthy variety of virtues. On the one hand he is a strong and noble laborer, sure of his craft, able to imagine perfection, able to give advice to others. On the other hand he has the moral strength of an honest artisan who makes the most of his potential each day, almost to the awe of those who can appreciate his hardworking character. Moreover, Adam has risen above the virtue of the simple worker. He has advanced himself through schooling and through reading good books. He can think thoughts that the average laborer cannot think. Even so, during his three-mile walk, he chooses to think dreamily about the future and how he will be able to become a success in order to be worthy of marrying Hetty, rather than about the ideas he might have found in the writings of Bunyan or Franklin. Also, it is not clear that these virtues are given merely from Adam's own perspective of self-esteem rather than from the narrator's honest assessment of his character. Eliot observes in Chapter Twenty that often men mistake the signs that a woman is in love with someone else as the signs that she is in love with him. While she claims to be a realist, opinions such as these occasionally cause Eliot to come off as more of a cynic. She also writes that Adam has no way of knowing this general truth because he has not had the opportunity to read many novels and see how women act when they are in love. This is an unsubtle self-promotion of her own work, in that she claims that her novel is not only entertaining but also educational. The theme of costuming arises in this chapter, with Hetty's quick switch from wearing a flower behind her ear to wearing Dinah's Methodist cap. She makes the switch when she sees that Adam is displeased with her vanity; although she is not in love with him, she cannot bear to lose the attentions of any man. As transgressive as wearing a flower in her hair is, being reminiscent of prostitution, wearing Dinah's cap as mere adornment is even more transgressive because it has definite religious implications. A lot of Eliot's novel is taken up with sorting the young Bedes and the relatives of the Poysers into various possible matches. Dinah could marry Seth or possibly Adam; Hetty could marry Adam or possibly the Captain. Chapter Twenty-One, therefore, pulls short the notion that such alliances are necessary or even advisable. By showing a bachelor whose home functions at least as well or better than that of a married man, Eliot hints at the possibility that none of the matches might work out in the end. But even her depiction of a happy unmarried man has some flaws. First, there is the possibility that Bartle was married at some point in his life before, leaving the question of whether it is more likely to reach a happy bachelorhood only after having been married. Second, he is now in possession of a family of his own, whether he likes it or not. His female dog has given birth to pups, and because he calls her a "woman," he does have some elements of a family after all. | analysis |
ADAM came back from his work in the empty waggon--that was why he had
changed his clothes--and was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it
still wanted a quarter to seven.
"What's thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?" said Lisbeth complainingly,
as he came downstairs. "Thee artna goin' to th' school i' thy best
coat?"
"No, Mother," said Adam, quietly. "I'm going to the Hall Farm, but
mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I'm a
bit late. Seth 'ull be at home in half an hour--he's only gone to the
village; so thee wutna mind."
"Eh, an' what's thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th' Hall Farm?
The Poyser folks see'd thee in 'em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean
by turnin' worki'day into Sunday a-that'n? It's poor keepin' company wi'
folks as donna like to see thee i' thy workin' jacket."
"Good-bye, mother, I can't stay," said Adam, putting on his hat and
going out.
But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Lisbeth
became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course, the
secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they
were put on for Hetty's sake; but deeper than all her peevishness lay
the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him, and laid
hold of his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook, and said,
"Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi' thy mother, an' her got
nought to do but to sit by hersen an' think on thee?"
"Nay, nay, Mother," said Adam, gravely, and standing still while he put
his arm on her shoulder, "I'm not angered. But I wish, for thy own sake,
thee'dst be more contented to let me do what I've made up my mind to do.
I'll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live. But a
man has other feelings besides what he owes to's father and mother, and
thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And thee must make
up thy mind as I'll not give way to thee where I've a right to do what I
like. So let us have no more words about it."
"Eh," said Lisbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing
of Adam's words, "and' who likes to see thee i' thy best cloose better
nor thy mother? An' when thee'st got thy face washed as clean as
the smooth white pibble, an' thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes
a-sparklin'--what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at
half so well? An' thee sha't put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik'st
for me--I'll ne'er plague thee no moor about'n."
"Well, well; good-bye, mother," said Adam, kissing her and hurrying
away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the dialogue.
Lisbeth stood still on the spot, shading her eyes and looking after him
till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the meaning
that had lain in Adam's words, and, as she lost sight of him and turned
back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself--for it was her
way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her husband and
sons were at their work--"Eh, he'll be tellin' me as he's goin' to bring
her home one o' these days; an' she'll be missis o'er me, and I mun
look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters, and breaks
'em, mayhap, though there's ne'er been one broke sin' my old man an' me
bought 'em at the fair twenty 'ear come next Whissuntide. Eh!" she went
on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the table, "but
she'll ne'er knit the lad's stockin's, nor foot 'em nayther, while I
live; an' when I'm gone, he'll bethink him as nobody 'ull ne'er fit's
leg an' foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' o' narrowin' an'
heelin', I warrand, an' she'll make a long toe as he canna get's boot
on. That's what comes o' marr'in' young wenches. I war gone thirty, an'
th' feyther too, afore we war married; an' young enough too. She'll be
a poor dratchell by then SHE'S thirty, a-marr'in' a-that'n, afore her
teeth's all come."
Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Martin
Poyser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every
one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier--no one
kept watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Adam reached the
house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright
clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Poyser and some one else
would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said in
his strong voice, "Mrs. Poyser within?"
"Come in, Mr. Bede, come in," Mrs. Poyser called out from the dairy. She
always gave Adam this title when she received him in her own house.
"You may come into the dairy if you will, for I canna justly leave the
cheese."
Adam walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Poyser and Nancy were crushing
the first evening cheese.
"Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house," said Mrs. Poyser,
as he stood in the open doorway; "they're all i' the meadow; but
Martin's sure to be in afore long, for they're leaving the hay cocked
to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I've been forced
t' have Nancy in, upo' 'count as Hetty must gether the red currants
to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand's
wanted. An' there's no trustin' the children to gether it, for they put
more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set
the wasps to gether the fruit."
Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poyser came in,
but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, "I could be looking
at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps it
stands in the house, where I can find it?"
"No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till
I can fetch it and show it you. I'd be glad now if you'd go into the
garden and tell Hetty to send Totty in. The child 'ull run in if she's
told, an' I know Hetty's lettin' her eat too many currants. I'll be much
obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you'll go and send her in; an' there's the
York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now--you'll like to see
'em. But you'd like a drink o' whey first, p'r'aps; I know you're fond
o' whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it out."
"Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Adam; "a drink o' whey's allays a treat
to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day."
"Aye, aye," said Mrs. Poyser, reaching a small white basin that stood on
the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, "the smell o' bread's
sweet t' everybody but the baker. The Miss Irwines allays say, 'Oh, Mrs.
Poyser, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and what
a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!' An' I say, 'Yes; a
farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the
liftin', an' the stannin', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs
to't.'"
"Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a
farm-house, so well as you manage it," said Adam, taking the basin;
"and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow,
standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the
pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the
poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look
after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the
country."
Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a
compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing
sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes,
as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey
now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from
an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one's imagination
with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey
is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire
network window--the window overlooking the garden, and shaded by tall
Guelder roses.
"Have a little more, Mr. Bede?" said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the
basin.
"No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little
lass."
"Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy."
Adam walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to
the little wooden gate leading into the garden--once the well-tended
kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall
with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse
garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen
vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In
that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden
was like playing at "hide-and-seek." There were the tall hollyhocks
beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and
yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and
disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans
and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction,
and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its
low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The
garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it
took nine or ten of Adam's strides to get to the end of the uncut grass
walk that ran by the side of them; and as for other vegetables, there
was so much more room than was necessary for them that in the rotation
of crops a large flourishing bed of groundsel was of yearly occurrence
on one spot or other. The very rose-trees at which Adam stopped to pluck
one looked as if they grew wild; they were all huddled together in bushy
masses, now flaunting with wide-open petals, almost all of them of the
streaked pink-and-white kind, which doubtless dated from the union
of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise enough to choose a
compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting
scentless neighbours, and held it in his hand--he thought he should be
more at ease holding something in his hand--as he walked on to the far
end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of
currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour.
But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the
shaking of a bough, and a boy's voice saying, "Now, then, Totty, hold
out your pinny--there's a duck."
The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had
no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a
commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Totty was
below, behind the screen of peas. Yes--with her bonnet hanging down her
back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up
towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a mouth
and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I am
sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow
instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets,
and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, "There
now, Totty, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with 'em to
Mother--she wants you--she's in the dairy. Run in this minute--there's a
good little girl."
He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke,
a ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to
cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently
towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along.
"Tommy, my lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird,"
said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.
He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Hetty would
not be far off, and Adam already felt as if she were looking at him. Yet
when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him,
and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit. Strange that she had
not heard him coming! Perhaps it was because she was making the
leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that some one was
near--started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants
in it, and then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep
red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Hetty had
never blushed at seeing him before.
"I frightened you," he said, with a delicious sense that it didn't
signify what he said, since Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did; "let
ME pick the currants up."
That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the
grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked
straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the
first moments of hopeful love.
Hetty did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met
his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Adam because it was so
unlike anything he had seen in her before.
"There's not many more currants to get," she said; "I shall soon ha'
done now."
"I'll help you," said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was
nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.
Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Adam's heart
was too full to speak, and he thought Hetty knew all that was in it. She
was not indifferent to his presence after all; she had blushed when she
saw him, and then there was that touch of sadness about her which must
surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner, which
had often impressed him as indifference. And he could glance at her
continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams
stole through the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her round cheek
and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to Adam the time
that a man can least forget in after-life, the time when he believes
that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something--a
word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid--that she is
at least beginning to love him in return. The sign is so slight, it
is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye--he could describe it to no
one--it is a mere feather-touch, yet it seems to have changed his
whole being, to have merged an uneasy yearning into a delicious
unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much of our
early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the
joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our
father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our
nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft
mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination,
and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. But the first glad
moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last,
and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the
recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour
of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to
tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last
keenness to the agony of despair.
Hetty bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen
of apple-tree boughs, the length of bushy garden beyond, his own emotion
as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him, and that
there was no need for them to talk--Adam remembered it all to the last
moment of his life.
And Hetty? You know quite well that Adam was mistaken about her. Like
many other men, he thought the signs of love for another were signs of
love towards himself. When Adam was approaching unseen by her, she was
absorbed as usual in thinking and wondering about Arthur's possible
return. The sound of any man's footstep would have affected her just in
the same way--she would have FELT it might be Arthur before she had time
to see, and the blood that forsook her cheek in the agitation of that
momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any one
else just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in thinking
that a change had come over Hetty: the anxieties and fears of a first
passion, with which she was trembling, had become stronger than vanity,
had given her for the first time that sense of helpless dependence on
another's feeling which awakens the clinging deprecating womanhood even
in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it, and creates in her a
sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard before. For the first
time Hetty felt that there was something soothing to her in Adam's timid
yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated lovingly--oh, it was
very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence, apparent indifference,
after those moments of glowing love! She was not afraid that Adam
would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches like her other
admirers; he had always been so reserved to her; she could enjoy without
any fear the sense that this strong brave man loved her and was near
her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pitiable too--that
Adam too must suffer one day.
Hetty, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently
to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love
another. It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he
drank in the sweet delusion.
"That'll do," said Hetty, after a little while. "Aunt wants me to leave
some on the trees. I'll take 'em in now."
"It's very well I came to carry the basket," said Adam "for it 'ud ha'
been too heavy for your little arms."
"No; I could ha' carried it with both hands."
"Oh, I daresay," said Adam, smiling, "and been as long getting into the
house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those
tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?"
"No," said Hetty, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of
ant life.
"Oh, I used to watch 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can
carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give
you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made
for little arms like yours to lean on."
Hetty smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at
her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards another corner of the
garden.
"Have you ever been to Eagledale?" she said, as they walked slowly
along.
"Yes," said Adam, pleased to have her ask a question about himself. "Ten
years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father to see about some work
there. It's a wonderful sight--rocks and caves such as you never saw in
your life. I never had a right notion o' rocks till I went there."
"How long did it take to get there?"
"Why, it took us the best part o' two days' walking. But it's nothing of
a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud
get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound, he's such a rider. And I
shouldn't wonder if he's back again to-morrow; he's too active to rest
long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a
bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th'
estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud
give him plenty to do, and he'd do't well too, for all he's so young;
he's got better notions o' things than many a man twice his age. He
spoke very handsome to me th' other day about lending me money to set up
i' business; and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholding
to him nor to any man i' the world."
Poor Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hetty
would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend
him; the fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to
seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Hetty listened with an
interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon
her lips.
"How pretty the roses are now!" Adam continued, pausing to look at them.
"See! I stole the prettiest, but I didna mean to keep it myself. I think
these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o' green leaves, are
prettier than the striped uns, don't you?"
He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole.
"It smells very sweet," he said; "those striped uns have no smell. Stick
it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It 'ud be a
pity to let it fade."
Hetty took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that
Arthur could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope and
happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what
she had very often done before--stuck the rose in her hair a little
above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's face was slightly
shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hetty's love of finery was just the
thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it
as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to
her.
"Ah," he said, "that's like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase;
they've mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i' their hair,
but somehow I don't like to see 'em; they allays put me i' mind o' the
painted women outside the shows at Treddles'on Fair. What can a woman
have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like
yours? If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks
all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris looks very
nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a
woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. I'm
sure yours is."
"Oh, very well," said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the rose
out of her hair. "I'll put one o' Dinah's caps on when we go in, and
you'll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can take
the pattern."
"Nay, nay, I don't want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah's. I
daresay it's a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as
it was nonsense for her to dress different t' other people; but I never
rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and then I
thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th 'acorn-cup fits th'
acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've
got another sort o' face; I'd have you just as you are now, without
anything t' interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's
singing a good tune--you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and
interfering wi' the sound."
He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly.
He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we
are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only
half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should
come over this evening's happiness. For the world he would not have
spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards
him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he
saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blest with the
right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with very little at
present. So he took up the basket of currants once more, and they went
on towards the house.
The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Adam had been in the
garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming
geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at
him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it, after
dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering,
amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many "whups" from Tim the
ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek, intelligent
heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were likely to rush
wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was come back from
the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the house-place, Mr. Poyser
was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the
large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the
supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth
herself--a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered
pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all
sensible housewives like to see--none of your bleached "shop-rag" that
would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last
for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed
chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past
twelve o'clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were
bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for Alick and his
companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off
each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about
to-morrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was at hand to
hear it.
"Well, Adam, I'm glad to see ye," said Mr. Poyser. "What! ye've been
helping Hetty to gether the curran's, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye
down. Why, it's pretty near a three-week since y' had your supper with
us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I'm glad
ye're come."
"Hetty," said Mrs. Poyser, as she looked into the basket of currants
to see if the fruit was fine, "run upstairs and send Molly down. She's
putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th' ale, for Nancy's busy
yet i' the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her
run away from you along wi' Tommy for, and stuff herself wi' fruit as
she can't eat a bit o' good victual?"
This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking
to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser was strict in adherence to her own rules of
propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated
sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That
would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her
chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not
to spoil--just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must not
try to balk another of a customer.
Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to
her aunt's question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and
Tommy and bring them in to supper.
Soon they were all seated--the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the
pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle.
Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold
broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding
a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest
pineapple.
"What a time that gell is drawing th' ale, to be sure!" said Mrs.
Poyser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. "I think
she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there's nothing
you can't believe o' them wenches: they'll set the empty kettle o' the
fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils."
"She's drawin' for the men too," said Mr. Poyser. "Thee shouldst ha'
told her to bring our jug up first."
"Told her?" said Mrs. Poyser. "Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my
body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything
as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Bede, will you take some
vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the
flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour
o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter and
trusten to the salt t' hide it."
Mrs. Poyser's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly,
carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full
of ale or small beer--an interesting example of the prehensile power
possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open
than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double
cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her
mistress's eye.
"Molly, I niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is
a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an'
times I've told you...."
Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the
more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that
she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step
a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her
cans--caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell
with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering
explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious "Ello!" from Mr. Poyser,
who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.
"There you go!" resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and
went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the
fragments of pottery. "It's what I told you 'ud come, over and over
again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug
as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't
before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been
'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been
boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha'
been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but
what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got
the St. Vitus's Dance, to see the things you've throwed down. It's
a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's
neither seeing nor hearing as 'ull make much odds to you--anybody 'ud
think you war case-hardened."
Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her
desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick's
legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser,
opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.
"Ah," she went on, "you'll do no good wi' crying an' making more wet to
wipe up. It's all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there's nobody
no call to break anything if they'll only go the right way to work. But
wooden folks had need ha' wooden things t' handle. And here must I take
the brown-and-white jug, as it's niver been used three times this year,
and go down i' the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid
up wi' inflammation...."
Mrs. Poyser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white
jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end
of the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and
nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps
jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However
it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious
brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout
and handle.
"Did ever anybody see the like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered
tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are
bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the
finger like a snail."
"Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face," said her husband, who
had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.
"It's all very fine to look on and grin," rejoined Mrs. Poyser; "but
there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand
like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands.
What is to be broke WILL be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my
life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery
all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as
there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?"
A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused,
less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than
by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt. The
little minx had found a black gown of her aunt's, and pinned it close
round her neck to look like Dinah's, had made her hair as flat as she
could, and had tied on one of Dinah's high-crowned borderless net caps.
The thought of Dinah's pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the
sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise
enough to see them replaced by Hetty's round rosy cheeks and coquettish
dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping
their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up
from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser went into the back
kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter measure,
which had some chance of being free from bewitchment.
"Why, Hetty, lass, are ye turned Methodist?" said Mr. Poyser, with
that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout
people. "You must pull your face a deal longer before you'll do for one;
mustna she, Adam? How come you put them things on, eh?"
"Adam said he liked Dinah's cap and gown better nor my clothes," said
Hetty, sitting down demurely. "He says folks looks better in ugly
clothes."
"Nay, nay," said Adam, looking at her admiringly; "I only said they
seemed to suit Dinah. But if I'd said you'd look pretty in 'em, I should
ha' said nothing but what was true."
"Why, thee thought'st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?" said Mr. Poyser to
his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. "Thee look'dst as
scared as scared."
"It little sinnifies how I looked," said Mrs. Poyser; "looks 'ull mend
no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I'm sorry you've to
wait so long for your ale, but it's coming in a minute. Make yourself at
home wi' th' cold potatoes: I know you like 'em. Tommy, I'll send you to
bed this minute, if you don't give over laughing. What is there to laugh
at, I should like to know? I'd sooner cry nor laugh at the sight o' that
poor thing's cap; and there's them as 'ud be better if they could make
theirselves like her i' more ways nor putting on her cap. It little
becomes anybody i' this house to make fun o' my sister's child, an' her
just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part wi' her. An' I
know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an' I was to be laid up i'
my bed, an' the children was to die--as there's no knowing but what they
will--an' the murrain was to come among the cattle again, an' everything
went to rack an' ruin, I say we might be glad to get sight o' Dinah's
cap again, wi' her own face under it, border or no border. For she's one
o' them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day, and loves you the
best when you're most i' need on't."
Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, was aware that nothing would be so likely
to expel the comic as the terrible. Tommy, who was of a susceptible
disposition, and very fond of his mother, and who had, besides, eaten so
many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual, was
so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible future
that he began to cry; and the good-natured father, indulgent to all
weaknesses but those of negligent farmers, said to Hetty, "You'd better
take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see 'em."
Hetty went upstairs again, and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable
diversion; for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap, which could
not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser; and then followed
a discussion on the secrets of good brewing, the folly of stinginess in
"hopping," and the doubtful economy of a farmer's making his own malt.
Mrs. Poyser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with
weight on these subjects that by the time supper was ended, the ale-jug
refilled, and Mr. Poyser's pipe alight she was once more in high good
humour, and ready, at Adam's request, to fetch the broken spinning-wheel
for his inspection.
"Ah," said Adam, looking at it carefully, "here's a nice bit o' turning
wanted. It's a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in
the village and do it there, for I've no convenence for turning at home.
If you'll send it to Mr. Burge's shop i' the morning, I'll get it
done for you by Wednesday. I've been turning it over in my mind," he
continued, looking at Mr. Poyser, "to make a bit more convenence at home
for nice jobs o' cabinet-making. I've always done a deal at such
little things in odd hours, and they're profitable, for there's more
workmanship nor material in 'em. I look for me and Seth to get a little
business for ourselves i' that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as 'ull
take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get orders
for round about."
Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step
towards Adam's becoming a "master-man," and Mrs. Poyser gave her
approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to
be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in
the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own
dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm
evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could
see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up
to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for at
this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being sleepy at
five o'clock in the morning.
"I shall take a step farther," said Adam, "and go on to see Mester
Massey, for he wasn't at church yesterday, and I've not seen him for a
week past. I've never hardly known him to miss church before."
"Aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we've heared nothing about him, for it's the
boys' hollodays now, so we can give you no account."
"But you'll niver think o' going there at this hour o' the night?" said
Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting.
"Oh, Mester Massey sits up late," said Adam. "An' the night-school's not
over yet. Some o' the men don't come till late--they've got so far to
walk. And Bartle himself's never in bed till it's gone eleven."
"I wouldna have him to live wi' me, then," said Mrs. Poyser, "a-dropping
candle-grease about, as you're like to tumble down o' the floor the
first thing i' the morning."
"Aye, eleven o'clock's late--it's late," said old Martin. "I ne'er sot
up so i' MY life, not to say as it warna a marr'in', or a christenin',
or a wake, or th' harvest supper. Eleven o'clock's late."
"Why, I sit up till after twelve often," said Adam, laughing, "but
it isn't t' eat and drink extry, it's to work extry. Good-night, Mrs.
Poyser; good-night, Hetty."
Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp
with currant-juice; but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large
palm that was held out to them, and said, "Come again, come again!"
"Aye, think o' that now," said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the
causeway. "Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye'll not find
many men o' six-an' twenty as 'ull do to put i' the shafts wi' him.
If you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you'll ride i' your own
spring-cart some day, I'll be your warrant."
Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, so her uncle did
not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him. To ride
in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.
| Adam wears his Sunday clothes the Monday after, and Lisbeth is upset because she guesses correctly that he is dressed up to visit Hetty. When he reaches the Poysers' farm, Mrs. Poyser asks him to go out where Hetty is picking currants with Totty and to fetch Totty in, because she is probably eating too many currants. Adam walks out and, when Hetty hears him approach, she imagines that it might be the Captain. She blushes deeply. Adam mistakes this blushing as her first sign of love for him. On the way back to the house, Hetty questions Adam about how far Eagledale is, and she is pleased to learn that the Captain could come back quickly if he wanted to. Adam is happy that she is asking him questions, and he picks a rose to give to her. She puts it in her hair. This displeases him slightly, knowing that Hetty's vanity could irritate his mother, and the flower in her hair reminds him slightly of the accessories of a prostitute. He mentions that Dinah looks very nice without adornment, and Hetty takes the flower out of her hair. Hetty puts on Dinah's Methodist cap when she gets back to the farm. Adam thinks that she looks nice, but Mrs. Poyser scolds her for making fun of Dinah, who has only just left. Her uncle makes her take off the cap. Adam lightens the mood at dinner by complimenting the homemade ale, and then he goes to fix the family's broken spinning wheel. Adam discusses his plans of setting up his own business and designing a movable kitchen cupboard which he would sell. He leaves to go to night school, saying that he only stays up late to work extra, not to eat and drink extra. After he leaves, Hetty's family comments that she should try to catch him as a husband, because one day she might ride in her own cart. But Hetty thinks that this would be a miserable fate given her new aspirations | summary |
ADAM came back from his work in the empty waggon--that was why he had
changed his clothes--and was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it
still wanted a quarter to seven.
"What's thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?" said Lisbeth complainingly,
as he came downstairs. "Thee artna goin' to th' school i' thy best
coat?"
"No, Mother," said Adam, quietly. "I'm going to the Hall Farm, but
mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I'm a
bit late. Seth 'ull be at home in half an hour--he's only gone to the
village; so thee wutna mind."
"Eh, an' what's thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th' Hall Farm?
The Poyser folks see'd thee in 'em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean
by turnin' worki'day into Sunday a-that'n? It's poor keepin' company wi'
folks as donna like to see thee i' thy workin' jacket."
"Good-bye, mother, I can't stay," said Adam, putting on his hat and
going out.
But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Lisbeth
became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course, the
secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they
were put on for Hetty's sake; but deeper than all her peevishness lay
the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him, and laid
hold of his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook, and said,
"Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi' thy mother, an' her got
nought to do but to sit by hersen an' think on thee?"
"Nay, nay, Mother," said Adam, gravely, and standing still while he put
his arm on her shoulder, "I'm not angered. But I wish, for thy own sake,
thee'dst be more contented to let me do what I've made up my mind to do.
I'll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live. But a
man has other feelings besides what he owes to's father and mother, and
thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And thee must make
up thy mind as I'll not give way to thee where I've a right to do what I
like. So let us have no more words about it."
"Eh," said Lisbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing
of Adam's words, "and' who likes to see thee i' thy best cloose better
nor thy mother? An' when thee'st got thy face washed as clean as
the smooth white pibble, an' thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes
a-sparklin'--what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at
half so well? An' thee sha't put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik'st
for me--I'll ne'er plague thee no moor about'n."
"Well, well; good-bye, mother," said Adam, kissing her and hurrying
away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the dialogue.
Lisbeth stood still on the spot, shading her eyes and looking after him
till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the meaning
that had lain in Adam's words, and, as she lost sight of him and turned
back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself--for it was her
way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her husband and
sons were at their work--"Eh, he'll be tellin' me as he's goin' to bring
her home one o' these days; an' she'll be missis o'er me, and I mun
look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters, and breaks
'em, mayhap, though there's ne'er been one broke sin' my old man an' me
bought 'em at the fair twenty 'ear come next Whissuntide. Eh!" she went
on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the table, "but
she'll ne'er knit the lad's stockin's, nor foot 'em nayther, while I
live; an' when I'm gone, he'll bethink him as nobody 'ull ne'er fit's
leg an' foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' o' narrowin' an'
heelin', I warrand, an' she'll make a long toe as he canna get's boot
on. That's what comes o' marr'in' young wenches. I war gone thirty, an'
th' feyther too, afore we war married; an' young enough too. She'll be
a poor dratchell by then SHE'S thirty, a-marr'in' a-that'n, afore her
teeth's all come."
Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Martin
Poyser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every
one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier--no one
kept watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Adam reached the
house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright
clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Poyser and some one else
would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said in
his strong voice, "Mrs. Poyser within?"
"Come in, Mr. Bede, come in," Mrs. Poyser called out from the dairy. She
always gave Adam this title when she received him in her own house.
"You may come into the dairy if you will, for I canna justly leave the
cheese."
Adam walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Poyser and Nancy were crushing
the first evening cheese.
"Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house," said Mrs. Poyser,
as he stood in the open doorway; "they're all i' the meadow; but
Martin's sure to be in afore long, for they're leaving the hay cocked
to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I've been forced
t' have Nancy in, upo' 'count as Hetty must gether the red currants
to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand's
wanted. An' there's no trustin' the children to gether it, for they put
more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set
the wasps to gether the fruit."
Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poyser came in,
but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, "I could be looking
at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps it
stands in the house, where I can find it?"
"No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till
I can fetch it and show it you. I'd be glad now if you'd go into the
garden and tell Hetty to send Totty in. The child 'ull run in if she's
told, an' I know Hetty's lettin' her eat too many currants. I'll be much
obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you'll go and send her in; an' there's the
York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now--you'll like to see
'em. But you'd like a drink o' whey first, p'r'aps; I know you're fond
o' whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it out."
"Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Adam; "a drink o' whey's allays a treat
to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day."
"Aye, aye," said Mrs. Poyser, reaching a small white basin that stood on
the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, "the smell o' bread's
sweet t' everybody but the baker. The Miss Irwines allays say, 'Oh, Mrs.
Poyser, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and what
a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!' An' I say, 'Yes; a
farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the
liftin', an' the stannin', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs
to't.'"
"Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a
farm-house, so well as you manage it," said Adam, taking the basin;
"and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow,
standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the
pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the
poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look
after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the
country."
Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a
compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing
sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes,
as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey
now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from
an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one's imagination
with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey
is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire
network window--the window overlooking the garden, and shaded by tall
Guelder roses.
"Have a little more, Mr. Bede?" said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the
basin.
"No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little
lass."
"Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy."
Adam walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to
the little wooden gate leading into the garden--once the well-tended
kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall
with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse
garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen
vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In
that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden
was like playing at "hide-and-seek." There were the tall hollyhocks
beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and
yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and
disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans
and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction,
and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its
low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The
garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it
took nine or ten of Adam's strides to get to the end of the uncut grass
walk that ran by the side of them; and as for other vegetables, there
was so much more room than was necessary for them that in the rotation
of crops a large flourishing bed of groundsel was of yearly occurrence
on one spot or other. The very rose-trees at which Adam stopped to pluck
one looked as if they grew wild; they were all huddled together in bushy
masses, now flaunting with wide-open petals, almost all of them of the
streaked pink-and-white kind, which doubtless dated from the union
of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise enough to choose a
compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting
scentless neighbours, and held it in his hand--he thought he should be
more at ease holding something in his hand--as he walked on to the far
end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of
currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour.
But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the
shaking of a bough, and a boy's voice saying, "Now, then, Totty, hold
out your pinny--there's a duck."
The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had
no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a
commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Totty was
below, behind the screen of peas. Yes--with her bonnet hanging down her
back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up
towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a mouth
and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I am
sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow
instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets,
and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, "There
now, Totty, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with 'em to
Mother--she wants you--she's in the dairy. Run in this minute--there's a
good little girl."
He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke,
a ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to
cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently
towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along.
"Tommy, my lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird,"
said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.
He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Hetty would
not be far off, and Adam already felt as if she were looking at him. Yet
when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him,
and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit. Strange that she had
not heard him coming! Perhaps it was because she was making the
leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that some one was
near--started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants
in it, and then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep
red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Hetty had
never blushed at seeing him before.
"I frightened you," he said, with a delicious sense that it didn't
signify what he said, since Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did; "let
ME pick the currants up."
That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the
grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked
straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the
first moments of hopeful love.
Hetty did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met
his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Adam because it was so
unlike anything he had seen in her before.
"There's not many more currants to get," she said; "I shall soon ha'
done now."
"I'll help you," said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was
nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.
Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Adam's heart
was too full to speak, and he thought Hetty knew all that was in it. She
was not indifferent to his presence after all; she had blushed when she
saw him, and then there was that touch of sadness about her which must
surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner, which
had often impressed him as indifference. And he could glance at her
continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams
stole through the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her round cheek
and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to Adam the time
that a man can least forget in after-life, the time when he believes
that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something--a
word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid--that she is
at least beginning to love him in return. The sign is so slight, it
is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye--he could describe it to no
one--it is a mere feather-touch, yet it seems to have changed his
whole being, to have merged an uneasy yearning into a delicious
unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much of our
early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the
joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our
father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our
nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft
mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination,
and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. But the first glad
moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last,
and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the
recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour
of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to
tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last
keenness to the agony of despair.
Hetty bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen
of apple-tree boughs, the length of bushy garden beyond, his own emotion
as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him, and that
there was no need for them to talk--Adam remembered it all to the last
moment of his life.
And Hetty? You know quite well that Adam was mistaken about her. Like
many other men, he thought the signs of love for another were signs of
love towards himself. When Adam was approaching unseen by her, she was
absorbed as usual in thinking and wondering about Arthur's possible
return. The sound of any man's footstep would have affected her just in
the same way--she would have FELT it might be Arthur before she had time
to see, and the blood that forsook her cheek in the agitation of that
momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any one
else just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in thinking
that a change had come over Hetty: the anxieties and fears of a first
passion, with which she was trembling, had become stronger than vanity,
had given her for the first time that sense of helpless dependence on
another's feeling which awakens the clinging deprecating womanhood even
in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it, and creates in her a
sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard before. For the first
time Hetty felt that there was something soothing to her in Adam's timid
yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated lovingly--oh, it was
very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence, apparent indifference,
after those moments of glowing love! She was not afraid that Adam
would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches like her other
admirers; he had always been so reserved to her; she could enjoy without
any fear the sense that this strong brave man loved her and was near
her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pitiable too--that
Adam too must suffer one day.
Hetty, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently
to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love
another. It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he
drank in the sweet delusion.
"That'll do," said Hetty, after a little while. "Aunt wants me to leave
some on the trees. I'll take 'em in now."
"It's very well I came to carry the basket," said Adam "for it 'ud ha'
been too heavy for your little arms."
"No; I could ha' carried it with both hands."
"Oh, I daresay," said Adam, smiling, "and been as long getting into the
house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those
tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?"
"No," said Hetty, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of
ant life.
"Oh, I used to watch 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can
carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give
you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made
for little arms like yours to lean on."
Hetty smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at
her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards another corner of the
garden.
"Have you ever been to Eagledale?" she said, as they walked slowly
along.
"Yes," said Adam, pleased to have her ask a question about himself. "Ten
years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father to see about some work
there. It's a wonderful sight--rocks and caves such as you never saw in
your life. I never had a right notion o' rocks till I went there."
"How long did it take to get there?"
"Why, it took us the best part o' two days' walking. But it's nothing of
a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud
get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound, he's such a rider. And I
shouldn't wonder if he's back again to-morrow; he's too active to rest
long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a
bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th'
estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud
give him plenty to do, and he'd do't well too, for all he's so young;
he's got better notions o' things than many a man twice his age. He
spoke very handsome to me th' other day about lending me money to set up
i' business; and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholding
to him nor to any man i' the world."
Poor Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hetty
would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend
him; the fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to
seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Hetty listened with an
interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon
her lips.
"How pretty the roses are now!" Adam continued, pausing to look at them.
"See! I stole the prettiest, but I didna mean to keep it myself. I think
these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o' green leaves, are
prettier than the striped uns, don't you?"
He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole.
"It smells very sweet," he said; "those striped uns have no smell. Stick
it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It 'ud be a
pity to let it fade."
Hetty took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that
Arthur could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope and
happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what
she had very often done before--stuck the rose in her hair a little
above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's face was slightly
shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hetty's love of finery was just the
thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it
as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to
her.
"Ah," he said, "that's like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase;
they've mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i' their hair,
but somehow I don't like to see 'em; they allays put me i' mind o' the
painted women outside the shows at Treddles'on Fair. What can a woman
have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like
yours? If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks
all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris looks very
nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a
woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. I'm
sure yours is."
"Oh, very well," said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the rose
out of her hair. "I'll put one o' Dinah's caps on when we go in, and
you'll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can take
the pattern."
"Nay, nay, I don't want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah's. I
daresay it's a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as
it was nonsense for her to dress different t' other people; but I never
rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and then I
thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th 'acorn-cup fits th'
acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've
got another sort o' face; I'd have you just as you are now, without
anything t' interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's
singing a good tune--you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and
interfering wi' the sound."
He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly.
He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we
are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only
half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should
come over this evening's happiness. For the world he would not have
spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards
him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he
saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blest with the
right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with very little at
present. So he took up the basket of currants once more, and they went
on towards the house.
The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Adam had been in the
garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming
geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at
him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it, after
dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering,
amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many "whups" from Tim the
ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek, intelligent
heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were likely to rush
wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was come back from
the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the house-place, Mr. Poyser
was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the
large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the
supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth
herself--a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered
pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all
sensible housewives like to see--none of your bleached "shop-rag" that
would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last
for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed
chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past
twelve o'clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were
bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for Alick and his
companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off
each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about
to-morrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was at hand to
hear it.
"Well, Adam, I'm glad to see ye," said Mr. Poyser. "What! ye've been
helping Hetty to gether the curran's, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye
down. Why, it's pretty near a three-week since y' had your supper with
us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I'm glad
ye're come."
"Hetty," said Mrs. Poyser, as she looked into the basket of currants
to see if the fruit was fine, "run upstairs and send Molly down. She's
putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th' ale, for Nancy's busy
yet i' the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her
run away from you along wi' Tommy for, and stuff herself wi' fruit as
she can't eat a bit o' good victual?"
This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking
to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser was strict in adherence to her own rules of
propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated
sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That
would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her
chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not
to spoil--just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must not
try to balk another of a customer.
Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to
her aunt's question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and
Tommy and bring them in to supper.
Soon they were all seated--the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the
pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle.
Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold
broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding
a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest
pineapple.
"What a time that gell is drawing th' ale, to be sure!" said Mrs.
Poyser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. "I think
she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there's nothing
you can't believe o' them wenches: they'll set the empty kettle o' the
fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils."
"She's drawin' for the men too," said Mr. Poyser. "Thee shouldst ha'
told her to bring our jug up first."
"Told her?" said Mrs. Poyser. "Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my
body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything
as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Bede, will you take some
vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the
flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour
o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter and
trusten to the salt t' hide it."
Mrs. Poyser's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly,
carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full
of ale or small beer--an interesting example of the prehensile power
possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open
than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double
cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her
mistress's eye.
"Molly, I niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is
a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an'
times I've told you...."
Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the
more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that
she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step
a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her
cans--caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell
with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering
explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious "Ello!" from Mr. Poyser,
who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.
"There you go!" resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and
went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the
fragments of pottery. "It's what I told you 'ud come, over and over
again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug
as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't
before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been
'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been
boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha'
been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but
what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got
the St. Vitus's Dance, to see the things you've throwed down. It's
a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's
neither seeing nor hearing as 'ull make much odds to you--anybody 'ud
think you war case-hardened."
Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her
desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick's
legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser,
opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.
"Ah," she went on, "you'll do no good wi' crying an' making more wet to
wipe up. It's all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there's nobody
no call to break anything if they'll only go the right way to work. But
wooden folks had need ha' wooden things t' handle. And here must I take
the brown-and-white jug, as it's niver been used three times this year,
and go down i' the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid
up wi' inflammation...."
Mrs. Poyser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white
jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end
of the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and
nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps
jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However
it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious
brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout
and handle.
"Did ever anybody see the like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered
tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are
bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the
finger like a snail."
"Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face," said her husband, who
had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.
"It's all very fine to look on and grin," rejoined Mrs. Poyser; "but
there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand
like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands.
What is to be broke WILL be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my
life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery
all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as
there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?"
A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused,
less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than
by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt. The
little minx had found a black gown of her aunt's, and pinned it close
round her neck to look like Dinah's, had made her hair as flat as she
could, and had tied on one of Dinah's high-crowned borderless net caps.
The thought of Dinah's pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the
sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise
enough to see them replaced by Hetty's round rosy cheeks and coquettish
dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping
their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up
from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser went into the back
kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter measure,
which had some chance of being free from bewitchment.
"Why, Hetty, lass, are ye turned Methodist?" said Mr. Poyser, with
that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout
people. "You must pull your face a deal longer before you'll do for one;
mustna she, Adam? How come you put them things on, eh?"
"Adam said he liked Dinah's cap and gown better nor my clothes," said
Hetty, sitting down demurely. "He says folks looks better in ugly
clothes."
"Nay, nay," said Adam, looking at her admiringly; "I only said they
seemed to suit Dinah. But if I'd said you'd look pretty in 'em, I should
ha' said nothing but what was true."
"Why, thee thought'st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?" said Mr. Poyser to
his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. "Thee look'dst as
scared as scared."
"It little sinnifies how I looked," said Mrs. Poyser; "looks 'ull mend
no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I'm sorry you've to
wait so long for your ale, but it's coming in a minute. Make yourself at
home wi' th' cold potatoes: I know you like 'em. Tommy, I'll send you to
bed this minute, if you don't give over laughing. What is there to laugh
at, I should like to know? I'd sooner cry nor laugh at the sight o' that
poor thing's cap; and there's them as 'ud be better if they could make
theirselves like her i' more ways nor putting on her cap. It little
becomes anybody i' this house to make fun o' my sister's child, an' her
just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part wi' her. An' I
know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an' I was to be laid up i'
my bed, an' the children was to die--as there's no knowing but what they
will--an' the murrain was to come among the cattle again, an' everything
went to rack an' ruin, I say we might be glad to get sight o' Dinah's
cap again, wi' her own face under it, border or no border. For she's one
o' them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day, and loves you the
best when you're most i' need on't."
Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, was aware that nothing would be so likely
to expel the comic as the terrible. Tommy, who was of a susceptible
disposition, and very fond of his mother, and who had, besides, eaten so
many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual, was
so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible future
that he began to cry; and the good-natured father, indulgent to all
weaknesses but those of negligent farmers, said to Hetty, "You'd better
take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see 'em."
Hetty went upstairs again, and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable
diversion; for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap, which could
not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser; and then followed
a discussion on the secrets of good brewing, the folly of stinginess in
"hopping," and the doubtful economy of a farmer's making his own malt.
Mrs. Poyser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with
weight on these subjects that by the time supper was ended, the ale-jug
refilled, and Mr. Poyser's pipe alight she was once more in high good
humour, and ready, at Adam's request, to fetch the broken spinning-wheel
for his inspection.
"Ah," said Adam, looking at it carefully, "here's a nice bit o' turning
wanted. It's a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in
the village and do it there, for I've no convenence for turning at home.
If you'll send it to Mr. Burge's shop i' the morning, I'll get it
done for you by Wednesday. I've been turning it over in my mind," he
continued, looking at Mr. Poyser, "to make a bit more convenence at home
for nice jobs o' cabinet-making. I've always done a deal at such
little things in odd hours, and they're profitable, for there's more
workmanship nor material in 'em. I look for me and Seth to get a little
business for ourselves i' that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as 'ull
take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get orders
for round about."
Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step
towards Adam's becoming a "master-man," and Mrs. Poyser gave her
approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to
be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in
the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own
dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm
evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could
see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up
to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for at
this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being sleepy at
five o'clock in the morning.
"I shall take a step farther," said Adam, "and go on to see Mester
Massey, for he wasn't at church yesterday, and I've not seen him for a
week past. I've never hardly known him to miss church before."
"Aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we've heared nothing about him, for it's the
boys' hollodays now, so we can give you no account."
"But you'll niver think o' going there at this hour o' the night?" said
Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting.
"Oh, Mester Massey sits up late," said Adam. "An' the night-school's not
over yet. Some o' the men don't come till late--they've got so far to
walk. And Bartle himself's never in bed till it's gone eleven."
"I wouldna have him to live wi' me, then," said Mrs. Poyser, "a-dropping
candle-grease about, as you're like to tumble down o' the floor the
first thing i' the morning."
"Aye, eleven o'clock's late--it's late," said old Martin. "I ne'er sot
up so i' MY life, not to say as it warna a marr'in', or a christenin',
or a wake, or th' harvest supper. Eleven o'clock's late."
"Why, I sit up till after twelve often," said Adam, laughing, "but
it isn't t' eat and drink extry, it's to work extry. Good-night, Mrs.
Poyser; good-night, Hetty."
Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp
with currant-juice; but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large
palm that was held out to them, and said, "Come again, come again!"
"Aye, think o' that now," said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the
causeway. "Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye'll not find
many men o' six-an' twenty as 'ull do to put i' the shafts wi' him.
If you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you'll ride i' your own
spring-cart some day, I'll be your warrant."
Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, so her uncle did
not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him. To ride
in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.
| Chapter Seventeen is crucial to the literary philosophy of the book. Eliot steps back to explain why she has chosen the subject matter that she has. This chapter could be referred to as meta-literary, because it does not advance the plot at all but instead airs the author's literary theories. The style of writing that Eliot supports is a sort of working-class realism. The most famous line in the novel is in this chapter: "And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up early in the morning to do our daily work." Eliot holds that literary integrity stems from an exact replication of real life. The Dutch masters whose paintings she so appreciates almost undoubtedly mean people including Rembrandt and Van Eyck, who took peasants as their subjects. In Chapter Eighteen, it is interesting that Eliot often puts her comments on human nature in the mouths of various characters, considering that she has already given herself a strong narrative voice in the novel. The characters who most often seem to hold Eliot's points of view are the female characters, especially Mrs. Poyser, whose commentary on old age seems to come straight from the author. This can be chalked up to the fact that while Adam Bede is a novel, it is also a treatise on both literary style and human nature. In Chapter Nineteen, Eliot gives Adam a healthy variety of virtues. On the one hand he is a strong and noble laborer, sure of his craft, able to imagine perfection, able to give advice to others. On the other hand he has the moral strength of an honest artisan who makes the most of his potential each day, almost to the awe of those who can appreciate his hardworking character. Moreover, Adam has risen above the virtue of the simple worker. He has advanced himself through schooling and through reading good books. He can think thoughts that the average laborer cannot think. Even so, during his three-mile walk, he chooses to think dreamily about the future and how he will be able to become a success in order to be worthy of marrying Hetty, rather than about the ideas he might have found in the writings of Bunyan or Franklin. Also, it is not clear that these virtues are given merely from Adam's own perspective of self-esteem rather than from the narrator's honest assessment of his character. Eliot observes in Chapter Twenty that often men mistake the signs that a woman is in love with someone else as the signs that she is in love with him. While she claims to be a realist, opinions such as these occasionally cause Eliot to come off as more of a cynic. She also writes that Adam has no way of knowing this general truth because he has not had the opportunity to read many novels and see how women act when they are in love. This is an unsubtle self-promotion of her own work, in that she claims that her novel is not only entertaining but also educational. The theme of costuming arises in this chapter, with Hetty's quick switch from wearing a flower behind her ear to wearing Dinah's Methodist cap. She makes the switch when she sees that Adam is displeased with her vanity; although she is not in love with him, she cannot bear to lose the attentions of any man. As transgressive as wearing a flower in her hair is, being reminiscent of prostitution, wearing Dinah's cap as mere adornment is even more transgressive because it has definite religious implications. A lot of Eliot's novel is taken up with sorting the young Bedes and the relatives of the Poysers into various possible matches. Dinah could marry Seth or possibly Adam; Hetty could marry Adam or possibly the Captain. Chapter Twenty-One, therefore, pulls short the notion that such alliances are necessary or even advisable. By showing a bachelor whose home functions at least as well or better than that of a married man, Eliot hints at the possibility that none of the matches might work out in the end. But even her depiction of a happy unmarried man has some flaws. First, there is the possibility that Bartle was married at some point in his life before, leaving the question of whether it is more likely to reach a happy bachelorhood only after having been married. Second, he is now in possession of a family of his own, whether he likes it or not. His female dog has given birth to pups, and because he calls her a "woman," he does have some elements of a family after all. | analysis |
Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a
common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it
in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had his
hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless window,
that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by
thin dips.
When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey
merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had
not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full
of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in
Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was
over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It
was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he
knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle
Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of
keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs
of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above
the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out
of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had long
ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think
how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native
element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the
old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had
turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a well-seasoned
meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar as the
scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent to it, and even
in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a momentary stirring of the
old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough men painfully holding pen
or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly labouring through their
reading lesson.
The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster's
desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known
it only by seeing Bartle Massey's face as he looked over his spectacles,
which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for
present purposes. The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled
bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate
kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower
lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable
in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the
schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side,
had rather a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that
peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen
impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the
transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no
tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an
inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever.
"Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to
Adam, "begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you what d-r-y
spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you know."
"Bill" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent
stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of his
years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a harder
matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to saw. The
letters, he complained, were so "uncommon alike, there was no tellin'
'em one from another," the sawyer's business not being concerned with
minute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail
turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm
determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on two
reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything "right
off," whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a letter
from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world and had
got an overlooker's place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who sawed with
him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what could be
done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could
be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if
circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger
towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he
might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be
discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey
must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination
recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the
schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular
return of daylight and the changes in the weather.
The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a
Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in
perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately "got religion," and
along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning
was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as
usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard
task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might
have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil
memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language,
the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was
suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the
man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that
might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to,
which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher
at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and
though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of
"Brimstone," there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further
transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested
fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing
religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human
knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken
in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the
letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that
Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.
The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but
thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face and
hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of dipping
homespun wool and old women's petticoats had got fired with the ambition
to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of colour. He had
already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he was
bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the expense
of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given him a
notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and expense if
he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his spare hours to
the night-school, resolving that his "little chap" should lose no time
in coming to Mr. Massey's day-school as soon as he was old enough.
It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their hard
labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and painfully
making out, "The grass is green," "The sticks are dry," "The corn is
ripe"--a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single words
all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three rough
animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human.
And it touched the tenderest fibre in Bartle Massey's nature, for such
full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he had
no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with an
imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience
could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances
over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his
head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters
d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light.
After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up
with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on
their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"--a test which
they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes
had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some
minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing
between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which
rested between his legs.
"Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a
fortnight ago, and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn
accounts--that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn
accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three
times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of
doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You
go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of
than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that
happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em,
it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got
cheap--you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he'll make
you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge
isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know
figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts
fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's
nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to
yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed
four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how
many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had
got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work
'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches
by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and
then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself
how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten
workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that
rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if
he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the
short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive
to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get
out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because
he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not
refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people
who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with
'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you
can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of
thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word
I've got to say to you."
With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap than ever
with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a
sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to
show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and
mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Bartle
than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob
Storey's Z's, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their
tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not right
"somehow." But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you never
wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there "to finish off th'
alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha' done as well, for what he
could see."
At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their
"Good-nights," and Adam, knowing his old master's habits, rose and said,
"Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Massey?"
"Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I'll carry into the house; and
just lock the outer door, now you're near it," said Bartle, getting his
stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool.
He was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick
was necessary--the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the
school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly thought
of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along the
schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would perhaps
have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his pace might
be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might overtake them
even in their swiftest run.
The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his
hand, a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a
brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short legs
and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits, came
creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at every
other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between the
hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not leave
without a greeting.
"Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?" said the schoolmaster,
making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over
the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads
towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even
see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the
hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine
folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large
old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.
"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as
he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law
here."
"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a
woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost
all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known
Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but
when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you
see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke
these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who
poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen
sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at
church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man,
that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord."
"I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church," said Adam. "I
was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was
particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday."
"Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why," said Bartle kindly, going up to
Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
with his own head. "You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I
saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times
coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper
first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down."
Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times
to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the
round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf
with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as
if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was
the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs,
which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic
houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Bartle
had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be
at the end of a summer's day.
"Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We'll not talk about business till
we've had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach. But," said
Bartle, rising from his chair again, "I must give Vixen her supper
too, confound her! Though she'll do nothing with it but nourish those
unnecessary babbies. That's the way with these women--they've got no
head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to
brats."
He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed
her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost
dispatch.
"I've had my supper, Mr. Massey," said Adam, "so I'll look on while you
eat yours. I've been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper
betimes, you know: they don't keep your late hours."
"I know little about their hours," said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread
and not shrinking from the crust. "It's a house I seldom go into, though
I'm fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser's a good fellow. There's too
many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices;
they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak--always either a-buzz or
a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and
as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what
they'll turn to--stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my
boy: it's been drawn for you--it's been drawn for you."
"Nay, Mr. Massey," said Adam, who took his old friend's whim more
seriously than usual to-night, "don't be so hard on the creaturs God has
made to be companions for us. A working-man 'ud be badly off without
a wife to see to th' house and the victual, and make things clean and
comfortable."
"Nonsense! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed,
to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up because
the women are there and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell
you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but
what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and
they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to
the men--it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman
'ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that
the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make
your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring
the proportion between the meal and the milk--a little more or less,
she'll think, doesn't signify. The porridge WILL be awk'ard now and
then: if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the
milk, or it's summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and
there's no difference between one batch and another from year's end to
year's end; but if I'd got any other woman besides Vixen in the house,
I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread
turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any
other house on the Common, though the half of 'em swarm with women. Will
Baker's lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning
done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman 'ud get done in three,
and all the while be sending buckets o' water after your ankles, and let
the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o' the floor half the
day for you to break your shins against 'em. Don't tell me about God
having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but
He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise--there was no
cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make
mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an
opportunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's
a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and
foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they're only the evils that
belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep
as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever
in another--hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another."
Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective
that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the
purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the
raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that
Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark
vaguely.
"Quiet, Vixen!" snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. "You're like the
rest o' the women--always putting in your word before you know why."
Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master
continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to
interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had
had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in
this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle's past life as to know
whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On that
point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived
previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and
artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their
only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this
subject, Bartle always replied, "Oh, I've seen many places--I've been a
deal in the south," and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of
asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in "the south."
"Now then, my boy," said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his
second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, "now then, we'll have a little
talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?"
"No," said Adam, "not as I remember."
"Ah, they'll keep it close, they'll keep it close, I daresay. But I
found it out by chance; and it's news that may concern you, Adam, else
I'm a man that don't know a superficial square foot from a solid."
Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly
the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion of
keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always letting
it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At last he
said, "Satchell's got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from the lad
they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o'clock this
morning. He's a good way beyond sixty, you know; it's much if he gets
over it."
"Well," said Adam, "I daresay there'd be more rejoicing than sorrow
in the parish at his being laid up. He's been a selfish, tale-bearing,
mischievous fellow; but, after all, there's nobody he's done so much
harm to as to th' old squire. Though it's the squire himself as is to
blame--making a stupid fellow like that a sort o' man-of-all-work, just
to save th' expense of having a proper steward to look after th' estate.
And he's lost more by ill management o' the woods, I'll be bound, than
'ud pay for two stewards. If he's laid on the shelf, it's to be hoped
he'll make way for a better man, but I don't see how it's like to make
any difference to me."
"But I see it, but I see it," said Bartle, "and others besides me. The
captain's coming of age now--you know that as well as I do--and it's to
be expected he'll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and
you know too, what 'ud be the captain's wish about the woods, if there
was a fair opportunity for making a change. He's said in plenty of
people's hearing that he'd make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if
he'd the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine's butler, heard him say so to
the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking
our pipes o' Saturday night at Casson's, and he told us about it; and
whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson's ready to back
it, that I'll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell
you, at Casson's, and one and another had their fling at you; for if
donkeys set to work to sing, you're pretty sure what the tune'll be."
"Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?" said Adam; "or wasn't he
there o' Saturday?"
"Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson--he's always for
setting other folks right, you know--would have it Burge was the man to
have the management of the woods. 'A substantial man,' says he, 'with
pretty near sixty years' experience o' timber: it 'ud be all very well
for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn't to be supposed the squire
'ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there's his elders and
betters at hand!' But I said, 'That's a pretty notion o' yours, Casson.
Why, Burge is the man to buy timber; would you put the woods into his
hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your
customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's
worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's
the backbone of Jonathan Burge's business.'"
"I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "But, for
all that, Casson was partly i' the right for once. There's not much
likelihood that th' old squire 'ud ever consent t' employ me. I offended
him about two years ago, and he's never forgiven me."
"Why, how was that? You never told me about it," said Bartle.
"Oh, it was a bit o' nonsense. I'd made a frame for a screen for
Miss Lyddy--she's allays making something with her worsted-work, you
know--and she'd given me particular orders about this screen, and there
was as much talking and measuring as if we'd been planning a house.
However, it was a nice bit o' work, and I liked doing it for her. But,
you know, those little friggling things take a deal o' time. I only
worked at it in overhours--often late at night--and I had to go to
Treddleston over an' over again about little bits o' brass nails and
such gear; and I turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th'
open work, after a pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon
pleased with it when it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy
sent for me to bring it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me
directions about fastening on the work--very fine needlework, Jacob and
Rachel a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture--and th'
old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was
mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she
was to give me. I didn't speak at random--you know it's not my way; I'd
calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said,
'One pound thirteen.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but
none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered
in his way at the screen, and said, 'One pound thirteen for a gimcrack
like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these things,
why don't you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double price for
clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter like Adam.
Give him a guinea, and no more.' Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon, believed
what he told her, and she's not overfond o' parting with the money
herself--she's not a bad woman at bottom, but she's been brought up
under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned as
red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, 'No, thank you, madam;
I'll make you a present o' the screen, if you please. I've charged
the regular price for my work, and I know it's done well; and I know,
begging His Honour's pardon, that you couldn't get such a screen at
Rosseter under two guineas. I'm willing to give you my work--it's been
done in my own time, and nobody's got anything to do with it but me; but
if I'm paid, I can't take a smaller price than I asked, because that
'ud be like saying I'd asked more than was just. With your leave, madam,
I'll bid you good-morning.' I made my bow and went out before she'd
time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking
almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite
as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as
I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me
the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty
clear as th' old squire can't abide me."
"That's likely enough, that's likely enough," said Bartle meditatively.
"The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his
own interest, and that the captain may do--that the captain may do."
"Nay, I don't know," said Adam; "the squire's 'cute enough but it takes
something else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'll be their
interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right
and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You'd hardly ever bring round th'
old squire to believe he'd gain as much in a straightfor'ard way as by
tricks and turns. And, besides, I've not much mind to work under him:
I don't want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old
gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn't agree long. If the
captain was master o' th' estate, it 'ud be different: he's got a
conscience and a will to do right, and I'd sooner work for him nor for
any man living."
"Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put
your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business,
that's all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well
as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you
pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling
before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest--you're overhasty and
proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don't square to your
notions. It's no harm for me to be a bit fiery and stiff-backed--I'm an
old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to a higher perch. But
where's the use of all the time I've spent in teaching you writing and
mapping and mensuration, if you're not to get for'ard in the world and
show folks there's some advantage in having a head on your shoulders,
instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on turning up your nose at every
opportunity because it's got a bit of a smell about it that nobody finds
out but yourself? It's as foolish as that notion o' yours that a wife
is to make a working-man comfortable. Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and
nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple
addition. Simple addition enough! Add one fool to another fool, and in
six years' time six fools more--they're all of the same denomination,
big and little's nothing to do with the sum!"
During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the
pipe had gone out, and Bartle gave the climax to his speech by striking
a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing
his eye still on Adam, who was trying not to laugh.
"There's a good deal o' sense in what you say, Mr. Massey," Adam began,
as soon as he felt quite serious, "as there always is. But you'll give
in that it's no business o' mine to be building on chances that may
never happen. What I've got to do is to work as well as I can with the
tools and mater'als I've got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me,
I'll think o' what you've been saying; but till then, I've got nothing
to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I'm turning
over a little plan for Seth and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit
by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it's getting
late now--it'll be pretty near eleven before I'm at home, and Mother may
happen to lie awake; she's more fidgety nor usual now. So I'll bid you
good-night."
"Well, well, we'll go to the gate with you--it's a fine night," said
Bartle, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without
further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of
Bartle's potato-beds, to the little gate.
"Come to the music o' Friday night, if you can, my boy," said the old
man, as he closed the gate after Adam and leaned against it.
"Aye, aye," said Adam, striding along towards the streak of pale road.
He was the only object moving on the wide common. The two grey donkeys,
just visible in front of the gorse bushes, stood as still as limestone
images--as still as the grey-thatched roof of the mud cottage a little
farther on. Bartle kept his eye on the moving figure till it passed into
the darkness, while Vixen, in a state of divided affection, had twice
run back to the house to bestow a parenthetic lick on her puppies.
"Aye, aye," muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, "there you
go, stalking along--stalking along; but you wouldn't have been what you
are if you hadn't had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest
calf must have something to suck at. There's plenty of these big,
lumbering fellows 'ud never have known their A B C if it hadn't been for
Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is
it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own
any more. And those pups--what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when
they're twice as big as you? For I'm pretty sure the father was that
hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker's--wasn't he now, eh, you sly hussy?"
(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran forward into the
house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a well-bred female will
ignore.)
"But where's the use of talking to a woman with babbies?" continued
Bartle. "She's got no conscience--no conscience; it's all run to milk."
Book Three
| Adam reaches Bartle Massey's house thirty minutes later, just in time to catch the end of night school. The schoolmaster was helping Bill learn to read. The man has a double motivation to get up to speed--his cousin can read, as can a young boy who works in his stonecutter's shop. Another beginner is a bricklayer, previously notorious, now Methodist, who wants to learn to read so that he can better understand religion. The third beginner is a dyer who wants to improve his business. The schoolmaster is less patient with sixteen-year-olds who are not learning their sums well. The lesson finishes, and Adam helps the schoolmaster clean up. He checks on the two pups of his dog, Vixen. The two men have a supper of bread, cheese, and ale. Bartle says that he likes the Poysers, but that there are too many women there, and he argues that a man can keep his house as comfortably as a woman can. He is better at baking and the like because he knows to measure the ingredients and has figured out that the hotter the oven, the shorter the time to bake. It is a mystery whether Bartle has ever been married, because previous to living in Hayslope he lived in the South. Bartle says that he has some news for Adam, namely that the Squire has had a stroke. Bartle thinks that if he dies, Adam is likely to be appointed steward of the forest. Adam says that the Squire is not likely to hire him in any case because he made an intricate screen for Miss Lydia once, and the Squire begrudged him the price that he asked for it and told Lydia to pay less. Adam then made a present of it, because to be paid less would imply that he had asked an unreasonable amount. The Squire sent him the money afterward, but he hated him thereafter | summary |
Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a
common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it
in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had his
hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless window,
that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by
thin dips.
When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey
merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had
not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full
of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in
Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was
over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It
was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he
knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle
Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of
keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs
of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above
the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out
of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had long
ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think
how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native
element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the
old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had
turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a well-seasoned
meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar as the
scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent to it, and even
in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a momentary stirring of the
old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough men painfully holding pen
or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly labouring through their
reading lesson.
The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster's
desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known
it only by seeing Bartle Massey's face as he looked over his spectacles,
which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for
present purposes. The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled
bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate
kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower
lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable
in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the
schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side,
had rather a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that
peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen
impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the
transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no
tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an
inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever.
"Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to
Adam, "begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you what d-r-y
spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you know."
"Bill" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent
stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of his
years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a harder
matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to saw. The
letters, he complained, were so "uncommon alike, there was no tellin'
'em one from another," the sawyer's business not being concerned with
minute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail
turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm
determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on two
reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything "right
off," whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a letter
from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world and had
got an overlooker's place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who sawed with
him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what could be
done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could
be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if
circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger
towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he
might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be
discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey
must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination
recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the
schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular
return of daylight and the changes in the weather.
The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a
Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in
perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately "got religion," and
along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning
was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as
usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard
task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might
have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil
memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language,
the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was
suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the
man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that
might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to,
which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher
at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and
though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of
"Brimstone," there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further
transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested
fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing
religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human
knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken
in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the
letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that
Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.
The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but
thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face and
hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of dipping
homespun wool and old women's petticoats had got fired with the ambition
to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of colour. He had
already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he was
bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the expense
of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given him a
notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and expense if
he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his spare hours to
the night-school, resolving that his "little chap" should lose no time
in coming to Mr. Massey's day-school as soon as he was old enough.
It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their hard
labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and painfully
making out, "The grass is green," "The sticks are dry," "The corn is
ripe"--a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single words
all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three rough
animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human.
And it touched the tenderest fibre in Bartle Massey's nature, for such
full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he had
no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with an
imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience
could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances
over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his
head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters
d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light.
After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up
with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on
their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"--a test which
they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes
had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some
minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing
between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which
rested between his legs.
"Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a
fortnight ago, and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn
accounts--that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn
accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three
times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of
doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You
go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of
than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that
happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em,
it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got
cheap--you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he'll make
you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge
isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know
figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts
fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's
nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to
yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed
four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how
many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had
got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work
'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches
by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and
then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself
how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten
workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that
rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if
he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the
short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive
to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get
out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because
he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not
refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people
who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with
'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you
can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of
thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word
I've got to say to you."
With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap than ever
with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a
sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to
show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and
mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Bartle
than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob
Storey's Z's, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their
tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not right
"somehow." But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you never
wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there "to finish off th'
alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha' done as well, for what he
could see."
At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their
"Good-nights," and Adam, knowing his old master's habits, rose and said,
"Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Massey?"
"Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I'll carry into the house; and
just lock the outer door, now you're near it," said Bartle, getting his
stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool.
He was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick
was necessary--the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the
school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly thought
of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along the
schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would perhaps
have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his pace might
be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might overtake them
even in their swiftest run.
The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his
hand, a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a
brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short legs
and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits, came
creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at every
other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between the
hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not leave
without a greeting.
"Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?" said the schoolmaster,
making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over
the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads
towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even
see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the
hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine
folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large
old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.
"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as
he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law
here."
"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a
woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost
all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known
Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but
when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you
see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke
these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who
poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen
sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at
church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man,
that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord."
"I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church," said Adam. "I
was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was
particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday."
"Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why," said Bartle kindly, going up to
Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
with his own head. "You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I
saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times
coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper
first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down."
Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times
to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the
round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf
with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as
if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was
the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs,
which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic
houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Bartle
had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be
at the end of a summer's day.
"Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We'll not talk about business till
we've had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach. But," said
Bartle, rising from his chair again, "I must give Vixen her supper
too, confound her! Though she'll do nothing with it but nourish those
unnecessary babbies. That's the way with these women--they've got no
head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to
brats."
He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed
her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost
dispatch.
"I've had my supper, Mr. Massey," said Adam, "so I'll look on while you
eat yours. I've been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper
betimes, you know: they don't keep your late hours."
"I know little about their hours," said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread
and not shrinking from the crust. "It's a house I seldom go into, though
I'm fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser's a good fellow. There's too
many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices;
they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak--always either a-buzz or
a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and
as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what
they'll turn to--stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my
boy: it's been drawn for you--it's been drawn for you."
"Nay, Mr. Massey," said Adam, who took his old friend's whim more
seriously than usual to-night, "don't be so hard on the creaturs God has
made to be companions for us. A working-man 'ud be badly off without
a wife to see to th' house and the victual, and make things clean and
comfortable."
"Nonsense! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed,
to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up because
the women are there and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell
you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but
what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and
they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to
the men--it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman
'ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that
the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make
your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring
the proportion between the meal and the milk--a little more or less,
she'll think, doesn't signify. The porridge WILL be awk'ard now and
then: if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the
milk, or it's summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and
there's no difference between one batch and another from year's end to
year's end; but if I'd got any other woman besides Vixen in the house,
I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread
turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any
other house on the Common, though the half of 'em swarm with women. Will
Baker's lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning
done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman 'ud get done in three,
and all the while be sending buckets o' water after your ankles, and let
the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o' the floor half the
day for you to break your shins against 'em. Don't tell me about God
having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but
He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise--there was no
cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make
mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an
opportunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's
a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and
foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they're only the evils that
belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep
as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever
in another--hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another."
Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective
that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the
purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the
raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that
Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark
vaguely.
"Quiet, Vixen!" snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. "You're like the
rest o' the women--always putting in your word before you know why."
Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master
continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to
interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had
had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in
this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle's past life as to know
whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On that
point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived
previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and
artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their
only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this
subject, Bartle always replied, "Oh, I've seen many places--I've been a
deal in the south," and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of
asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in "the south."
"Now then, my boy," said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his
second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, "now then, we'll have a little
talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?"
"No," said Adam, "not as I remember."
"Ah, they'll keep it close, they'll keep it close, I daresay. But I
found it out by chance; and it's news that may concern you, Adam, else
I'm a man that don't know a superficial square foot from a solid."
Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly
the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion of
keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always letting
it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At last he
said, "Satchell's got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from the lad
they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o'clock this
morning. He's a good way beyond sixty, you know; it's much if he gets
over it."
"Well," said Adam, "I daresay there'd be more rejoicing than sorrow
in the parish at his being laid up. He's been a selfish, tale-bearing,
mischievous fellow; but, after all, there's nobody he's done so much
harm to as to th' old squire. Though it's the squire himself as is to
blame--making a stupid fellow like that a sort o' man-of-all-work, just
to save th' expense of having a proper steward to look after th' estate.
And he's lost more by ill management o' the woods, I'll be bound, than
'ud pay for two stewards. If he's laid on the shelf, it's to be hoped
he'll make way for a better man, but I don't see how it's like to make
any difference to me."
"But I see it, but I see it," said Bartle, "and others besides me. The
captain's coming of age now--you know that as well as I do--and it's to
be expected he'll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and
you know too, what 'ud be the captain's wish about the woods, if there
was a fair opportunity for making a change. He's said in plenty of
people's hearing that he'd make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if
he'd the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine's butler, heard him say so to
the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking
our pipes o' Saturday night at Casson's, and he told us about it; and
whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson's ready to back
it, that I'll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell
you, at Casson's, and one and another had their fling at you; for if
donkeys set to work to sing, you're pretty sure what the tune'll be."
"Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?" said Adam; "or wasn't he
there o' Saturday?"
"Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson--he's always for
setting other folks right, you know--would have it Burge was the man to
have the management of the woods. 'A substantial man,' says he, 'with
pretty near sixty years' experience o' timber: it 'ud be all very well
for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn't to be supposed the squire
'ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there's his elders and
betters at hand!' But I said, 'That's a pretty notion o' yours, Casson.
Why, Burge is the man to buy timber; would you put the woods into his
hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your
customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's
worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's
the backbone of Jonathan Burge's business.'"
"I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "But, for
all that, Casson was partly i' the right for once. There's not much
likelihood that th' old squire 'ud ever consent t' employ me. I offended
him about two years ago, and he's never forgiven me."
"Why, how was that? You never told me about it," said Bartle.
"Oh, it was a bit o' nonsense. I'd made a frame for a screen for
Miss Lyddy--she's allays making something with her worsted-work, you
know--and she'd given me particular orders about this screen, and there
was as much talking and measuring as if we'd been planning a house.
However, it was a nice bit o' work, and I liked doing it for her. But,
you know, those little friggling things take a deal o' time. I only
worked at it in overhours--often late at night--and I had to go to
Treddleston over an' over again about little bits o' brass nails and
such gear; and I turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th'
open work, after a pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon
pleased with it when it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy
sent for me to bring it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me
directions about fastening on the work--very fine needlework, Jacob and
Rachel a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture--and th'
old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was
mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she
was to give me. I didn't speak at random--you know it's not my way; I'd
calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said,
'One pound thirteen.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but
none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered
in his way at the screen, and said, 'One pound thirteen for a gimcrack
like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these things,
why don't you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double price for
clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter like Adam.
Give him a guinea, and no more.' Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon, believed
what he told her, and she's not overfond o' parting with the money
herself--she's not a bad woman at bottom, but she's been brought up
under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned as
red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, 'No, thank you, madam;
I'll make you a present o' the screen, if you please. I've charged
the regular price for my work, and I know it's done well; and I know,
begging His Honour's pardon, that you couldn't get such a screen at
Rosseter under two guineas. I'm willing to give you my work--it's been
done in my own time, and nobody's got anything to do with it but me; but
if I'm paid, I can't take a smaller price than I asked, because that
'ud be like saying I'd asked more than was just. With your leave, madam,
I'll bid you good-morning.' I made my bow and went out before she'd
time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking
almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite
as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as
I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me
the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty
clear as th' old squire can't abide me."
"That's likely enough, that's likely enough," said Bartle meditatively.
"The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his
own interest, and that the captain may do--that the captain may do."
"Nay, I don't know," said Adam; "the squire's 'cute enough but it takes
something else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'll be their
interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right
and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You'd hardly ever bring round th'
old squire to believe he'd gain as much in a straightfor'ard way as by
tricks and turns. And, besides, I've not much mind to work under him:
I don't want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old
gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn't agree long. If the
captain was master o' th' estate, it 'ud be different: he's got a
conscience and a will to do right, and I'd sooner work for him nor for
any man living."
"Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put
your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business,
that's all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well
as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you
pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling
before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest--you're overhasty and
proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don't square to your
notions. It's no harm for me to be a bit fiery and stiff-backed--I'm an
old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to a higher perch. But
where's the use of all the time I've spent in teaching you writing and
mapping and mensuration, if you're not to get for'ard in the world and
show folks there's some advantage in having a head on your shoulders,
instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on turning up your nose at every
opportunity because it's got a bit of a smell about it that nobody finds
out but yourself? It's as foolish as that notion o' yours that a wife
is to make a working-man comfortable. Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and
nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple
addition. Simple addition enough! Add one fool to another fool, and in
six years' time six fools more--they're all of the same denomination,
big and little's nothing to do with the sum!"
During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the
pipe had gone out, and Bartle gave the climax to his speech by striking
a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing
his eye still on Adam, who was trying not to laugh.
"There's a good deal o' sense in what you say, Mr. Massey," Adam began,
as soon as he felt quite serious, "as there always is. But you'll give
in that it's no business o' mine to be building on chances that may
never happen. What I've got to do is to work as well as I can with the
tools and mater'als I've got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me,
I'll think o' what you've been saying; but till then, I've got nothing
to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I'm turning
over a little plan for Seth and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit
by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it's getting
late now--it'll be pretty near eleven before I'm at home, and Mother may
happen to lie awake; she's more fidgety nor usual now. So I'll bid you
good-night."
"Well, well, we'll go to the gate with you--it's a fine night," said
Bartle, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without
further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of
Bartle's potato-beds, to the little gate.
"Come to the music o' Friday night, if you can, my boy," said the old
man, as he closed the gate after Adam and leaned against it.
"Aye, aye," said Adam, striding along towards the streak of pale road.
He was the only object moving on the wide common. The two grey donkeys,
just visible in front of the gorse bushes, stood as still as limestone
images--as still as the grey-thatched roof of the mud cottage a little
farther on. Bartle kept his eye on the moving figure till it passed into
the darkness, while Vixen, in a state of divided affection, had twice
run back to the house to bestow a parenthetic lick on her puppies.
"Aye, aye," muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, "there you
go, stalking along--stalking along; but you wouldn't have been what you
are if you hadn't had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest
calf must have something to suck at. There's plenty of these big,
lumbering fellows 'ud never have known their A B C if it hadn't been for
Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is
it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own
any more. And those pups--what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when
they're twice as big as you? For I'm pretty sure the father was that
hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker's--wasn't he now, eh, you sly hussy?"
(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran forward into the
house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a well-bred female will
ignore.)
"But where's the use of talking to a woman with babbies?" continued
Bartle. "She's got no conscience--no conscience; it's all run to milk."
Book Three
| Chapter Seventeen is crucial to the literary philosophy of the book. Eliot steps back to explain why she has chosen the subject matter that she has. This chapter could be referred to as meta-literary, because it does not advance the plot at all but instead airs the author's literary theories. The style of writing that Eliot supports is a sort of working-class realism. The most famous line in the novel is in this chapter: "And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up early in the morning to do our daily work." Eliot holds that literary integrity stems from an exact replication of real life. The Dutch masters whose paintings she so appreciates almost undoubtedly mean people including Rembrandt and Van Eyck, who took peasants as their subjects. In Chapter Eighteen, it is interesting that Eliot often puts her comments on human nature in the mouths of various characters, considering that she has already given herself a strong narrative voice in the novel. The characters who most often seem to hold Eliot's points of view are the female characters, especially Mrs. Poyser, whose commentary on old age seems to come straight from the author. This can be chalked up to the fact that while Adam Bede is a novel, it is also a treatise on both literary style and human nature. In Chapter Nineteen, Eliot gives Adam a healthy variety of virtues. On the one hand he is a strong and noble laborer, sure of his craft, able to imagine perfection, able to give advice to others. On the other hand he has the moral strength of an honest artisan who makes the most of his potential each day, almost to the awe of those who can appreciate his hardworking character. Moreover, Adam has risen above the virtue of the simple worker. He has advanced himself through schooling and through reading good books. He can think thoughts that the average laborer cannot think. Even so, during his three-mile walk, he chooses to think dreamily about the future and how he will be able to become a success in order to be worthy of marrying Hetty, rather than about the ideas he might have found in the writings of Bunyan or Franklin. Also, it is not clear that these virtues are given merely from Adam's own perspective of self-esteem rather than from the narrator's honest assessment of his character. Eliot observes in Chapter Twenty that often men mistake the signs that a woman is in love with someone else as the signs that she is in love with him. While she claims to be a realist, opinions such as these occasionally cause Eliot to come off as more of a cynic. She also writes that Adam has no way of knowing this general truth because he has not had the opportunity to read many novels and see how women act when they are in love. This is an unsubtle self-promotion of her own work, in that she claims that her novel is not only entertaining but also educational. The theme of costuming arises in this chapter, with Hetty's quick switch from wearing a flower behind her ear to wearing Dinah's Methodist cap. She makes the switch when she sees that Adam is displeased with her vanity; although she is not in love with him, she cannot bear to lose the attentions of any man. As transgressive as wearing a flower in her hair is, being reminiscent of prostitution, wearing Dinah's cap as mere adornment is even more transgressive because it has definite religious implications. A lot of Eliot's novel is taken up with sorting the young Bedes and the relatives of the Poysers into various possible matches. Dinah could marry Seth or possibly Adam; Hetty could marry Adam or possibly the Captain. Chapter Twenty-One, therefore, pulls short the notion that such alliances are necessary or even advisable. By showing a bachelor whose home functions at least as well or better than that of a married man, Eliot hints at the possibility that none of the matches might work out in the end. But even her depiction of a happy unmarried man has some flaws. First, there is the possibility that Bartle was married at some point in his life before, leaving the question of whether it is more likely to reach a happy bachelorhood only after having been married. Second, he is now in possession of a family of his own, whether he likes it or not. His female dog has given birth to pups, and because he calls her a "woman," he does have some elements of a family after all. | analysis |
THE thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm
days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No
rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was
perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on
the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the
roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll
on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple,
high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor
July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in.
Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers
are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and
yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at
the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment
of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the
waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their
sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are
often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour
of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their
innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows.
But it is a time of leisure on the farm--that pause between hay-and
corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton
thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when they could
give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which
had been brewed the autumn after "the heir" was born, and was to be
tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry with the
ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one had made
haste to get through the needful work before twelve, when it would be
time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase.
The midday sun was streaming into Hetty's bedchamber, and there was no
blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked at
herself in the old specked glass. Still, that was the only glass she had
in which she could see her neck and arms, for the small hanging
glass she had fetched out of the next room--the room that had been
Dinah's--would show her nothing below her little chin; and that
beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into
another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls. And to-day she
thought more than usual about her neck and arms; for at the dance this
evening she was not to wear any neckerchief, and she had been busy
yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock, that she might make the
sleeves either long or short at will. She was dressed now just as she
was to be in the evening, with a tucker made of "real" lace, which her
aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion, but with no ornaments
besides; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings which she wore
every day. But there was something more to be done, apparently, before
she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which she was to wear in
the day-time, for now she unlocked the drawer that held her private
treasures. It is more than a month since we saw her unlock that drawer
before, and now it holds new treasures, so much more precious than the
old ones that these are thrust into the corner. Hetty would not care to
put the large coloured glass ear-rings into her ears now; for see! she
has got a beautiful pair of gold and pearls and garnet, lying snugly in
a pretty little box lined with white satin. Oh, the delight of taking
out that little box and looking at the ear-rings! Do not reason about
it, my philosphical reader, and say that Hetty, being very pretty, must
have known that it did not signify whether she had on any ornaments
or not; and that, moreover, to look at ear-rings which she could not
possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the
essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced
on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so
excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational
prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary
bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she
turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings
nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the
person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to
the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she
have cared to have ear-rings rather than anything else? And I know that
she had longed for ear-rings from among all the ornaments she could
imagine.
"Little, little ears!" Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them one
evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat. "I wish I
had some pretty ear-rings!" she said in a moment, almost before she knew
what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her lips, it WOULD flutter
past them at the slightest breath. And the next day--it was only last
week--Arthur had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That
little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of
childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had
wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty
unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed back
their new delight into his.
No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the
ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them
to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears--only for one moment, to
see how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against
the wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a
listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings
as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be
made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the
tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps
water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little
round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty
must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman,
with a woman's destiny before her--a woman spinning in young ignorance a
light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and
press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once
her fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human
anguish.
But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle
and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them
up. Some day she will be able to wear any ear-rings she likes,
and already she lives in an invisible world of brilliant costumes,
shimmering gauze, soft satin, and velvet, such as the lady's maid at the
Chase has shown her in Miss Lydia's wardrobe. She feels the bracelets on
her arms, and treads on a soft carpet in front of a tall mirror. But
she has one thing in the drawer which she can venture to wear to-day,
because she can hang it on the chain of dark-brown berries which she has
been used to wear on grand days, with a tiny flat scent-bottle at
the end of it tucked inside her frock; and she must put on her brown
berries--her neck would look so unfinished without it. Hetty was
not quite as fond of the locket as of the ear-rings, though it was
a handsome large locket, with enamelled flowers at the back and a
beautiful gold border round the glass, which showed a light-brown
slightly waving lock, forming a background for two little dark rings.
She must keep it under her clothes, and no one would see it. But Hetty
had another passion, only a little less strong than her love of finery,
and that other passion made her like to wear the locket even hidden in
her bosom. She would always have worn it, if she had dared to encounter
her aunt's questions about a ribbon round her neck. So now she slipped
it on along her chain of dark-brown berries, and snapped the chain round
her neck. It was not a very long chain, only allowing the locket to hang
a little way below the edge of her frock. And now she had nothing to do
but to put on her long sleeves, her new white gauze neckerchief, and
her straw hat trimmed with white to-day instead of the pink, which
had become rather faded under the July sun. That hat made the drop of
bitterness in Hetty's cup to-day, for it was not quite new--everybody
would see that it was a little tanned against the white ribbon--and Mary
Burge, she felt sure, would have a new hat or bonnet on. She looked for
consolation at her fine white cotton stockings: they really were very
nice indeed, and she had given almost all her spare money for them.
Hetty's dream of the future could not make her insensible to triumph in
the present. To be sure, Captain Donnithorne loved her so that he would
never care about looking at other people, but then those other people
didn't know how he loved her, and she was not satisfied to appear shabby
and insignificant in their eyes even for a short space.
The whole party was assembled in the house-place when Hetty went down,
all of course in their Sunday clothes; and the bells had been ringing so
this morning in honour of the captain's twenty-first birthday, and the
work had all been got done so early, that Marty and Tommy were not quite
easy in their minds until their mother had assured them that going
to church was not part of the day's festivities. Mr. Poyser had once
suggested that the house should be shut up and left to take care
of itself; "for," said he, "there's no danger of anybody's breaking
in--everybody'll be at the Chase, thieves an' all. If we lock th' house
up, all the men can go: it's a day they wonna see twice i' their lives."
But Mrs. Poyser answered with great decision: "I never left the house to
take care of itself since I was a missis, and I never will. There's been
ill-looking tramps enoo' about the place this last week, to carry off
every ham an' every spoon we'n got; and they all collogue together,
them tramps, as it's a mercy they hanna come and poisoned the dogs and
murdered us all in our beds afore we knowed, some Friday night when
we'n got the money in th' house to pay the men. And it's like enough the
tramps know where we're going as well as we do oursens; for if Old Harry
wants any work done, you may be sure he'll find the means."
"Nonsense about murdering us in our beds," said Mr. Poyser; "I've got a
gun i' our room, hanna I? and thee'st got ears as 'ud find it out if a
mouse was gnawing the bacon. Howiver, if thee wouldstna be easy, Alick
can stay at home i' the forepart o' the day, and Tim can come back
tow'rds five o'clock, and let Alick have his turn. They may let Growler
loose if anybody offers to do mischief, and there's Alick's dog too,
ready enough to set his tooth in a tramp if Alick gives him a wink."
Mrs. Poyser accepted this compromise, but thought it advisable to bar
and bolt to the utmost; and now, at the last moment before starting,
Nancy, the dairy-maid, was closing the shutters of the house-place,
although the window, lying under the immediate observation of Alick and
the dogs, might have been supposed the least likely to be selected for a
burglarious attempt.
The covered cart, without springs, was standing ready to carry the whole
family except the men-servants. Mr. Poyser and the grandfather sat
on the seat in front, and within there was room for all the women and
children; the fuller the cart the better, because then the jolting
would not hurt so much, and Nancy's broad person and thick arms were an
excellent cushion to be pitched on. But Mr. Poyser drove at no more
than a walking pace, that there might be as little risk of jolting as
possible on this warm day, and there was time to exchange greetings and
remarks with the foot-passengers who were going the same way, specking
the paths between the green meadows and the golden cornfields with bits
of movable bright colour--a scarlet waistcoat to match the poppies that
nodded a little too thickly among the corn, or a dark-blue neckerchief
with ends flaunting across a brand-new white smock-frock. All Broxton
and all Hayslope were to be at the Chase, and make merry there in honour
of "th' heir"; and the old men and women, who had never been so far down
this side of the hill for the last twenty years, were being brought from
Broxton and Hayslope in one of the farmer's waggons, at Mr. Irwine's
suggestion. The church-bells had struck up again now--a last tune,
before the ringers came down the hill to have their share in the
festival; and before the bells had finished, other music was heard
approaching, so that even Old Brown, the sober horse that was drawing
Mr. Poyser's cart, began to prick up his ears. It was the band of the
Benefit Club, which had mustered in all its glory--that is to say, in
bright-blue scarfs and blue favours, and carrying its banner with
the motto, "Let brotherly love continue," encircling a picture of a
stone-pit.
The carts, of course, were not to enter the Chase. Every one must get
down at the lodges, and the vehicles must be sent back.
"Why, the Chase is like a fair a'ready," said Mrs. Poyser, as she got
down from the cart, and saw the groups scattered under the great oaks,
and the boys running about in the hot sunshine to survey the tall poles
surmounted by the fluttering garments that were to be the prize of the
successful climbers. "I should ha' thought there wasna so many people
i' the two parishes. Mercy on us! How hot it is out o' the shade! Come
here, Totty, else your little face 'ull be burnt to a scratchin'! They
might ha' cooked the dinners i' that open space an' saved the fires. I
shall go to Mrs. Best's room an' sit down."
"Stop a bit, stop a bit," said Mr. Poyser. "There's th' waggin coming
wi' th' old folks in't; it'll be such a sight as wonna come o'er again,
to see 'em get down an' walk along all together. You remember some on
'em i' their prime, eh, Father?"
"Aye, aye," said old Martin, walking slowly under the shade of the lodge
porch, from which he could see the aged party descend. "I remember Jacob
Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when they turned back
from Stoniton."
He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he
saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon
and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two
sticks.
"Well, Mester Taft," shouted old Martin, at the utmost stretch of his
voice--for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit
the propriety of a greeting--"you're hearty yet. You can enjoy yoursen
to-day, for-all you're ninety an' better."
"Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant," said Feyther Taft in a treble
tone, perceiving that he was in company.
The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and
grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the house,
where a special table was prepared for them; while the Poyser party
wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great trees,
but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn and
flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the lawn,
standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of the
open green space where the games were to be played. The house would have
been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne's time, but for
the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much
the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and
prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old remnant
stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the
sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all
down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made Hetty quite
sad to look at it: Arthur must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the
grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and
she should not see him for a long, long while--not till after dinner,
when they said he was to come up and make a speech.
But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was
come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early,
and Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the
rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long
tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants.
A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a
bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode--his arm no longer in a sling.
So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets,
and secrets leave no lines in young faces.
"Upon my word," he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, "I think
the cottagers have the best of it: these cloisters make a delightful
dining-room on a hot day. That was capital advice of yours, Irwine,
about the dinners--to let them be as orderly and comfortable as
possible, and only for the tenants: especially as I had only a limited
sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a carte blanche, he
couldn't make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point."
"Never mind, you'll give more pleasure in this quiet way," said Mr.
Irwine. "In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding
liberality with riot and disorder. It sounds very grand to say that so
many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked
to come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an
enjoyable meal. If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity
of ale in the middle of the day, they'll be able to enjoy the games
as the day cools. You can't hinder some of them from getting too much
towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than
drunkenness and daylight."
"Well, I hope there won't be much of it. I've kept the Treddleston
people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I've got Casson
and Adam Bede and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of
ale in the booths, and to take care things don't go too far. Come, let
us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants."
They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery
above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old
pictures had been banished for the last three generations--mouldy
portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye
knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius
Caesar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his
Commentaries in his hand.
"What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old
abbey!" said Arthur. "If I'm ever master here, I shall do up the gallery
in first-rate style. We've got no room in the house a third as large
as this. That second table is for the farmers' wives and children: Mrs.
Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers and children
to be by themselves. I was determined to have the children, and make a
regular family thing of it. I shall be 'the old squire' to those little
lads and lasses some day, and they'll tell their children what a much
finer young fellow I was than my own son. There's a table for the women
and children below as well. But you will see them all--you will come up
with me after dinner, I hope?"
"Yes, to be sure," said Mr. Irwine. "I wouldn't miss your maiden speech
to the tenantry."
"And there will be something else you'll like to hear," said Arthur.
"Let us go into the library and I'll tell you all about it while my
grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies. Something that will
surprise you," he continued, as they sat down. "My grandfather has come
round after all."
"What, about Adam?"
"Yes; I should have ridden over to tell you about it, only I was so
busy. You know I told you I had quite given up arguing the matter with
him--I thought it was hopeless--but yesterday morning he asked me to
come in here to him before I went out, and astonished me by saying that
he had decided on all the new arrangements he should make in consequence
of old Satchell being obliged to lay by work, and that he intended to
employ Adam in superintending the woods at a salary of a guinea a-week,
and the use of a pony to be kept here. I believe the secret of it is,
he saw from the first it would be a profitable plan, but he had some
particular dislike of Adam to get over--and besides, the fact that I
propose a thing is generally a reason with him for rejecting it. There's
the most curious contradiction in my grandfather: I know he means to
leave me all the money he has saved, and he is likely enough to have cut
off poor Aunt Lydia, who has been a slave to him all her life, with only
five hundred a-year, for the sake of giving me all the more; and yet I
sometimes think he positively hates me because I'm his heir. I believe
if I were to break my neck, he would feel it the greatest misfortune
that could befall him, and yet it seems a pleasure to him to make my
life a series of petty annoyances."
"Ah, my boy, it is not only woman's love that is [two greek words
omitted] as old AEschylus calls it. There's plenty of 'unloving love' in
the world of a masculine kind. But tell me about Adam. Has he accepted
the post? I don't see that it can be much more profitable than his
present work, though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time
on his own hands.
"Well, I felt some doubt about it when I spoke to him and he seemed to
hesitate at first. His objection was that he thought he should not be
able to satisfy my grandfather. But I begged him as a personal favour
to me not to let any reason prevent him from accepting the place, if he
really liked the employment and would not be giving up anything that
was more profitable to him. And he assured me he should like it of all
things--it would be a great step forward for him in business, and it
would enable him to do what he had long wished to do, to give up working
for Burge. He says he shall have plenty of time to superintend a little
business of his own, which he and Seth will carry on, and will perhaps
be able to enlarge by degrees. So he has agreed at last, and I have
arranged that he shall dine with the large tenants to-day; and I mean to
announce the appointment to them, and ask them to drink Adam's health.
It's a little drama I've got up in honour of my friend Adam. He's a fine
fellow, and I like the opportunity of letting people know that I think
so."
"A drama in which friend Arthur piques himself on having a pretty part
to play," said Mr. Irwine, smiling. But when he saw Arthur colour, he
went on relentingly, "My part, you know, is always that of the old fogy
who sees nothing to admire in the young folks. I don't like to admit
that I'm proud of my pupil when he does graceful things. But I must play
the amiable old gentleman for once, and second your toast in honour of
Adam. Has your grandfather yielded on the other point too, and agreed to
have a respectable man as steward?"
"Oh no," said Arthur, rising from his chair with an air of impatience
and walking along the room with his hands in his pockets. "He's got
some project or other about letting the Chase Farm and bargaining for
a supply of milk and butter for the house. But I ask no questions about
it--it makes me too angry. I believe he means to do all the business
himself, and have nothing in the shape of a steward. It's amazing what
energy he has, though."
"Well, we'll go to the ladies now," said Mr. Irwine, rising too. "I want
to tell my mother what a splendid throne you've prepared for her under
the marquee."
"Yes, and we must be going to luncheon too," said Arthur. "It must be
two o'clock, for there is the gong beginning to sound for the tenants'
dinners."
| The Captain's birthday is at the end of July. Hetty prepares herself in her room, looking at a lovely pair of garnet and pearl earrings that the Captain has given her, which she knows she cannot wear yet. She wears a locket with locks of hair in it hidden in her bosom. Everyone walks towards the Chase, where the great party is to be held. The oldest people all come in a wagon together. The great house was from the time of Queen Anne, but it was attached to the remnant of an old Abbey at one end. Hetty is sad that she has not seen Arthur yet. The Captain, preparing for dinner, thanks the vicar for his advice: only giving his tenants dinner and doing it earlier in the day, so that his house will not become a riot scene. He says that since Adam is handing out the alcohol, the party will not get out of hand. The Captain confides in the vicar that his grandfather has come around to having Adam manage the estate, although the Captain says that he still does not get along with his grandfather. Adam will dine with the large tenants, and the Captain will announce his new position at dinner | summary |
THE thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm
days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No
rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was
perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on
the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the
roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll
on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple,
high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor
July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in.
Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers
are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and
yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at
the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment
of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the
waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their
sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are
often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour
of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their
innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows.
But it is a time of leisure on the farm--that pause between hay-and
corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton
thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when they could
give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which
had been brewed the autumn after "the heir" was born, and was to be
tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry with the
ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one had made
haste to get through the needful work before twelve, when it would be
time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase.
The midday sun was streaming into Hetty's bedchamber, and there was no
blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked at
herself in the old specked glass. Still, that was the only glass she had
in which she could see her neck and arms, for the small hanging
glass she had fetched out of the next room--the room that had been
Dinah's--would show her nothing below her little chin; and that
beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into
another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls. And to-day she
thought more than usual about her neck and arms; for at the dance this
evening she was not to wear any neckerchief, and she had been busy
yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock, that she might make the
sleeves either long or short at will. She was dressed now just as she
was to be in the evening, with a tucker made of "real" lace, which her
aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion, but with no ornaments
besides; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings which she wore
every day. But there was something more to be done, apparently, before
she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which she was to wear in
the day-time, for now she unlocked the drawer that held her private
treasures. It is more than a month since we saw her unlock that drawer
before, and now it holds new treasures, so much more precious than the
old ones that these are thrust into the corner. Hetty would not care to
put the large coloured glass ear-rings into her ears now; for see! she
has got a beautiful pair of gold and pearls and garnet, lying snugly in
a pretty little box lined with white satin. Oh, the delight of taking
out that little box and looking at the ear-rings! Do not reason about
it, my philosphical reader, and say that Hetty, being very pretty, must
have known that it did not signify whether she had on any ornaments
or not; and that, moreover, to look at ear-rings which she could not
possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the
essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced
on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so
excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational
prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary
bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she
turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings
nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the
person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to
the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she
have cared to have ear-rings rather than anything else? And I know that
she had longed for ear-rings from among all the ornaments she could
imagine.
"Little, little ears!" Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them one
evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat. "I wish I
had some pretty ear-rings!" she said in a moment, almost before she knew
what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her lips, it WOULD flutter
past them at the slightest breath. And the next day--it was only last
week--Arthur had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That
little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of
childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had
wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty
unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed back
their new delight into his.
No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the
ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them
to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears--only for one moment, to
see how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against
the wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a
listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings
as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be
made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the
tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps
water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little
round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty
must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman,
with a woman's destiny before her--a woman spinning in young ignorance a
light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and
press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once
her fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human
anguish.
But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle
and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them
up. Some day she will be able to wear any ear-rings she likes,
and already she lives in an invisible world of brilliant costumes,
shimmering gauze, soft satin, and velvet, such as the lady's maid at the
Chase has shown her in Miss Lydia's wardrobe. She feels the bracelets on
her arms, and treads on a soft carpet in front of a tall mirror. But
she has one thing in the drawer which she can venture to wear to-day,
because she can hang it on the chain of dark-brown berries which she has
been used to wear on grand days, with a tiny flat scent-bottle at
the end of it tucked inside her frock; and she must put on her brown
berries--her neck would look so unfinished without it. Hetty was
not quite as fond of the locket as of the ear-rings, though it was
a handsome large locket, with enamelled flowers at the back and a
beautiful gold border round the glass, which showed a light-brown
slightly waving lock, forming a background for two little dark rings.
She must keep it under her clothes, and no one would see it. But Hetty
had another passion, only a little less strong than her love of finery,
and that other passion made her like to wear the locket even hidden in
her bosom. She would always have worn it, if she had dared to encounter
her aunt's questions about a ribbon round her neck. So now she slipped
it on along her chain of dark-brown berries, and snapped the chain round
her neck. It was not a very long chain, only allowing the locket to hang
a little way below the edge of her frock. And now she had nothing to do
but to put on her long sleeves, her new white gauze neckerchief, and
her straw hat trimmed with white to-day instead of the pink, which
had become rather faded under the July sun. That hat made the drop of
bitterness in Hetty's cup to-day, for it was not quite new--everybody
would see that it was a little tanned against the white ribbon--and Mary
Burge, she felt sure, would have a new hat or bonnet on. She looked for
consolation at her fine white cotton stockings: they really were very
nice indeed, and she had given almost all her spare money for them.
Hetty's dream of the future could not make her insensible to triumph in
the present. To be sure, Captain Donnithorne loved her so that he would
never care about looking at other people, but then those other people
didn't know how he loved her, and she was not satisfied to appear shabby
and insignificant in their eyes even for a short space.
The whole party was assembled in the house-place when Hetty went down,
all of course in their Sunday clothes; and the bells had been ringing so
this morning in honour of the captain's twenty-first birthday, and the
work had all been got done so early, that Marty and Tommy were not quite
easy in their minds until their mother had assured them that going
to church was not part of the day's festivities. Mr. Poyser had once
suggested that the house should be shut up and left to take care
of itself; "for," said he, "there's no danger of anybody's breaking
in--everybody'll be at the Chase, thieves an' all. If we lock th' house
up, all the men can go: it's a day they wonna see twice i' their lives."
But Mrs. Poyser answered with great decision: "I never left the house to
take care of itself since I was a missis, and I never will. There's been
ill-looking tramps enoo' about the place this last week, to carry off
every ham an' every spoon we'n got; and they all collogue together,
them tramps, as it's a mercy they hanna come and poisoned the dogs and
murdered us all in our beds afore we knowed, some Friday night when
we'n got the money in th' house to pay the men. And it's like enough the
tramps know where we're going as well as we do oursens; for if Old Harry
wants any work done, you may be sure he'll find the means."
"Nonsense about murdering us in our beds," said Mr. Poyser; "I've got a
gun i' our room, hanna I? and thee'st got ears as 'ud find it out if a
mouse was gnawing the bacon. Howiver, if thee wouldstna be easy, Alick
can stay at home i' the forepart o' the day, and Tim can come back
tow'rds five o'clock, and let Alick have his turn. They may let Growler
loose if anybody offers to do mischief, and there's Alick's dog too,
ready enough to set his tooth in a tramp if Alick gives him a wink."
Mrs. Poyser accepted this compromise, but thought it advisable to bar
and bolt to the utmost; and now, at the last moment before starting,
Nancy, the dairy-maid, was closing the shutters of the house-place,
although the window, lying under the immediate observation of Alick and
the dogs, might have been supposed the least likely to be selected for a
burglarious attempt.
The covered cart, without springs, was standing ready to carry the whole
family except the men-servants. Mr. Poyser and the grandfather sat
on the seat in front, and within there was room for all the women and
children; the fuller the cart the better, because then the jolting
would not hurt so much, and Nancy's broad person and thick arms were an
excellent cushion to be pitched on. But Mr. Poyser drove at no more
than a walking pace, that there might be as little risk of jolting as
possible on this warm day, and there was time to exchange greetings and
remarks with the foot-passengers who were going the same way, specking
the paths between the green meadows and the golden cornfields with bits
of movable bright colour--a scarlet waistcoat to match the poppies that
nodded a little too thickly among the corn, or a dark-blue neckerchief
with ends flaunting across a brand-new white smock-frock. All Broxton
and all Hayslope were to be at the Chase, and make merry there in honour
of "th' heir"; and the old men and women, who had never been so far down
this side of the hill for the last twenty years, were being brought from
Broxton and Hayslope in one of the farmer's waggons, at Mr. Irwine's
suggestion. The church-bells had struck up again now--a last tune,
before the ringers came down the hill to have their share in the
festival; and before the bells had finished, other music was heard
approaching, so that even Old Brown, the sober horse that was drawing
Mr. Poyser's cart, began to prick up his ears. It was the band of the
Benefit Club, which had mustered in all its glory--that is to say, in
bright-blue scarfs and blue favours, and carrying its banner with
the motto, "Let brotherly love continue," encircling a picture of a
stone-pit.
The carts, of course, were not to enter the Chase. Every one must get
down at the lodges, and the vehicles must be sent back.
"Why, the Chase is like a fair a'ready," said Mrs. Poyser, as she got
down from the cart, and saw the groups scattered under the great oaks,
and the boys running about in the hot sunshine to survey the tall poles
surmounted by the fluttering garments that were to be the prize of the
successful climbers. "I should ha' thought there wasna so many people
i' the two parishes. Mercy on us! How hot it is out o' the shade! Come
here, Totty, else your little face 'ull be burnt to a scratchin'! They
might ha' cooked the dinners i' that open space an' saved the fires. I
shall go to Mrs. Best's room an' sit down."
"Stop a bit, stop a bit," said Mr. Poyser. "There's th' waggin coming
wi' th' old folks in't; it'll be such a sight as wonna come o'er again,
to see 'em get down an' walk along all together. You remember some on
'em i' their prime, eh, Father?"
"Aye, aye," said old Martin, walking slowly under the shade of the lodge
porch, from which he could see the aged party descend. "I remember Jacob
Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when they turned back
from Stoniton."
He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he
saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon
and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two
sticks.
"Well, Mester Taft," shouted old Martin, at the utmost stretch of his
voice--for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit
the propriety of a greeting--"you're hearty yet. You can enjoy yoursen
to-day, for-all you're ninety an' better."
"Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant," said Feyther Taft in a treble
tone, perceiving that he was in company.
The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and
grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the house,
where a special table was prepared for them; while the Poyser party
wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great trees,
but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn and
flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the lawn,
standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of the
open green space where the games were to be played. The house would have
been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne's time, but for
the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much
the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and
prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old remnant
stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the
sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all
down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made Hetty quite
sad to look at it: Arthur must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the
grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and
she should not see him for a long, long while--not till after dinner,
when they said he was to come up and make a speech.
But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was
come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early,
and Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the
rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long
tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants.
A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a
bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode--his arm no longer in a sling.
So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets,
and secrets leave no lines in young faces.
"Upon my word," he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, "I think
the cottagers have the best of it: these cloisters make a delightful
dining-room on a hot day. That was capital advice of yours, Irwine,
about the dinners--to let them be as orderly and comfortable as
possible, and only for the tenants: especially as I had only a limited
sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a carte blanche, he
couldn't make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point."
"Never mind, you'll give more pleasure in this quiet way," said Mr.
Irwine. "In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding
liberality with riot and disorder. It sounds very grand to say that so
many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked
to come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an
enjoyable meal. If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity
of ale in the middle of the day, they'll be able to enjoy the games
as the day cools. You can't hinder some of them from getting too much
towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than
drunkenness and daylight."
"Well, I hope there won't be much of it. I've kept the Treddleston
people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I've got Casson
and Adam Bede and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of
ale in the booths, and to take care things don't go too far. Come, let
us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants."
They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery
above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old
pictures had been banished for the last three generations--mouldy
portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye
knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius
Caesar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his
Commentaries in his hand.
"What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old
abbey!" said Arthur. "If I'm ever master here, I shall do up the gallery
in first-rate style. We've got no room in the house a third as large
as this. That second table is for the farmers' wives and children: Mrs.
Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers and children
to be by themselves. I was determined to have the children, and make a
regular family thing of it. I shall be 'the old squire' to those little
lads and lasses some day, and they'll tell their children what a much
finer young fellow I was than my own son. There's a table for the women
and children below as well. But you will see them all--you will come up
with me after dinner, I hope?"
"Yes, to be sure," said Mr. Irwine. "I wouldn't miss your maiden speech
to the tenantry."
"And there will be something else you'll like to hear," said Arthur.
"Let us go into the library and I'll tell you all about it while my
grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies. Something that will
surprise you," he continued, as they sat down. "My grandfather has come
round after all."
"What, about Adam?"
"Yes; I should have ridden over to tell you about it, only I was so
busy. You know I told you I had quite given up arguing the matter with
him--I thought it was hopeless--but yesterday morning he asked me to
come in here to him before I went out, and astonished me by saying that
he had decided on all the new arrangements he should make in consequence
of old Satchell being obliged to lay by work, and that he intended to
employ Adam in superintending the woods at a salary of a guinea a-week,
and the use of a pony to be kept here. I believe the secret of it is,
he saw from the first it would be a profitable plan, but he had some
particular dislike of Adam to get over--and besides, the fact that I
propose a thing is generally a reason with him for rejecting it. There's
the most curious contradiction in my grandfather: I know he means to
leave me all the money he has saved, and he is likely enough to have cut
off poor Aunt Lydia, who has been a slave to him all her life, with only
five hundred a-year, for the sake of giving me all the more; and yet I
sometimes think he positively hates me because I'm his heir. I believe
if I were to break my neck, he would feel it the greatest misfortune
that could befall him, and yet it seems a pleasure to him to make my
life a series of petty annoyances."
"Ah, my boy, it is not only woman's love that is [two greek words
omitted] as old AEschylus calls it. There's plenty of 'unloving love' in
the world of a masculine kind. But tell me about Adam. Has he accepted
the post? I don't see that it can be much more profitable than his
present work, though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time
on his own hands.
"Well, I felt some doubt about it when I spoke to him and he seemed to
hesitate at first. His objection was that he thought he should not be
able to satisfy my grandfather. But I begged him as a personal favour
to me not to let any reason prevent him from accepting the place, if he
really liked the employment and would not be giving up anything that
was more profitable to him. And he assured me he should like it of all
things--it would be a great step forward for him in business, and it
would enable him to do what he had long wished to do, to give up working
for Burge. He says he shall have plenty of time to superintend a little
business of his own, which he and Seth will carry on, and will perhaps
be able to enlarge by degrees. So he has agreed at last, and I have
arranged that he shall dine with the large tenants to-day; and I mean to
announce the appointment to them, and ask them to drink Adam's health.
It's a little drama I've got up in honour of my friend Adam. He's a fine
fellow, and I like the opportunity of letting people know that I think
so."
"A drama in which friend Arthur piques himself on having a pretty part
to play," said Mr. Irwine, smiling. But when he saw Arthur colour, he
went on relentingly, "My part, you know, is always that of the old fogy
who sees nothing to admire in the young folks. I don't like to admit
that I'm proud of my pupil when he does graceful things. But I must play
the amiable old gentleman for once, and second your toast in honour of
Adam. Has your grandfather yielded on the other point too, and agreed to
have a respectable man as steward?"
"Oh no," said Arthur, rising from his chair with an air of impatience
and walking along the room with his hands in his pockets. "He's got
some project or other about letting the Chase Farm and bargaining for
a supply of milk and butter for the house. But I ask no questions about
it--it makes me too angry. I believe he means to do all the business
himself, and have nothing in the shape of a steward. It's amazing what
energy he has, though."
"Well, we'll go to the ladies now," said Mr. Irwine, rising too. "I want
to tell my mother what a splendid throne you've prepared for her under
the marquee."
"Yes, and we must be going to luncheon too," said Arthur. "It must be
two o'clock, for there is the gong beginning to sound for the tenants'
dinners."
| In Chapter Twenty-Two, the Captain's behavior towards his tenants is interestingly old-fashioned. He seems to take an almost feudal responsibility for them, a fact enhanced by the setting of the tenants' dinner in a room in the old Abbey. The Captain in no way questions the established social order of his society, but he wants to be--and to appear--as benevolent a master as possible. He is constantly concerned about his image in the eyes of his tenants, and he uses a possible dip in their feelings toward him as a reason that he should not continue to see Hetty . The new position for Adam shakes up the established order of the book in the same way that his father's death did. It makes him somewhat more able to marry Hetty. This new development not only frees him economically, but also it increases his social status, bringing him level with large tenants like the Poysers. Chapter Twenty-Three shows the differences in character between Hetty and Adam once again, suggesting that they might not make a very good couple. Adam's humility is highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, showing that he does not want to be elevated above his family. One moral center in this novel concerns family values, and the fact that Adam does not want to move upward socially without bringing the rest of his family with him is an extremely positive quality in the context of the novel. Eliot has already remarked, however, that if Hetty were invited to make a great social leap, she would do so without a backward glance. Two of Hetty's most negative characteristics are highlighted at the end of this chapter. Her vanity, the most obvious of her sins, is irritated when Totty innocently does something that might spoil Hetty's careful toilette. Her groundless flirtation is also emphasized here; she smiles winningly at Adam not because she loves him, but because she knows that a competitor is watching. She wants to retain her hold over Adam even if she does not want him for herself. In Chapter Twenty-Four, all of the people in the village put on a good, happy, and unanimous face, while they are divided by social barriers and generally feel conflicted about their own troubles. The Captain is worried that if others learn about his relationship with Hetty, they will think less of him. Hetty is worried that he does not love her anymore. Adam is worried that he is letting down his family by moving into a new social sphere. There are several other worries here. What Eliot is trying to demonstrate is that, unlike natural events, social events can lend themselves to theatricality, leading people to play their expected roles instead of interacting and responding as they might do in a more natural way. The speeches of the men are weighed and judged, and despite the fact that all of the villagers know that Adam means well, some still judge his speech negatively. Chapter Twenty-Five steps back from the story of the love problems among the Bedes and Poyser nieces to view the community as a whole. Rather than use the narrator to comment, Eliot brings in Mrs. Irwine as an outsider who rather impartially surveys the community. The result of this outsider perspective is a more even distribution of praise where praise is deserved. For example, she notices Seth Bede's particularity, though he is usually overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother. The short episode of Chad's Bess's disappointment is almost more like a fable than a novel. Chad's Bess is persuaded to do something that she knows she should not be doing--heating herself up too much by racing--in pursuit of some sort of finery as a prize. She is quite disappointed when she ends up with a prize that is not to her taste. This fable might do well to instruct Hetty, who is carrying on a relationship that she knows she should not in pursuit of luxury and finery herself. Chad's Bess's disappointment may foreshadow her own. Formal dancing is used in Chapter Twenty-Six in a similar way compared with dancing in Victorian fiction. That is, it is a proxy for, or a prelude to, sexual relations. Certain rules regulate the way that balls, even those as informal as the country dance, are held. Men must ask women to dance, and people may survey their possible prizes with all of the leisure of someone shopping for vegetables in a market. Men must not dance too often with the same partner, or else it will be expected that he has serious designs on her and may even be ready to marry her. For this reason, neither Adam nor the Captain dances with Hetty more than once. The fact that Adam sees the locket, which is obviously so fine as to be a gift from the Captain, suggests that Hetty's secret cannot remain a secret for very much longer. Even though she tries to hide the signs of her love, and though she is fairly successful at making others believe that her emotions are linked to men other than the Captain, she ultimately will be unsuccessful at hiding such a big secret. | analysis |
WHEN Adam heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he
felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way above
his mother and Seth, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But
Mr. Mills, the butler, assured him that Captain Donnithorne had given
particular orders about it, and would be very angry if Adam was not
there.
Adam nodded and went up to Seth, who was standing a few yards off.
"Seth, lad," he said, "the captain has sent to say I'm to dine
upstairs--he wishes it particular, Mr. Mills says, so I suppose it 'ud
be behaving ill for me not to go. But I don't like sitting up above thee
and mother, as if I was better than my own flesh and blood. Thee't not
take it unkind, I hope?"
"Nay, nay, lad," said Seth, "thy honour's our honour; and if thee get'st
respect, thee'st won it by thy own deserts. The further I see thee
above me, the better, so long as thee feel'st like a brother to me.
It's because o' thy being appointed over the woods, and it's nothing but
what's right. That's a place o' trust, and thee't above a common workman
now."
"Aye," said Adam, "but nobody knows a word about it yet. I haven't given
notice to Mr. Burge about leaving him, and I don't like to tell anybody
else about it before he knows, for he'll be a good bit hurt, I doubt.
People 'ull be wondering to see me there, and they'll like enough be
guessing the reason and asking questions, for there's been so much talk
up and down about my having the place, this last three weeks."
"Well, thee canst say thee wast ordered to come without being told the
reason. That's the truth. And mother 'ull be fine and joyful about it.
Let's go and tell her."
Adam was not the only guest invited to come upstairs on other grounds
than the amount he contributed to the rent-roll. There were other people
in the two parishes who derived dignity from their functions rather than
from their pocket, and of these Bartle Massey was one. His lame walk was
rather slower than usual on this warm day, so Adam lingered behind when
the bell rang for dinner, that he might walk up with his old friend;
for he was a little too shy to join the Poyser party on this public
occasion. Opportunities of getting to Hetty's side would be sure to turn
up in the course of the day, and Adam contented himself with that for
he disliked any risk of being "joked" about Hetty--the big, outspoken,
fearless man was very shy and diffident as to his love-making.
"Well, Mester Massey," said Adam, as Bartle came up "I'm going to dine
upstairs with you to-day: the captain's sent me orders."
"Ah!" said Bartle, pausing, with one hand on his back. "Then there's
something in the wind--there's something in the wind. Have you heard
anything about what the old squire means to do?"
"Why, yes," said Adam; "I'll tell you what I know, because I believe you
can keep a still tongue in your head if you like, and I hope you'll
not let drop a word till it's common talk, for I've particular reasons
against its being known."
"Trust to me, my boy, trust to me. I've got no wife to worm it out of
me and then run out and cackle it in everybody's hearing. If you trust a
man, let him be a bachelor--let him be a bachelor."
"Well, then, it was so far settled yesterday that I'm to take the
management o' the woods. The captain sent for me t' offer it me, when
I was seeing to the poles and things here and I've agreed to't. But if
anybody asks any questions upstairs, just you take no notice, and turn
the talk to something else, and I'll be obliged to you. Now, let us go
on, for we're pretty nigh the last, I think."
"I know what to do, never fear," said Bartle, moving on. "The news will
be good sauce to my dinner. Aye, aye, my boy, you'll get on. I'll back
you for an eye at measuring and a head-piece for figures, against
any man in this county and you've had good teaching--you've had good
teaching."
When they got upstairs, the question which Arthur had left unsettled, as
to who was to be president, and who vice, was still under discussion, so
that Adam's entrance passed without remark.
"It stands to sense," Mr. Casson was saying, "as old Mr. Poyser, as is
th' oldest man i' the room, should sit at top o' the table. I wasn't
butler fifteen year without learning the rights and the wrongs about
dinner."
"Nay, nay," said old Martin, "I'n gi'en up to my son; I'm no tenant now:
let my son take my place. Th' ould foulks ha' had their turn: they mun
make way for the young uns."
"I should ha' thought the biggest tenant had the best right, more nor
th' oldest," said Luke Britton, who was not fond of the critical Mr.
Poyser; "there's Mester Holdsworth has more land nor anybody else on th'
estate."
"Well," said Mr. Poyser, "suppose we say the man wi' the foulest land
shall sit at top; then whoever gets th' honour, there'll be no envying
on him."
"Eh, here's Mester Massey," said Mr. Craig, who, being a neutral in the
dispute, had no interest but in conciliation; "the schoolmaster ought to
be able to tell you what's right. Who's to sit at top o' the table, Mr.
Massey?"
"Why, the broadest man," said Bartle; "and then he won't take up other
folks' room; and the next broadest must sit at bottom."
This happy mode of settling the dispute produced much laughter--a
smaller joke would have sufficed for that Mr. Casson, however, did not
feel it compatible with his dignity and superior knowledge to join
in the laugh, until it turned out that he was fixed on as the second
broadest man. Martin Poyser the younger, as the broadest, was to be
president, and Mr. Casson, as next broadest, was to be vice.
Owing to this arrangement, Adam, being, of course, at the bottom of the
table, fell under the immediate observation of Mr. Casson, who, too much
occupied with the question of precedence, had not hitherto noticed his
entrance. Mr. Casson, we have seen, considered Adam "rather lifted up
and peppery-like": he thought the gentry made more fuss about this
young carpenter than was necessary; they made no fuss about Mr. Casson,
although he had been an excellent butler for fifteen years.
"Well, Mr. Bede, you're one o' them as mounts hup'ards apace," he said,
when Adam sat down. "You've niver dined here before, as I remember."
"No, Mr. Casson," said Adam, in his strong voice, that could be heard
along the table; "I've never dined here before, but I come by Captain
Donnithorne's wish, and I hope it's not disagreeable to anybody here."
"Nay, nay," said several voices at once, "we're glad ye're come. Who's
got anything to say again' it?"
"And ye'll sing us 'Over the hills and far away,' after dinner, wonna
ye?" said Mr. Chowne. "That's a song I'm uncommon fond on."
"Peeh!" said Mr. Craig; "it's not to be named by side o' the Scotch
tunes. I've never cared about singing myself; I've had something better
to do. A man that's got the names and the natur o' plants in's head isna
likely to keep a hollow place t' hold tunes in. But a second cousin o'
mine, a drovier, was a rare hand at remembering the Scotch tunes. He'd
got nothing else to think on."
"The Scotch tunes!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard
enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for
nothing but to frighten the birds with--that's to say, the English
birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the
lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the corn 'll
be safe."
"Yes, there's folks as find a pleasure in undervallying what they know
but little about," said Mr. Craig.
"Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman," Bartle
went on, without deigning to notice Mr. Craig's remark. "They go on with
the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end.
Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a question of
somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet."
Adam minded the less about sitting by Mr. Casson, because this position
enabled him to see Hetty, who was not far off him at the next table.
Hetty, however, had not even noticed his presence yet, for she was
giving angry attention to Totty, who insisted on drawing up her feet on
to the bench in antique fashion, and thereby threatened to make dusty
marks on Hetty's pink-and-white frock. No sooner were the little fat
legs pushed down than up they came again, for Totty's eyes were too busy
in staring at the large dishes to see where the plum pudding was for
her to retain any consciousness of her legs. Hetty got quite out of
patience, and at last, with a frown and pout, and gathering tears, she
said, "Oh dear, Aunt, I wish you'd speak to Totty; she keeps putting her
legs up so, and messing my frock."
"What's the matter wi' the child? She can niver please you," said the
mother. "Let her come by the side o' me, then. I can put up wi' her."
Adam was looking at Hetty, and saw the frown, and pout, and the dark
eyes seeming to grow larger with pettish half-gathered tears. Quiet Mary
Burge, who sat near enough to see that Hetty was cross and that Adam's
eyes were fixed on her, thought that so sensible a man as Adam must be
reflecting on the small value of beauty in a woman whose temper was bad.
Mary was a good girl, not given to indulge in evil feelings, but she
said to herself, that, since Hetty had a bad temper, it was better Adam
should know it. And it was quite true that if Hetty had been plain, she
would have looked very ugly and unamiable at that moment, and no one's
moral judgment upon her would have been in the least beguiled. But
really there was something quite charming in her pettishness: it looked
so much more like innocent distress than ill humour; and the severe Adam
felt no movement of disapprobation; he only felt a sort of amused pity,
as if he had seen a kitten setting up its back, or a little bird with
its feathers ruffled. He could not gather what was vexing her, but it
was impossible to him to feel otherwise than that she was the prettiest
thing in the world, and that if he could have his way, nothing should
ever vex her any more. And presently, when Totty was gone, she caught
his eye, and her face broke into one of its brightest smiles, as she
nodded to him. It was a bit of flirtation--she knew Mary Burge was
looking at them. But the smile was like wine to Adam.
| Adam is called to dine with the large tenants and feels uncomfortable leaving his family downstairs, but Seth encourages him to go. He walks up with Bartle. There was a small argument about who was to sit at the top of the table, because the butler felt strongly that the elder Mr. Poyser should. Bartle settles the matter with a joke: the broadest should sit at the head and the second-broadest at the foot. Thus, Mr. Poyser gets the head and Mr. Casson gets the foot. This has put Adam next to Mr. Casson, who thinks that he is too uppity. He asks if it is the first time that Adam has dined at this table. Adam says yes and that he hopes that it is agreeable to the others at the table. A few people say that of course it is. Adam is pleased, anyway, with his seat, because he can see Hetty. Hetty is preoccupied with scolding Totty for putting her feet up on the bench because she might get dust marks on her dress. Adam cannot see the cause of her vexation, but he thinks that she looks sweet, although the moment of anger would not have looked very good on someone less pretty. Mary Burge sees Adam looking at Hetty and is glad that he has seen her out of humor because he might like her less. Hetty, knowing that Mary Burge and Adam are both looking at her, looks up at Adam and smiles brightly | summary |
WHEN Adam heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he
felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way above
his mother and Seth, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But
Mr. Mills, the butler, assured him that Captain Donnithorne had given
particular orders about it, and would be very angry if Adam was not
there.
Adam nodded and went up to Seth, who was standing a few yards off.
"Seth, lad," he said, "the captain has sent to say I'm to dine
upstairs--he wishes it particular, Mr. Mills says, so I suppose it 'ud
be behaving ill for me not to go. But I don't like sitting up above thee
and mother, as if I was better than my own flesh and blood. Thee't not
take it unkind, I hope?"
"Nay, nay, lad," said Seth, "thy honour's our honour; and if thee get'st
respect, thee'st won it by thy own deserts. The further I see thee
above me, the better, so long as thee feel'st like a brother to me.
It's because o' thy being appointed over the woods, and it's nothing but
what's right. That's a place o' trust, and thee't above a common workman
now."
"Aye," said Adam, "but nobody knows a word about it yet. I haven't given
notice to Mr. Burge about leaving him, and I don't like to tell anybody
else about it before he knows, for he'll be a good bit hurt, I doubt.
People 'ull be wondering to see me there, and they'll like enough be
guessing the reason and asking questions, for there's been so much talk
up and down about my having the place, this last three weeks."
"Well, thee canst say thee wast ordered to come without being told the
reason. That's the truth. And mother 'ull be fine and joyful about it.
Let's go and tell her."
Adam was not the only guest invited to come upstairs on other grounds
than the amount he contributed to the rent-roll. There were other people
in the two parishes who derived dignity from their functions rather than
from their pocket, and of these Bartle Massey was one. His lame walk was
rather slower than usual on this warm day, so Adam lingered behind when
the bell rang for dinner, that he might walk up with his old friend;
for he was a little too shy to join the Poyser party on this public
occasion. Opportunities of getting to Hetty's side would be sure to turn
up in the course of the day, and Adam contented himself with that for
he disliked any risk of being "joked" about Hetty--the big, outspoken,
fearless man was very shy and diffident as to his love-making.
"Well, Mester Massey," said Adam, as Bartle came up "I'm going to dine
upstairs with you to-day: the captain's sent me orders."
"Ah!" said Bartle, pausing, with one hand on his back. "Then there's
something in the wind--there's something in the wind. Have you heard
anything about what the old squire means to do?"
"Why, yes," said Adam; "I'll tell you what I know, because I believe you
can keep a still tongue in your head if you like, and I hope you'll
not let drop a word till it's common talk, for I've particular reasons
against its being known."
"Trust to me, my boy, trust to me. I've got no wife to worm it out of
me and then run out and cackle it in everybody's hearing. If you trust a
man, let him be a bachelor--let him be a bachelor."
"Well, then, it was so far settled yesterday that I'm to take the
management o' the woods. The captain sent for me t' offer it me, when
I was seeing to the poles and things here and I've agreed to't. But if
anybody asks any questions upstairs, just you take no notice, and turn
the talk to something else, and I'll be obliged to you. Now, let us go
on, for we're pretty nigh the last, I think."
"I know what to do, never fear," said Bartle, moving on. "The news will
be good sauce to my dinner. Aye, aye, my boy, you'll get on. I'll back
you for an eye at measuring and a head-piece for figures, against
any man in this county and you've had good teaching--you've had good
teaching."
When they got upstairs, the question which Arthur had left unsettled, as
to who was to be president, and who vice, was still under discussion, so
that Adam's entrance passed without remark.
"It stands to sense," Mr. Casson was saying, "as old Mr. Poyser, as is
th' oldest man i' the room, should sit at top o' the table. I wasn't
butler fifteen year without learning the rights and the wrongs about
dinner."
"Nay, nay," said old Martin, "I'n gi'en up to my son; I'm no tenant now:
let my son take my place. Th' ould foulks ha' had their turn: they mun
make way for the young uns."
"I should ha' thought the biggest tenant had the best right, more nor
th' oldest," said Luke Britton, who was not fond of the critical Mr.
Poyser; "there's Mester Holdsworth has more land nor anybody else on th'
estate."
"Well," said Mr. Poyser, "suppose we say the man wi' the foulest land
shall sit at top; then whoever gets th' honour, there'll be no envying
on him."
"Eh, here's Mester Massey," said Mr. Craig, who, being a neutral in the
dispute, had no interest but in conciliation; "the schoolmaster ought to
be able to tell you what's right. Who's to sit at top o' the table, Mr.
Massey?"
"Why, the broadest man," said Bartle; "and then he won't take up other
folks' room; and the next broadest must sit at bottom."
This happy mode of settling the dispute produced much laughter--a
smaller joke would have sufficed for that Mr. Casson, however, did not
feel it compatible with his dignity and superior knowledge to join
in the laugh, until it turned out that he was fixed on as the second
broadest man. Martin Poyser the younger, as the broadest, was to be
president, and Mr. Casson, as next broadest, was to be vice.
Owing to this arrangement, Adam, being, of course, at the bottom of the
table, fell under the immediate observation of Mr. Casson, who, too much
occupied with the question of precedence, had not hitherto noticed his
entrance. Mr. Casson, we have seen, considered Adam "rather lifted up
and peppery-like": he thought the gentry made more fuss about this
young carpenter than was necessary; they made no fuss about Mr. Casson,
although he had been an excellent butler for fifteen years.
"Well, Mr. Bede, you're one o' them as mounts hup'ards apace," he said,
when Adam sat down. "You've niver dined here before, as I remember."
"No, Mr. Casson," said Adam, in his strong voice, that could be heard
along the table; "I've never dined here before, but I come by Captain
Donnithorne's wish, and I hope it's not disagreeable to anybody here."
"Nay, nay," said several voices at once, "we're glad ye're come. Who's
got anything to say again' it?"
"And ye'll sing us 'Over the hills and far away,' after dinner, wonna
ye?" said Mr. Chowne. "That's a song I'm uncommon fond on."
"Peeh!" said Mr. Craig; "it's not to be named by side o' the Scotch
tunes. I've never cared about singing myself; I've had something better
to do. A man that's got the names and the natur o' plants in's head isna
likely to keep a hollow place t' hold tunes in. But a second cousin o'
mine, a drovier, was a rare hand at remembering the Scotch tunes. He'd
got nothing else to think on."
"The Scotch tunes!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard
enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for
nothing but to frighten the birds with--that's to say, the English
birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the
lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the corn 'll
be safe."
"Yes, there's folks as find a pleasure in undervallying what they know
but little about," said Mr. Craig.
"Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman," Bartle
went on, without deigning to notice Mr. Craig's remark. "They go on with
the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end.
Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a question of
somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet."
Adam minded the less about sitting by Mr. Casson, because this position
enabled him to see Hetty, who was not far off him at the next table.
Hetty, however, had not even noticed his presence yet, for she was
giving angry attention to Totty, who insisted on drawing up her feet on
to the bench in antique fashion, and thereby threatened to make dusty
marks on Hetty's pink-and-white frock. No sooner were the little fat
legs pushed down than up they came again, for Totty's eyes were too busy
in staring at the large dishes to see where the plum pudding was for
her to retain any consciousness of her legs. Hetty got quite out of
patience, and at last, with a frown and pout, and gathering tears, she
said, "Oh dear, Aunt, I wish you'd speak to Totty; she keeps putting her
legs up so, and messing my frock."
"What's the matter wi' the child? She can niver please you," said the
mother. "Let her come by the side o' me, then. I can put up wi' her."
Adam was looking at Hetty, and saw the frown, and pout, and the dark
eyes seeming to grow larger with pettish half-gathered tears. Quiet Mary
Burge, who sat near enough to see that Hetty was cross and that Adam's
eyes were fixed on her, thought that so sensible a man as Adam must be
reflecting on the small value of beauty in a woman whose temper was bad.
Mary was a good girl, not given to indulge in evil feelings, but she
said to herself, that, since Hetty had a bad temper, it was better Adam
should know it. And it was quite true that if Hetty had been plain, she
would have looked very ugly and unamiable at that moment, and no one's
moral judgment upon her would have been in the least beguiled. But
really there was something quite charming in her pettishness: it looked
so much more like innocent distress than ill humour; and the severe Adam
felt no movement of disapprobation; he only felt a sort of amused pity,
as if he had seen a kitten setting up its back, or a little bird with
its feathers ruffled. He could not gather what was vexing her, but it
was impossible to him to feel otherwise than that she was the prettiest
thing in the world, and that if he could have his way, nothing should
ever vex her any more. And presently, when Totty was gone, she caught
his eye, and her face broke into one of its brightest smiles, as she
nodded to him. It was a bit of flirtation--she knew Mary Burge was
looking at them. But the smile was like wine to Adam.
| In Chapter Twenty-Two, the Captain's behavior towards his tenants is interestingly old-fashioned. He seems to take an almost feudal responsibility for them, a fact enhanced by the setting of the tenants' dinner in a room in the old Abbey. The Captain in no way questions the established social order of his society, but he wants to be--and to appear--as benevolent a master as possible. He is constantly concerned about his image in the eyes of his tenants, and he uses a possible dip in their feelings toward him as a reason that he should not continue to see Hetty . The new position for Adam shakes up the established order of the book in the same way that his father's death did. It makes him somewhat more able to marry Hetty. This new development not only frees him economically, but also it increases his social status, bringing him level with large tenants like the Poysers. Chapter Twenty-Three shows the differences in character between Hetty and Adam once again, suggesting that they might not make a very good couple. Adam's humility is highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, showing that he does not want to be elevated above his family. One moral center in this novel concerns family values, and the fact that Adam does not want to move upward socially without bringing the rest of his family with him is an extremely positive quality in the context of the novel. Eliot has already remarked, however, that if Hetty were invited to make a great social leap, she would do so without a backward glance. Two of Hetty's most negative characteristics are highlighted at the end of this chapter. Her vanity, the most obvious of her sins, is irritated when Totty innocently does something that might spoil Hetty's careful toilette. Her groundless flirtation is also emphasized here; she smiles winningly at Adam not because she loves him, but because she knows that a competitor is watching. She wants to retain her hold over Adam even if she does not want him for herself. In Chapter Twenty-Four, all of the people in the village put on a good, happy, and unanimous face, while they are divided by social barriers and generally feel conflicted about their own troubles. The Captain is worried that if others learn about his relationship with Hetty, they will think less of him. Hetty is worried that he does not love her anymore. Adam is worried that he is letting down his family by moving into a new social sphere. There are several other worries here. What Eliot is trying to demonstrate is that, unlike natural events, social events can lend themselves to theatricality, leading people to play their expected roles instead of interacting and responding as they might do in a more natural way. The speeches of the men are weighed and judged, and despite the fact that all of the villagers know that Adam means well, some still judge his speech negatively. Chapter Twenty-Five steps back from the story of the love problems among the Bedes and Poyser nieces to view the community as a whole. Rather than use the narrator to comment, Eliot brings in Mrs. Irwine as an outsider who rather impartially surveys the community. The result of this outsider perspective is a more even distribution of praise where praise is deserved. For example, she notices Seth Bede's particularity, though he is usually overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother. The short episode of Chad's Bess's disappointment is almost more like a fable than a novel. Chad's Bess is persuaded to do something that she knows she should not be doing--heating herself up too much by racing--in pursuit of some sort of finery as a prize. She is quite disappointed when she ends up with a prize that is not to her taste. This fable might do well to instruct Hetty, who is carrying on a relationship that she knows she should not in pursuit of luxury and finery herself. Chad's Bess's disappointment may foreshadow her own. Formal dancing is used in Chapter Twenty-Six in a similar way compared with dancing in Victorian fiction. That is, it is a proxy for, or a prelude to, sexual relations. Certain rules regulate the way that balls, even those as informal as the country dance, are held. Men must ask women to dance, and people may survey their possible prizes with all of the leisure of someone shopping for vegetables in a market. Men must not dance too often with the same partner, or else it will be expected that he has serious designs on her and may even be ready to marry her. For this reason, neither Adam nor the Captain dances with Hetty more than once. The fact that Adam sees the locket, which is obviously so fine as to be a gift from the Captain, suggests that Hetty's secret cannot remain a secret for very much longer. Even though she tries to hide the signs of her love, and though she is fairly successful at making others believe that her emotions are linked to men other than the Captain, she ultimately will be unsuccessful at hiding such a big secret. | analysis |
WHEN the dinner was over, and the first draughts from the great cask of
birthday ale were brought up, room was made for the broad Mr. Poyser at
the side of the table, and two chairs were placed at the head. It had
been settled very definitely what Mr. Poyser was to do when the young
squire should appear, and for the last five minutes he had been in a
state of abstraction, with his eyes fixed on the dark picture opposite,
and his hands busy with the loose cash and other articles in his
breeches pockets.
When the young squire entered, with Mr. Irwine by his side, every one
stood up, and this moment of homage was very agreeable to Arthur. He
liked to feel his own importance, and besides that, he cared a great
deal for the good-will of these people: he was fond of thinking that
they had a hearty, special regard for him. The pleasure he felt was in
his face as he said, "My grandfather and I hope all our friends here
have enjoyed their dinner, and find my birthday ale good. Mr. Irwine
and I are come to taste it with you, and I am sure we shall all like
anything the better that the rector shares with us."
All eyes were now turned on Mr. Poyser, who, with his hands still busy
in his pockets, began with the deliberateness of a slow-striking clock.
"Captain, my neighbours have put it upo' me to speak for 'em to-day, for
where folks think pretty much alike, one spokesman's as good as a score.
And though we've mayhappen got contrairy ways o' thinking about a many
things--one man lays down his land one way an' another another--an' I'll
not take it upon me to speak to no man's farming, but my own--this I'll
say, as we're all o' one mind about our young squire. We've pretty nigh
all on us known you when you war a little un, an' we've niver known
anything on you but what was good an' honorable. You speak fair an'
y' act fair, an' we're joyful when we look forrard to your being our
landlord, for we b'lieve you mean to do right by everybody, an' 'ull
make no man's bread bitter to him if you can help it. That's what I
mean, an' that's what we all mean; and when a man's said what he means,
he'd better stop, for th' ale 'ull be none the better for stannin'. An'
I'll not say how we like th' ale yet, for we couldna well taste it till
we'd drunk your health in it; but the dinner was good, an' if there's
anybody hasna enjoyed it, it must be the fault of his own inside. An' as
for the rector's company, it's well known as that's welcome t' all the
parish wherever he may be; an' I hope, an' we all hope, as he'll live
to see us old folks, an' our children grown to men an' women an' Your
Honour a family man. I've no more to say as concerns the present time,
an' so we'll drink our young squire's health--three times three."
Hereupon a glorious shouting, a rapping, a jingling, a clattering, and a
shouting, with plentiful da capo, pleasanter than a strain of sublimest
music in the ears that receive such a tribute for the first time. Arthur
had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Poyser's speech, but it was
too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being praised. Did he not
deserve what was said of him on the whole? If there was something in
his conduct that Poyser wouldn't have liked if he had known it, why,
no man's conduct will bear too close an inspection; and Poyser was not
likely to know it; and, after all, what had he done? Gone a little too
far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his place would have
acted much worse; and no harm would come--no harm should come, for the
next time he was alone with Hetty, he would explain to her that she must
not think seriously of him or of what had passed. It was necessary
to Arthur, you perceive, to be satisfied with himself. Uncomfortable
thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future, which can
be formed so rapidly that he had time to be uncomfortable and to become
easy again before Mr. Poyser's slow speech was finished, and when it was
time for him to speak he was quite light-hearted.
"I thank you all, my good friends and neighbours," Arthur said, "for the
good opinion of me, and the kind feelings towards me which Mr. Poyser
has been expressing on your behalf and on his own, and it will always be
my heartiest wish to deserve them. In the course of things we may expect
that, if I live, I shall one day or other be your landlord; indeed, it
is on the ground of that expectation that my grandfather has wished me
to celebrate this day and to come among you now; and I look forward to
this position, not merely as one of power and pleasure for myself, but
as a means of benefiting my neighbours. It hardly becomes so young a man
as I am to talk much about farming to you, who are most of you so much
older, and are men of experience; still, I have interested myself a good
deal in such matters, and learned as much about them as my opportunities
have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in
my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the
encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and
trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish
to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and
nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every man on
the estate, and to be respected by him in return. It is not my place
at present to enter into particulars; I only meet your good hopes
concerning me by telling you that my own hopes correspond to them--that
what you expect from me I desire to fulfil; and I am quite of Mr.
Poyser's opinion, that when a man has said what he means, he had better
stop. But the pleasure I feel in having my own health drunk by you would
not be perfect if we did not drink the health of my grandfather, who has
filled the place of both parents to me. I will say no more, until you
have joined me in drinking his health on a day when he has wished me to
appear among you as the future representative of his name and family."
Perhaps there was no one present except Mr. Irwine who thoroughly
understood and approved Arthur's graceful mode of proposing his
grandfather's health. The farmers thought the young squire knew well
enough that they hated the old squire, and Mrs. Poyser said, "he'd
better not ha' stirred a kettle o' sour broth." The bucolic mind does
not readily apprehend the refinements of good taste. But the toast could
not be rejected and when it had been drunk, Arthur said, "I thank you,
both for my grandfather and myself; and now there is one more thing I
wish to tell you, that you may share my pleasure about it, as I hope
and believe you will. I think there can be no man here who has not a
respect, and some of you, I am sure, have a very high regard, for my
friend Adam Bede. It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood
that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that
whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the
interests of those who employ him as for his own. I'm proud to say that
I was very fond of Adam when I was a little boy, and I have never lost
my old feeling for him--I think that shows that I know a good fellow
when I find him. It has long been my wish that he should have the
management of the woods on the estate, which happen to be very valuable,
not only because I think so highly of his character, but because he has
the knowledge and the skill which fit him for the place. And I am happy
to tell you that it is my grandfather's wish too, and it is now settled
that Adam shall manage the woods--a change which I am sure will be very
much for the advantage of the estate; and I hope you will by and by join
me in drinking his health, and in wishing him all the prosperity in life
that he deserves. But there is a still older friend of mine than Adam
Bede present, and I need not tell you that it is Mr. Irwine. I'm sure
you will agree with me that we must drink no other person's health until
we have drunk his. I know you have all reason to love him, but no one of
his parishioners has so much reason as I. Come, charge your glasses, and
let us drink to our excellent rector--three times three!"
This toast was drunk with all the enthusiasm that was wanting to the
last, and it certainly was the most picturesque moment in the scene when
Mr. Irwine got up to speak, and all the faces in the room were turned
towards him. The superior refinement of his face was much more striking
than that of Arthur's when seen in comparison with the people round
them. Arthur's was a much commoner British face, and the splendour of
his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young farmer's taste
in costume than Mr. Irwine's powder and the well-brushed but well-worn
black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great occasions; for he
had the mysterious secret of never wearing a new-looking coat.
"This is not the first time, by a great many," he said, "that I have
had to thank my parishioners for giving me tokens of their goodwill, but
neighbourly kindness is among those things that are the more precious
the older they get. Indeed, our pleasant meeting to-day is a proof that
when what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason
for rejoicing, and the relation between us as clergyman and parishioners
came of age two years ago, for it is three-and-twenty years since I
first came among you, and I see some tall fine-looking young men here,
as well as some blooming young women, that were far from looking as
pleasantly at me when I christened them as I am happy to see them
looking now. But I'm sure you will not wonder when I say that among all
those young men, the one in whom I have the strongest interest is my
friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne, for whom you have just expressed your
regard. I had the pleasure of being his tutor for several years, and
have naturally had opportunities of knowing him intimately which cannot
have occurred to any one else who is present; and I have some pride as
well as pleasure in assuring you that I share your high hopes concerning
him, and your confidence in his possession of those qualities which will
make him an excellent landlord when the time shall come for him to take
that important position among you. We feel alike on most matters on
which a man who is getting towards fifty can feel in common with a young
man of one-and-twenty, and he has just been expressing a feeling which
I share very heartily, and I would not willingly omit the opportunity of
saying so. That feeling is his value and respect for Adam Bede. People
in a high station are of course more thought of and talked about and
have their virtues more praised, than those whose lives are passed in
humble everyday work; but every sensible man knows how necessary that
humble everyday work is, and how important it is to us that it should be
done well. And I agree with my friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne in feeling
that when a man whose duty lies in that sort of work shows a character
which would make him an example in any station, his merit should be
acknowledged. He is one of those to whom honour is due, and his friends
should delight to honour him. I know Adam Bede well--I know what he is
as a workman, and what he has been as a son and brother--and I am saying
the simplest truth when I say that I respect him as much as I respect
any man living. But I am not speaking to you about a stranger; some of
you are his intimate friends, and I believe there is not one here who
does not know enough of him to join heartily in drinking his health."
As Mr. Irwine paused, Arthur jumped up and, filling his glass, said, "A
bumper to Adam Bede, and may he live to have sons as faithful and clever
as himself!"
No hearer, not even Bartle Massey, was so delighted with this toast as
Mr. Poyser. "Tough work" as his first speech had been, he would have
started up to make another if he had not known the extreme irregularity
of such a course. As it was, he found an outlet for his feeling in
drinking his ale unusually fast, and setting down his glass with a swing
of his arm and a determined rap. If Jonathan Burge and a few others
felt less comfortable on the occasion, they tried their best to look
contented, and so the toast was drunk with a goodwill apparently
unanimous.
Adam was rather paler than usual when he got up to thank his friends. He
was a good deal moved by this public tribute--very naturally, for he was
in the presence of all his little world, and it was uniting to do him
honour. But he felt no shyness about speaking, not being troubled
with small vanity or lack of words; he looked neither awkward nor
embarrassed, but stood in his usual firm upright attitude, with his head
thrown a little backward and his hands perfectly still, in that rough
dignity which is peculiar to intelligent, honest, well-built workmen,
who are never wondering what is their business in the world.
"I'm quite taken by surprise," he said. "I didn't expect anything o'
this sort, for it's a good deal more than my wages. But I've the more
reason to be grateful to you, Captain, and to you, Mr. Irwine, and to
all my friends here, who've drunk my health and wished me well. It 'ud
be nonsense for me to be saying, I don't at all deserve th' opinion you
have of me; that 'ud be poor thanks to you, to say that you've known me
all these years and yet haven't sense enough to find out a great deal o'
the truth about me. You think, if I undertake to do a bit o' work, I'll
do it well, be my pay big or little--and that's true. I'd be ashamed
to stand before you here if it wasna true. But it seems to me that's
a man's plain duty, and nothing to be conceited about, and it's pretty
clear to me as I've never done more than my duty; for let us do what we
will, it's only making use o' the sperrit and the powers that ha' been
given to us. And so this kindness o' yours, I'm sure, is no debt you owe
me, but a free gift, and as such I accept it and am thankful. And as to
this new employment I've taken in hand, I'll only say that I took it
at Captain Donnithorne's desire, and that I'll try to fulfil his
expectations. I'd wish for no better lot than to work under him, and
to know that while I was getting my own bread I was taking care of his
int'rests. For I believe he's one o those gentlemen as wishes to do the
right thing, and to leave the world a bit better than he found it, which
it's my belief every man may do, whether he's gentle or simple, whether
he sets a good bit o' work going and finds the money, or whether he does
the work with his own hands. There's no occasion for me to say any more
about what I feel towards him: I hope to show it through the rest o' my
life in my actions."
There were various opinions about Adam's speech: some of the women
whispered that he didn't show himself thankful enough, and seemed to
speak as proud as could be; but most of the men were of opinion that
nobody could speak more straightfor'ard, and that Adam was as fine a
chap as need to be. While such observations were being buzzed about,
mingled with wonderings as to what the old squire meant to do for a
bailiff, and whether he was going to have a steward, the two gentlemen
had risen, and were walking round to the table where the wives and
children sat. There was none of the strong ale here, of course, but
wine and dessert--sparkling gooseberry for the young ones, and some good
sherry for the mothers. Mrs. Poyser was at the head of this table, and
Totty was now seated in her lap, bending her small nose deep down into a
wine-glass in search of the nuts floating there.
"How do you do, Mrs. Poyser?" said Arthur. "Weren't you pleased to hear
your husband make such a good speech to-day?"
"Oh, sir, the men are mostly so tongue-tied--you're forced partly to
guess what they mean, as you do wi' the dumb creaturs."
"What! you think you could have made it better for him?" said Mr.
Irwine, laughing.
"Well, sir, when I want to say anything, I can mostly find words to say
it in, thank God. Not as I'm a-finding faut wi' my husband, for if he's
a man o' few words, what he says he'll stand to."
"I'm sure I never saw a prettier party than this," Arthur said, looking
round at the apple-cheeked children. "My aunt and the Miss Irwines will
come up and see you presently. They were afraid of the noise of the
toasts, but it would be a shame for them not to see you at table."
He walked on, speaking to the mothers and patting the children, while
Mr. Irwine satisfied himself with standing still and nodding at a
distance, that no one's attention might be disturbed from the young
squire, the hero of the day. Arthur did not venture to stop near Hetty,
but merely bowed to her as he passed along the opposite side. The
foolish child felt her heart swelling with discontent; for what woman
was ever satisfied with apparent neglect, even when she knows it to be
the mask of love? Hetty thought this was going to be the most miserable
day she had had for a long while, a moment of chill daylight and reality
came across her dream: Arthur, who had seemed so near to her only a few
hours before, was separated from her, as the hero of a great procession
is separated from a small outsider in the crowd.
| Everyone stands when Arthur enters, and he enjoys the sign of respect. Mr. Poyser makes a short speech thanking Arthur and calls for a toast to his health. The Captain feels only a small twinge of conscience for having feelings for Mr. Poyser's daughter and for acting on them. The Captain thanks his tenants for teaching him so much about farming and hopes that when he is in control, he can make their lives better. Arthur also proposes a toast to his grandfather, and the tenants are forced to drink it. The Captain also praises Adam, announces him as the new manager of the woods, and proposes a toast to him and the vicar together. The vicar makes a speech, saying that the townspeople's high hopes for the Captain as a landlord will certainly be fulfilled, and that Adam is worthy of his honor. The Captain toasts Adam by saying, "may he live to have sons as faithful and clever as himself. Adam feels moved and says that he is taken by surprise by the public tribute. He makes a small speech saying that the townspeople must not be wrong if they have such a high opinion of him, though he has only done his duty. He says that rather than thanking the Captain now, he will try to do so in a lifetime of work for him. Some of the women think that this is a proud speech, but the men like it because it is straightforward. Arthur says hello to Mrs. Poyser and compliments her on her husband's speech. She says that it was good, especially because men are usually so tongue-tied. He cannot greet Hetty specially, and she feels neglected. He seems as far away "as the hero of a great procession is separated from a small outsider in the crowd | summary |
WHEN the dinner was over, and the first draughts from the great cask of
birthday ale were brought up, room was made for the broad Mr. Poyser at
the side of the table, and two chairs were placed at the head. It had
been settled very definitely what Mr. Poyser was to do when the young
squire should appear, and for the last five minutes he had been in a
state of abstraction, with his eyes fixed on the dark picture opposite,
and his hands busy with the loose cash and other articles in his
breeches pockets.
When the young squire entered, with Mr. Irwine by his side, every one
stood up, and this moment of homage was very agreeable to Arthur. He
liked to feel his own importance, and besides that, he cared a great
deal for the good-will of these people: he was fond of thinking that
they had a hearty, special regard for him. The pleasure he felt was in
his face as he said, "My grandfather and I hope all our friends here
have enjoyed their dinner, and find my birthday ale good. Mr. Irwine
and I are come to taste it with you, and I am sure we shall all like
anything the better that the rector shares with us."
All eyes were now turned on Mr. Poyser, who, with his hands still busy
in his pockets, began with the deliberateness of a slow-striking clock.
"Captain, my neighbours have put it upo' me to speak for 'em to-day, for
where folks think pretty much alike, one spokesman's as good as a score.
And though we've mayhappen got contrairy ways o' thinking about a many
things--one man lays down his land one way an' another another--an' I'll
not take it upon me to speak to no man's farming, but my own--this I'll
say, as we're all o' one mind about our young squire. We've pretty nigh
all on us known you when you war a little un, an' we've niver known
anything on you but what was good an' honorable. You speak fair an'
y' act fair, an' we're joyful when we look forrard to your being our
landlord, for we b'lieve you mean to do right by everybody, an' 'ull
make no man's bread bitter to him if you can help it. That's what I
mean, an' that's what we all mean; and when a man's said what he means,
he'd better stop, for th' ale 'ull be none the better for stannin'. An'
I'll not say how we like th' ale yet, for we couldna well taste it till
we'd drunk your health in it; but the dinner was good, an' if there's
anybody hasna enjoyed it, it must be the fault of his own inside. An' as
for the rector's company, it's well known as that's welcome t' all the
parish wherever he may be; an' I hope, an' we all hope, as he'll live
to see us old folks, an' our children grown to men an' women an' Your
Honour a family man. I've no more to say as concerns the present time,
an' so we'll drink our young squire's health--three times three."
Hereupon a glorious shouting, a rapping, a jingling, a clattering, and a
shouting, with plentiful da capo, pleasanter than a strain of sublimest
music in the ears that receive such a tribute for the first time. Arthur
had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Poyser's speech, but it was
too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being praised. Did he not
deserve what was said of him on the whole? If there was something in
his conduct that Poyser wouldn't have liked if he had known it, why,
no man's conduct will bear too close an inspection; and Poyser was not
likely to know it; and, after all, what had he done? Gone a little too
far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his place would have
acted much worse; and no harm would come--no harm should come, for the
next time he was alone with Hetty, he would explain to her that she must
not think seriously of him or of what had passed. It was necessary
to Arthur, you perceive, to be satisfied with himself. Uncomfortable
thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future, which can
be formed so rapidly that he had time to be uncomfortable and to become
easy again before Mr. Poyser's slow speech was finished, and when it was
time for him to speak he was quite light-hearted.
"I thank you all, my good friends and neighbours," Arthur said, "for the
good opinion of me, and the kind feelings towards me which Mr. Poyser
has been expressing on your behalf and on his own, and it will always be
my heartiest wish to deserve them. In the course of things we may expect
that, if I live, I shall one day or other be your landlord; indeed, it
is on the ground of that expectation that my grandfather has wished me
to celebrate this day and to come among you now; and I look forward to
this position, not merely as one of power and pleasure for myself, but
as a means of benefiting my neighbours. It hardly becomes so young a man
as I am to talk much about farming to you, who are most of you so much
older, and are men of experience; still, I have interested myself a good
deal in such matters, and learned as much about them as my opportunities
have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in
my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the
encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and
trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish
to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and
nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every man on
the estate, and to be respected by him in return. It is not my place
at present to enter into particulars; I only meet your good hopes
concerning me by telling you that my own hopes correspond to them--that
what you expect from me I desire to fulfil; and I am quite of Mr.
Poyser's opinion, that when a man has said what he means, he had better
stop. But the pleasure I feel in having my own health drunk by you would
not be perfect if we did not drink the health of my grandfather, who has
filled the place of both parents to me. I will say no more, until you
have joined me in drinking his health on a day when he has wished me to
appear among you as the future representative of his name and family."
Perhaps there was no one present except Mr. Irwine who thoroughly
understood and approved Arthur's graceful mode of proposing his
grandfather's health. The farmers thought the young squire knew well
enough that they hated the old squire, and Mrs. Poyser said, "he'd
better not ha' stirred a kettle o' sour broth." The bucolic mind does
not readily apprehend the refinements of good taste. But the toast could
not be rejected and when it had been drunk, Arthur said, "I thank you,
both for my grandfather and myself; and now there is one more thing I
wish to tell you, that you may share my pleasure about it, as I hope
and believe you will. I think there can be no man here who has not a
respect, and some of you, I am sure, have a very high regard, for my
friend Adam Bede. It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood
that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that
whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the
interests of those who employ him as for his own. I'm proud to say that
I was very fond of Adam when I was a little boy, and I have never lost
my old feeling for him--I think that shows that I know a good fellow
when I find him. It has long been my wish that he should have the
management of the woods on the estate, which happen to be very valuable,
not only because I think so highly of his character, but because he has
the knowledge and the skill which fit him for the place. And I am happy
to tell you that it is my grandfather's wish too, and it is now settled
that Adam shall manage the woods--a change which I am sure will be very
much for the advantage of the estate; and I hope you will by and by join
me in drinking his health, and in wishing him all the prosperity in life
that he deserves. But there is a still older friend of mine than Adam
Bede present, and I need not tell you that it is Mr. Irwine. I'm sure
you will agree with me that we must drink no other person's health until
we have drunk his. I know you have all reason to love him, but no one of
his parishioners has so much reason as I. Come, charge your glasses, and
let us drink to our excellent rector--three times three!"
This toast was drunk with all the enthusiasm that was wanting to the
last, and it certainly was the most picturesque moment in the scene when
Mr. Irwine got up to speak, and all the faces in the room were turned
towards him. The superior refinement of his face was much more striking
than that of Arthur's when seen in comparison with the people round
them. Arthur's was a much commoner British face, and the splendour of
his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young farmer's taste
in costume than Mr. Irwine's powder and the well-brushed but well-worn
black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great occasions; for he
had the mysterious secret of never wearing a new-looking coat.
"This is not the first time, by a great many," he said, "that I have
had to thank my parishioners for giving me tokens of their goodwill, but
neighbourly kindness is among those things that are the more precious
the older they get. Indeed, our pleasant meeting to-day is a proof that
when what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason
for rejoicing, and the relation between us as clergyman and parishioners
came of age two years ago, for it is three-and-twenty years since I
first came among you, and I see some tall fine-looking young men here,
as well as some blooming young women, that were far from looking as
pleasantly at me when I christened them as I am happy to see them
looking now. But I'm sure you will not wonder when I say that among all
those young men, the one in whom I have the strongest interest is my
friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne, for whom you have just expressed your
regard. I had the pleasure of being his tutor for several years, and
have naturally had opportunities of knowing him intimately which cannot
have occurred to any one else who is present; and I have some pride as
well as pleasure in assuring you that I share your high hopes concerning
him, and your confidence in his possession of those qualities which will
make him an excellent landlord when the time shall come for him to take
that important position among you. We feel alike on most matters on
which a man who is getting towards fifty can feel in common with a young
man of one-and-twenty, and he has just been expressing a feeling which
I share very heartily, and I would not willingly omit the opportunity of
saying so. That feeling is his value and respect for Adam Bede. People
in a high station are of course more thought of and talked about and
have their virtues more praised, than those whose lives are passed in
humble everyday work; but every sensible man knows how necessary that
humble everyday work is, and how important it is to us that it should be
done well. And I agree with my friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne in feeling
that when a man whose duty lies in that sort of work shows a character
which would make him an example in any station, his merit should be
acknowledged. He is one of those to whom honour is due, and his friends
should delight to honour him. I know Adam Bede well--I know what he is
as a workman, and what he has been as a son and brother--and I am saying
the simplest truth when I say that I respect him as much as I respect
any man living. But I am not speaking to you about a stranger; some of
you are his intimate friends, and I believe there is not one here who
does not know enough of him to join heartily in drinking his health."
As Mr. Irwine paused, Arthur jumped up and, filling his glass, said, "A
bumper to Adam Bede, and may he live to have sons as faithful and clever
as himself!"
No hearer, not even Bartle Massey, was so delighted with this toast as
Mr. Poyser. "Tough work" as his first speech had been, he would have
started up to make another if he had not known the extreme irregularity
of such a course. As it was, he found an outlet for his feeling in
drinking his ale unusually fast, and setting down his glass with a swing
of his arm and a determined rap. If Jonathan Burge and a few others
felt less comfortable on the occasion, they tried their best to look
contented, and so the toast was drunk with a goodwill apparently
unanimous.
Adam was rather paler than usual when he got up to thank his friends. He
was a good deal moved by this public tribute--very naturally, for he was
in the presence of all his little world, and it was uniting to do him
honour. But he felt no shyness about speaking, not being troubled
with small vanity or lack of words; he looked neither awkward nor
embarrassed, but stood in his usual firm upright attitude, with his head
thrown a little backward and his hands perfectly still, in that rough
dignity which is peculiar to intelligent, honest, well-built workmen,
who are never wondering what is their business in the world.
"I'm quite taken by surprise," he said. "I didn't expect anything o'
this sort, for it's a good deal more than my wages. But I've the more
reason to be grateful to you, Captain, and to you, Mr. Irwine, and to
all my friends here, who've drunk my health and wished me well. It 'ud
be nonsense for me to be saying, I don't at all deserve th' opinion you
have of me; that 'ud be poor thanks to you, to say that you've known me
all these years and yet haven't sense enough to find out a great deal o'
the truth about me. You think, if I undertake to do a bit o' work, I'll
do it well, be my pay big or little--and that's true. I'd be ashamed
to stand before you here if it wasna true. But it seems to me that's
a man's plain duty, and nothing to be conceited about, and it's pretty
clear to me as I've never done more than my duty; for let us do what we
will, it's only making use o' the sperrit and the powers that ha' been
given to us. And so this kindness o' yours, I'm sure, is no debt you owe
me, but a free gift, and as such I accept it and am thankful. And as to
this new employment I've taken in hand, I'll only say that I took it
at Captain Donnithorne's desire, and that I'll try to fulfil his
expectations. I'd wish for no better lot than to work under him, and
to know that while I was getting my own bread I was taking care of his
int'rests. For I believe he's one o those gentlemen as wishes to do the
right thing, and to leave the world a bit better than he found it, which
it's my belief every man may do, whether he's gentle or simple, whether
he sets a good bit o' work going and finds the money, or whether he does
the work with his own hands. There's no occasion for me to say any more
about what I feel towards him: I hope to show it through the rest o' my
life in my actions."
There were various opinions about Adam's speech: some of the women
whispered that he didn't show himself thankful enough, and seemed to
speak as proud as could be; but most of the men were of opinion that
nobody could speak more straightfor'ard, and that Adam was as fine a
chap as need to be. While such observations were being buzzed about,
mingled with wonderings as to what the old squire meant to do for a
bailiff, and whether he was going to have a steward, the two gentlemen
had risen, and were walking round to the table where the wives and
children sat. There was none of the strong ale here, of course, but
wine and dessert--sparkling gooseberry for the young ones, and some good
sherry for the mothers. Mrs. Poyser was at the head of this table, and
Totty was now seated in her lap, bending her small nose deep down into a
wine-glass in search of the nuts floating there.
"How do you do, Mrs. Poyser?" said Arthur. "Weren't you pleased to hear
your husband make such a good speech to-day?"
"Oh, sir, the men are mostly so tongue-tied--you're forced partly to
guess what they mean, as you do wi' the dumb creaturs."
"What! you think you could have made it better for him?" said Mr.
Irwine, laughing.
"Well, sir, when I want to say anything, I can mostly find words to say
it in, thank God. Not as I'm a-finding faut wi' my husband, for if he's
a man o' few words, what he says he'll stand to."
"I'm sure I never saw a prettier party than this," Arthur said, looking
round at the apple-cheeked children. "My aunt and the Miss Irwines will
come up and see you presently. They were afraid of the noise of the
toasts, but it would be a shame for them not to see you at table."
He walked on, speaking to the mothers and patting the children, while
Mr. Irwine satisfied himself with standing still and nodding at a
distance, that no one's attention might be disturbed from the young
squire, the hero of the day. Arthur did not venture to stop near Hetty,
but merely bowed to her as he passed along the opposite side. The
foolish child felt her heart swelling with discontent; for what woman
was ever satisfied with apparent neglect, even when she knows it to be
the mask of love? Hetty thought this was going to be the most miserable
day she had had for a long while, a moment of chill daylight and reality
came across her dream: Arthur, who had seemed so near to her only a few
hours before, was separated from her, as the hero of a great procession
is separated from a small outsider in the crowd.
| In Chapter Twenty-Two, the Captain's behavior towards his tenants is interestingly old-fashioned. He seems to take an almost feudal responsibility for them, a fact enhanced by the setting of the tenants' dinner in a room in the old Abbey. The Captain in no way questions the established social order of his society, but he wants to be--and to appear--as benevolent a master as possible. He is constantly concerned about his image in the eyes of his tenants, and he uses a possible dip in their feelings toward him as a reason that he should not continue to see Hetty . The new position for Adam shakes up the established order of the book in the same way that his father's death did. It makes him somewhat more able to marry Hetty. This new development not only frees him economically, but also it increases his social status, bringing him level with large tenants like the Poysers. Chapter Twenty-Three shows the differences in character between Hetty and Adam once again, suggesting that they might not make a very good couple. Adam's humility is highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, showing that he does not want to be elevated above his family. One moral center in this novel concerns family values, and the fact that Adam does not want to move upward socially without bringing the rest of his family with him is an extremely positive quality in the context of the novel. Eliot has already remarked, however, that if Hetty were invited to make a great social leap, she would do so without a backward glance. Two of Hetty's most negative characteristics are highlighted at the end of this chapter. Her vanity, the most obvious of her sins, is irritated when Totty innocently does something that might spoil Hetty's careful toilette. Her groundless flirtation is also emphasized here; she smiles winningly at Adam not because she loves him, but because she knows that a competitor is watching. She wants to retain her hold over Adam even if she does not want him for herself. In Chapter Twenty-Four, all of the people in the village put on a good, happy, and unanimous face, while they are divided by social barriers and generally feel conflicted about their own troubles. The Captain is worried that if others learn about his relationship with Hetty, they will think less of him. Hetty is worried that he does not love her anymore. Adam is worried that he is letting down his family by moving into a new social sphere. There are several other worries here. What Eliot is trying to demonstrate is that, unlike natural events, social events can lend themselves to theatricality, leading people to play their expected roles instead of interacting and responding as they might do in a more natural way. The speeches of the men are weighed and judged, and despite the fact that all of the villagers know that Adam means well, some still judge his speech negatively. Chapter Twenty-Five steps back from the story of the love problems among the Bedes and Poyser nieces to view the community as a whole. Rather than use the narrator to comment, Eliot brings in Mrs. Irwine as an outsider who rather impartially surveys the community. The result of this outsider perspective is a more even distribution of praise where praise is deserved. For example, she notices Seth Bede's particularity, though he is usually overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother. The short episode of Chad's Bess's disappointment is almost more like a fable than a novel. Chad's Bess is persuaded to do something that she knows she should not be doing--heating herself up too much by racing--in pursuit of some sort of finery as a prize. She is quite disappointed when she ends up with a prize that is not to her taste. This fable might do well to instruct Hetty, who is carrying on a relationship that she knows she should not in pursuit of luxury and finery herself. Chad's Bess's disappointment may foreshadow her own. Formal dancing is used in Chapter Twenty-Six in a similar way compared with dancing in Victorian fiction. That is, it is a proxy for, or a prelude to, sexual relations. Certain rules regulate the way that balls, even those as informal as the country dance, are held. Men must ask women to dance, and people may survey their possible prizes with all of the leisure of someone shopping for vegetables in a market. Men must not dance too often with the same partner, or else it will be expected that he has serious designs on her and may even be ready to marry her. For this reason, neither Adam nor the Captain dances with Hetty more than once. The fact that Adam sees the locket, which is obviously so fine as to be a gift from the Captain, suggests that Hetty's secret cannot remain a secret for very much longer. Even though she tries to hide the signs of her love, and though she is fairly successful at making others believe that her emotions are linked to men other than the Captain, she ultimately will be unsuccessful at hiding such a big secret. | analysis |
THE great dance was not to begin until eight o'clock, but for any lads
and lasses who liked to dance on the shady grass before then, there was
music always at hand--for was not the band of the Benefit Club capable
of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this,
there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful
wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful
show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann's
fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided
himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to
prefer dancing to a solo on that instrument.
Meantime, when the sun had moved off the great open space in front of
the house, the games began. There were, of course, well-soaped poles
to be climbed by the boys and youths, races to be run by the old women,
races to be run in sacks, heavy weights to be lifted by the strong men,
and a long list of challenges to such ambitious attempts as that
of walking as many yards possible on one leg--feats in which it was
generally remarked that Wiry Ben, being "the lissom'st, springest fellow
i' the country," was sure to be pre-eminent. To crown all, there was to
be a donkey-race--that sublimest of all races, conducted on the grand
socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else's donkey, and
the sorriest donkey winning.
And soon after four o'clock, splendid old Mrs. Irwine, in her damask
satin and jewels and black lace, was led out by Arthur, followed by the
whole family party, to her raised seat under the striped marquee, where
she was to give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia
had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and
Arthur was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother's
taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean,
finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of
punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking
neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came
last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides
Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for
the neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were
required for the entertainment of the tenants.
There was a sunk fence in front of the marquee, dividing the lawn from
the park, but a temporary bridge had been made for the passage of the
victors, and the groups of people standing, or seated here and there
on benches, stretched on each side of the open space from the white
marquees up to the sunk fence.
"Upon my word it's a pretty sight," said the old lady, in her deep
voice, when she was seated, and looked round on the bright scene with
its dark-green background; "and it's the last fete-day I'm likely to
see, unless you make haste and get married, Arthur. But take care you
get a charming bride, else I would rather die without seeing her."
"You're so terribly fastidious, Godmother," said Arthur, "I'm afraid I
should never satisfy you with my choice."
"Well, I won't forgive you if she's not handsome. I can't be put off
with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the
existence of plain people. And she must not be silly; that will never
do, because you'll want managing, and a silly woman can't manage you.
Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face? There, standing
without his hat, and taking such care of that tall old woman by the side
of him--his mother, of course. I like to see that."
"What, don't you know him, Mother?" said Mr. Irwine. "That is Seth
Bede, Adam's brother--a Methodist, but a very good fellow. Poor Seth
has looked rather down-hearted of late; I thought it was because of his
father's dying in that sad way, but Joshua Rann tells me he wanted to
marry that sweet little Methodist preacher who was here about a month
ago, and I suppose she refused him."
"Ah, I remember hearing about her. But there are no end of people here
that I don't know, for they're grown up and altered so since I used to
go about."
"What excellent sight you have!" said old Mr. Donnithorne, who was
holding a double glass up to his eyes, "to see the expression of that
young man's face so far off. His face is nothing but a pale blurred
spot to me. But I fancy I have the advantage of you when we come to look
close. I can read small print without spectacles."
"Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those
near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to
read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at
a distance. I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should be
blind to everything that wasn't out of other people's sight, like a man
who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars."
"See," said Arthur, "the old women are ready to set out on their race
now. Which do you bet on, Gawaine?"
"The long-legged one, unless they're going to have several heats, and
then the little wiry one may win."
"There are the Poysers, Mother, not far off on the right hand," said
Miss Irwine. "Mrs. Poyser is looking at you. Do take notice of her."
"To be sure I will," said the old lady, giving a gracious bow to Mrs.
Poyser. "A woman who sends me such excellent cream-cheese is not to
be neglected. Bless me! What a fat child that is she is holding on her
knee! But who is that pretty girl with dark eyes?"
"That is Hetty Sorrel," said Miss Lydia Donnithorne, "Martin Poyser's
niece--a very likely young person, and well-looking too. My maid has
taught her fine needlework, and she has mended some lace of mine very
respectably indeed--very respectably."
"Why, she has lived with the Poysers six or seven years, Mother; you
must have seen her," said Miss Irwine.
"No, I've never seen her, child--at least not as she is now," said Mrs.
Irwine, continuing to look at Hetty. "Well-looking, indeed! She's a
perfect beauty! I've never seen anything so pretty since my young days.
What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the farmers,
when it's wanted so terribly among the good families without fortune!
I daresay, now, she'll marry a man who would have thought her just as
pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair."
Arthur dared not turn his eyes towards Hetty while Mrs. Irwine was
speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with
something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without
looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty
praised--for other men's opinion, you know, was like a native climate
to Arthur's feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and
grew strong. Yes! She was enough to turn any man's head: any man in his
place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after all,
as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always look
back upon with pride.
"No, Mother," and Mr. Irwine, replying to her last words; "I can't
agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you
imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling,
is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a
coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may
be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined
beauty has on him, but he feels it."
"Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?"
"Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than
married men, because they have time for more general contemplation.
Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling
one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty
Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached
to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the
utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is--though she doesn't
know it--that there's so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about
her. Such a woman as that brings with her 'airs from heaven' that the
coarsest fellow is not insensible to."
"Here's a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a
prize, I suppose," said Mr. Gawaine. "She must be one of the racers in
the sacks, who had set off before we came."
The "bit of womanhood" was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise
Chad's Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone
an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly
body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken
to her ear-rings again since Dinah's departure, and was otherwise decked
out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have
looked into poor Bessy's heart would have seen a striking resemblance
between her little hopes and anxieties and Hetty's. The advantage,
perhaps, would have been on Bessy's side in the matter of feeling. But
then, you see, they were so very different outside! You would have been
inclined to box Bessy's ears, and you would have longed to kiss Hetty.
Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere
hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there
were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached
the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation
sparkling in her round eyes.
"Here is the prize for the first sack-race," said Miss Lydia, taking a
large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to
Mrs. Irwine before Bessy came up, "an excellent grogram gown and a piece
of flannel."
"You didn't think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?" said
Arthur. "Couldn't you find something else for this girl, and save that
grim-looking gown for one of the older women?"
"I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial," said Miss
Lydia, adjusting her own lace; "I should not think of encouraging a love
of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak, but that
is for the old woman who wins."
This speech of Miss Lydia's produced rather a mocking expression in Mrs.
Irwine's face as she looked at Arthur, while Bessy came up and dropped a
series of curtsies.
"This is Bessy Cranage, mother," said Mr. Irwine, kindly, "Chad
Cranage's daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?"
"Yes, to be sure," said Mrs. Irwine. "Well, Bessy, here is your
prize--excellent warm things for winter. I'm sure you have had hard work
to win them this warm day."
Bessy's lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown--which felt so hot and
disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to
carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a
growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned
away.
"Poor girl," said Arthur; "I think she's disappointed. I wish it had
been something more to her taste."
"She's a bold-looking young person," observed Miss Lydia. "Not at all
one I should like to encourage."
Arthur silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money
before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind;
but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of
the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing
down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry--very much tittered at
the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her
discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just
given the baby into her husband's charge.
"What's the matter wi' ye?" said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle
and examining it. "Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's
race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as
should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep
away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make
clothes for the lad--ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er said that
on ye."
"Ye may take it all, for what I care," said Bess the maiden, with a
pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself.
"Well, I could do wi't, if so be ye want to get rid on't," said the
disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad's
Bess should change her mind.
But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits
that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand
climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost
in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey
by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the
strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the
arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental
force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the
first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill
just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd,
radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate
rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the
midst of its triumph.
Arthur himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made
happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets
enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned
from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be
understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before
the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous
performance--namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless
borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and
complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality.
Wiry Ben's pride in his dancing--an accomplishment productive of great
effect at the yearly Wake--had needed only slightly elevating by an
extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be
very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been
decidedly encouraged in this idea by Joshua Rann, who observed that it
was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in
return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised
at this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Ben had
requested Mr. Rann to accompany him on the fiddle, and Joshua felt quite
sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the music would
make up for it. Adam Bede, who was present in one of the large marquees,
where the plan was being discussed, told Ben he had better not make a
fool of himself--a remark which at once fixed Ben's determination: he
was not going to let anything alone because Adam Bede turned up his nose
at it.
"What's this, what's this?" said old Mr. Donnithorne. "Is it something
you've arranged, Arthur? Here's the clerk coming with his fiddle, and a
smart fellow with a nosegay in his button-hole."
"No," said Arthur; "I know nothing about it. By Jove, he's going to
dance! It's one of the carpenters--I forget his name at this moment."
"It's Ben Cranage--Wiry Ben, they call him," said Mr. Irwine; "rather
a loose fish, I think. Anne, my dear, I see that fiddle-scraping is too
much for you: you're getting tired. Let me take you in now, that you may
rest till dinner."
Miss Anne rose assentingly, and the good brother took her away, while
Joshua's preliminary scrapings burst into the "White Cockade," from
which he intended to pass to a variety of tunes, by a series of
transitions which his good ear really taught him to execute with some
skill. It would have been an exasperating fact to him, if he had known
it, that the general attention was too thoroughly absorbed by Ben's
dancing for any one to give much heed to the music.
Have you ever seen a real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps
you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in
crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements
of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the "Bird Waltz" is
like the song of birds. Wiry Ben never smiled: he looked as serious as a
dancing monkey--as serious as if he had been an experimental philosopher
ascertaining in his own person the amount of shaking and the varieties
of angularity that could be given to the human limbs.
To make amends for the abundant laughter in the striped marquee, Arthur
clapped his hands continually and cried "Bravo!" But Ben had one admirer
whose eyes followed his movements with a fervid gravity that equalled
his own. It was Martin Poyser, who was seated on a bench, with Tommy
between his legs.
"What dost think o' that?" he said to his wife. "He goes as pat to the
music as if he was made o' clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at
dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha' hit it just to
th' hair like that."
"It's little matter what his limbs are, to my thinking," re-turned
Mrs. Poyser. "He's empty enough i' the upper story, or he'd niver come
jigging an' stamping i' that way, like a mad grasshopper, for the gentry
to look at him. They're fit to die wi' laughing, I can see."
"Well, well, so much the better, it amuses 'em," said Mr. Poyser, who
did not easily take an irritable view of things. "But they're going away
now, t' have their dinner, I reckon. Well move about a bit, shall we,
and see what Adam Bede's doing. He's got to look after the drinking and
things: I doubt he hasna had much fun."
| The official dancing does not begin until eight, but there is plenty of music around for the eager. There are contests including races and greased-pole-climbing, the prizes for which are handed out by the vicar's mother, who presides from under a marquee. The Captain talks to his godmother, who encourages him to get married--but to someone handsome and sensible. She asks who the young man helping his mother is, and the Captain says that he is Seth Bede, who may be sad because his father died in such a terrible way, although he has also heard that he was turned down by Dinah. Mrs. Irwine bows to Mrs. Poyser and asks who Hetty is. She says that it is a pity that she will be spoiled on a farmer husband who would not know the difference between her and a coarser woman, but the vicar says that the farmers do know the difference. Chad's Bess approaches the marquee, having just won the women's race. Her love of finery is similar to Hetty's, and she thinks that the prize will be a nice piece of clothing, but it is a staid flannel dress. Chad's Bess goes under a tree and cries. She is approached by a cousin, an older woman also named Bess, who tells her not to make a fool of herself and asks her if she can have some of the material to make clothes for her boys, and Chad's Bess gives it all to her. Wiry Ben decides to dance a hornpipe, accompanied by Joshua Rann on the fiddle, although Adam Bede tells him not to make a fool of himself. Despite the fact that many laugh at his dance, the Captain cries "Bravo. and Mr. Poyser admires the dancing. Mrs. Poyser says that Wiry Ben must be quite light in his brain to be able to dance so well | summary |
THE great dance was not to begin until eight o'clock, but for any lads
and lasses who liked to dance on the shady grass before then, there was
music always at hand--for was not the band of the Benefit Club capable
of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this,
there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful
wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful
show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann's
fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided
himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to
prefer dancing to a solo on that instrument.
Meantime, when the sun had moved off the great open space in front of
the house, the games began. There were, of course, well-soaped poles
to be climbed by the boys and youths, races to be run by the old women,
races to be run in sacks, heavy weights to be lifted by the strong men,
and a long list of challenges to such ambitious attempts as that
of walking as many yards possible on one leg--feats in which it was
generally remarked that Wiry Ben, being "the lissom'st, springest fellow
i' the country," was sure to be pre-eminent. To crown all, there was to
be a donkey-race--that sublimest of all races, conducted on the grand
socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else's donkey, and
the sorriest donkey winning.
And soon after four o'clock, splendid old Mrs. Irwine, in her damask
satin and jewels and black lace, was led out by Arthur, followed by the
whole family party, to her raised seat under the striped marquee, where
she was to give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia
had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and
Arthur was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother's
taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean,
finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of
punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking
neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came
last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides
Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for
the neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were
required for the entertainment of the tenants.
There was a sunk fence in front of the marquee, dividing the lawn from
the park, but a temporary bridge had been made for the passage of the
victors, and the groups of people standing, or seated here and there
on benches, stretched on each side of the open space from the white
marquees up to the sunk fence.
"Upon my word it's a pretty sight," said the old lady, in her deep
voice, when she was seated, and looked round on the bright scene with
its dark-green background; "and it's the last fete-day I'm likely to
see, unless you make haste and get married, Arthur. But take care you
get a charming bride, else I would rather die without seeing her."
"You're so terribly fastidious, Godmother," said Arthur, "I'm afraid I
should never satisfy you with my choice."
"Well, I won't forgive you if she's not handsome. I can't be put off
with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the
existence of plain people. And she must not be silly; that will never
do, because you'll want managing, and a silly woman can't manage you.
Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face? There, standing
without his hat, and taking such care of that tall old woman by the side
of him--his mother, of course. I like to see that."
"What, don't you know him, Mother?" said Mr. Irwine. "That is Seth
Bede, Adam's brother--a Methodist, but a very good fellow. Poor Seth
has looked rather down-hearted of late; I thought it was because of his
father's dying in that sad way, but Joshua Rann tells me he wanted to
marry that sweet little Methodist preacher who was here about a month
ago, and I suppose she refused him."
"Ah, I remember hearing about her. But there are no end of people here
that I don't know, for they're grown up and altered so since I used to
go about."
"What excellent sight you have!" said old Mr. Donnithorne, who was
holding a double glass up to his eyes, "to see the expression of that
young man's face so far off. His face is nothing but a pale blurred
spot to me. But I fancy I have the advantage of you when we come to look
close. I can read small print without spectacles."
"Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those
near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to
read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at
a distance. I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should be
blind to everything that wasn't out of other people's sight, like a man
who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars."
"See," said Arthur, "the old women are ready to set out on their race
now. Which do you bet on, Gawaine?"
"The long-legged one, unless they're going to have several heats, and
then the little wiry one may win."
"There are the Poysers, Mother, not far off on the right hand," said
Miss Irwine. "Mrs. Poyser is looking at you. Do take notice of her."
"To be sure I will," said the old lady, giving a gracious bow to Mrs.
Poyser. "A woman who sends me such excellent cream-cheese is not to
be neglected. Bless me! What a fat child that is she is holding on her
knee! But who is that pretty girl with dark eyes?"
"That is Hetty Sorrel," said Miss Lydia Donnithorne, "Martin Poyser's
niece--a very likely young person, and well-looking too. My maid has
taught her fine needlework, and she has mended some lace of mine very
respectably indeed--very respectably."
"Why, she has lived with the Poysers six or seven years, Mother; you
must have seen her," said Miss Irwine.
"No, I've never seen her, child--at least not as she is now," said Mrs.
Irwine, continuing to look at Hetty. "Well-looking, indeed! She's a
perfect beauty! I've never seen anything so pretty since my young days.
What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the farmers,
when it's wanted so terribly among the good families without fortune!
I daresay, now, she'll marry a man who would have thought her just as
pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair."
Arthur dared not turn his eyes towards Hetty while Mrs. Irwine was
speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with
something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without
looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty
praised--for other men's opinion, you know, was like a native climate
to Arthur's feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and
grew strong. Yes! She was enough to turn any man's head: any man in his
place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after all,
as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always look
back upon with pride.
"No, Mother," and Mr. Irwine, replying to her last words; "I can't
agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you
imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling,
is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a
coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may
be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined
beauty has on him, but he feels it."
"Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?"
"Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than
married men, because they have time for more general contemplation.
Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling
one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty
Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached
to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the
utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is--though she doesn't
know it--that there's so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about
her. Such a woman as that brings with her 'airs from heaven' that the
coarsest fellow is not insensible to."
"Here's a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a
prize, I suppose," said Mr. Gawaine. "She must be one of the racers in
the sacks, who had set off before we came."
The "bit of womanhood" was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise
Chad's Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone
an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly
body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken
to her ear-rings again since Dinah's departure, and was otherwise decked
out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have
looked into poor Bessy's heart would have seen a striking resemblance
between her little hopes and anxieties and Hetty's. The advantage,
perhaps, would have been on Bessy's side in the matter of feeling. But
then, you see, they were so very different outside! You would have been
inclined to box Bessy's ears, and you would have longed to kiss Hetty.
Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere
hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there
were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached
the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation
sparkling in her round eyes.
"Here is the prize for the first sack-race," said Miss Lydia, taking a
large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to
Mrs. Irwine before Bessy came up, "an excellent grogram gown and a piece
of flannel."
"You didn't think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?" said
Arthur. "Couldn't you find something else for this girl, and save that
grim-looking gown for one of the older women?"
"I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial," said Miss
Lydia, adjusting her own lace; "I should not think of encouraging a love
of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak, but that
is for the old woman who wins."
This speech of Miss Lydia's produced rather a mocking expression in Mrs.
Irwine's face as she looked at Arthur, while Bessy came up and dropped a
series of curtsies.
"This is Bessy Cranage, mother," said Mr. Irwine, kindly, "Chad
Cranage's daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?"
"Yes, to be sure," said Mrs. Irwine. "Well, Bessy, here is your
prize--excellent warm things for winter. I'm sure you have had hard work
to win them this warm day."
Bessy's lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown--which felt so hot and
disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to
carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a
growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned
away.
"Poor girl," said Arthur; "I think she's disappointed. I wish it had
been something more to her taste."
"She's a bold-looking young person," observed Miss Lydia. "Not at all
one I should like to encourage."
Arthur silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money
before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind;
but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of
the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing
down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry--very much tittered at
the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her
discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just
given the baby into her husband's charge.
"What's the matter wi' ye?" said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle
and examining it. "Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's
race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as
should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep
away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make
clothes for the lad--ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er said that
on ye."
"Ye may take it all, for what I care," said Bess the maiden, with a
pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself.
"Well, I could do wi't, if so be ye want to get rid on't," said the
disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad's
Bess should change her mind.
But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits
that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand
climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost
in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey
by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the
strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the
arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental
force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the
first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill
just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd,
radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate
rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the
midst of its triumph.
Arthur himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made
happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets
enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned
from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be
understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before
the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous
performance--namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless
borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and
complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality.
Wiry Ben's pride in his dancing--an accomplishment productive of great
effect at the yearly Wake--had needed only slightly elevating by an
extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be
very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been
decidedly encouraged in this idea by Joshua Rann, who observed that it
was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in
return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised
at this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Ben had
requested Mr. Rann to accompany him on the fiddle, and Joshua felt quite
sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the music would
make up for it. Adam Bede, who was present in one of the large marquees,
where the plan was being discussed, told Ben he had better not make a
fool of himself--a remark which at once fixed Ben's determination: he
was not going to let anything alone because Adam Bede turned up his nose
at it.
"What's this, what's this?" said old Mr. Donnithorne. "Is it something
you've arranged, Arthur? Here's the clerk coming with his fiddle, and a
smart fellow with a nosegay in his button-hole."
"No," said Arthur; "I know nothing about it. By Jove, he's going to
dance! It's one of the carpenters--I forget his name at this moment."
"It's Ben Cranage--Wiry Ben, they call him," said Mr. Irwine; "rather
a loose fish, I think. Anne, my dear, I see that fiddle-scraping is too
much for you: you're getting tired. Let me take you in now, that you may
rest till dinner."
Miss Anne rose assentingly, and the good brother took her away, while
Joshua's preliminary scrapings burst into the "White Cockade," from
which he intended to pass to a variety of tunes, by a series of
transitions which his good ear really taught him to execute with some
skill. It would have been an exasperating fact to him, if he had known
it, that the general attention was too thoroughly absorbed by Ben's
dancing for any one to give much heed to the music.
Have you ever seen a real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps
you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in
crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements
of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the "Bird Waltz" is
like the song of birds. Wiry Ben never smiled: he looked as serious as a
dancing monkey--as serious as if he had been an experimental philosopher
ascertaining in his own person the amount of shaking and the varieties
of angularity that could be given to the human limbs.
To make amends for the abundant laughter in the striped marquee, Arthur
clapped his hands continually and cried "Bravo!" But Ben had one admirer
whose eyes followed his movements with a fervid gravity that equalled
his own. It was Martin Poyser, who was seated on a bench, with Tommy
between his legs.
"What dost think o' that?" he said to his wife. "He goes as pat to the
music as if he was made o' clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at
dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha' hit it just to
th' hair like that."
"It's little matter what his limbs are, to my thinking," re-turned
Mrs. Poyser. "He's empty enough i' the upper story, or he'd niver come
jigging an' stamping i' that way, like a mad grasshopper, for the gentry
to look at him. They're fit to die wi' laughing, I can see."
"Well, well, so much the better, it amuses 'em," said Mr. Poyser, who
did not easily take an irritable view of things. "But they're going away
now, t' have their dinner, I reckon. Well move about a bit, shall we,
and see what Adam Bede's doing. He's got to look after the drinking and
things: I doubt he hasna had much fun."
| In Chapter Twenty-Two, the Captain's behavior towards his tenants is interestingly old-fashioned. He seems to take an almost feudal responsibility for them, a fact enhanced by the setting of the tenants' dinner in a room in the old Abbey. The Captain in no way questions the established social order of his society, but he wants to be--and to appear--as benevolent a master as possible. He is constantly concerned about his image in the eyes of his tenants, and he uses a possible dip in their feelings toward him as a reason that he should not continue to see Hetty . The new position for Adam shakes up the established order of the book in the same way that his father's death did. It makes him somewhat more able to marry Hetty. This new development not only frees him economically, but also it increases his social status, bringing him level with large tenants like the Poysers. Chapter Twenty-Three shows the differences in character between Hetty and Adam once again, suggesting that they might not make a very good couple. Adam's humility is highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, showing that he does not want to be elevated above his family. One moral center in this novel concerns family values, and the fact that Adam does not want to move upward socially without bringing the rest of his family with him is an extremely positive quality in the context of the novel. Eliot has already remarked, however, that if Hetty were invited to make a great social leap, she would do so without a backward glance. Two of Hetty's most negative characteristics are highlighted at the end of this chapter. Her vanity, the most obvious of her sins, is irritated when Totty innocently does something that might spoil Hetty's careful toilette. Her groundless flirtation is also emphasized here; she smiles winningly at Adam not because she loves him, but because she knows that a competitor is watching. She wants to retain her hold over Adam even if she does not want him for herself. In Chapter Twenty-Four, all of the people in the village put on a good, happy, and unanimous face, while they are divided by social barriers and generally feel conflicted about their own troubles. The Captain is worried that if others learn about his relationship with Hetty, they will think less of him. Hetty is worried that he does not love her anymore. Adam is worried that he is letting down his family by moving into a new social sphere. There are several other worries here. What Eliot is trying to demonstrate is that, unlike natural events, social events can lend themselves to theatricality, leading people to play their expected roles instead of interacting and responding as they might do in a more natural way. The speeches of the men are weighed and judged, and despite the fact that all of the villagers know that Adam means well, some still judge his speech negatively. Chapter Twenty-Five steps back from the story of the love problems among the Bedes and Poyser nieces to view the community as a whole. Rather than use the narrator to comment, Eliot brings in Mrs. Irwine as an outsider who rather impartially surveys the community. The result of this outsider perspective is a more even distribution of praise where praise is deserved. For example, she notices Seth Bede's particularity, though he is usually overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother. The short episode of Chad's Bess's disappointment is almost more like a fable than a novel. Chad's Bess is persuaded to do something that she knows she should not be doing--heating herself up too much by racing--in pursuit of some sort of finery as a prize. She is quite disappointed when she ends up with a prize that is not to her taste. This fable might do well to instruct Hetty, who is carrying on a relationship that she knows she should not in pursuit of luxury and finery herself. Chad's Bess's disappointment may foreshadow her own. Formal dancing is used in Chapter Twenty-Six in a similar way compared with dancing in Victorian fiction. That is, it is a proxy for, or a prelude to, sexual relations. Certain rules regulate the way that balls, even those as informal as the country dance, are held. Men must ask women to dance, and people may survey their possible prizes with all of the leisure of someone shopping for vegetables in a market. Men must not dance too often with the same partner, or else it will be expected that he has serious designs on her and may even be ready to marry her. For this reason, neither Adam nor the Captain dances with Hetty more than once. The fact that Adam sees the locket, which is obviously so fine as to be a gift from the Captain, suggests that Hetty's secret cannot remain a secret for very much longer. Even though she tries to hide the signs of her love, and though she is fairly successful at making others believe that her emotions are linked to men other than the Captain, she ultimately will be unsuccessful at hiding such a big secret. | analysis |
ARTHUR had chosen the entrance-hall for the ballroom: very wisely, for
no other room could have been so airy, or would have had the advantage
of the wide doors opening into the garden, as well as a ready entrance
into the other rooms. To be sure, a stone floor was not the pleasantest
to dance on, but then, most of the dancers had known what it was
to enjoy a Christmas dance on kitchen quarries. It was one of those
entrance-halls which make the surrounding rooms look like closets--with
stucco angels, trumpets, and flower-wreaths on the lofty ceiling, and
great medallions of miscellaneous heroes on the walls, alternating with
statues in niches. Just the sort of place to be ornamented well with
green boughs, and Mr. Craig had been proud to show his taste and his
hothouse plants on the occasion. The broad steps of the stone staircase
were covered with cushions to serve as seats for the children, who were
to stay till half-past nine with the servant-maids to see the dancing,
and as this dance was confined to the chief tenants, there was
abundant room for every one. The lights were charmingly disposed in
coloured-paper lamps, high up among green boughs, and the farmers'
wives and daughters, as they peeped in, believed no scene could be more
splendid; they knew now quite well in what sort of rooms the king and
queen lived, and their thoughts glanced with some pity towards cousins
and acquaintances who had not this fine opportunity of knowing how
things went on in the great world. The lamps were already lit, though
the sun had not long set, and there was that calm light out of doors in
which we seem to see all objects more distinctly than in the broad day.
It was a pretty scene outside the house: the farmers and their families
were moving about the lawn, among the flowers and shrubs, or along the
broad straight road leading from the east front, where a carpet of
mossy grass spread on each side, studded here and there with a dark
flat-boughed cedar, or a grand pyramidal fir sweeping the ground with
its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of
cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being
attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the
windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room,
and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly.
One of these was Lisbeth Bede, and Seth went with her--not from filial
attention only, for his conscience would not let him join in dancing.
It had been rather a melancholy day to Seth: Dinah had never been more
constantly present with him than in this scene, where everything was
so unlike her. He saw her all the more vividly after looking at the
thoughtless faces and gay-coloured dresses of the young women--just as
one feels the beauty and the greatness of a pictured Madonna the more
when it has been for a moment screened from us by a vulgar head in a
bonnet. But this presence of Dinah in his mind only helped him to bear
the better with his mother's mood, which had been becoming more and more
querulous for the last hour. Poor Lisbeth was suffering from a strange
conflict of feelings. Her joy and pride in the honour paid to her
darling son Adam was beginning to be worsted in the conflict with the
jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Adam came to tell her
that Captain Donnithorne desired him to join the dancers in the hall.
Adam was getting more and more out of her reach; she wished all the old
troubles back again, for then it mattered more to Adam what his mother
said and did.
"Eh, it's fine talkin' o' dancin'," she said, "an' thy father not a five
week in's grave. An' I wish I war there too, i'stid o' bein' left to
take up merrier folks's room above ground."
"Nay, don't look at it i' that way, Mother," said Adam, who was
determined to be gentle to her to-day. "I don't mean to dance--I shall
only look on. And since the captain wishes me to be there, it 'ud look
as if I thought I knew better than him to say as I'd rather not stay.
And thee know'st how he's behaved to me to-day."
"Eh, thee't do as thee lik'st, for thy old mother's got no right t'
hinder thee. She's nought but th' old husk, and thee'st slipped away
from her, like the ripe nut."
"Well, Mother," said Adam, "I'll go and tell the captain as it hurts thy
feelings for me to stay, and I'd rather go home upo' that account: he
won't take it ill then, I daresay, and I'm willing." He said this with
some effort, for he really longed to be near Hetty this evening.
"Nay, nay, I wonna ha' thee do that--the young squire 'ull be angered.
Go an' do what thee't ordered to do, an' me and Seth 'ull go whome. I
know it's a grit honour for thee to be so looked on--an' who's to be
prouder on it nor thy mother? Hadna she the cumber o' rearin' thee an'
doin' for thee all these 'ears?"
"Well, good-bye, then, Mother--good-bye, lad--remember Gyp when you get
home," said Adam, turning away towards the gate of the pleasure-grounds,
where he hoped he might be able to join the Poysers, for he had been so
occupied throughout the afternoon that he had had no time to speak to
Hetty. His eye soon detected a distant group, which he knew to be the
right one, returning to the house along the broad gravel road, and he
hastened on to meet them.
"Why, Adam, I'm glad to get sight on y' again," said Mr. Poyser, who was
carrying Totty on his arm. "You're going t' have a bit o' fun, I hope,
now your work's all done. And here's Hetty has promised no end o'
partners, an' I've just been askin' her if she'd agreed to dance wi'
you, an' she says no."
"Well, I didn't think o' dancing to-night," said Adam, already tempted
to change his mind, as he looked at Hetty.
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Poyser. "Why, everybody's goin' to dance to-night,
all but th' old squire and Mrs. Irwine. Mrs. Best's been tellin' us as
Miss Lyddy and Miss Irwine 'ull dance, an' the young squire 'ull pick
my wife for his first partner, t' open the ball: so she'll be forced to
dance, though she's laid by ever sin' the Christmas afore the little un
was born. You canna for shame stand still, Adam, an' you a fine young
fellow and can dance as well as anybody."
"Nay, nay," said Mrs. Poyser, "it 'ud be unbecomin'. I know the dancin's
nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it's nonsense, you
wonna go far i' this life. When your broth's ready-made for you, you mun
swallow the thickenin', or else let the broth alone."
"Then if Hetty 'ull dance with me," said Adam, yielding either to Mrs.
Poyser's argument or to something else, "I'll dance whichever dance
she's free."
"I've got no partner for the fourth dance," said Hetty; "I'll dance that
with you, if you like."
"Ah," said Mr. Poyser, "but you mun dance the first dance, Adam, else
it'll look partic'ler. There's plenty o' nice partners to pick an'
choose from, an' it's hard for the gells when the men stan' by and don't
ask 'em."
Adam felt the justice of Mr. Poyser's observation: it would not do for
him to dance with no one besides Hetty; and remembering that Jonathan
Burge had some reason to feel hurt to-day, he resolved to ask Miss Mary
to dance with him the first dance, if she had no other partner.
"There's the big clock strikin' eight," said Mr. Poyser; "we must make
haste in now, else the squire and the ladies 'ull be in afore us, an'
that wouldna look well."
When they had entered the hall, and the three children under Molly's
charge had been seated on the stairs, the folding-doors of the
drawing-room were thrown open, and Arthur entered in his regimentals,
leading Mrs. Irwine to a carpet-covered dais ornamented with hot-house
plants, where she and Miss Anne were to be seated with old Mr.
Donnithorne, that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings
and queens in the plays. Arthur had put on his uniform to please the
tenants, he said, who thought as much of his militia dignity as if it
had been an elevation to the premiership. He had not the least objection
to gratify them in that way: his uniform was very advantageous to his
figure.
The old squire, before sitting down, walked round the hall to greet the
tenants and make polite speeches to the wives: he was always polite; but
the farmers had found out, after long puzzling, that this polish was
one of the signs of hardness. It was observed that he gave his most
elaborate civility to Mrs. Poyser to-night, inquiring particularly about
her health, recommending her to strengthen herself with cold water as
he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Poyser curtsied and thanked him with
great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered to her
husband, "I'll lay my life he's brewin' some nasty turn against us. Old
Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin'." Mr. Poyser had no time to
answer, for now Arthur came up and said, "Mrs. Poyser, I'm come to
request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr. Poyser,
you must let me take you to my aunt, for she claims you as her partner."
The wife's pale cheek flushed with a nervous sense of unwonted honour as
Arthur led her to the top of the room; but Mr. Poyser, to whom an extra
glass had restored his youthful confidence in his good looks and good
dancing, walked along with them quite proudly, secretly flattering
himself that Miss Lydia had never had a partner in HER life who could
lift her off the ground as he would. In order to balance the honours
given to the two parishes, Miss Irwine danced with Luke Britton, the
largest Broxton farmer, and Mr. Gawaine led out Mrs. Britton. Mr.
Irwine, after seating his sister Anne, had gone to the abbey gallery,
as he had agreed with Arthur beforehand, to see how the merriment of the
cottagers was prospering. Meanwhile, all the less distinguished couples
had taken their places: Hetty was led out by the inevitable Mr. Craig,
and Mary Burge by Adam; and now the music struck up, and the glorious
country-dance, best of all dances, began.
Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the thick
shoes would have been better than any drums. That merry stamping, that
gracious nodding of the head, that waving bestowal of the hand--where
can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying
aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not
affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their
side--that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little
compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come
again--those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their
partners, having nothing to say--it would be a pleasant variety to
see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large skirts, and
scanning glances exploring costumes, and languid men in lacquered boots
smiling with double meaning.
There was but one thing to mar Martin Poyser's pleasure in this dance:
it was that he was always in close contact with Luke Britton, that
slovenly farmer. He thought of throwing a little glazed coldness into
his eye in the crossing of hands; but then, as Miss Irwine was opposite
to him instead of the offensive Luke, he might freeze the wrong person.
So he gave his face up to hilarity, unchilled by moral judgments.
How Hetty's heart beat as Arthur approached her! He had hardly looked at
her to-day: now he must take her hand. Would he press it? Would he look
at her? She thought she would cry if he gave her no sign of feeling.
Now he was there--he had taken her hand--yes, he was pressing it. Hetty
turned pale as she looked up at him for an instant and met his eyes,
before the dance carried him away. That pale look came upon Arthur like
the beginning of a dull pain, which clung to him, though he must dance
and smile and joke all the same. Hetty would look so, when he told her
what he had to tell her; and he should never be able to bear it--he
should be a fool and give way again. Hetty's look did not really mean
so much as he thought: it was only the sign of a struggle between the
desire for him to notice her and the dread lest she should betray the
desire to others. But Hetty's face had a language that transcended her
feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos
not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but
speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations--eyes that tell of
deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with
these eyes--perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as
a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that
use it. That look of Hetty's oppressed Arthur with a dread which yet had
something of a terrible unconfessed delight in it, that she loved him
too well. There was a hard task before him, for at that moment he felt
he would have given up three years of his youth for the happiness of
abandoning himself without remorse to his passion for Hetty.
These were the incongruous thoughts in his mind as he led Mrs. Poyser,
who was panting with fatigue, and secretly resolving that neither judge
nor jury should force her to dance another dance, to take a quiet rest
in the dining-room, where supper was laid out for the guests to come and
take it as they chose.
"I've desired Hetty to remember as she's got to dance wi' you, sir,"
said the good innocent woman; "for she's so thoughtless, she'd be like
enough to go an' engage herself for ivery dance. So I told her not to
promise too many."
"Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Arthur, not without a twinge. "Now, sit
down in this comfortable chair, and here is Mills ready to give you what
you would like best."
He hurried away to seek another matronly partner, for due honour must be
paid to the married women before he asked any of the young ones; and
the country-dances, and the stamping, and the gracious nodding, and the
waving of the hands, went on joyously.
At last the time had come for the fourth dance--longed for by the
strong, grave Adam, as if he had been a delicate-handed youth of
eighteen; for we are all very much alike when we are in our first love;
and Adam had hardly ever touched Hetty's hand for more than a transient
greeting--had never danced with her but once before. His eyes had
followed her eagerly to-night in spite of himself, and had taken in
deeper draughts of love. He thought she behaved so prettily, so quietly;
she did not seem to be flirting at all she smiled less than usual; there
was almost a sweet sadness about her. "God bless her!" he said inwardly;
"I'd make her life a happy 'un, if a strong arm to work for her, and a
heart to love her, could do it."
And then there stole over him delicious thoughts of coming home from
work, and drawing Hetty to his side, and feeling her cheek softly
pressed against his, till he forgot where he was, and the music and the
tread of feet might have been the falling of rain and the roaring of the
wind, for what he knew.
But now the third dance was ended, and he might go up to her and
claim her hand. She was at the far end of the hall near the staircase,
whispering with Molly, who had just given the sleeping Totty into her
arms before running to fetch shawls and bonnets from the landing. Mrs.
Poyser had taken the two boys away into the dining-room to give them
some cake before they went home in the cart with Grandfather and Molly
was to follow as fast as possible.
"Let me hold her," said Adam, as Molly turned upstairs; "the children
are so heavy when they're asleep."
Hetty was glad of the relief, for to hold Totty in her arms, standing,
was not at all a pleasant variety to her. But this second transfer had
the unfortunate effect of rousing Totty, who was not behind any child
of her age in peevishness at an unseasonable awaking. While Hetty was
in the act of placing her in Adam's arms, and had not yet withdrawn her
own, Totty opened her eyes, and forthwith fought out with her left fist
at Adam's arm, and with her right caught at the string of brown beads
round Hetty's neck. The locket leaped out from her frock, and the next
moment the string was broken, and Hetty, helpless, saw beads and locket
scattered wide on the floor.
"My locket, my locket!" she said, in a loud frightened whisper to Adam;
"never mind the beads."
Adam had already seen where the locket fell, for it had attracted his
glance as it leaped out of her frock. It had fallen on the raised wooden
dais where the band sat, not on the stone floor; and as Adam picked it
up, he saw the glass with the dark and light locks of hair under it. It
had fallen that side upwards, so the glass was not broken. He turned it
over on his hand, and saw the enamelled gold back.
"It isn't hurt," he said, as he held it towards Hetty, who was unable to
take it because both her hands were occupied with Totty.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, I don't mind about it," said Hetty, who had been
pale and was now red.
"Not matter?" said Adam, gravely. "You seemed very frightened about it.
I'll hold it till you're ready to take it," he added, quietly closing
his hand over it, that she might not think he wanted to look at it
again.
By this time Molly had come with bonnet and shawl, and as soon as she
had taken Totty, Adam placed the locket in Hetty's hand. She took it
with an air of indifference and put it in her pocket, in her heart vexed
and angry with Adam because he had seen it, but determined now that she
would show no more signs of agitation.
"See," she said, "they're taking their places to dance; let us go."
Adam assented silently. A puzzled alarm had taken possession of him. Had
Hetty a lover he didn't know of? For none of her relations, he was sure,
would give her a locket like that; and none of her admirers, with whom
he was acquainted, was in the position of an accepted lover, as the
giver of that locket must be. Adam was lost in the utter impossibility
of finding any person for his fears to alight on. He could only feel
with a terrible pang that there was something in Hetty's life unknown to
him; that while he had been rocking himself in the hope that she would
come to love him, she was already loving another. The pleasure of the
dance with Hetty was gone; his eyes, when they rested on her, had an
uneasy questioning expression in them; he could think of nothing to say
to her; and she too was out of temper and disinclined to speak. They
were both glad when the dance was ended.
Adam was determined to stay no longer; no one wanted him, and no one
would notice if he slipped away. As soon as he got out of doors, he
began to walk at his habitual rapid pace, hurrying along without knowing
why, busy with the painful thought that the memory of this day, so full
of honour and promise to him, was poisoned for ever. Suddenly, when
he was far on through the Chase, he stopped, startled by a flash of
reviving hope. After all, he might be a fool, making a great misery out
of a trifle. Hetty, fond of finery as she was, might have bought the
thing herself. It looked too expensive for that--it looked like the
things on white satin in the great jeweller's shop at Rosseter. But Adam
had very imperfect notions of the value of such things, and he thought
it could certainly not cost more than a guinea. Perhaps Hetty had had as
much as that in Christmas boxes, and there was no knowing but she might
have been childish enough to spend it in that way; she was such a young
thing, and she couldn't help loving finery! But then, why had she been
so frightened about it at first, and changed colour so, and afterwards
pretended not to care? Oh, that was because she was ashamed of his
seeing that she had such a smart thing--she was conscious that it
was wrong for her to spend her money on it, and she knew that Adam
disapproved of finery. It was a proof she cared about what he liked and
disliked. She must have thought from his silence and gravity afterwards
that he was very much displeased with her, that he was inclined to be
harsh and severe towards her foibles. And as he walked on more quietly,
chewing the cud of this new hope, his only uneasiness was that he had
behaved in a way which might chill Hetty's feeling towards him. For this
last view of the matter must be the true one. How could Hetty have
an accepted lover, quite unknown to him? She was never away from her
uncle's house for more than a day; she could have no acquaintances that
did not come there, and no intimacies unknown to her uncle and aunt. It
would be folly to believe that the locket was given to her by a lover.
The little ring of dark hair he felt sure was her own; he could form
no guess about the light hair under it, for he had not seen it very
distinctly. It might be a bit of her father's or mother's, who had died
when she was a child, and she would naturally put a bit of her own along
with it.
And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious
web of probabilities--the surest screen a wise man can place between
himself and the truth. His last waking thoughts melted into a dream that
he was with Hetty again at the Hall Farm, and that he was asking her to
forgive him for being so cold and silent.
And while he was dreaming this, Arthur was leading Hetty to the dance
and saying to her in low hurried tones, "I shall be in the wood the day
after to-morrow at seven; come as early as you can." And Hetty's foolish
joys and hopes, which had flown away for a little space, scared by a
mere nothing, now all came fluttering back, unconscious of the real
peril. She was happy for the first time this long day, and wished
that dance would last for hours. Arthur wished it too; it was the
last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more
delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has
persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
But Mrs. Poyser's wishes were quite the reverse of this, for her mind
was filled with dreary forebodings as to the retardation of to-morrow
morning's cheese in consequence of these late hours. Now that Hetty had
done her duty and danced one dance with the young squire, Mr. Poyser
must go out and see if the cart was come back to fetch them, for it was
half-past ten o'clock, and notwithstanding a mild suggestion on his part
that it would be bad manners for them to be the first to go, Mrs. Poyser
was resolute on the point, "manners or no manners."
"What! Going already, Mrs. Poyser?" said old Mr. Donnithorne, as she
came to curtsy and take leave; "I thought we should not part with any of
our guests till eleven. Mrs. Irwine and I, who are elderly people, think
of sitting out the dance till then."
"Oh, Your Honour, it's all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up
by candlelight--they've got no cheese on their minds. We're late enough
as it is, an' there's no lettin' the cows know as they mustn't want to
be milked so early to-morrow mornin'. So, if you'll please t' excuse us,
we'll take our leave."
"Eh!" she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, "I'd sooner
ha' brewin' day and washin' day together than one o' these pleasurin'
days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not
rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i'
smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think
you civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't when it's done, if it
isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who was in his merriest mood, and felt that
he had had a great day, "a bit o' pleasuring's good for thee sometimes.
An' thee danc'st as well as any of 'em, for I'll back thee against all
the wives i' the parish for a light foot an' ankle. An' it was a great
honour for the young squire to ask thee first--I reckon it was because
I sat at th' head o' the table an' made the speech. An' Hetty too--she
never had such a partner before--a fine young gentleman in reg'mentals.
It'll serve you to talk on, Hetty, when you're an old woman--how you
danced wi' th' young squire the day he come o' age."
Book Four
| The ball is held in the grand entrance room to the Chase. Lisbeth Bede objects to Adam being invited to the dancing because it causes him to leave his family, but when Adam says that he could apologize to the Captain and explain that his mother did not want him to attend, she says that he should go after all. Seth is happy to leave the party because all of the women in their finery remind him too strongly of Dinah, who never wears any ornaments at all. He finds the Poyser party, and Mr. Poyser encourages him to dance with Hetty. Adam, who had thought that he was not going to dance, engages her for the fourth dance, and he takes out Mary Burge for the first. The old Squire makes the rounds of the hall to say hello to his tenants, all of whom hate him. The Captain leads out Mrs. Poyser for the first dance, while Miss Lydia leads out Mr. Poyser. When he takes her to dance, Arthur squeezes Hetty's hand, which makes her pale with emotion. He imagines that she will look this way again when he breaks it off for good. Adam thinks that Hetty looks more serious and beautiful than ever and imagines marrying her. He goes to talk to her and collects the sleeping Totty from her arms. Totty wakes up and lashes out her arms, breaking the brown beads around Hetty's neck and popping the golden locket out of her dress. Adam picks it up from the floor, sees the two locks of hair, and becomes confused. As he dances with Hetty he realizes that they must have been given by some other, established, rich lover. He runs from the dance. As he walks home, he surmises that there could be nobody in her life whom he has not known about, so he concludes that she bought it with her own money and was ashamed of her vanity. Meanwhile, As Arthur dances with Hetty, he arranges to meet with her again | summary |
ARTHUR had chosen the entrance-hall for the ballroom: very wisely, for
no other room could have been so airy, or would have had the advantage
of the wide doors opening into the garden, as well as a ready entrance
into the other rooms. To be sure, a stone floor was not the pleasantest
to dance on, but then, most of the dancers had known what it was
to enjoy a Christmas dance on kitchen quarries. It was one of those
entrance-halls which make the surrounding rooms look like closets--with
stucco angels, trumpets, and flower-wreaths on the lofty ceiling, and
great medallions of miscellaneous heroes on the walls, alternating with
statues in niches. Just the sort of place to be ornamented well with
green boughs, and Mr. Craig had been proud to show his taste and his
hothouse plants on the occasion. The broad steps of the stone staircase
were covered with cushions to serve as seats for the children, who were
to stay till half-past nine with the servant-maids to see the dancing,
and as this dance was confined to the chief tenants, there was
abundant room for every one. The lights were charmingly disposed in
coloured-paper lamps, high up among green boughs, and the farmers'
wives and daughters, as they peeped in, believed no scene could be more
splendid; they knew now quite well in what sort of rooms the king and
queen lived, and their thoughts glanced with some pity towards cousins
and acquaintances who had not this fine opportunity of knowing how
things went on in the great world. The lamps were already lit, though
the sun had not long set, and there was that calm light out of doors in
which we seem to see all objects more distinctly than in the broad day.
It was a pretty scene outside the house: the farmers and their families
were moving about the lawn, among the flowers and shrubs, or along the
broad straight road leading from the east front, where a carpet of
mossy grass spread on each side, studded here and there with a dark
flat-boughed cedar, or a grand pyramidal fir sweeping the ground with
its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of
cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being
attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the
windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room,
and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly.
One of these was Lisbeth Bede, and Seth went with her--not from filial
attention only, for his conscience would not let him join in dancing.
It had been rather a melancholy day to Seth: Dinah had never been more
constantly present with him than in this scene, where everything was
so unlike her. He saw her all the more vividly after looking at the
thoughtless faces and gay-coloured dresses of the young women--just as
one feels the beauty and the greatness of a pictured Madonna the more
when it has been for a moment screened from us by a vulgar head in a
bonnet. But this presence of Dinah in his mind only helped him to bear
the better with his mother's mood, which had been becoming more and more
querulous for the last hour. Poor Lisbeth was suffering from a strange
conflict of feelings. Her joy and pride in the honour paid to her
darling son Adam was beginning to be worsted in the conflict with the
jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Adam came to tell her
that Captain Donnithorne desired him to join the dancers in the hall.
Adam was getting more and more out of her reach; she wished all the old
troubles back again, for then it mattered more to Adam what his mother
said and did.
"Eh, it's fine talkin' o' dancin'," she said, "an' thy father not a five
week in's grave. An' I wish I war there too, i'stid o' bein' left to
take up merrier folks's room above ground."
"Nay, don't look at it i' that way, Mother," said Adam, who was
determined to be gentle to her to-day. "I don't mean to dance--I shall
only look on. And since the captain wishes me to be there, it 'ud look
as if I thought I knew better than him to say as I'd rather not stay.
And thee know'st how he's behaved to me to-day."
"Eh, thee't do as thee lik'st, for thy old mother's got no right t'
hinder thee. She's nought but th' old husk, and thee'st slipped away
from her, like the ripe nut."
"Well, Mother," said Adam, "I'll go and tell the captain as it hurts thy
feelings for me to stay, and I'd rather go home upo' that account: he
won't take it ill then, I daresay, and I'm willing." He said this with
some effort, for he really longed to be near Hetty this evening.
"Nay, nay, I wonna ha' thee do that--the young squire 'ull be angered.
Go an' do what thee't ordered to do, an' me and Seth 'ull go whome. I
know it's a grit honour for thee to be so looked on--an' who's to be
prouder on it nor thy mother? Hadna she the cumber o' rearin' thee an'
doin' for thee all these 'ears?"
"Well, good-bye, then, Mother--good-bye, lad--remember Gyp when you get
home," said Adam, turning away towards the gate of the pleasure-grounds,
where he hoped he might be able to join the Poysers, for he had been so
occupied throughout the afternoon that he had had no time to speak to
Hetty. His eye soon detected a distant group, which he knew to be the
right one, returning to the house along the broad gravel road, and he
hastened on to meet them.
"Why, Adam, I'm glad to get sight on y' again," said Mr. Poyser, who was
carrying Totty on his arm. "You're going t' have a bit o' fun, I hope,
now your work's all done. And here's Hetty has promised no end o'
partners, an' I've just been askin' her if she'd agreed to dance wi'
you, an' she says no."
"Well, I didn't think o' dancing to-night," said Adam, already tempted
to change his mind, as he looked at Hetty.
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Poyser. "Why, everybody's goin' to dance to-night,
all but th' old squire and Mrs. Irwine. Mrs. Best's been tellin' us as
Miss Lyddy and Miss Irwine 'ull dance, an' the young squire 'ull pick
my wife for his first partner, t' open the ball: so she'll be forced to
dance, though she's laid by ever sin' the Christmas afore the little un
was born. You canna for shame stand still, Adam, an' you a fine young
fellow and can dance as well as anybody."
"Nay, nay," said Mrs. Poyser, "it 'ud be unbecomin'. I know the dancin's
nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it's nonsense, you
wonna go far i' this life. When your broth's ready-made for you, you mun
swallow the thickenin', or else let the broth alone."
"Then if Hetty 'ull dance with me," said Adam, yielding either to Mrs.
Poyser's argument or to something else, "I'll dance whichever dance
she's free."
"I've got no partner for the fourth dance," said Hetty; "I'll dance that
with you, if you like."
"Ah," said Mr. Poyser, "but you mun dance the first dance, Adam, else
it'll look partic'ler. There's plenty o' nice partners to pick an'
choose from, an' it's hard for the gells when the men stan' by and don't
ask 'em."
Adam felt the justice of Mr. Poyser's observation: it would not do for
him to dance with no one besides Hetty; and remembering that Jonathan
Burge had some reason to feel hurt to-day, he resolved to ask Miss Mary
to dance with him the first dance, if she had no other partner.
"There's the big clock strikin' eight," said Mr. Poyser; "we must make
haste in now, else the squire and the ladies 'ull be in afore us, an'
that wouldna look well."
When they had entered the hall, and the three children under Molly's
charge had been seated on the stairs, the folding-doors of the
drawing-room were thrown open, and Arthur entered in his regimentals,
leading Mrs. Irwine to a carpet-covered dais ornamented with hot-house
plants, where she and Miss Anne were to be seated with old Mr.
Donnithorne, that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings
and queens in the plays. Arthur had put on his uniform to please the
tenants, he said, who thought as much of his militia dignity as if it
had been an elevation to the premiership. He had not the least objection
to gratify them in that way: his uniform was very advantageous to his
figure.
The old squire, before sitting down, walked round the hall to greet the
tenants and make polite speeches to the wives: he was always polite; but
the farmers had found out, after long puzzling, that this polish was
one of the signs of hardness. It was observed that he gave his most
elaborate civility to Mrs. Poyser to-night, inquiring particularly about
her health, recommending her to strengthen herself with cold water as
he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Poyser curtsied and thanked him with
great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered to her
husband, "I'll lay my life he's brewin' some nasty turn against us. Old
Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin'." Mr. Poyser had no time to
answer, for now Arthur came up and said, "Mrs. Poyser, I'm come to
request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr. Poyser,
you must let me take you to my aunt, for she claims you as her partner."
The wife's pale cheek flushed with a nervous sense of unwonted honour as
Arthur led her to the top of the room; but Mr. Poyser, to whom an extra
glass had restored his youthful confidence in his good looks and good
dancing, walked along with them quite proudly, secretly flattering
himself that Miss Lydia had never had a partner in HER life who could
lift her off the ground as he would. In order to balance the honours
given to the two parishes, Miss Irwine danced with Luke Britton, the
largest Broxton farmer, and Mr. Gawaine led out Mrs. Britton. Mr.
Irwine, after seating his sister Anne, had gone to the abbey gallery,
as he had agreed with Arthur beforehand, to see how the merriment of the
cottagers was prospering. Meanwhile, all the less distinguished couples
had taken their places: Hetty was led out by the inevitable Mr. Craig,
and Mary Burge by Adam; and now the music struck up, and the glorious
country-dance, best of all dances, began.
Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the thick
shoes would have been better than any drums. That merry stamping, that
gracious nodding of the head, that waving bestowal of the hand--where
can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying
aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not
affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their
side--that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little
compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come
again--those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their
partners, having nothing to say--it would be a pleasant variety to
see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large skirts, and
scanning glances exploring costumes, and languid men in lacquered boots
smiling with double meaning.
There was but one thing to mar Martin Poyser's pleasure in this dance:
it was that he was always in close contact with Luke Britton, that
slovenly farmer. He thought of throwing a little glazed coldness into
his eye in the crossing of hands; but then, as Miss Irwine was opposite
to him instead of the offensive Luke, he might freeze the wrong person.
So he gave his face up to hilarity, unchilled by moral judgments.
How Hetty's heart beat as Arthur approached her! He had hardly looked at
her to-day: now he must take her hand. Would he press it? Would he look
at her? She thought she would cry if he gave her no sign of feeling.
Now he was there--he had taken her hand--yes, he was pressing it. Hetty
turned pale as she looked up at him for an instant and met his eyes,
before the dance carried him away. That pale look came upon Arthur like
the beginning of a dull pain, which clung to him, though he must dance
and smile and joke all the same. Hetty would look so, when he told her
what he had to tell her; and he should never be able to bear it--he
should be a fool and give way again. Hetty's look did not really mean
so much as he thought: it was only the sign of a struggle between the
desire for him to notice her and the dread lest she should betray the
desire to others. But Hetty's face had a language that transcended her
feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos
not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but
speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations--eyes that tell of
deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with
these eyes--perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as
a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that
use it. That look of Hetty's oppressed Arthur with a dread which yet had
something of a terrible unconfessed delight in it, that she loved him
too well. There was a hard task before him, for at that moment he felt
he would have given up three years of his youth for the happiness of
abandoning himself without remorse to his passion for Hetty.
These were the incongruous thoughts in his mind as he led Mrs. Poyser,
who was panting with fatigue, and secretly resolving that neither judge
nor jury should force her to dance another dance, to take a quiet rest
in the dining-room, where supper was laid out for the guests to come and
take it as they chose.
"I've desired Hetty to remember as she's got to dance wi' you, sir,"
said the good innocent woman; "for she's so thoughtless, she'd be like
enough to go an' engage herself for ivery dance. So I told her not to
promise too many."
"Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Arthur, not without a twinge. "Now, sit
down in this comfortable chair, and here is Mills ready to give you what
you would like best."
He hurried away to seek another matronly partner, for due honour must be
paid to the married women before he asked any of the young ones; and
the country-dances, and the stamping, and the gracious nodding, and the
waving of the hands, went on joyously.
At last the time had come for the fourth dance--longed for by the
strong, grave Adam, as if he had been a delicate-handed youth of
eighteen; for we are all very much alike when we are in our first love;
and Adam had hardly ever touched Hetty's hand for more than a transient
greeting--had never danced with her but once before. His eyes had
followed her eagerly to-night in spite of himself, and had taken in
deeper draughts of love. He thought she behaved so prettily, so quietly;
she did not seem to be flirting at all she smiled less than usual; there
was almost a sweet sadness about her. "God bless her!" he said inwardly;
"I'd make her life a happy 'un, if a strong arm to work for her, and a
heart to love her, could do it."
And then there stole over him delicious thoughts of coming home from
work, and drawing Hetty to his side, and feeling her cheek softly
pressed against his, till he forgot where he was, and the music and the
tread of feet might have been the falling of rain and the roaring of the
wind, for what he knew.
But now the third dance was ended, and he might go up to her and
claim her hand. She was at the far end of the hall near the staircase,
whispering with Molly, who had just given the sleeping Totty into her
arms before running to fetch shawls and bonnets from the landing. Mrs.
Poyser had taken the two boys away into the dining-room to give them
some cake before they went home in the cart with Grandfather and Molly
was to follow as fast as possible.
"Let me hold her," said Adam, as Molly turned upstairs; "the children
are so heavy when they're asleep."
Hetty was glad of the relief, for to hold Totty in her arms, standing,
was not at all a pleasant variety to her. But this second transfer had
the unfortunate effect of rousing Totty, who was not behind any child
of her age in peevishness at an unseasonable awaking. While Hetty was
in the act of placing her in Adam's arms, and had not yet withdrawn her
own, Totty opened her eyes, and forthwith fought out with her left fist
at Adam's arm, and with her right caught at the string of brown beads
round Hetty's neck. The locket leaped out from her frock, and the next
moment the string was broken, and Hetty, helpless, saw beads and locket
scattered wide on the floor.
"My locket, my locket!" she said, in a loud frightened whisper to Adam;
"never mind the beads."
Adam had already seen where the locket fell, for it had attracted his
glance as it leaped out of her frock. It had fallen on the raised wooden
dais where the band sat, not on the stone floor; and as Adam picked it
up, he saw the glass with the dark and light locks of hair under it. It
had fallen that side upwards, so the glass was not broken. He turned it
over on his hand, and saw the enamelled gold back.
"It isn't hurt," he said, as he held it towards Hetty, who was unable to
take it because both her hands were occupied with Totty.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, I don't mind about it," said Hetty, who had been
pale and was now red.
"Not matter?" said Adam, gravely. "You seemed very frightened about it.
I'll hold it till you're ready to take it," he added, quietly closing
his hand over it, that she might not think he wanted to look at it
again.
By this time Molly had come with bonnet and shawl, and as soon as she
had taken Totty, Adam placed the locket in Hetty's hand. She took it
with an air of indifference and put it in her pocket, in her heart vexed
and angry with Adam because he had seen it, but determined now that she
would show no more signs of agitation.
"See," she said, "they're taking their places to dance; let us go."
Adam assented silently. A puzzled alarm had taken possession of him. Had
Hetty a lover he didn't know of? For none of her relations, he was sure,
would give her a locket like that; and none of her admirers, with whom
he was acquainted, was in the position of an accepted lover, as the
giver of that locket must be. Adam was lost in the utter impossibility
of finding any person for his fears to alight on. He could only feel
with a terrible pang that there was something in Hetty's life unknown to
him; that while he had been rocking himself in the hope that she would
come to love him, she was already loving another. The pleasure of the
dance with Hetty was gone; his eyes, when they rested on her, had an
uneasy questioning expression in them; he could think of nothing to say
to her; and she too was out of temper and disinclined to speak. They
were both glad when the dance was ended.
Adam was determined to stay no longer; no one wanted him, and no one
would notice if he slipped away. As soon as he got out of doors, he
began to walk at his habitual rapid pace, hurrying along without knowing
why, busy with the painful thought that the memory of this day, so full
of honour and promise to him, was poisoned for ever. Suddenly, when
he was far on through the Chase, he stopped, startled by a flash of
reviving hope. After all, he might be a fool, making a great misery out
of a trifle. Hetty, fond of finery as she was, might have bought the
thing herself. It looked too expensive for that--it looked like the
things on white satin in the great jeweller's shop at Rosseter. But Adam
had very imperfect notions of the value of such things, and he thought
it could certainly not cost more than a guinea. Perhaps Hetty had had as
much as that in Christmas boxes, and there was no knowing but she might
have been childish enough to spend it in that way; she was such a young
thing, and she couldn't help loving finery! But then, why had she been
so frightened about it at first, and changed colour so, and afterwards
pretended not to care? Oh, that was because she was ashamed of his
seeing that she had such a smart thing--she was conscious that it
was wrong for her to spend her money on it, and she knew that Adam
disapproved of finery. It was a proof she cared about what he liked and
disliked. She must have thought from his silence and gravity afterwards
that he was very much displeased with her, that he was inclined to be
harsh and severe towards her foibles. And as he walked on more quietly,
chewing the cud of this new hope, his only uneasiness was that he had
behaved in a way which might chill Hetty's feeling towards him. For this
last view of the matter must be the true one. How could Hetty have
an accepted lover, quite unknown to him? She was never away from her
uncle's house for more than a day; she could have no acquaintances that
did not come there, and no intimacies unknown to her uncle and aunt. It
would be folly to believe that the locket was given to her by a lover.
The little ring of dark hair he felt sure was her own; he could form
no guess about the light hair under it, for he had not seen it very
distinctly. It might be a bit of her father's or mother's, who had died
when she was a child, and she would naturally put a bit of her own along
with it.
And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious
web of probabilities--the surest screen a wise man can place between
himself and the truth. His last waking thoughts melted into a dream that
he was with Hetty again at the Hall Farm, and that he was asking her to
forgive him for being so cold and silent.
And while he was dreaming this, Arthur was leading Hetty to the dance
and saying to her in low hurried tones, "I shall be in the wood the day
after to-morrow at seven; come as early as you can." And Hetty's foolish
joys and hopes, which had flown away for a little space, scared by a
mere nothing, now all came fluttering back, unconscious of the real
peril. She was happy for the first time this long day, and wished
that dance would last for hours. Arthur wished it too; it was the
last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more
delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has
persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
But Mrs. Poyser's wishes were quite the reverse of this, for her mind
was filled with dreary forebodings as to the retardation of to-morrow
morning's cheese in consequence of these late hours. Now that Hetty had
done her duty and danced one dance with the young squire, Mr. Poyser
must go out and see if the cart was come back to fetch them, for it was
half-past ten o'clock, and notwithstanding a mild suggestion on his part
that it would be bad manners for them to be the first to go, Mrs. Poyser
was resolute on the point, "manners or no manners."
"What! Going already, Mrs. Poyser?" said old Mr. Donnithorne, as she
came to curtsy and take leave; "I thought we should not part with any of
our guests till eleven. Mrs. Irwine and I, who are elderly people, think
of sitting out the dance till then."
"Oh, Your Honour, it's all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up
by candlelight--they've got no cheese on their minds. We're late enough
as it is, an' there's no lettin' the cows know as they mustn't want to
be milked so early to-morrow mornin'. So, if you'll please t' excuse us,
we'll take our leave."
"Eh!" she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, "I'd sooner
ha' brewin' day and washin' day together than one o' these pleasurin'
days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not
rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i'
smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think
you civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't when it's done, if it
isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who was in his merriest mood, and felt that
he had had a great day, "a bit o' pleasuring's good for thee sometimes.
An' thee danc'st as well as any of 'em, for I'll back thee against all
the wives i' the parish for a light foot an' ankle. An' it was a great
honour for the young squire to ask thee first--I reckon it was because
I sat at th' head o' the table an' made the speech. An' Hetty too--she
never had such a partner before--a fine young gentleman in reg'mentals.
It'll serve you to talk on, Hetty, when you're an old woman--how you
danced wi' th' young squire the day he come o' age."
Book Four
| In Chapter Twenty-Two, the Captain's behavior towards his tenants is interestingly old-fashioned. He seems to take an almost feudal responsibility for them, a fact enhanced by the setting of the tenants' dinner in a room in the old Abbey. The Captain in no way questions the established social order of his society, but he wants to be--and to appear--as benevolent a master as possible. He is constantly concerned about his image in the eyes of his tenants, and he uses a possible dip in their feelings toward him as a reason that he should not continue to see Hetty . The new position for Adam shakes up the established order of the book in the same way that his father's death did. It makes him somewhat more able to marry Hetty. This new development not only frees him economically, but also it increases his social status, bringing him level with large tenants like the Poysers. Chapter Twenty-Three shows the differences in character between Hetty and Adam once again, suggesting that they might not make a very good couple. Adam's humility is highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, showing that he does not want to be elevated above his family. One moral center in this novel concerns family values, and the fact that Adam does not want to move upward socially without bringing the rest of his family with him is an extremely positive quality in the context of the novel. Eliot has already remarked, however, that if Hetty were invited to make a great social leap, she would do so without a backward glance. Two of Hetty's most negative characteristics are highlighted at the end of this chapter. Her vanity, the most obvious of her sins, is irritated when Totty innocently does something that might spoil Hetty's careful toilette. Her groundless flirtation is also emphasized here; she smiles winningly at Adam not because she loves him, but because she knows that a competitor is watching. She wants to retain her hold over Adam even if she does not want him for herself. In Chapter Twenty-Four, all of the people in the village put on a good, happy, and unanimous face, while they are divided by social barriers and generally feel conflicted about their own troubles. The Captain is worried that if others learn about his relationship with Hetty, they will think less of him. Hetty is worried that he does not love her anymore. Adam is worried that he is letting down his family by moving into a new social sphere. There are several other worries here. What Eliot is trying to demonstrate is that, unlike natural events, social events can lend themselves to theatricality, leading people to play their expected roles instead of interacting and responding as they might do in a more natural way. The speeches of the men are weighed and judged, and despite the fact that all of the villagers know that Adam means well, some still judge his speech negatively. Chapter Twenty-Five steps back from the story of the love problems among the Bedes and Poyser nieces to view the community as a whole. Rather than use the narrator to comment, Eliot brings in Mrs. Irwine as an outsider who rather impartially surveys the community. The result of this outsider perspective is a more even distribution of praise where praise is deserved. For example, she notices Seth Bede's particularity, though he is usually overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother. The short episode of Chad's Bess's disappointment is almost more like a fable than a novel. Chad's Bess is persuaded to do something that she knows she should not be doing--heating herself up too much by racing--in pursuit of some sort of finery as a prize. She is quite disappointed when she ends up with a prize that is not to her taste. This fable might do well to instruct Hetty, who is carrying on a relationship that she knows she should not in pursuit of luxury and finery herself. Chad's Bess's disappointment may foreshadow her own. Formal dancing is used in Chapter Twenty-Six in a similar way compared with dancing in Victorian fiction. That is, it is a proxy for, or a prelude to, sexual relations. Certain rules regulate the way that balls, even those as informal as the country dance, are held. Men must ask women to dance, and people may survey their possible prizes with all of the leisure of someone shopping for vegetables in a market. Men must not dance too often with the same partner, or else it will be expected that he has serious designs on her and may even be ready to marry her. For this reason, neither Adam nor the Captain dances with Hetty more than once. The fact that Adam sees the locket, which is obviously so fine as to be a gift from the Captain, suggests that Hetty's secret cannot remain a secret for very much longer. Even though she tries to hide the signs of her love, and though she is fairly successful at making others believe that her emotions are linked to men other than the Captain, she ultimately will be unsuccessful at hiding such a big secret. | analysis |
IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the
birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland
county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded
by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage
throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope
farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered
valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such
exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own,
you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid
rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in
their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying
winds flattered this hope.
The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked
brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of
cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the
Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a
moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves,
still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the
farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the
orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on
the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind
seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A
merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could
top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in
good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had
fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the
husk and scattered as untimely seed!
And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it
be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment
of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful
unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births
of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new
sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There
are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that
Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of
our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such
children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be
content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work,
for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some
satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was
slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for
his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time she had seen him
since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the
more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven
his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the
locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier
because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he
interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!"
he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful
enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the
work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at,
after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the
birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the
Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase
and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage
Mr. Craig. "She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house
keeper's room," Mrs. Poyser remarked. "For my part, I was never overfond
o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat
dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show."
And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things;
though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at
a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But,
when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again
when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther
into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to
go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always
made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. "Oh, do come in with
me!" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and
he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented
with only a slight remark on Hetty's being later than was expected;
while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and
talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude.
That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for
going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to
the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done
as possible this evening, that the next might be clear.
One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs
at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as
bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to
let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it
one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the
squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr.
Casson's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take
the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it.
However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all
dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order
with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere,
he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the
afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had
calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to
be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and
Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as
to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for
implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when
the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and
busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the
expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him
on persuading the squire to consent. To "make a good job" of anything,
however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block,
with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and
then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of
gratification--of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he
loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are
free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It
was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and
on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been working
here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. "Why, th' lad's
forgot his tools," thought Adam, "and he's got to work up at the shop
to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave
his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em;
I'll carry 'em home."
The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase,
at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come
thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag
on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come
to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day
after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants
were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire
luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the Chase,
and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the
sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays
among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of
ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon
the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to
stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the
house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite
enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought
himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going
through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on
across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with
Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the
light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain
calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts.
How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more
timid.
Presently Adam's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about
Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes
that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back
affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt
on Arthur's good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in
the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam's, with
a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its
happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no
ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in
the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving
admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant
thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his
keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the
old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a
kind word to him.
After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path
through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of
all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's
perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He
kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and
knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had
often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he
stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get
on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which
he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince
himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the
rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining
the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his
youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The
beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of
boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped away from the
tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty
yards before him.
He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The
two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands
about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been
running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave
a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate
out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with
a sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale,
clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over
his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which
amazement was fast turning to fierceness.
Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make
unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than
usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering
influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Adam
than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best person
who could have happened to see him and Hetty together--he was a sensible
fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur felt
confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so
he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his
evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into
his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which
the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding
down between the topmost branches above him.
Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood
it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to
him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that
changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must
inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting
emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he
would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing.
He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own
strong will.
"Well, Adam," said Arthur, "you've been looking at the fine old beeches,
eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred
grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was coming to my
den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late.
So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains.
But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night,
Adam. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know."
Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to
be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam's face. He did not look
directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then
lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no
more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam's eyes--and as he
spoke the last words, he walked on.
"Stop a bit, sir," said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without
turning round. "I've got a word to say to you."
Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by
a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the
susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still
more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his
back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was
going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper
rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the
confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a
man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a position
to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels
himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares
for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as
anger in his voice when he said, "What do you mean, Adam?"
"I mean, sir"--answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without
turning round--"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light
words. This is not the first time you've met Hetty Sorrel in this grove,
and this is not the first time you've kissed her."
Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from
knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty,
which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his
irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, "Well, sir, what then?"
"Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've
all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to
when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like
Hetty, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks
to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd
rather ha' lost my right hand."
"Let me tell you, Adam," said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and
trying to recur to his careless tone, "you're not only devilishly
impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such
a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and
pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every
man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be
flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there
is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself."
"I don't know what you mean by flirting," said Adam, "but if you mean
behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all
the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't
honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you
know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made
public as you've behaved to Hetty as y' have done without her losing her
character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What
if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks
won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not
deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the
thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love
another man as 'ud make her a good husband."
Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived
that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no
irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Adam
could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a
position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed
his anger a little.
"Well, Adam," he said, in a tone of friendly concession, "you're perhaps
right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty
little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave,
steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling.
I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good
Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little
too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't
make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night"--Arthur
here turned round to walk on--"and talk no more about the matter. The
whole thing will soon be forgotten."
"No, by God!" Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no
longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he
was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal
injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up
and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp
agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of
inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion
against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak
our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had
been robbed of Hetty--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had
trusted--and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring
at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he
had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just
indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him
as he spoke.
"No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me,
when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed
me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a
noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing
her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my
life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And
you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other
folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw
back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never
count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and
fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me."
Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to
throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the
change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur's
lips were now as pale as Adam's; his heart was beating violently. The
discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the
moment see himself in the light of Adam's indignation, and regard Adam's
suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error.
The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his
life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars
on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while
others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face
with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was
only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought
proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His
first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to
utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his
coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and
motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets.
"What!" he said, "won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike
you while you stand so."
"Go away, Adam," said Arthur, "I don't want to fight you."
"No," said Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a
common man, as you can injure without answering for it."
"I never meant to injure you," said Arthur, with returning anger. "I
didn't know you loved her."
"But you've made her love you," said Adam. "You're a double-faced
man--I'll never believe a word you say again."
"Go away, I tell you," said Arthur, angrily, "or we shall both repent."
"No," said Adam, with a convulsed voice, "I swear I won't go away
without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're
a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you."
The colour had all rushed back to Arthur's face; in a moment his right
hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam
staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam's now, and
the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought
with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight
darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the
workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to
protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the
battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur
must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken
by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying
concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly
clad body.
He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise.
The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the
force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he
done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own
vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past--there it was,
just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage.
But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time
seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam
shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of
this dread he knelt down by Arthur's side and lifted his head from among
the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The
horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced upon
him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Arthur's
face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement,
but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.
| In the middle of August, Adam performs twice as much work as before. He has begun his work on the Captain's estate, but he also has remained with Mr. Burge until Mr. Burge can find a replacement. His hopes about Hetty are high, because she has behaved more nicely than usual to him after the ball. One evening she goes to Treddleston to buy some things, so Adam is quite surprised to see her walking home out of her way near the Chase, but she explains that she wanted to remain outside a little longer. He walks her home, and she invites him in for a conversation with her family. He arrives at the Chase Farm late one evening and is occupied with making plans for a new farmhouse until late, so he decides to walk home by cutting through the grove. He thinks about Arthur's good qualities, which he enjoys partly because he has not read widely enough--so Adam must choose his heroes from among the people he knows. He stops to contemplate a beautiful beech at the turnoff to the Hermitage, and he sees Arthur kissing Hetty. Gyp barks, the couple see him, and Hetty hurries off. Arthur, who has had too much wine to drink, confronts Adam, red-faced. Adam understands the locket, everything, in a flash. Arthur tries to pass off the kiss as a casual encounter, but Adam says that he knows that it is not the first time. Adam calls him a scoundrel and will not let the point pass, saying that he has loved Hetty for many years and that Arthur is doing him a disservice by making love to her. Arthur has never been criticized before and does not like the feeling of it. They get in a fistfight. Adam is stronger, and he knocks Arthur to the ground. Adam waits in vain for Arthur to rise. He looks at Arthur's face and sees no sign of life. Adam feels the vanity of his own rage in that it has not solved anything or changed the past | summary |
IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the
birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland
county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded
by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage
throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope
farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered
valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such
exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own,
you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid
rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in
their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying
winds flattered this hope.
The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked
brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of
cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the
Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a
moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves,
still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the
farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the
orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on
the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind
seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A
merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could
top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in
good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had
fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the
husk and scattered as untimely seed!
And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it
be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment
of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful
unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births
of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new
sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There
are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that
Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of
our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such
children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be
content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work,
for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some
satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was
slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for
his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time she had seen him
since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the
more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven
his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the
locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier
because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he
interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!"
he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful
enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the
work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at,
after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the
birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the
Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase
and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage
Mr. Craig. "She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house
keeper's room," Mrs. Poyser remarked. "For my part, I was never overfond
o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat
dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show."
And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things;
though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at
a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But,
when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again
when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther
into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to
go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always
made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. "Oh, do come in with
me!" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and
he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented
with only a slight remark on Hetty's being later than was expected;
while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and
talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude.
That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for
going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to
the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done
as possible this evening, that the next might be clear.
One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs
at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as
bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to
let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it
one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the
squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr.
Casson's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take
the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it.
However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all
dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order
with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere,
he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the
afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had
calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to
be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and
Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as
to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for
implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when
the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and
busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the
expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him
on persuading the squire to consent. To "make a good job" of anything,
however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block,
with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and
then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of
gratification--of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he
loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are
free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It
was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and
on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been working
here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. "Why, th' lad's
forgot his tools," thought Adam, "and he's got to work up at the shop
to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave
his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em;
I'll carry 'em home."
The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase,
at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come
thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag
on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come
to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day
after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants
were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire
luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the Chase,
and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the
sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays
among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of
ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon
the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to
stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the
house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite
enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought
himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going
through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on
across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with
Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the
light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain
calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts.
How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more
timid.
Presently Adam's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about
Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes
that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back
affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt
on Arthur's good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in
the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam's, with
a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its
happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no
ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in
the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving
admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant
thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his
keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the
old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a
kind word to him.
After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path
through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of
all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's
perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He
kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and
knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had
often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he
stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get
on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which
he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince
himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the
rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining
the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his
youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The
beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of
boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped away from the
tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty
yards before him.
He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The
two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands
about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been
running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave
a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate
out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with
a sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale,
clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over
his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which
amazement was fast turning to fierceness.
Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make
unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than
usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering
influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Adam
than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best person
who could have happened to see him and Hetty together--he was a sensible
fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur felt
confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so
he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his
evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into
his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which
the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding
down between the topmost branches above him.
Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood
it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to
him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that
changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must
inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting
emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he
would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing.
He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own
strong will.
"Well, Adam," said Arthur, "you've been looking at the fine old beeches,
eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred
grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was coming to my
den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late.
So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains.
But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night,
Adam. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know."
Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to
be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam's face. He did not look
directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then
lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no
more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam's eyes--and as he
spoke the last words, he walked on.
"Stop a bit, sir," said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without
turning round. "I've got a word to say to you."
Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by
a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the
susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still
more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his
back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was
going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper
rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the
confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a
man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a position
to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels
himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares
for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as
anger in his voice when he said, "What do you mean, Adam?"
"I mean, sir"--answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without
turning round--"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light
words. This is not the first time you've met Hetty Sorrel in this grove,
and this is not the first time you've kissed her."
Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from
knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty,
which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his
irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, "Well, sir, what then?"
"Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've
all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to
when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like
Hetty, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks
to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd
rather ha' lost my right hand."
"Let me tell you, Adam," said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and
trying to recur to his careless tone, "you're not only devilishly
impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such
a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and
pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every
man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be
flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there
is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself."
"I don't know what you mean by flirting," said Adam, "but if you mean
behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all
the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't
honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you
know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made
public as you've behaved to Hetty as y' have done without her losing her
character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What
if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks
won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not
deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the
thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love
another man as 'ud make her a good husband."
Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived
that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no
irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Adam
could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a
position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed
his anger a little.
"Well, Adam," he said, in a tone of friendly concession, "you're perhaps
right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty
little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave,
steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling.
I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good
Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little
too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't
make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night"--Arthur
here turned round to walk on--"and talk no more about the matter. The
whole thing will soon be forgotten."
"No, by God!" Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no
longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he
was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal
injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up
and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp
agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of
inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion
against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak
our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had
been robbed of Hetty--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had
trusted--and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring
at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he
had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just
indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him
as he spoke.
"No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me,
when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed
me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a
noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing
her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my
life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And
you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other
folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw
back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never
count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and
fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me."
Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to
throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the
change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur's
lips were now as pale as Adam's; his heart was beating violently. The
discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the
moment see himself in the light of Adam's indignation, and regard Adam's
suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error.
The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his
life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars
on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while
others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face
with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was
only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought
proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His
first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to
utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his
coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and
motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets.
"What!" he said, "won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike
you while you stand so."
"Go away, Adam," said Arthur, "I don't want to fight you."
"No," said Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a
common man, as you can injure without answering for it."
"I never meant to injure you," said Arthur, with returning anger. "I
didn't know you loved her."
"But you've made her love you," said Adam. "You're a double-faced
man--I'll never believe a word you say again."
"Go away, I tell you," said Arthur, angrily, "or we shall both repent."
"No," said Adam, with a convulsed voice, "I swear I won't go away
without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're
a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you."
The colour had all rushed back to Arthur's face; in a moment his right
hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam
staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam's now, and
the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought
with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight
darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the
workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to
protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the
battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur
must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken
by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying
concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly
clad body.
He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise.
The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the
force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he
done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own
vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past--there it was,
just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage.
But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time
seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam
shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of
this dread he knelt down by Arthur's side and lifted his head from among
the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The
horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced upon
him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Arthur's
face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement,
but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Adam always
thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of
consciousness in Arthur's face and a slight shiver through his frame.
The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old
affection with it.
"Do you feel any pain, sir?" he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur's
cravat.
Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a
slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But
he only shivered again and said nothing.
"Do you feel any hurt, sir?" Adam said again, with a trembling in his
voice.
Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had
unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. "Lay my head down," he said,
faintly, "and get me some water if you can."
Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools
out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the
Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank.
When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur
looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness.
"Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?" said Adam, kneeling down
again to lift up Arthur's head.
"No," said Arthur, "dip my cravat in and souse it on my head."
The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a
little higher, resting on Adam's arm.
"Do you feel any hurt inside sir?" Adam asked again
"No--no hurt," said Arthur, still faintly, "but rather done up."
After a while he said, "I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me
down."
"Yes, sir, thank God," said Adam. "I thought it was worse."
"What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs."
"I feel terribly shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning
on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a
battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone."
"Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down
a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be
better in a minute or two."
"No," said Arthur. "I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some
brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the
gate. If you'll just help me on."
They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again.
In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended
the first moments of Arthur's revival had now given way to a vivid
recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow
path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the
Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the
windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles,
and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness,
as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Adam's hand,
for him to open the door. Adam had not known before that Arthur had
furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it
was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with
all the signs of frequent habitation.
Arthur loosed Adam's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. "You'll see
my hunting-bottle somewhere," he said. "A leather case with a bottle and
glass in."
Adam was not long in finding the case. "There's very little brandy in
it, sir," he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it
before the window; "hardly this little glassful."
"Well, give me that," said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical
depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, "Hadn't I better
run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and
back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have
something to revive you."
"Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get
it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too."
Adam was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to
be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam's swift pace could
not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated
suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over
all the new sad future.
Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently
he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken
moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that
stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was
more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was
done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself
of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight
thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought,
took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a
woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table,
and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort.
When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a
doze.
"That's right," Arthur said; "I'm tremendously in want of some
brandy-vigour."
"I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir," said Adam. "I've been
thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn."
"No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking
home now."
"I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir," said Adam,
hesitatingly.
"No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down."
Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy
silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly
renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and
looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was
keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur's
condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which
every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the
physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be
done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had
been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make
this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw
the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again came to
his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better
to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did
not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they
began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at
each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat
in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the
silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just
poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his
head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an
irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind.
"You begin to feel more yourself again, sir," he said, as the candle
went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint
moonlight.
"Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move;
but I'll go home when I've taken this dose."
There was a slight pause before Adam said, "My temper got the better of
me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd
known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've
always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could."
He paused again before he went on.
"And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may
have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was
possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put
together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the
joy I could have now, to think the best of you."
Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully
embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any
further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam
reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer.
Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has
committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native
impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank
confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of
tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him
tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual
feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive
Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved.
And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the
sad appeal with which Adam ended--he was obliged to rejoice in
the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer
immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.
"Say no more about our anger, Adam," he said, at last, very languidly,
for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; "I forgive your momentary
injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in
your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because
we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for
I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake
hands."
Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still.
"I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir," he said, "but I can't shake
hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as
if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said
before, about your behaviour t' Hetty, and I can't shake hands with you
as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up
better."
Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand.
He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he
could, "I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I've told you
already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if
you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on
Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given
you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more."
Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face
towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the
moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the
conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak
till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes
before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and
looking down on him as he lay.
"It'll be better for me to speak plain," he said, with evident effort,
"though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me,
whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love
first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds
which of 'em I take. What I feel for Hetty's a different sort o' love,
such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God
as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but
my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying
all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it,
as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and
hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak
false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look."
"You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it," said
Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away.
But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly,
"You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations
upon her."
"Nay, sir," Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were
half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction
between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--"Nay, sir, things don't
lie level between Hetty and you. You're acting with your eyes open,
whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's
all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound
to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed
her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many
things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to
make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that."
"Good God, Adam, let me alone!" Arthur burst out impetuously; "I feel it
enough without your worrying me."
He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him.
"Well, then, if you feel it," Adam rejoined, eagerly; "if you feel as
you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as
you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand
to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t'
undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if
you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her
the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the
mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her
pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing
as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for
behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal.
I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can
take care o' Hetty in this thing but me."
"I can do what I think needful in the matter," said Arthur, more and
more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, "without giving
promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper."
"No," said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, "that won't do. I must know
what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what
ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a
gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up."
There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, "I'll see you
to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill." He rose as he spoke, and
reached his cap, as if intending to go.
"You won't see her again!" Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring
anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back
against it. "Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've
been lying--or else promise me what I've said."
Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before
Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint,
shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that
inward struggle of Arthur's--before he said, feebly, "I promise; let me
go."
Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached the
step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post.
"You're not well enough to walk alone, sir," said Adam. "Take my arm
again."
Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But,
after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, "I believe I
must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set
up about me at home."
Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they
came where the basket and the tools lay.
"I must pick up the tools, sir," Adam said. "They're my brother's. I
doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute."
Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between
them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in
without being seen by any one. He said then, "Thank you; I needn't
trouble you any further."
"What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?" said
Adam.
"You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock," said Arthur;
"not before."
"Good-night, sir," said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned
into the house.
| After a few minutes, Arthur sits up and says that he fainted. Adam tends to him, putting water on his forehead. They walk to the Hermitage to get Arthur some brandy so that he can stand the walk home. It is a surprise to Adam that the Hermitage has become so well equipped as a hideaway for Arthur. Arthur revives himself by drinking brandy with water. Adam apologizes for perhaps being too hasty, especially because Arthur had no way of knowing about Adam's secret feelings for Hetty. Arthur wants to shake hands and say no more about the matter, but Adam will not agree to do so unless Arthur ends his relationship with Hetty. Arthur says that he is leaving on Saturday, which should be enough, but Adam insists that he must write a specific letter. Adam says that he will deliver the letter himself, and Arthur somewhat reluctantly agrees to have him pick it up the next day at five. Arthur promises that he will never see Hetty again | summary |
IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Adam always
thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of
consciousness in Arthur's face and a slight shiver through his frame.
The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old
affection with it.
"Do you feel any pain, sir?" he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur's
cravat.
Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a
slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But
he only shivered again and said nothing.
"Do you feel any hurt, sir?" Adam said again, with a trembling in his
voice.
Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had
unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. "Lay my head down," he said,
faintly, "and get me some water if you can."
Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools
out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the
Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank.
When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur
looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness.
"Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?" said Adam, kneeling down
again to lift up Arthur's head.
"No," said Arthur, "dip my cravat in and souse it on my head."
The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a
little higher, resting on Adam's arm.
"Do you feel any hurt inside sir?" Adam asked again
"No--no hurt," said Arthur, still faintly, "but rather done up."
After a while he said, "I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me
down."
"Yes, sir, thank God," said Adam. "I thought it was worse."
"What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs."
"I feel terribly shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning
on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a
battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone."
"Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down
a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be
better in a minute or two."
"No," said Arthur. "I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some
brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the
gate. If you'll just help me on."
They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again.
In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended
the first moments of Arthur's revival had now given way to a vivid
recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow
path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the
Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the
windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles,
and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness,
as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Adam's hand,
for him to open the door. Adam had not known before that Arthur had
furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it
was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with
all the signs of frequent habitation.
Arthur loosed Adam's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. "You'll see
my hunting-bottle somewhere," he said. "A leather case with a bottle and
glass in."
Adam was not long in finding the case. "There's very little brandy in
it, sir," he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it
before the window; "hardly this little glassful."
"Well, give me that," said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical
depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, "Hadn't I better
run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and
back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have
something to revive you."
"Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get
it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too."
Adam was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to
be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam's swift pace could
not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated
suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over
all the new sad future.
Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently
he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken
moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that
stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was
more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was
done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself
of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight
thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought,
took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a
woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table,
and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort.
When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a
doze.
"That's right," Arthur said; "I'm tremendously in want of some
brandy-vigour."
"I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir," said Adam. "I've been
thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn."
"No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking
home now."
"I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir," said Adam,
hesitatingly.
"No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down."
Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy
silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly
renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and
looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was
keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur's
condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which
every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the
physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be
done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had
been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make
this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw
the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again came to
his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better
to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did
not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they
began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at
each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat
in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the
silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just
poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his
head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an
irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind.
"You begin to feel more yourself again, sir," he said, as the candle
went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint
moonlight.
"Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move;
but I'll go home when I've taken this dose."
There was a slight pause before Adam said, "My temper got the better of
me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd
known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've
always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could."
He paused again before he went on.
"And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may
have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was
possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put
together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the
joy I could have now, to think the best of you."
Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully
embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any
further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam
reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer.
Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has
committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native
impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank
confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of
tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him
tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual
feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive
Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved.
And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the
sad appeal with which Adam ended--he was obliged to rejoice in
the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer
immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.
"Say no more about our anger, Adam," he said, at last, very languidly,
for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; "I forgive your momentary
injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in
your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because
we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for
I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake
hands."
Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still.
"I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir," he said, "but I can't shake
hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as
if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said
before, about your behaviour t' Hetty, and I can't shake hands with you
as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up
better."
Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand.
He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he
could, "I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I've told you
already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if
you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on
Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given
you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more."
Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face
towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the
moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the
conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak
till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes
before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and
looking down on him as he lay.
"It'll be better for me to speak plain," he said, with evident effort,
"though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me,
whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love
first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds
which of 'em I take. What I feel for Hetty's a different sort o' love,
such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God
as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but
my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying
all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it,
as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and
hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak
false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look."
"You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it," said
Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away.
But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly,
"You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations
upon her."
"Nay, sir," Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were
half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction
between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--"Nay, sir, things don't
lie level between Hetty and you. You're acting with your eyes open,
whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's
all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound
to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed
her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many
things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to
make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that."
"Good God, Adam, let me alone!" Arthur burst out impetuously; "I feel it
enough without your worrying me."
He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him.
"Well, then, if you feel it," Adam rejoined, eagerly; "if you feel as
you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as
you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand
to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t'
undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if
you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her
the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the
mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her
pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing
as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for
behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal.
I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can
take care o' Hetty in this thing but me."
"I can do what I think needful in the matter," said Arthur, more and
more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, "without giving
promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper."
"No," said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, "that won't do. I must know
what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what
ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a
gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up."
There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, "I'll see you
to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill." He rose as he spoke, and
reached his cap, as if intending to go.
"You won't see her again!" Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring
anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back
against it. "Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've
been lying--or else promise me what I've said."
Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before
Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint,
shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that
inward struggle of Arthur's--before he said, feebly, "I promise; let me
go."
Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached the
step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post.
"You're not well enough to walk alone, sir," said Adam. "Take my arm
again."
Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But,
after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, "I believe I
must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set
up about me at home."
Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they
came where the basket and the tools lay.
"I must pick up the tools, sir," Adam said. "They're my brother's. I
doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute."
Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between
them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in
without being seen by any one. He said then, "Thank you; I needn't
trouble you any further."
"What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?" said
Adam.
"You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock," said Arthur;
"not before."
"Good-night, sir," said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned
into the house.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep
comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at
seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to
get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.
"And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my
grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for
a ride."
He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it
be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some
resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against
tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages
of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting
seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on
country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he
should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting
on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the
scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion,
the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which
suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as
a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid
even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of
danger.
Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as
easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses
and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to
witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the
giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an
old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse,
not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that
sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife
out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same
Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits.
If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself
against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the
time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment,
Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that
Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had
been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or
any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for
him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without
hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam,
and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Adam could
receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and
affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He
stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could
avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank from believing in--the
irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal
to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation
in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to
which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most
heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was
stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself
that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he
could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a
sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel
in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there
to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good
society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives
rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And
so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words,
disturbed his self-soothing arguments.
Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and
resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was
distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he
must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking
resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily
end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not
to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with
uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she
was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to
her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go
with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had
given the most exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no
word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her
own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was
spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this
last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been
obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw
her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the
sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker
anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future.
That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he
could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret;
the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew
anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Arthur
had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or
look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who
knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray
it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in
making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings
of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was
the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad
consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Hetty might
have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps
hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her
for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage
of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now.
So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!
Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two
months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which
shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any
more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own
self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same,
I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us,
as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or
will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which
constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think
ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in
our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then
reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong
presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The
action which before commission has been seen with that blended common
sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the
soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity,
through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to
be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a
_fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid
adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.
No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own
sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of
that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at
ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to
him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been
very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he
was under of deceiving Adam--it was a course so opposed to the honesty
of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do.
Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in
consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that
he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross
barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her.
And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden
impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry
Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to....
In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable
prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the
crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which
would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up
his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in
the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the
situation.
The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the
gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and
patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual.
He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But
Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many
others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen
towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation.
Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot
of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then
he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind.
Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur
went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without
exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think
of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put
her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but
comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a
dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam
said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be
worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying
Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have
seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge
of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet,
if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to
suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it.
Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control.
A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread
lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that
dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off
with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the
future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur
told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He
had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved;
he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit
confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom,
Providence would not treat him harshly.
At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do
was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he
persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between
Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a
while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since
it was still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam
was deceived--deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a
deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection
that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in
mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in
such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure
Hetty: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or
acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was
to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had
excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses
but by actions!)
Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised
a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he
thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him
to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this
last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never
deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left
himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up
Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.
When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set
off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first
thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business:
he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine
were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should
have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this
constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to
rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would
undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every
slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift
gallop.
"I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said
sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's
been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon."
"That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman.
"Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly.
Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been
relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning
that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there
again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down
with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain
was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say.
The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before
opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the
inside of the cover Adam read:
"In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it
to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty
or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking
a measure which may pain her more than mere silence.
"There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet
with better feelings some months hence.
"A.D."
"Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's
no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake
hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better
not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my
thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking
revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back
again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't
feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the
same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a
false line, and had got it all to measure over again."
But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed
Adam's thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing
the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to
hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain
as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he decided on
delivering the letter.
| Arthur wakes up in the morning and decides to go for a ride on his horse. He hates to witness pain. Once he gave a gardener his favorite pencil case because he kicked over the man's supper of broth. If Arthur could gain back Adam's self-confidence with gifts, then he would try to do so, but he knows that he cannot. He also feels bad for Hetty, who, upon learning that he was going away, asked if she could come as his wife. He resolves to make everything up to her with future benefits. He takes a ride on his horse to try to ascertain whether he should write the letter after all, because in his room he is having the mad thought of carrying her away. Once on horseback, he decides to write it after all. When Adam arrives at five, the butler gives him a letter addressed to Adam. He opens it, and enclosed is a letter to Hetty. Arthur wrote that this is what Adam wanted, and he has left to Adam the decision whether to give the letter to Hetty or not. Adam hesitates. He decides to feel out what sort of state of mind Hetty is in before giving her the letter | summary |
ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep
comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at
seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to
get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.
"And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my
grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for
a ride."
He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it
be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some
resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against
tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages
of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting
seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on
country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he
should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting
on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the
scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion,
the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which
suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as
a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid
even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of
danger.
Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as
easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses
and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to
witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the
giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an
old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse,
not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that
sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife
out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same
Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits.
If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself
against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the
time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment,
Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that
Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had
been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or
any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for
him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without
hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam,
and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Adam could
receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and
affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He
stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could
avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank from believing in--the
irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal
to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation
in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to
which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most
heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was
stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself
that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he
could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a
sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel
in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there
to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good
society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives
rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And
so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words,
disturbed his self-soothing arguments.
Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and
resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was
distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he
must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking
resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily
end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not
to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with
uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she
was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to
her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go
with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had
given the most exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no
word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her
own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was
spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this
last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been
obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw
her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the
sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker
anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future.
That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he
could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret;
the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew
anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Arthur
had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or
look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who
knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray
it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in
making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings
of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was
the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad
consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Hetty might
have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps
hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her
for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage
of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now.
So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!
Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two
months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which
shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any
more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own
self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same,
I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us,
as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or
will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which
constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think
ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in
our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then
reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong
presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The
action which before commission has been seen with that blended common
sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the
soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity,
through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to
be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a
_fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid
adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.
No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own
sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of
that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at
ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to
him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been
very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he
was under of deceiving Adam--it was a course so opposed to the honesty
of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do.
Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in
consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that
he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross
barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her.
And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden
impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry
Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to....
In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable
prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the
crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which
would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up
his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in
the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the
situation.
The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the
gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and
patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual.
He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But
Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many
others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen
towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation.
Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot
of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then
he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind.
Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur
went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without
exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think
of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put
her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but
comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a
dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam
said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be
worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying
Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have
seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge
of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet,
if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to
suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it.
Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control.
A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread
lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that
dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off
with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the
future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur
told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He
had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved;
he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit
confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom,
Providence would not treat him harshly.
At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do
was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he
persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between
Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a
while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since
it was still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam
was deceived--deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a
deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection
that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in
mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in
such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure
Hetty: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or
acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was
to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had
excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses
but by actions!)
Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised
a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he
thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him
to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this
last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never
deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left
himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up
Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.
When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set
off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first
thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business:
he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine
were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should
have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this
constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to
rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would
undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every
slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift
gallop.
"I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said
sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's
been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon."
"That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman.
"Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly.
Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been
relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning
that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there
again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down
with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain
was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say.
The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before
opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the
inside of the cover Adam read:
"In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it
to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty
or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking
a measure which may pain her more than mere silence.
"There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet
with better feelings some months hence.
"A.D."
"Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's
no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake
hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better
not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my
thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking
revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back
again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't
feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the
same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a
false line, and had got it all to measure over again."
But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed
Adam's thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing
the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to
hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain
as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he decided on
delivering the letter.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
THE next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church,
hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in
his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty
alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her
seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful
and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had
met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Arthur in the
Grove.
"Come, you'll go on with us, Adam," Mr. Poyser said when they reached
the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to
offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of
lingering behind a little, and then Adam said:
"Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this
evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I've something partic'lar to talk to
you about."
Hetty said, "Very well." She was really as anxious as Adam was that she
should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of
her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had
no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and Adam.
Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with her, and
perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind
that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It was a
relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to
speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going
home with them lest he should mean "to tell." But, now he wanted to talk
to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to
do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to
do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him
believe that she didn't care for Arthur; and as long as Adam thought
there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked,
she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Adam, lest her
uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret
lover.
Hetty's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on
Adam's arm and said "yes" or "no" to some slight observations of his
about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this
next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till
morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her
thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a young
man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would
nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the
while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent
news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed
Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and
imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along
by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been
an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty
in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how
closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society
and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of
committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the
resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very unhappy all
the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to her--mingling
with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear
that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream.
She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had uttered in their
last meeting--"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see
what can be done." She clung to the belief that he was so fond of
her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her
secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a
superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the
future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to
press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her
little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water
where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by
looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on
past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her
dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that
Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden
proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a
new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after
tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go
with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Poyser,
"I'll go with her, Aunt."
It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too,
and soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the
filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large
unripe nuts to play at "cob-nut" with, and Totty was watching them with
a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two
months--since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he
stood by Hetty's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had
often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through
the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty's sweet blush. It came
importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but
he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more
than was needful for Hetty's sake.
"After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty," he began, "you won't think
me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by
any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and
meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about
it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never
marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere
for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your
parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful."
Adam's words relieved one of Hetty's fears, but they also carried a
meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale
and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she
had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent.
"You're so young, you know, Hetty," he went on, almost tenderly, "and y'
haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to
do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your
knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I
know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him,
they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides
that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to
a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your
life."
Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the
filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and
preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson,
under the terrible agitation produced by Adam's words. There was a cruel
force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her
flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw
them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what
she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting
now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words.
"You've no right to say as I love him," she said, faintly, but
impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very
beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes
dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam's heart yearned over her
as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her,
and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that
would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have
rescued her body in the face of all danger!
"I doubt it must be so, Hetty," he said, tenderly; "for I canna believe
you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with
his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love
him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little,
till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for
stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you
the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of
you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care."
"Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you," Hetty burst out.
Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam's
words.
"Nay, Hetty," said Adam, "if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never
ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and
presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em
too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been
trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a
gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for
fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the
thought o' marrying you."
"How do you know? How durst you say so?" said Hetty, pausing in her walk
and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam's tone shook her with fear.
She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur would
have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and look
were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter.
"Perhaps you can't believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of
him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got
a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not
read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before
I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don't let it take too much
hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such
a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end."
Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a
letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite different
in it from what he thought.
Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he
said, in a tone of tender entreaty, "Don't you bear me ill will, Hetty,
because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne
a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's
nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was
your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've
done any wrong knowingly."
Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till
he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not
listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket,
without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she
wanted to go in.
"You're in the right not to read it just yet," said Adam. "Read it when
you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call
the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of
it."
Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying
her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the
shock of Adam's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was
sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find
Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was
making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe
apple that she had set her small teeth in.
"Hegh, Totty," said Adam, "come and ride on my shoulder--ever so
high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees."
What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of
being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried
when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's
shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure
height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at
the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden.
"Bless your sweet face, my pet," she said, the mother's strong love
filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put
out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said,
without looking at her, "You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are
both at the cheese."
After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was
Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown
because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper
to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help.
Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her
and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of
leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her
safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much
self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the
letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the
letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him
to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was
bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was
to press her hand gently as he said "Good-bye," and hope she would take
that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was
there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home,
in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness
to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and
less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His
exasperation at Hetty's suffering--and also at the sense that she was
possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any
plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Adam was a
clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well
as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous,
he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend
that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation
and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love
made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent
in his feeling towards Arthur.
"Her head was allays likely to be turned," he thought, "when a
gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands,
and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to
her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and
it's much if she'll ever like a common man now." He could not help
drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard
palms and the broken finger-nails. "I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I
don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to
like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if
I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women
think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps,
as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of,
if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her
because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may
turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the
while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be
bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it
is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man
that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a
good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's
enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He
does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha'
gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and
shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since
I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his
limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two."
As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he
perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Seth,
returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him.
"I thought thee'dst be at home before me," he said, as Seth turned round
to wait for him, "for I'm later than usual to-night."
"Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John
Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection,
and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them
subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the
straight road."
They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was not
inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he
was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and
confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the
brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters,
or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was
by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain
timidity towards his more practical brother.
"Seth, lad," Adam said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, "hast
heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?"
"Yes," said Seth. "She told me I might write her word after a while, how
we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her
a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and
how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the
post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps
like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st
seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes
wonderful for a woman."
Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who
said, as he took it, "Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just
now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor
usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall
stick together to the last."
"I take nought ill o' thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if
thee't a bit short wi' me now and then."
"There's Mother opening the door to look out for us," said Adam, as they
mounted the slope. "She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Gyp,
well, art glad to see me?"
Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard
the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp's joyful
bark.
"Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been
this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this
time?"
"Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother," said Adam; "that makes the
time seem longer."
"Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y
me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough
for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o'
shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on
you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should
think, seein' what time o' night it is."
"I'm hungry, Mother," said Seth, seating himself at the little table,
which had been spread ever since it was light.
"I've had my supper," said Adam. "Here, Gyp," he added, taking some cold
potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up
towards him.
"Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog," said Lisbeth; "I'n fed him well
a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I
can get sight on."
"Come, then, Gyp," said Adam, "we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm
very tired."
"What ails him, dost know?" Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone
upstairs. "He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's
so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast
gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him."
"He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother," said Seth, "and I think
he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it
hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't
say anything to vex him."
"Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind?
I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'."
Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah's letter by the light of his dip
candle.
DEAR BROTHER SETH--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it
at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this
being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have
fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay
by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in
present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying
up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me
slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly
good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love you bear
him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses
them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of
power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his
younger brother.
"My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near
her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear
her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light
as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the
words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time,
isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a
little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light
shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine
strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it
is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For
then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin
I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the
children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I
can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross.
For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the
fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a
blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true
blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the
world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it
off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole
work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the
Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And
is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our
sorrow?
"These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen
with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let
him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the
troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But
surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the
sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and
that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink
of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one
with his sorrow.
"In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I
have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have
been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that
I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say
about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me
that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear
showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a
false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle
it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think
I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be
rebellious if I was called away.
"I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall
Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came
back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My
aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is
sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her
and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to
all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep,
and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them
is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark
to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say
they are all well.
"We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be,
not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous
to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me
again to leave Snowfield.
"Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of
God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to
hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can
never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls
are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about
in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful
Sister and fellow-worker in Christ,
"DINAH MORRIS."
"I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves
slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind.
Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice
when we parted."
Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head
resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came upstairs.
"Hast read the letter?" said Seth.
"Yes," said Adam. "I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her
letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching
woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says
and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the
letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd
make thee rare and happy, Seth; she's just the woman for thee."
"It's no use thinking o' that," said Seth, despondingly. "She spoke so
firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another."
"Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by
degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and
see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three
or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and
thirty mile."
"I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be
displeased with me for going," said Seth.
"She'll be none displeased," said Adam emphatically, getting up and
throwing off his coat. "It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd
have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented
to be with her."
"Aye," said Seth, rather timidly, "and Dinah's fond o' Hetty too; she
thinks a deal about her."
Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but "good-night" passed
between them.
| The next Sunday Adam joins the Poysers on their way to church with the letter in his pocket. He hopes to find a moment to talk to Hetty alone. After church, Adam asks to speak to her alone. Hetty is relieved, because she knows that Adam must have seen her kiss the Captain and feels sure that they would not have talked about it, but has been afraid that he would tell her aunt and uncle. Hetty and Adam walk out alone that night, and Adam remembers having his hopes raised in this very garden. Adam says that he must be worried, because he has seen her being courted by a man who will never marry her. She says that he does not really know that she loves Arthur and is being trifled with. Adam says that he does know, otherwise she would not let him kiss her, and she is indeed letting herself be played with. Angrily, Hetty says that she knows that the Captain is serious about her. Adam realizes that he must give her the letter. He does, saying that he has not read it, and Hetty gains some hope again that it might not contain what he thinks. They go back into the house, Adam swinging Totty up onto his shoulders, and Hetty has no time to read the letter alone yet. Adam tries to carry the conversation with her aunt and uncle, and he is surprised at the amount of self-control that Hetty shows. As he leaves, he squeezes her hand, trying to tell her that she can always take refuge in his love. Adam reflects that she is spoiled for normal men like himself now that she has had an affair with a gentleman. He thinks that he does not have much happiness in his life. Adam runs into Seth on the way home and asks if he has heard from Dinah recently. Adam apologizes for being a bit short with him lately. Seth replies that everything is always all right between brothers. He adds that Dinah has written him a letter that he would like Adam to read. The letter is full of greetings for their mother, and it brings the news that she is moving to Leeds to preach. Adam says that she would be a great match for Seth, and it is almost like hearing her speak to read the letter. Adam says that the match would work out well and is convenient because their mother likes her so much. Adam does not reply | summary |
THE next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church,
hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in
his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty
alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her
seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful
and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had
met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Arthur in the
Grove.
"Come, you'll go on with us, Adam," Mr. Poyser said when they reached
the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to
offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of
lingering behind a little, and then Adam said:
"Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this
evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I've something partic'lar to talk to
you about."
Hetty said, "Very well." She was really as anxious as Adam was that she
should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of
her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had
no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and Adam.
Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with her, and
perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind
that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It was a
relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to
speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going
home with them lest he should mean "to tell." But, now he wanted to talk
to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to
do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to
do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him
believe that she didn't care for Arthur; and as long as Adam thought
there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked,
she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Adam, lest her
uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret
lover.
Hetty's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on
Adam's arm and said "yes" or "no" to some slight observations of his
about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this
next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till
morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her
thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a young
man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would
nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the
while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent
news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed
Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and
imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along
by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been
an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty
in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how
closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society
and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of
committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the
resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very unhappy all
the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to her--mingling
with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear
that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream.
She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had uttered in their
last meeting--"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see
what can be done." She clung to the belief that he was so fond of
her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her
secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a
superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the
future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to
press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her
little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water
where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by
looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on
past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her
dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that
Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden
proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a
new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after
tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go
with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Poyser,
"I'll go with her, Aunt."
It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too,
and soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the
filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large
unripe nuts to play at "cob-nut" with, and Totty was watching them with
a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two
months--since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he
stood by Hetty's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had
often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through
the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty's sweet blush. It came
importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but
he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more
than was needful for Hetty's sake.
"After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty," he began, "you won't think
me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by
any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and
meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about
it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never
marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere
for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your
parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful."
Adam's words relieved one of Hetty's fears, but they also carried a
meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale
and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she
had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent.
"You're so young, you know, Hetty," he went on, almost tenderly, "and y'
haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to
do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your
knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I
know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him,
they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides
that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to
a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your
life."
Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the
filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and
preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson,
under the terrible agitation produced by Adam's words. There was a cruel
force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her
flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw
them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what
she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting
now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words.
"You've no right to say as I love him," she said, faintly, but
impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very
beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes
dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam's heart yearned over her
as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her,
and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that
would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have
rescued her body in the face of all danger!
"I doubt it must be so, Hetty," he said, tenderly; "for I canna believe
you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with
his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love
him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little,
till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for
stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you
the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of
you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care."
"Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you," Hetty burst out.
Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam's
words.
"Nay, Hetty," said Adam, "if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never
ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and
presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em
too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been
trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a
gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for
fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the
thought o' marrying you."
"How do you know? How durst you say so?" said Hetty, pausing in her walk
and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam's tone shook her with fear.
She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur would
have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and look
were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter.
"Perhaps you can't believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of
him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got
a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not
read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before
I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don't let it take too much
hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such
a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end."
Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a
letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite different
in it from what he thought.
Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he
said, in a tone of tender entreaty, "Don't you bear me ill will, Hetty,
because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne
a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's
nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was
your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've
done any wrong knowingly."
Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till
he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not
listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket,
without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she
wanted to go in.
"You're in the right not to read it just yet," said Adam. "Read it when
you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call
the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of
it."
Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying
her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the
shock of Adam's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was
sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find
Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was
making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe
apple that she had set her small teeth in.
"Hegh, Totty," said Adam, "come and ride on my shoulder--ever so
high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees."
What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of
being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried
when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's
shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure
height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at
the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden.
"Bless your sweet face, my pet," she said, the mother's strong love
filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put
out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said,
without looking at her, "You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are
both at the cheese."
After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was
Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown
because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper
to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help.
Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her
and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of
leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her
safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much
self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the
letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the
letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him
to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was
bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was
to press her hand gently as he said "Good-bye," and hope she would take
that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was
there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home,
in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness
to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and
less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His
exasperation at Hetty's suffering--and also at the sense that she was
possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any
plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Adam was a
clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well
as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous,
he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend
that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation
and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love
made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent
in his feeling towards Arthur.
"Her head was allays likely to be turned," he thought, "when a
gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands,
and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to
her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and
it's much if she'll ever like a common man now." He could not help
drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard
palms and the broken finger-nails. "I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I
don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to
like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if
I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women
think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps,
as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of,
if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her
because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may
turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the
while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be
bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it
is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man
that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a
good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's
enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He
does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha'
gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and
shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since
I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his
limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two."
As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he
perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Seth,
returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him.
"I thought thee'dst be at home before me," he said, as Seth turned round
to wait for him, "for I'm later than usual to-night."
"Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John
Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection,
and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them
subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the
straight road."
They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was not
inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he
was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and
confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the
brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters,
or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was
by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain
timidity towards his more practical brother.
"Seth, lad," Adam said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, "hast
heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?"
"Yes," said Seth. "She told me I might write her word after a while, how
we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her
a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and
how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the
post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps
like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st
seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes
wonderful for a woman."
Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who
said, as he took it, "Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just
now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor
usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall
stick together to the last."
"I take nought ill o' thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if
thee't a bit short wi' me now and then."
"There's Mother opening the door to look out for us," said Adam, as they
mounted the slope. "She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Gyp,
well, art glad to see me?"
Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard
the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp's joyful
bark.
"Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been
this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this
time?"
"Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother," said Adam; "that makes the
time seem longer."
"Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y
me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough
for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o'
shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on
you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should
think, seein' what time o' night it is."
"I'm hungry, Mother," said Seth, seating himself at the little table,
which had been spread ever since it was light.
"I've had my supper," said Adam. "Here, Gyp," he added, taking some cold
potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up
towards him.
"Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog," said Lisbeth; "I'n fed him well
a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I
can get sight on."
"Come, then, Gyp," said Adam, "we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm
very tired."
"What ails him, dost know?" Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone
upstairs. "He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's
so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast
gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him."
"He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother," said Seth, "and I think
he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it
hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't
say anything to vex him."
"Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind?
I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'."
Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah's letter by the light of his dip
candle.
DEAR BROTHER SETH--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it
at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this
being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have
fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay
by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in
present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying
up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me
slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly
good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love you bear
him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses
them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of
power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his
younger brother.
"My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near
her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear
her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light
as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the
words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time,
isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a
little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light
shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine
strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it
is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For
then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin
I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the
children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I
can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross.
For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the
fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a
blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true
blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the
world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it
off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole
work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the
Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And
is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our
sorrow?
"These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen
with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let
him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the
troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But
surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the
sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and
that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink
of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one
with his sorrow.
"In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I
have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have
been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that
I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say
about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me
that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear
showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a
false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle
it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think
I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be
rebellious if I was called away.
"I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall
Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came
back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My
aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is
sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her
and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to
all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep,
and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them
is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark
to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say
they are all well.
"We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be,
not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous
to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me
again to leave Snowfield.
"Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of
God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to
hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can
never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls
are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about
in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful
Sister and fellow-worker in Christ,
"DINAH MORRIS."
"I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves
slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind.
Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice
when we parted."
Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head
resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came upstairs.
"Hast read the letter?" said Seth.
"Yes," said Adam. "I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her
letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching
woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says
and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the
letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd
make thee rare and happy, Seth; she's just the woman for thee."
"It's no use thinking o' that," said Seth, despondingly. "She spoke so
firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another."
"Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by
degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and
see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three
or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and
thirty mile."
"I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be
displeased with me for going," said Seth.
"She'll be none displeased," said Adam emphatically, getting up and
throwing off his coat. "It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd
have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented
to be with her."
"Aye," said Seth, rather timidly, "and Dinah's fond o' Hetty too; she
thinks a deal about her."
Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but "good-night" passed
between them.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in
Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she
went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the
door behind her.
Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How
was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he
did say.
She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of
roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to
her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept
away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands
to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for
her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to
write plainly.
"DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you,
and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long
as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say
anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of
love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do
for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to
think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them
away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her
at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from
her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though
they spring from the truest kindness.
"Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would
be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been
better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is
my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The
fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the
longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection
for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I
should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now,
since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil
that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for
you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of
no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I
ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future
which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you
one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself
would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know
you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and
if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have
done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life.
You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live,
and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little
in which we should be alike.
"And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel
like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else
can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe
that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always
remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now
foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.
"I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to
write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not
write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear
Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive
me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as
long as I live, your affectionate friend,
"ARTHUR DONNITHORNE."
Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there
was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white
marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than
a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she
only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and
rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this
cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and
Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it
round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm.
Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read
it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that
blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was
cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could
not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in
any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had
been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make
up the notion of that misery.
As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the
glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a
companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned
forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and
at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker,
and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.
The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on
her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an
overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and
suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then,
wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without
undressing and went to sleep.
There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after
four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon
her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim
light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her
misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming.
She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there
lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings
and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of
the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little
trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest
of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when
they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely
pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering
delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought
anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at
her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round
her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel,
cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched
and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The
half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's
violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her
wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel.
She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it
by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed
it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him
for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the
girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.
She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night,
and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the
first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.
Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she
would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.
For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first
moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is
to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered
hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all
the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a
sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always
be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of
work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to
Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought
with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the
little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock
ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake,
the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect
of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown
and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and
dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry
about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing.
She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the
dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down
in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that
night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber
glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms
now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly
over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the
growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her
foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate
entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression
had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could
have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better
bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to
dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate
one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon
fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she
would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid
would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's
leave.
When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming
health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual
in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap,
an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up
the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out
of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great
drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She
wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should
find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed
about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle
would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a
great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the
possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and
weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her
conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's
conscience.
So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.
In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his
good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the
opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go
for a lady's maid."
Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild
surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work
industriously.
"Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after
he had given one conservative puff.
"I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work."
"Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't
be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you
to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and
I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as
long as I've got a home for you."
Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.
"I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages."
"Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing
Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it
for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no
kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has."
"No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better."
"It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my
consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you.
For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand
to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my
wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody
knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take
wage?"
"Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make
it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down
on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t'
hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head
o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o'
th' inflammation afore she war thirty."
It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question
had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished
resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to
Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by
that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins.
"Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have
provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's
got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i'
this country."
After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe
and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign
of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty,
in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial,
half out of the day's repressed sadness.
"Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't
let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for
them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his
wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce
rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the
twittering of a crab's antennae.
"Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much
older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's
the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?"
"Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I
tell her we can do better for her nor that."
"I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her
mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants
at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a
finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up
sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to
being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll
be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on
from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be
the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out.
I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's
got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody
better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a
gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to
stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for
him."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor
that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and
get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid.
Let's hear no more on't."
When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should
want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's
looked like it o' late."
"Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take
no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell,
Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe
she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been
here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this
notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might
ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work.
But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick."
"Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr.
Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work."
"Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted
hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me
these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything
wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking
all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's
married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of
our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no
better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it."
"Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser,
soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets
things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young
fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why."
Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides
that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom
he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid
husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her
marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no
strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of
right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet
endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague
clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor
Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic
calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut
out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready
for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men
and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.
Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that
it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still
want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the
matter had never yet visited her.
"Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course
that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind,
and in only the second night of her sadness!"
Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling
amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are
the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy
sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight,
moored in the quiet bay!
"Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings."
But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been
a lasting joy.
| Hetty reads the letter from Arthur in her bedchamber. It is not easy for her to read the fancy handwriting, although Arthur has tried to write plainly. He says that he loves her and will always remember their love, but it would have been better had they not had it in the first place. He says that even if he married her, she would end up very unhappy, and that she would be happiest marrying someone of her own station. He says that if she ever has any misfortunes, he will try to help her in any way that he can. He tells her not to write him back unless she is in true distress, because they must try to forget about one another. Hetty cries, thinking Arthur cruel to write and cruel not to marry her. The candle goes out, and she throws herself on her bed without undressing. She wakes up at dawn, remembers her misery, reads the letter again, and fingers the trinkets that Arthur has given her. She thinks miserably that she must hide her sadness from her family. She at first thinks of running away, but that seems too difficult, so she plans on becoming a lady's maid. She asks her uncle for permission, but he says that farming is better for her health and that she is more likely to find a husband that way. The elder Mr. Poyser says that Hetty takes after her good-for-nothing mother. Mr. Poyser hints that she could marry Adam Bede, and Hetty begins to cry. After she goes to her room, the Poysers conclude that even the maid has more family feeling than she does. Hetty, in her room, considers why she should not marry Adam--after all, she does want a change in her life | summary |
IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in
Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she
went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the
door behind her.
Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How
was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he
did say.
She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of
roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to
her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept
away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands
to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for
her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to
write plainly.
"DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you,
and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long
as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say
anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of
love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do
for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to
think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them
away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her
at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from
her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though
they spring from the truest kindness.
"Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would
be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been
better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is
my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The
fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the
longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection
for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I
should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now,
since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil
that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for
you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of
no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I
ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future
which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you
one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself
would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know
you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and
if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have
done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life.
You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live,
and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little
in which we should be alike.
"And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel
like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else
can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe
that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always
remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now
foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.
"I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to
write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not
write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear
Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive
me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as
long as I live, your affectionate friend,
"ARTHUR DONNITHORNE."
Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there
was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white
marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than
a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she
only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and
rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this
cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and
Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it
round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm.
Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read
it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that
blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was
cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could
not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in
any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had
been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make
up the notion of that misery.
As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the
glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a
companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned
forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and
at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker,
and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.
The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on
her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an
overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and
suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then,
wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without
undressing and went to sleep.
There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after
four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon
her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim
light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her
misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming.
She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there
lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings
and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of
the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little
trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest
of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when
they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely
pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering
delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought
anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at
her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round
her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel,
cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched
and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The
half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's
violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her
wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel.
She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it
by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed
it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him
for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the
girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.
She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night,
and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the
first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.
Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she
would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.
For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first
moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is
to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered
hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all
the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a
sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always
be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of
work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to
Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought
with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the
little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock
ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake,
the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect
of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown
and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and
dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry
about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing.
She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the
dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down
in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that
night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber
glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms
now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly
over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the
growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her
foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate
entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression
had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could
have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better
bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to
dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate
one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon
fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she
would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid
would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's
leave.
When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming
health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual
in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap,
an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up
the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out
of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great
drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She
wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should
find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed
about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle
would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a
great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the
possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and
weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her
conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's
conscience.
So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.
In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his
good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the
opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go
for a lady's maid."
Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild
surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work
industriously.
"Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after
he had given one conservative puff.
"I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work."
"Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't
be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you
to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and
I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as
long as I've got a home for you."
Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.
"I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages."
"Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing
Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it
for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no
kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has."
"No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better."
"It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my
consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you.
For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand
to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my
wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody
knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take
wage?"
"Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make
it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down
on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t'
hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head
o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o'
th' inflammation afore she war thirty."
It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question
had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished
resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to
Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by
that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins.
"Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have
provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's
got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i'
this country."
After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe
and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign
of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty,
in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial,
half out of the day's repressed sadness.
"Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't
let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for
them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his
wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce
rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the
twittering of a crab's antennae.
"Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much
older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's
the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?"
"Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I
tell her we can do better for her nor that."
"I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her
mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants
at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a
finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up
sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to
being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll
be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on
from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be
the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out.
I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's
got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody
better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a
gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to
stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for
him."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor
that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and
get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid.
Let's hear no more on't."
When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should
want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's
looked like it o' late."
"Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take
no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell,
Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe
she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been
here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this
notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might
ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work.
But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick."
"Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr.
Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work."
"Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted
hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me
these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything
wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking
all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's
married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of
our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no
better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it."
"Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser,
soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets
things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young
fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why."
Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides
that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom
he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid
husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her
marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no
strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of
right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet
endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague
clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor
Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic
calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut
out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready
for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men
and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.
Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that
it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still
want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the
matter had never yet visited her.
"Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course
that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind,
and in only the second night of her sadness!"
Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling
amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are
the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy
sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight,
moored in the quiet bay!
"Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings."
But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been
a lasting joy.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the
Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very
day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said
by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to
be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness
to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better
than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought
of denying Mr. Casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen
the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating
circumstances.
"I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree
Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was
half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the
clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get
a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and
then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and
just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming
along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I
stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says,
for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he
was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup
for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if
we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo
tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a
wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think
me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks
the right language."
"The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about
as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on
a key-bugle."
"Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I
should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to
know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster."
"Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation,
"you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says
ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other
noise."
The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh
strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question,
which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in
the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest
conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and
that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never
went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and
looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces."
It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband
on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that
Mrs. Poyser's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two
afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting,
in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was
done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony,
followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of
prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable
penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to
herself, "I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to
take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay.
But Poyser's a fool if he does."
Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's
visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the
last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than
met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time
he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always
remained imaginary.
"Good-day, Mrs. Poyser," said the old squire, peering at her with his
short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser
observed, "allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he
was going to dab his finger-nail on you."
However, she said, "Your servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of
perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman
to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism,
without severe provocation.
"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?"
"Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if
you'll please to get down and step in."
"Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter;
but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your
opinion too."
"Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in," said Mrs. Poyser, as they
entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty's
curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry
jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round
furtively.
"What a fine old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round
admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled,
polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it
so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know,
beyond any on the estate."
"Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a
bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're
like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up
to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd
rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?"
"Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I
hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter," said the squire,
looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which
he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. "I think I see the door
open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your
cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter
will bear comparison with yours."
"I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter,
though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough."
"Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp
temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should
like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this
dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my
slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down
in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of
business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful
dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?"
Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a
face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of "pitching." As
he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old
gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.
"Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's
arm-chair forward a little: "you'll find it easy."
"No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman,
seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs.
Poyser--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for
some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a
good method, as you have."
"Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice,
rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window,
as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if
he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in
to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the
reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.
"And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the
Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my
own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A
satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser,
and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in
consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage."
"Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as
to the nature of the arrangement.
"If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at
her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I
don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own
farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into
the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on
i' that character."
"You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure
you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little
plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much
to your own advantage as his."
"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first
offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get
advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore
it's brought to 'em."
"The fact is, Poyser," said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of
worldly prosperity, "there is too much dairy land, and too little plough
land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only
take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears,
is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of
is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures,
you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your
wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my
house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other
hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges,
which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you.
There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land."
Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head
on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the
tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the
ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole
business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the
subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a
point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel,
any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So,
after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, "What
dost say?"
Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity
during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked
icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting
together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.
"Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your
corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next
Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands,
either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I
can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to
go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own
the land, and them as is born to sweat on't"--here Mrs. Poyser paused
to gasp a little--"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to
their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make
a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret
myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in
England, not if he was King George himself."
"No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the squire, still
confident in his own powers of persuasion, "you must not overwork
yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than
increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey
that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from
the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most
profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?"
"Aye, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a
question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case
a purely abstract question.
"I daresay," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way
towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--"I daresay
it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as
everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you
could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting
dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's
to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're
many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty
gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let
alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the
butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles.
And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work
for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But
there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away
the water."
"That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have,
Mrs. Poyser," said the squire, who thought that this entrance into
particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs.
Poyser's part. "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony."
"Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having
gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to
both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips
listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their
knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our
back kitchen turned into a public."
"Well, Poyser," said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if
he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and
left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily
make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not
forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a
neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three
years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who
is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they
could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old
tenant like you."
To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to
complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat.
Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old
place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire
had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance
explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and
sell more stock, with, "Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard..." when
Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say
out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only
shelter were the work-house.
"Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks
as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men
sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the
rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take
farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if
he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi'
the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by
dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit
o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect
'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long
ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as
'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles
down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay
half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough
out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground
beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as
that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon.
You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following
the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned
surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile,
had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get
away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard,
and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.
"You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand
ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend,
though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb
creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i'
their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th'
only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking
i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a
brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as
you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop
o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to
save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all
your scrapin'."
There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a
formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even
the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware
that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he
suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him--which was also
the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's
sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's
heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser's solo in an impressive
quartet.
Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she
turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them
into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again
with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house.
"Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but
not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak.
"Yes, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poyser; "but I've had my say out,
and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i'
living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind
out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I
think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little
likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only
folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world."
"But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas
twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, "and going into a strange parish, where
thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too."
"Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between
this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them,
for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually
hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own
merit and not by other people's fault.
"I'm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his
three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; "but I should
be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and
born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt,
and niver thrive again."
| Mr. Casson sees the stranger in top-boots ride by again. He says good morning to ascertain the man's accent, and he says that it is foreign and cannot compare to his own refined accent. Bartle makes fun of him, saying that despite the fact that he has worked with gentlefolks, his accent is still terrible. The old Squire visits the Poysers, a rare event. He looks at the dairy and says that he has a new tenant coming in who would like more space for his farm. He proposes a trade of some of the Poysers' farmland for some more dairy land and the exclusive right to sell butter, cream, and cheese to his family. Mrs. Poyser says that she will not consent to do more dairy work. The old Squire offers to have his servants help her with the fetching and carrying, but she refuses, saying that they would only make trouble with the girls. The old Squire changes tactics and threatens not to renew their lease in a year when it is up, because he is sure that Thurtle, his new tenant, would be happy to enlarge his farm. Despite the fact that the Squire addresses himself to Mr. Poyser, Mrs. Poyser continues to answer, following the Squire out the door as she tells him that few tenants would live with no repairs as she and Mr. Poyser have done, and she adds that everyone in the village hates him. He will do little to save his soul if he does not help his tenants. All of the Squire's own servants listen, grinning. Mr. Poyser is both worried and amused by his wife's outspokenness. She says that she could not have continued bottling it up inside of her for the rest of her life. He says that she will not be so happy when they have to move at Michaelmas when their rent is up, but Mrs. Poyser says that a lot could happen before then. Mr. Poyser says that they would be like a plant that left their roots behind them if they moved. They would never be able to thrive again | summary |
THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the
Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very
day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said
by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to
be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness
to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better
than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought
of denying Mr. Casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen
the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating
circumstances.
"I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree
Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was
half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the
clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get
a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and
then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and
just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming
along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I
stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says,
for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he
was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup
for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if
we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo
tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a
wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think
me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks
the right language."
"The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about
as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on
a key-bugle."
"Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I
should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to
know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster."
"Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation,
"you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says
ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other
noise."
The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh
strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question,
which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in
the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest
conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and
that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never
went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and
looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces."
It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband
on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that
Mrs. Poyser's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two
afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting,
in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was
done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony,
followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of
prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable
penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to
herself, "I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to
take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay.
But Poyser's a fool if he does."
Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's
visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the
last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than
met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time
he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always
remained imaginary.
"Good-day, Mrs. Poyser," said the old squire, peering at her with his
short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser
observed, "allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he
was going to dab his finger-nail on you."
However, she said, "Your servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of
perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman
to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism,
without severe provocation.
"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?"
"Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if
you'll please to get down and step in."
"Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter;
but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your
opinion too."
"Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in," said Mrs. Poyser, as they
entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty's
curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry
jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round
furtively.
"What a fine old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round
admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled,
polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it
so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know,
beyond any on the estate."
"Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a
bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're
like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up
to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd
rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?"
"Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I
hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter," said the squire,
looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which
he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. "I think I see the door
open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your
cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter
will bear comparison with yours."
"I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter,
though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough."
"Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp
temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should
like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this
dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my
slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down
in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of
business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful
dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?"
Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a
face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of "pitching." As
he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old
gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.
"Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's
arm-chair forward a little: "you'll find it easy."
"No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman,
seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs.
Poyser--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for
some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a
good method, as you have."
"Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice,
rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window,
as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if
he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in
to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the
reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.
"And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the
Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my
own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A
satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser,
and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in
consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage."
"Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as
to the nature of the arrangement.
"If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at
her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I
don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own
farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into
the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on
i' that character."
"You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure
you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little
plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much
to your own advantage as his."
"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first
offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get
advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore
it's brought to 'em."
"The fact is, Poyser," said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of
worldly prosperity, "there is too much dairy land, and too little plough
land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only
take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears,
is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of
is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures,
you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your
wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my
house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other
hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges,
which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you.
There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land."
Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head
on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the
tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the
ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole
business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the
subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a
point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel,
any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So,
after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, "What
dost say?"
Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity
during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked
icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting
together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.
"Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your
corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next
Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands,
either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I
can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to
go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own
the land, and them as is born to sweat on't"--here Mrs. Poyser paused
to gasp a little--"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to
their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make
a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret
myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in
England, not if he was King George himself."
"No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the squire, still
confident in his own powers of persuasion, "you must not overwork
yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than
increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey
that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from
the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most
profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?"
"Aye, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a
question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case
a purely abstract question.
"I daresay," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way
towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--"I daresay
it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as
everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you
could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting
dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's
to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're
many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty
gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let
alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the
butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles.
And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work
for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But
there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away
the water."
"That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have,
Mrs. Poyser," said the squire, who thought that this entrance into
particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs.
Poyser's part. "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony."
"Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having
gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to
both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips
listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their
knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our
back kitchen turned into a public."
"Well, Poyser," said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if
he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and
left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily
make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not
forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a
neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three
years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who
is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they
could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old
tenant like you."
To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to
complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat.
Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old
place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire
had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance
explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and
sell more stock, with, "Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard..." when
Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say
out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only
shelter were the work-house.
"Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks
as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men
sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the
rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take
farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if
he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi'
the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by
dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit
o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect
'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long
ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as
'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles
down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay
half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough
out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground
beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as
that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon.
You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following
the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned
surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile,
had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get
away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard,
and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.
"You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand
ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend,
though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb
creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i'
their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th'
only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking
i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a
brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as
you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop
o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to
save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all
your scrapin'."
There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a
formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even
the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware
that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he
suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him--which was also
the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's
sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's
heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser's solo in an impressive
quartet.
Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she
turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them
into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again
with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house.
"Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but
not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak.
"Yes, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poyser; "but I've had my say out,
and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i'
living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind
out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I
think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little
likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only
folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world."
"But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas
twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, "and going into a strange parish, where
thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too."
"Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between
this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them,
for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually
hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own
merit and not by other people's fault.
"I'm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his
three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; "but I should
be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and
born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt,
and niver thrive again."
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by
without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and
nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the
farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods
behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour
under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant
basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its
lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between
the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though
Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to
the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put
in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the
squire's plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to
be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all
the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent
repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was
comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was
nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard
a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of
the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any
quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure
of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his
mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs.
Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage
that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips.
"No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular
justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not
countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I
have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good
influence I have over the old man."
"Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs.
Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers.
And she says such sharp things too."
"Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original
in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country
with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about
Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear
him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence."
"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of
the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine.
"Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne
is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them
out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must
move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are
must not go."
"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs.
Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little
shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age.
It's only women who have a right to live as long as that."
"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,"
said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.
Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice
to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one
of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really
too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is
not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects
under that hard condition.
Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser
household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement
in Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she
seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,"
but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite
eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted
to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore
her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase
without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she
had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to
be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or
misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam
came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk
more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or
any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.
Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave
way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's
letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without
dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the
house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might
presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step
that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you
been?" Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the
changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw
her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever
at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen
her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at
her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a
change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she
had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes,
in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam
thought--something harder, older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he
said to himself, "that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first
heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for
that."
As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see
him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to
understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work
in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe
that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had
imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able
to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would
marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was,
as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her
heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she
knew to have a serious love for her.
Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his
interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a
sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really
had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary
virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had
fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient
trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in
so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find
rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible
men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance,
see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine
themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all
proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every
respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden
ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will
occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was
one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think
the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed
Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the
very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is
it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its
wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the
delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding
together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration,
melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has
been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one
emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of
self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and
your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it
a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's
cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or
the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is
like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and
far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius
have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more
than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a
far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself
there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more
than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known
of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this
impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are
gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever),
and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to
the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I
fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time
to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best
receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.
Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for
Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of
knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him.
He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching
the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within
him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her?
He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large,
unselfish, tender.
The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards
Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;
they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position
ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of
playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger
and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As
the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy
began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that
she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the
friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days
to come, and he would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods,
but would like them better because they were Arthur's. For this new
promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an
intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to
much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy
lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan
Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his
mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition
than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce
all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no
son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with,
and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill
in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little
difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about
the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Adam
saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he
had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might
come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always
said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an
acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand
to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy
visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I
say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning
timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of
bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the
strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder.
What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is
inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air,
exalting its power by a subtle presence.
Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his
mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very
soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps
be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he
would not be hasty--he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it
had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church,
he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he
knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if
Hetty's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had
to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of
late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home
and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat
by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual
because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for
the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them
all to go on living in it always.
| The barley crop is in, and it is already Michaelmas. Mr. Thurle did not come to the Chase, so the old Squire was obliged to find a steward. The whole town knows that this is because Mrs. Poyser refused to be put upon. Mrs. Irwine approves highly, and she wishes that she were rich enough to give the lady a pension. Hetty's attitude toward her work improves, and she does not complain when her aunt puts a stop to her lessons at the Chase. Adam begins to be hopeful because she looks happy when she sees him. Eliot observes that it is not the weakness in Adam that is attracted to Hetty, but rather his strength. It is no more shameful to be attracted to a beautiful woman than to be moved by beautiful music. The appearance of a change in Hetty's affections has made Adam more inclined to be less hard on Arthur. It looks like Adam's fortunes are on the upswing in every way now that Mr. Burge, despairing of ever having Adam as a son-in-law, has made him his partner anyway because he is irreplaceable. Now his prospects allow him to marry very soon and perhaps to build a house away from his mother's. His mother might be reconciled to this circumstance if Seth married Dinah. He is excited to tell the Poysers the news | summary |
THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by
without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and
nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the
farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods
behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour
under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant
basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its
lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between
the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though
Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to
the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put
in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the
squire's plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to
be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all
the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent
repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was
comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was
nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard
a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of
the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any
quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure
of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his
mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs.
Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage
that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips.
"No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular
justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not
countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I
have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good
influence I have over the old man."
"Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs.
Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers.
And she says such sharp things too."
"Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original
in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country
with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about
Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear
him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence."
"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of
the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine.
"Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne
is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them
out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must
move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are
must not go."
"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs.
Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little
shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age.
It's only women who have a right to live as long as that."
"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,"
said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.
Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice
to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one
of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really
too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is
not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects
under that hard condition.
Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser
household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement
in Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she
seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,"
but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite
eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted
to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore
her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase
without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she
had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to
be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or
misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam
came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk
more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or
any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.
Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave
way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's
letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without
dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the
house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might
presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step
that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you
been?" Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the
changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw
her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever
at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen
her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at
her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a
change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she
had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes,
in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam
thought--something harder, older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he
said to himself, "that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first
heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for
that."
As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see
him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to
understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work
in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe
that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had
imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able
to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would
marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was,
as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her
heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she
knew to have a serious love for her.
Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his
interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a
sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really
had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary
virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had
fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient
trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in
so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find
rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible
men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance,
see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine
themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all
proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every
respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden
ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will
occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was
one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think
the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed
Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the
very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is
it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its
wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the
delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding
together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration,
melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has
been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one
emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of
self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and
your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it
a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's
cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or
the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is
like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and
far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius
have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more
than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a
far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself
there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more
than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known
of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this
impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are
gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever),
and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to
the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I
fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time
to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best
receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.
Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for
Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of
knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him.
He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching
the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within
him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her?
He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large,
unselfish, tender.
The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards
Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;
they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position
ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of
playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger
and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As
the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy
began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that
she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the
friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days
to come, and he would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods,
but would like them better because they were Arthur's. For this new
promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an
intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to
much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy
lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan
Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his
mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition
than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce
all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no
son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with,
and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill
in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little
difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about
the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Adam
saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he
had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might
come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always
said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an
acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand
to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy
visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I
say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning
timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of
bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the
strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder.
What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is
inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air,
exalting its power by a subtle presence.
Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his
mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very
soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps
be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he
would not be hasty--he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it
had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church,
he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he
knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if
Hetty's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had
to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of
late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home
and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat
by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual
because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for
the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them
all to go on living in it always.
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November.
There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so
still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms
must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did not go
to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only
two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since
his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the whole
it would be as well for him to stay away too and "keep her company." He
could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined
this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our
firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which
words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the
Poyser family went to church that afternoon except Hetty and the boys;
yet Adam was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he
would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he
appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about
the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some
day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, "Now, then,
which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall
be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy
must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest."
Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon
as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, "Won't
you hang on my arm, Hetty?" in a pleading tone, as if he had already
asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put
her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting
her arm through Adam's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having
her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no
faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field
with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam scarcely
felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he was
pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that
he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and
so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience
with which he had once waited for Hetty's love, content only with her
presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that
terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had
given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty
too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Hetty of his
love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be
pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, "I'm
going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Hetty; and I
think he'll be glad to hear it too."
"What's that?" Hetty said indifferently.
"Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to
take it."
There was a change in Hetty's face, certainly not produced by any
agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary
annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle
that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day,
if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought
immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of
what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that
thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could
not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The
one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness,
had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with
tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the
tears, and before he had finished saying, "Hetty, dear Hetty, what
are you crying for?" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the
causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true
one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him
to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All
caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel
nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as
he said:
"I could afford to be married now, Hetty--I could make a wife
comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me."
Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to
Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not
coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she
felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful
as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant
womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the
happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed
her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her.
"Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and take
care of as long as I live?"
Hetty did not speak, but Adam's face was very close to hers, and she
put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be
caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again.
Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the
rest of the walk. He only said, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't
I, Hetty?" and she said, "Yes."
The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces
that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the opportunity
of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he saw his way
to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him.
"I hope you have no objections against me for her husband," said Adam;
"I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for."
"Objections?" said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and
brought out his long "Nay, nay." "What objections can we ha' to you,
lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your
head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time.
You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o'
furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty,
eh?"
This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped up
in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility.
At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to
resist the temptation to be more explicit.
"It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen," she said,
hoarsely, "when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's
a-going every day o' the week."
"Come, my wench," said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, "come and kiss
us, and let us wish you luck."
Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man.
"There!" he said, patting her on the back, "go and kiss your aunt and
your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was
my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by
you this seven 'ear, Hetty, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now,"
he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and
the old man, "Adam wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to
one now."
Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair.
"Come, Adam, then, take one," persisted Mr. Poyser, "else y' arena half
a man."
Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he
was--and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her
lips.
It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no
candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was
reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to
work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment
in the midst of all this love. Adam's attachment to her, Adam's caress,
stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity,
but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some
change.
There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the
possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.
No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery's in the village,
and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that the best
plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam in the old
home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of
space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to turning his
mother out.
"Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything
to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting
married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a
bit o' time to make things comfortable."
"Aye, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; "Christian
folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon."
"I'm a bit daunted, though," said Mr. Poyser, "when I think as we may
have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile
off."
"Eh," said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up
and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, "it's a poor
tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An'
you'll happen ha' double rates to pay," he added, looking up at his son.
"Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father," said Martin the younger.
"Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old
squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted
if he can."
| On the second of November, Mrs. Poyser does not go to church because she has a serious cold. Mr. Poyser decides to keep her company. Adam walks Hetty home from church and tells her that he has been made partners with Mr. Burge. Hetty thinks that this goes together with him marrying Mary Burge, and that Adam is doing so because of what he saw between her and Arthur. She starts to cry, thinking of Arthur, and Adam hopefully thinks that she is crying because she is jealous that he will probably marry Mary Burge. Adam sweeps all caution away and asks her to marry him. She does not speak, but she presses her cheek against his. She agrees that he may tell her uncle and aunt. Adam and Hetty tell the aunt and uncle, who agree to help with some furniture and a dowry. Adam kisses Hetty goodnight, and there is some discussion of what house he will move to. Mr. Poyser worries that he will be turned out of his own house, but Mrs. Poyser says that the Captain will come home and make everything all right with the Squire | summary |
IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November.
There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so
still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms
must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did not go
to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only
two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since
his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the whole
it would be as well for him to stay away too and "keep her company." He
could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined
this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our
firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which
words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the
Poyser family went to church that afternoon except Hetty and the boys;
yet Adam was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he
would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he
appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about
the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some
day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, "Now, then,
which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall
be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy
must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest."
Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon
as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, "Won't
you hang on my arm, Hetty?" in a pleading tone, as if he had already
asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put
her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting
her arm through Adam's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having
her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no
faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field
with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam scarcely
felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he was
pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that
he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and
so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience
with which he had once waited for Hetty's love, content only with her
presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that
terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had
given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty
too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Hetty of his
love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be
pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, "I'm
going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Hetty; and I
think he'll be glad to hear it too."
"What's that?" Hetty said indifferently.
"Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to
take it."
There was a change in Hetty's face, certainly not produced by any
agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary
annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle
that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day,
if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought
immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of
what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that
thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could
not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The
one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness,
had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with
tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the
tears, and before he had finished saying, "Hetty, dear Hetty, what
are you crying for?" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the
causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true
one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him
to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All
caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel
nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as
he said:
"I could afford to be married now, Hetty--I could make a wife
comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me."
Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to
Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not
coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she
felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful
as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant
womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the
happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed
her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her.
"Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and take
care of as long as I live?"
Hetty did not speak, but Adam's face was very close to hers, and she
put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be
caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again.
Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the
rest of the walk. He only said, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't
I, Hetty?" and she said, "Yes."
The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces
that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the opportunity
of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he saw his way
to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him.
"I hope you have no objections against me for her husband," said Adam;
"I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for."
"Objections?" said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and
brought out his long "Nay, nay." "What objections can we ha' to you,
lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your
head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time.
You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o'
furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty,
eh?"
This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped up
in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility.
At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to
resist the temptation to be more explicit.
"It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen," she said,
hoarsely, "when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's
a-going every day o' the week."
"Come, my wench," said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, "come and kiss
us, and let us wish you luck."
Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man.
"There!" he said, patting her on the back, "go and kiss your aunt and
your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was
my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by
you this seven 'ear, Hetty, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now,"
he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and
the old man, "Adam wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to
one now."
Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair.
"Come, Adam, then, take one," persisted Mr. Poyser, "else y' arena half
a man."
Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he
was--and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her
lips.
It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no
candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was
reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to
work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment
in the midst of all this love. Adam's attachment to her, Adam's caress,
stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity,
but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some
change.
There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the
possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.
No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery's in the village,
and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that the best
plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam in the old
home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of
space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to turning his
mother out.
"Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything
to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting
married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a
bit o' time to make things comfortable."
"Aye, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; "Christian
folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon."
"I'm a bit daunted, though," said Mr. Poyser, "when I think as we may
have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile
off."
"Eh," said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up
and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, "it's a poor
tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An'
you'll happen ha' double rates to pay," he added, looking up at his son.
"Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father," said Martin the younger.
"Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old
squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted
if he can."
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
IT was a busy time for Adam--the time between the beginning of November
and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except
on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer
and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little
preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the
longed-for day. Two new rooms had been "run up" to the old house, for
his mother and Seth were to live with them after all. Lisbeth had cried
so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he had gone to Hetty
and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his
mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Hetty
said, "Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not." Hetty's mind was
oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's
ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was consoled for the
disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back from his visit to
Snowfield and said "it was no use--Dinah's heart wasna turned towards
marrying." For when he told his mother that Hetty was willing they
should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of
parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak
in since it had been settled that he was to be married, "Eh, my lad,
I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but
th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the
platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee
wast born."
There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam's sunshine:
Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender
questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented
and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more
lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work
and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another
cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined
her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything
downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel
waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into
her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her,
that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him what a
good housekeeper he would have; but he "doubted the lass was o'erdoing
it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs."
This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser's coming downstairs happened in the
early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of
snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came
down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which
were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for neglecting,
observing that she supposed "it was because they were not for th'
outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough."
It was about ten o'clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost
that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as
the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger
charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes
to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the
patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that
the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the
same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on
the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And
the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches
is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or
rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so
when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me
like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care,
the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have
come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not
in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has
stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine
by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was
gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who
knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony
would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous
nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or
among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there
might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young
blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing
shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost
lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath,
yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.
Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the
blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came
close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear
with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in
it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.
Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is
turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that
she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think
with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is
shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for
something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to
be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her
face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate
she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great
dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is
desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender
man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in
the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway
branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow,
which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across
the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the
Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses
this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought
of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in
the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and
she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a
clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it.
No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with
the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low
beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the
stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has
thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone
by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round
her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to
guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs.
No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if
she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned
herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where
they can't find her.
After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her
betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope
that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she
could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated
on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible
dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her
miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had occurred
to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would
shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours
who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her
imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do
nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else
would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In
young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in
some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that
a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they
will die.
But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her
marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind
trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes
could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world,
of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a
thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so
unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing
herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As
she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that
he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for
her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment
indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing
but the scheme by which she should get away.
She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the
coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had
read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, "I wish Dinah 'ud come
again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What
do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared
and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her
wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being
able to come." Hetty had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield,
and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, "It's so far off,
Uncle." But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext
for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she
should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And
then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask
for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Arthur was at
Windsor, and she would go to him.
As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the
grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to
Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for,
though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any
suspicion that she was going to run away.
Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and
see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner
she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Adam, when
he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off to-morrow, he
would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the
Stoniton coach.
"I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty," he said, the
next morning, leaning in at the coach door; "but you won't stay much
beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long."
He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its
grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used
to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love
than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last
look.
"God bless her for loving me," said Adam, as he went on his way to work
again, with Gyp at his heels.
But Hetty's tears were not for Adam--not for the anguish that would come
upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the
misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man
who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless
suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was
obliged to cling to him.
At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take
her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she
felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards
the beginning of new misery.
Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he
did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to
her.
Book Five
| It is a busy time for Adam, but one that he enjoys, because it takes him closer to March, when he will at last be married to Hetty. It was decided that Adam and Hetty should live with Lisbeth and Seth, as Hetty had agreed. Also, Seth comes back from visiting Dinah and says that her mind is not turned toward marrying at all. Adam worries that Hetty looks unhappy sometimes, but she assures him that she is not-she is only tired because she has to do more work now that her aunt has a cold. Hetty goes to buy something in Treddleston and takes the long way home so that nobody will see her unhappy face. She sees a cold lake and considers jumping into it, but she worries that those left behind might guess the reason for an action as desperate as this. She had trusted that something would come to save her from her misery, but her marriage is almost upon her and nothing has come to the rescue. When she gets home she sees a letter from Dinah congratulating her on her engagement. Her uncle encourages her to pick up Dinah from Snowfield, but Hetty argues that it is too far off. She thinks for a bit, however, and decides to undertake the journey so that instead of seeing Dinah she can throw herself at Arthur's mercy at Windsor | summary |
IT was a busy time for Adam--the time between the beginning of November
and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except
on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer
and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little
preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the
longed-for day. Two new rooms had been "run up" to the old house, for
his mother and Seth were to live with them after all. Lisbeth had cried
so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he had gone to Hetty
and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his
mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Hetty
said, "Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not." Hetty's mind was
oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's
ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was consoled for the
disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back from his visit to
Snowfield and said "it was no use--Dinah's heart wasna turned towards
marrying." For when he told his mother that Hetty was willing they
should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of
parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak
in since it had been settled that he was to be married, "Eh, my lad,
I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but
th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the
platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee
wast born."
There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam's sunshine:
Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender
questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented
and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more
lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work
and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another
cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined
her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything
downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel
waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into
her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her,
that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him what a
good housekeeper he would have; but he "doubted the lass was o'erdoing
it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs."
This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser's coming downstairs happened in the
early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of
snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came
down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which
were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for neglecting,
observing that she supposed "it was because they were not for th'
outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough."
It was about ten o'clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost
that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as
the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger
charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes
to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the
patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that
the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the
same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on
the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And
the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches
is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or
rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so
when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me
like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care,
the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have
come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not
in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has
stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine
by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was
gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who
knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony
would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous
nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or
among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there
might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young
blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing
shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost
lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath,
yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.
Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the
blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came
close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear
with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in
it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.
Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is
turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that
she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think
with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is
shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for
something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to
be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her
face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate
she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great
dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is
desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender
man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in
the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway
branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow,
which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across
the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the
Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses
this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought
of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in
the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and
she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a
clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it.
No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with
the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low
beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the
stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has
thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone
by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round
her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to
guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs.
No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if
she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned
herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where
they can't find her.
After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her
betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope
that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she
could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated
on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible
dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her
miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had occurred
to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would
shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours
who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her
imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do
nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else
would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In
young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in
some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that
a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they
will die.
But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her
marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind
trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes
could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world,
of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a
thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so
unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing
herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As
she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that
he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for
her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment
indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing
but the scheme by which she should get away.
She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the
coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had
read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, "I wish Dinah 'ud come
again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What
do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared
and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her
wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being
able to come." Hetty had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield,
and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, "It's so far off,
Uncle." But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext
for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she
should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And
then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask
for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Arthur was at
Windsor, and she would go to him.
As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the
grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to
Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for,
though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any
suspicion that she was going to run away.
Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and
see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner
she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Adam, when
he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off to-morrow, he
would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the
Stoniton coach.
"I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty," he said, the
next morning, leaning in at the coach door; "but you won't stay much
beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long."
He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its
grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used
to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love
than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last
look.
"God bless her for loving me," said Adam, as he went on his way to work
again, with Gyp at his heels.
But Hetty's tears were not for Adam--not for the anguish that would come
upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the
misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man
who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless
suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was
obliged to cling to him.
At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take
her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she
felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards
the beginning of new misery.
Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he
did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to
her.
Book Five
| The first chapter of Book Fourth is crucial. Matters come to a head in Chapter Twenty-Seven when Adam finds out Arthur's and Hetty's secret. Moreover, despite the fact that they are isolated in the woods, class differences come to bear on the friendship between Arthur and Adam once again. When Arthur at first refuses to fight Adam, Adam worries that Arthur thinks that he does not have to pay for the wrong that he has done to Adam because he is of a nobler rank. When the two men do fight, the fact that Adam is a laborer gives him the decisive advantage in strength against Arthur, against whom he is in other respects well-matched. Class would also become an issue if, as Adam suspects, Arthur dies. To kill any man would be a large problem in their small community, but to kill the only heir of his landlord would be a crisis for Adam Bede. There is a decided role reversal in terms of class structure in Chapter Twenty-Eight. In previous parts of the book, Adam was all too glad to shake Arthur's hand, especially because the Captain did not deign to shake the hands of his other tenants. Now, however, Adam is in the moral right in this chapter, and he thus is in a position to refuse his social superior's condescension. Eliot illustrates her contention that even in their society, it is not the social hierarchy but the moral hierarchy that matters after all. Arthur is sufficiently penitent to realize that he has made a particularly damaging mistake, so he will agree to whatever Adam asks him to do as a result of the mistake, despite the fact that the social order dictates that it is he who should be telling Adam what to do, not the other way around. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Eliot uses the common literary device of a misplaced or misdirected letter. This device is famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and has long roots in literature. In Shakespeare's play, both lovers die because of the crucial misplacement of a letter. It is not a good sign, therefore, that Adam is second-guessing whether he should deliver the letter or not. When a communication goes awry, terrible results can ensue. Arthur's character is looking still less appealing in this chapter. He cannot face reproaches to himself comfortably. He tries to place some of the blame on Adam, and he ends up placing the burden of whether to hurt Hetty by giving her the letter or not also squarely on Adam's shoulders. This is unfair because it puts two of Adam's best characteristics in opposition to one another: his love of truth, and his desire to protect those whom he loves. Chapter Thirty reminds readers that besides the socioeconomic aspects of marriage, there is a stricly social aspect to it as well. The Bede boys need not think only of whether a potential marriage partner is within their socio-economic reach, but also they must consider who will fit well in their existing family. While class plays a role in social acceptance, it is important that their future wives will get along with their mother in more fundamental ways, because they all will live in the same house together. Hetty is the only character in the novel who does not seem to be old enough or perceptive enough to understand the obvious workings of the class structure in her society. In Chapter Thirty-One, she thinks that Arthur is being cruel in refusing to marry her, rather than pragmatic. She is also not wise enough to know that whatever choices she will make now will continue to affect her for a very long time. She is desperately unhappy, so she wants a change quickly, but she does not understand that a choice to run away, to become a lady's maid, or to marry Adam will have far-reaching, perhaps lifelong, effects. By Chapter Thirty-Two, Mrs. Poyser has been planning her diatribe against the old Squire for a long time, but she has never been able to muster the courage to tell him what she thinks until this very moment. She is incensed by his arbitrary use of his powers over the family, and she is sufficiently angry to cross class lines in venting this anger. Eliot engages an interesting point of view about privacy in this novel. Adam Bede focuses so much on the community that it does not seem that any feeling or action can remain private for very long. Hetty's locket bursts out of her dress, where she tried to keep it secret, just as the words burst out of Mrs. Poyser's mouth. Mrs. Poyser thinks that it is unhealthy to avoid giving vent to her feelings. This strong community and lack of privacy has also been reflected in Adam's assumption that Hetty could have no lover he did not know about because she scarcely ever leaves the farm and because he knows all of her acquaintances. By Chapter Thirty-Three, Adam's life, which has been rather hard throughout the course of the novel, finally begins to look easier. Eliot interposes her own voice yet again in defense of Adam's sentimentality in continuing to love Hetty despite what she has done in the past. Eliot claims that it is a positive feature of Adam's personality that he can be played upon by Hetty's delicate beauty; this virtue seems to correspond to Adam's artistic, rather than his peasant qualities. Recall that Eliot ditinguished such qualities in a previous chapter. The fact that Hetty's outer beauty does not correspond to her inner beauty is something that Eliot seems to propose that Adam has no way of knowing, although one ought to be able to infer moral beauty from one's external words and actions. Adam's inability to see Hetty's flaws clearly is likely to give him great trouble in the future. Chapter Thirty-Four contains a great deal of dramatic irony, a literary device in which readers have more knowledge about a situation than the characters themselves and can appreciate seeing the drama play itself out. Adam is extremely happy with his engagement, little knowing, as the reader does, that he is completely misinterpreting Hetty's feelings. His misunderstanding seems to work out for the best however, because it emboldens Adam to ask Hetty to marry him, something that the entire novel has led up to. Hetty's suicidal thoughts at the pond, in Chapter Thirty-Five, recall the suicidal attempt of another famous literary heroine from the 18th century: Richardson's Pamela. In Richardson's novel, he depicts the struggles of a virtuous servant girl to fend off the sexual attempts of her handsome gentleman master. The aristocrat kidnaps the young girl, shutting her up in a country estate. Rather than give in to his advances, the young heroine attempts to drown herself in a small pond on the estate, but her religious convictions are too strong to allow her to do so. It is the knowledge of this suicide attempt which reforms the master, making him repent of his advances to her. Eventually the two marry and are quite happy, despite their difference in class. Henry Fielding published a satirical response to Pamela , called Shamela . Purportedly told from Pamela's own point of view, it is the tale of how a sexually voracious servant girl entraps her master by acting innocent. The episode of the suicide is a cleverly engineered prank on Shamela's part, designed to make her master think that she has religious sentiments. Hetty's suicidal attempts lie strangely between these two extremes. Unlike Pamela, she has not fended off the sexual attempts of her social superior with the greatest of success. As will be shown by her later contemplation of suicide, it is not religious sentiments that keep her from taking the plunge. Still, she is not at the extreme of Shamela; she has no sexual relationship with other members of the small town, and she does not think that a mock suicide on her part would bring Arthur running back to her side. | analysis |
A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.
What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of
definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was
plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty
nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?"
"Who?" said Hetty, rather startled.
"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin'
arter--which is it?"
Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
She was too frightened to speak.
"Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's
behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart
any day."
Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she
had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on
any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant
of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store
of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply
provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
Windsor.
"Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's
where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby
next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London
as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been
no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be
thinking o' taking such a journey as that?"
"I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty,
frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go
by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the
morning?"
"Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and
walk, and trust to summat overtaking you."
Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey
stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur.
Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
because all the business of her life was managed for her--this
kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded
at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her
little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from
any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find
that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare.
She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own
sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other
people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so
tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though
it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable.
For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than
a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no
delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no
romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would
not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think
of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and
ambition.
The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing
hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the
length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of
spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask
people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature
but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and
most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet
occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings
which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic
and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides
were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had
a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other
bright-flaming coin.
For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she
had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read
that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank.
She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry
again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much
movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which
produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like
the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet,
if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite
and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of
weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know,
but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a
large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
mantle.
"Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?"
said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it."
"Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't
if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do
you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?"
"I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor."
"What! Arter some service, or what?"
"Going to my brother--he's a soldier there."
"Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll
take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses
wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as
I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been
all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and
let me put y' in."
To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the
awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept
away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down
and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this
"public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day
of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she
had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be
intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way
to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would
cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The
distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them
up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious
face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass
through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men
stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in
her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking
again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by
a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a
return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her,
twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the
heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from
Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work
for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon,
finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told
she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth
day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as
you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from
the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty!
It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and
dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her
indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among
them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and
then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the
miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses,
where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were
always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her
body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they
had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread
she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford,
her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical
caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way,
though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need
nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for
the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the
sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the
seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her
to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the
shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the
thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which
she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she
held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the
coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?"
"No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again."
The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his
good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most
men.
"Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something;
you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that."
He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this
young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's
tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.
She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked
at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her
curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its
youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes
presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her
journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye
detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.
"Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she
spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?"
"Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good
long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me
which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his
address.
While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.
"Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of
innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask
as many questions as possible before giving any information.
"I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty.
"But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut
up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
I can let you know where to find him."
"It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
find Arthur at once.
"Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he
in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?"
"Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?"
"A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to
Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight."
"Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support
Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.
"Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in
some water.
"Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife.
"She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
house--they're all honest folks in the north."
"I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband.
"She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at
her."
"It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and
had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction
must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's
coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."
| Hetty is terrified at the beginning of her journey, because the coachman jokes with her about the beau whom she is traveling to find, and she assumes that he actually knows about her affairs. She is alarmed further when she finds out how much the trip will actually cost. She tells everyone that she is looking for her brother. She can no longer afford coaches, so she travels on foot, waiting for a cart to give her a lift. She stops to cry, then gets up and walks on. A round-faced man allows her to ride in his cart to Leicester, and a friendly person writes down the names of the stops on the way to Windsor for her. She goes to Stratford-on-Avon instead of Stratford by mistake. She takes a coach to Windsor. The landlord of a pub sees how forlorn she looks when she alights, so he takes her to his wife, who gives her some supper. After eating, Hetty asks the landlord where she can find the address that Arthur has given her. He says that the house is shut up and that the soldiers have gone to Ireland. Hetty faints away. The landlord's wife says that it is plain what kind of business this is, since she is a pretty, young country girl | summary |
A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.
What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of
definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was
plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty
nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?"
"Who?" said Hetty, rather startled.
"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin'
arter--which is it?"
Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
She was too frightened to speak.
"Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's
behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart
any day."
Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she
had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on
any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant
of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store
of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply
provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
Windsor.
"Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's
where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby
next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London
as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been
no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be
thinking o' taking such a journey as that?"
"I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty,
frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go
by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the
morning?"
"Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and
walk, and trust to summat overtaking you."
Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey
stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur.
Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
because all the business of her life was managed for her--this
kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded
at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her
little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from
any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find
that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare.
She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own
sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other
people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so
tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though
it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable.
For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than
a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no
delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no
romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would
not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think
of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and
ambition.
The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing
hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the
length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of
spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask
people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature
but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and
most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet
occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings
which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic
and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides
were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had
a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other
bright-flaming coin.
For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she
had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read
that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank.
She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry
again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much
movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which
produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like
the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet,
if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite
and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of
weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know,
but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a
large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
mantle.
"Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?"
said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it."
"Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't
if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do
you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?"
"I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor."
"What! Arter some service, or what?"
"Going to my brother--he's a soldier there."
"Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll
take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses
wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as
I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been
all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and
let me put y' in."
To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the
awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept
away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down
and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this
"public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day
of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she
had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be
intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way
to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would
cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The
distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them
up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious
face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass
through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men
stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in
her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking
again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by
a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a
return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her,
twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the
heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from
Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work
for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon,
finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told
she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth
day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as
you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from
the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty!
It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and
dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her
indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among
them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and
then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the
miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses,
where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were
always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her
body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they
had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread
she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford,
her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical
caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way,
though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need
nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for
the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the
sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the
seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her
to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the
shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the
thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which
she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she
held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the
coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?"
"No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again."
The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his
good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most
men.
"Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something;
you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that."
He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this
young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's
tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.
She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked
at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her
curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its
youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes
presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her
journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye
detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.
"Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she
spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?"
"Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good
long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me
which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his
address.
While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.
"Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of
innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask
as many questions as possible before giving any information.
"I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty.
"But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut
up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
I can let you know where to find him."
"It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
find Arthur at once.
"Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he
in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?"
"Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?"
"A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to
Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight."
"Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support
Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.
"Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in
some water.
"Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife.
"She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
house--they're all honest folks in the north."
"I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband.
"She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at
her."
"It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and
had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction
must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's
coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."
| Anyone reading the novel at the time that it was published would have understood the delicate position of Hetty in traveling alone. As uncommon as it was for unmarried women to travel long distances alone at that time, it was even more scandalous at the time period in which Eliot sets the novel. Young women who traveled unprotected on the road risked the ruin of their reputations, assault, or even being pressed into service as a prostitute by older women who would gain their confidence by giving them some kind of help. To make matters worse, in Chapter Thirty-Seven, Hetty's sale of her jewelry shows a pitiful combination of basic worldliness and naA-vetA. She has the minimum savvy to realize that her ornaments are of some value, but as an unprotected young girl, she cannot receive their full value because she does not know how to go about selling them. She is glad just to get the bad deal that the landlord offers, because it means that she can avoid going to a shop where a jeweler might ask her uncomfortable, probing questions. Hetty's main concern at this point seems to be to try to get away from people who know anything about her as fast as possible, and she regrets the fact that she has told the landlord the name of the man whom she was looking for. This anxiety to cover her tracks illustrates that Hetty knows that she is doing something quite dangerous and wrong. It also suggests that she might realize that someone might try to find her by trailing her. Therefore, she tries to leave behind as few clues as possible. Chapter Thirty-Eight repeats the pattern of crisis that has been established in the novel. The first small crisis was the relationship between Hetty and Arthur. The prelude to its resolution occurred when Adam found out about it. The crisis of Hetty running away is a greater one, however, and it remains to be seen how Adam's knowledge of this situation will help as it did in the other situation. Adam's guesses about his fiancAe's whereabouts and her possible thoughts reveal once again how little he knows about her. He assumes that she has also heard that Arthur was sent to Ireland. More importantly, he assumes that Hetty would never travel so far without a specific invitation from Arthur. Angrily, Adam assumes that Arthur inveigled away his bride-to-be, an assumption that the reader knows to be far from the truth. Hetty's offstage infanticide is the crisis point that serves as the crux of the novel. Up to this point, we might have wondered where Hetty could possibly turn after her various disappointments and humiliations. There are very few references to her possibly being pregnant, so the fact will have escaped most readers' attention by Chapter Thirty-Nine. The sudden accusation of infanticide will surprise many. The one concrete reference to her condition is when the landlady's eyes "presently returned to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed." Read backwards, this is a clear indication that Hetty is pregnant, but in the regular course of the narrative, it could just as easily have been read as her being careless in showing more of her figure than was advisable on her trip. In Chapter Forty, despite the fact that Methodists have been reviled in the novel for their religion, Dinah is the first person who the people tend to turn to in times of trouble. Part of this choice has to do with the fact that they find Dinah immensely personally appealing, and they know that to gain part or all of her attention, they need only tell her of their great trouble. She enjoys sacrifice, so she sometimes only attends to her neighbors or family if their need is very great. Bartle's threat to his female dog foreshadows the harsh judgment that will come upon Hetty. Women who committed misdeeds of a sexual nature in that period were utterly ruined, since sexual chastity was the primary source of a woman's honor. No one thinks to reproach Arthur in this situation, because it has been assumed that sexual activity is something for men to pursue and women to defend against. In Chapter Forty-One, for the first time at this late stage in the novel, Mr. Irwine acts as a spiritual advisor. His advice is sound: to seek revenge is useless and hurtful to the community. Wrongs tend to multiply; he compares wrongs to the air that men share by breathing in and out. Adam's agreement to do no bodily harm to Arthur demonstrates that he does hold some religious principles, despite the fact that he is not as devout as the Methodists portrayed in the novel. This activity also relieves a plot tension. Given that Hetty's kiss with Arthur ultimately led to her trial, the reader must have also wondered about the results of Adam's initial knocking down of Arthur. In Chapter Forty-Two, due to the great stress that has been put upon him, Adam is behaving somewhat erratically. He goes to the trouble and expense of moving to Stoniton for the duration of the trial, but until this point he has not even seen or tried to speak to Hetty. It is strange that he has not attended the first portion of the trial, if not to comfort Hetty, at least to sate his curiosity about the proceedings and the question of her guilt. The effect that Eliot creates by Bartle telling the story of the beginning of the trial heightens the drama. Adam has to pull the information out of him, wanting him to describe the action in minute detail. Bartle believes that it is Adam's duty to come to the courthouse, and he throws out subtle hints in his description of the scene that this is what Adam should do. In Chapter Forty-Three, the narrative of Hetty's murder of her child is horrifying. This chapter reads almost like a sensationalist news article telling a gruesome tale. Elements of the gothic, which were also used in the chapter about the night before Thias died, are more fully realized in this chapter. Even the wording of the testimony is inclined to make the event sound more gruesome, if possible, than it is. When John Olding says that the first thing that he found when he went back to investigate was a baby hand, the crowd gasps. They, along with the reader, imagine a chopped off, disembodied hand. This is not the case, however, because when Olding continues, it becomes clear that the hand is still attached to the body of the baby, which is partially buried. Adam's unsuccessful action at the end of the trial epitomizes his relationship with Hetty. Even after Hetty has committed the worst crime imaginable, Adam is willing to stay at her side, supporting her. Still, he cannot control Hetty's desire to do wayward things, and they cannot change the past. Thus, when she falls, she must fall unsupported by Adam-as painful as that may feel to him. Arthur's optimistic return home in Chapter Forty-Four is another example of Eliot's use of dramatic irony. The reader knows the news that awaits him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Arthur, by meandering around his house, seems to prolong this process even more. His servants, knowing more than their master, are in a state similar to that of the reader, following Arthur around his home and reminding him that he has letters to read. Arthur looks shocked when he hears the news, but what he plans to do upon reaching Stoniton remains unclear. The scene of Hetty's confession in Chapter Forty-Five is perhaps the most Gothic in the entire book. The women are in a hostile environment, a prison so damp and dark that they can barely see one another's face. Hetty's experience, like Adam's impressions on the night that his father died, has a supernatural tinge transmitted through noises. It is impossible that Hetty could have heard her buried infant crying from such a distance when she buried it. It is instead the sound of her guilt that creates the crying sound in her ears, Hetty asks God to take from her the sound of the crying; she seems to be literally haunted by her dead child. Hetty's confession also contains distinct undertones of the moral novels that some of Eliot's predecessors wrote. The confessions of former sinners, often former prostitutes , constituted a common genre of fiction in the 18th and 19th centuries. They formed a tragic counterpart to the comedies of manners. Through such tales, women learned how to behave or not to behave. In Chapter Forty-Six, Adam has refused to visit Hetty until he has seen that no pardon is likely to come. Only then does he make his final goodbyes. Hetty seems to be completely dependent on Dinah now, and Hetty can hardly seem to stand without her help. Bartle's approval of Dinah is surprising in that he is a confirmed misogynist, but it is unsurprising in that Eliot portrays Dinah as separate from, and perhaps above, other women. A crowd gathering to watch the execution of a criminal was a common occurrence in early England. Especially in such a small, rural area, a hanging was an uncommon event. Even in larger towns and cities, it was quite normal to treat a hanging as a social gathering. Women would bring their knitting and often their children, who would watch and learn their lessons. Charles Dickens ironically describes these scenes in London and Paris in A Tale of Two Cities. Here, in Chapter Forty-Seven, the crowd adds drama to the Hollywood moment when Arthur arrives with his pardon, shouting with surprise as he rides up on horseback. The meeting between Arthur and Adam in Chapter Forty-Eight shows that their fraternal bond is stronger than the love that either of them had for Hetty. Perhaps it is easier for them to make up and shake hands, but for whatever reason, they decide to drop their enmity for one another. The resolution of their argument has an important effect on the community at large, because Arthur proceeds to convince Adam to stay in Hayslope, which has a ripple effect on the others, who have thought that they should move away because Hetty has shamed them. | analysis |
HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be
addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the
evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed,
and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the
borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations
of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the
good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as
there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on
the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun.
But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the
keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at
the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge
from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what
course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to
look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new
clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But
which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any
service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate
beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold
and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken
to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly understand the
effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought up among people who
were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived
among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel
inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them
a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought
burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison
in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same
far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance
of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from
church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back upon her with the
new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from
the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread
of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet
animal.
How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared
for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have
been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a
time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Hetty that
used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping
in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their
doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that
she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those
strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of
her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it
and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and
ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a
beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember
me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one
shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap.
Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet,
that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine
on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her
head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and
the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard
for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was
because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth
a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments:
those Arthur had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The
landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her
to get the money for these things.
But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was
gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary
drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask
them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea
again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never
endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the
servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew
her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do?
She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last
week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round
them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when
there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown
herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get
away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at
the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Captain
Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had
asked for him.
With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket,
meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her
hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might
be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth
selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she
craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire
eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless
places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried
tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her
little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name,
which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like
a newly discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There
was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own hand
with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and
Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before her. Hetty did not
read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first
time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness
Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that
Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go
to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as
other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was
always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in
dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or
rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to
that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But
even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not
prevail on herself to say, "I will go to Dinah": she only thought of
that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death.
The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon
after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed.
Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very
tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask
about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a
soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very
kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked
doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of
self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a
remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only
invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it
Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if
he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost
her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to
her friends, which she wanted to do at once.
It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she
had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she and her
husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful
things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been
miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
"Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles
before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one
not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o'
what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?" he
added, looking at her inquiringly.
"Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to go
back."
"And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell
'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have
fine jew'llery like that."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to respectable
folks," she said; "I'm not a thief."
"No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and you'd no
call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband. "The things were
gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen."
"I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically,
"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be
offering much money for 'em."
"Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on the
things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home,
she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might
do as we liked with 'em."
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had
no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the
ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they
would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented
itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord
took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner.
He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers
would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is
sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will
really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same
time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as
possible.
"How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said the
well-wisher, at length.
"Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with, for
want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.
"Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas," said the
landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery
again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away."
"Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty, relieved
at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be
stared at and questioned.
"But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said the
landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as
you don't want 'em."
"Yes," said Hetty indifferently.
The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The
husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a
good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife
thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And
they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking
young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything
for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty
said "Good-bye" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn
all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles
back along the way she had come.
There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the
last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense
of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She
would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never
be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire
fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place
even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often
getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows,
looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the
edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering
if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything
worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had
taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people
who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been
confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical
result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a
single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand
her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were
influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes.
She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by
mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards
it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool
she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried
her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong
in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very
moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap
towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for
she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks,
and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under
observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself
neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining
under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish.
And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly
different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass,
or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even
fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as
ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never
dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish
prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the
sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the
passionate, passionless lips.
At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long
narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that
wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a
wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving
mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up
and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she
came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The
afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the
sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again,
feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding
the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night.
She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one
direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after
field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner
of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to
dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the
opening. Hetty's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be
a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with
pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in
spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search.
There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near.
She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass,
trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got
shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer,
no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her
basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make
it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look
about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down
beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to
hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her
elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her
basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where
she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then
sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came
over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy
attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her
knees. She was fast asleep.
When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened
at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could
but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about
that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution
then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and
the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down,
the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with
their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young
life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms
towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of
Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She
wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that
he dared not end by death.
The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human
reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were
dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life
again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful
leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation:
wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she
was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She
walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern
something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to
the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer
felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back
across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next
field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a
sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She
could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope
in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new
hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was
some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The
exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her,
however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There
were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down
her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement
comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this
was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where
the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She
reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the
rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the
gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped
her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on
the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears
came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and
sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she
was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against
the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of
unconsciousness.
Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that
she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes.
There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of
early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
smock-frock.
"Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she
was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
here, that she found words at once.
"I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away
from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
tell me the way to the nearest village?"
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still,
and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show
you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o'
the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin'
into mischief, if you dooant mind."
"Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if
you'll be so good as show me how to get to it."
"Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the
way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud think you was a
wild woman, an' look at yer."
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last
suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of
the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the
way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point
out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence
ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning,
she held it out to him and said, "Thank you; will you please to take
something for your trouble?"
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o' your
money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer,
if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway."
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way.
Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of
drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left
to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking
this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be
all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she
would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said.
The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping
from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now.
Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard
wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it
was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank
as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still
two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it
would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of
Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the
experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from
the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah
would ever know--Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The
soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the
other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than
she could rush on death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give
her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less
and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange
action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very
ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the
straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that
day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart
and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and
tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds
for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in
a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never
thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her
desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from
all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to
life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!
| Hetty is too ill for the rest of the day to realize just how bad her predicament is. The next morning she realizes that she is friendless and that all of her money is gone. She yearns to be back at home, where everything is familiar. She decides to try to sell the jewelry that Arthur has given her. But now that all of her money is gone, she cannot bear the thought of going back to Hayslope in shame. She remembers Dinah's offer to help her in case of an emergency, and she decides to consider this option if her renewed plan to commit suicide fails. She asks the landlord and his wife for help selling her jewelry, and they worry that a jeweler will give her too little, thinking that she has stolen it. They offer to keep the jewels for Hetty, giving her an advance of three guineas. If she does not write to them in two months to get them back, they will sell them. Hetty accepts this "deal," which is to her decided disadvantage. Hetty returns the way that she came, hoping to find a nice field to commit suicide in. She feels no religious compunction about contemplating this choice. She eventually finds a dark pool and stays overnight contemplating it, but she cannot bring herself to do the deed. She sleeps overnight in a hovel. A farmer wakens her and gives her directions to the nearest village. She makes up her mind to find Dinah | summary |
HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be
addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the
evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed,
and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the
borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations
of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the
good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as
there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on
the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun.
But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the
keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at
the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge
from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what
course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to
look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new
clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But
which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any
service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate
beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold
and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken
to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly understand the
effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought up among people who
were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived
among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel
inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them
a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought
burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison
in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same
far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance
of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from
church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back upon her with the
new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from
the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread
of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet
animal.
How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared
for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have
been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a
time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Hetty that
used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping
in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their
doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that
she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those
strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of
her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it
and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and
ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a
beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember
me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one
shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap.
Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet,
that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine
on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her
head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and
the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard
for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was
because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth
a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments:
those Arthur had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The
landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her
to get the money for these things.
But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was
gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary
drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask
them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea
again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never
endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the
servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew
her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do?
She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last
week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round
them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when
there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown
herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get
away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at
the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Captain
Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had
asked for him.
With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket,
meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her
hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might
be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth
selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she
craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire
eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless
places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried
tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her
little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name,
which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like
a newly discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There
was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own hand
with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and
Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before her. Hetty did not
read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first
time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness
Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that
Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go
to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as
other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was
always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in
dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or
rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to
that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But
even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not
prevail on herself to say, "I will go to Dinah": she only thought of
that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death.
The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon
after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed.
Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very
tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask
about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a
soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very
kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked
doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of
self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a
remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only
invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it
Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if
he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost
her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to
her friends, which she wanted to do at once.
It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she
had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she and her
husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful
things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been
miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
"Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles
before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one
not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o'
what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?" he
added, looking at her inquiringly.
"Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to go
back."
"And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell
'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have
fine jew'llery like that."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to respectable
folks," she said; "I'm not a thief."
"No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and you'd no
call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband. "The things were
gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen."
"I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically,
"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be
offering much money for 'em."
"Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on the
things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home,
she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might
do as we liked with 'em."
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had
no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the
ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they
would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented
itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord
took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner.
He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers
would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is
sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will
really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same
time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as
possible.
"How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said the
well-wisher, at length.
"Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with, for
want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.
"Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas," said the
landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery
again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away."
"Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty, relieved
at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be
stared at and questioned.
"But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said the
landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as
you don't want 'em."
"Yes," said Hetty indifferently.
The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The
husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a
good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife
thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And
they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking
young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything
for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty
said "Good-bye" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn
all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles
back along the way she had come.
There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the
last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense
of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She
would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never
be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire
fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place
even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often
getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows,
looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the
edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering
if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything
worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had
taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people
who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been
confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical
result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a
single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand
her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were
influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes.
She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by
mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards
it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool
she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried
her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong
in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very
moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap
towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for
she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks,
and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under
observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself
neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining
under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish.
And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly
different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass,
or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even
fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as
ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never
dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish
prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the
sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the
passionate, passionless lips.
At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long
narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that
wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a
wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving
mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up
and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she
came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The
afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the
sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again,
feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding
the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night.
She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one
direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after
field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner
of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to
dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the
opening. Hetty's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be
a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with
pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in
spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search.
There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near.
She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass,
trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got
shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer,
no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her
basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make
it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look
about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down
beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to
hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her
elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her
basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where
she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then
sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came
over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy
attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her
knees. She was fast asleep.
When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened
at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could
but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about
that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution
then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and
the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down,
the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with
their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young
life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms
towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of
Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She
wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that
he dared not end by death.
The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human
reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were
dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life
again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful
leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation:
wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she
was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She
walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern
something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to
the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer
felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back
across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next
field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a
sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She
could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope
in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new
hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was
some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The
exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her,
however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There
were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down
her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement
comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this
was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where
the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She
reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the
rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the
gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped
her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on
the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears
came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and
sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she
was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against
the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of
unconsciousness.
Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that
she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes.
There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of
early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
smock-frock.
"Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she
was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
here, that she found words at once.
"I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away
from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
tell me the way to the nearest village?"
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still,
and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show
you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o'
the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin'
into mischief, if you dooant mind."
"Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if
you'll be so good as show me how to get to it."
"Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the
way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud think you was a
wild woman, an' look at yer."
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last
suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of
the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the
way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point
out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence
ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning,
she held it out to him and said, "Thank you; will you please to take
something for your trouble?"
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o' your
money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer,
if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway."
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way.
Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of
drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left
to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking
this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be
all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she
would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said.
The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping
from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now.
Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard
wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it
was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank
as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still
two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it
would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of
Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the
experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from
the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah
would ever know--Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The
soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the
other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than
she could rush on death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give
her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less
and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange
action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very
ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the
straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that
day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart
and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and
tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds
for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in
a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never
thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her
desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from
all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to
life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!
| Anyone reading the novel at the time that it was published would have understood the delicate position of Hetty in traveling alone. As uncommon as it was for unmarried women to travel long distances alone at that time, it was even more scandalous at the time period in which Eliot sets the novel. Young women who traveled unprotected on the road risked the ruin of their reputations, assault, or even being pressed into service as a prostitute by older women who would gain their confidence by giving them some kind of help. To make matters worse, in Chapter Thirty-Seven, Hetty's sale of her jewelry shows a pitiful combination of basic worldliness and naA-vetA. She has the minimum savvy to realize that her ornaments are of some value, but as an unprotected young girl, she cannot receive their full value because she does not know how to go about selling them. She is glad just to get the bad deal that the landlord offers, because it means that she can avoid going to a shop where a jeweler might ask her uncomfortable, probing questions. Hetty's main concern at this point seems to be to try to get away from people who know anything about her as fast as possible, and she regrets the fact that she has told the landlord the name of the man whom she was looking for. This anxiety to cover her tracks illustrates that Hetty knows that she is doing something quite dangerous and wrong. It also suggests that she might realize that someone might try to find her by trailing her. Therefore, she tries to leave behind as few clues as possible. Chapter Thirty-Eight repeats the pattern of crisis that has been established in the novel. The first small crisis was the relationship between Hetty and Arthur. The prelude to its resolution occurred when Adam found out about it. The crisis of Hetty running away is a greater one, however, and it remains to be seen how Adam's knowledge of this situation will help as it did in the other situation. Adam's guesses about his fiancAe's whereabouts and her possible thoughts reveal once again how little he knows about her. He assumes that she has also heard that Arthur was sent to Ireland. More importantly, he assumes that Hetty would never travel so far without a specific invitation from Arthur. Angrily, Adam assumes that Arthur inveigled away his bride-to-be, an assumption that the reader knows to be far from the truth. Hetty's offstage infanticide is the crisis point that serves as the crux of the novel. Up to this point, we might have wondered where Hetty could possibly turn after her various disappointments and humiliations. There are very few references to her possibly being pregnant, so the fact will have escaped most readers' attention by Chapter Thirty-Nine. The sudden accusation of infanticide will surprise many. The one concrete reference to her condition is when the landlady's eyes "presently returned to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed." Read backwards, this is a clear indication that Hetty is pregnant, but in the regular course of the narrative, it could just as easily have been read as her being careless in showing more of her figure than was advisable on her trip. In Chapter Forty, despite the fact that Methodists have been reviled in the novel for their religion, Dinah is the first person who the people tend to turn to in times of trouble. Part of this choice has to do with the fact that they find Dinah immensely personally appealing, and they know that to gain part or all of her attention, they need only tell her of their great trouble. She enjoys sacrifice, so she sometimes only attends to her neighbors or family if their need is very great. Bartle's threat to his female dog foreshadows the harsh judgment that will come upon Hetty. Women who committed misdeeds of a sexual nature in that period were utterly ruined, since sexual chastity was the primary source of a woman's honor. No one thinks to reproach Arthur in this situation, because it has been assumed that sexual activity is something for men to pursue and women to defend against. In Chapter Forty-One, for the first time at this late stage in the novel, Mr. Irwine acts as a spiritual advisor. His advice is sound: to seek revenge is useless and hurtful to the community. Wrongs tend to multiply; he compares wrongs to the air that men share by breathing in and out. Adam's agreement to do no bodily harm to Arthur demonstrates that he does hold some religious principles, despite the fact that he is not as devout as the Methodists portrayed in the novel. This activity also relieves a plot tension. Given that Hetty's kiss with Arthur ultimately led to her trial, the reader must have also wondered about the results of Adam's initial knocking down of Arthur. In Chapter Forty-Two, due to the great stress that has been put upon him, Adam is behaving somewhat erratically. He goes to the trouble and expense of moving to Stoniton for the duration of the trial, but until this point he has not even seen or tried to speak to Hetty. It is strange that he has not attended the first portion of the trial, if not to comfort Hetty, at least to sate his curiosity about the proceedings and the question of her guilt. The effect that Eliot creates by Bartle telling the story of the beginning of the trial heightens the drama. Adam has to pull the information out of him, wanting him to describe the action in minute detail. Bartle believes that it is Adam's duty to come to the courthouse, and he throws out subtle hints in his description of the scene that this is what Adam should do. In Chapter Forty-Three, the narrative of Hetty's murder of her child is horrifying. This chapter reads almost like a sensationalist news article telling a gruesome tale. Elements of the gothic, which were also used in the chapter about the night before Thias died, are more fully realized in this chapter. Even the wording of the testimony is inclined to make the event sound more gruesome, if possible, than it is. When John Olding says that the first thing that he found when he went back to investigate was a baby hand, the crowd gasps. They, along with the reader, imagine a chopped off, disembodied hand. This is not the case, however, because when Olding continues, it becomes clear that the hand is still attached to the body of the baby, which is partially buried. Adam's unsuccessful action at the end of the trial epitomizes his relationship with Hetty. Even after Hetty has committed the worst crime imaginable, Adam is willing to stay at her side, supporting her. Still, he cannot control Hetty's desire to do wayward things, and they cannot change the past. Thus, when she falls, she must fall unsupported by Adam-as painful as that may feel to him. Arthur's optimistic return home in Chapter Forty-Four is another example of Eliot's use of dramatic irony. The reader knows the news that awaits him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Arthur, by meandering around his house, seems to prolong this process even more. His servants, knowing more than their master, are in a state similar to that of the reader, following Arthur around his home and reminding him that he has letters to read. Arthur looks shocked when he hears the news, but what he plans to do upon reaching Stoniton remains unclear. The scene of Hetty's confession in Chapter Forty-Five is perhaps the most Gothic in the entire book. The women are in a hostile environment, a prison so damp and dark that they can barely see one another's face. Hetty's experience, like Adam's impressions on the night that his father died, has a supernatural tinge transmitted through noises. It is impossible that Hetty could have heard her buried infant crying from such a distance when she buried it. It is instead the sound of her guilt that creates the crying sound in her ears, Hetty asks God to take from her the sound of the crying; she seems to be literally haunted by her dead child. Hetty's confession also contains distinct undertones of the moral novels that some of Eliot's predecessors wrote. The confessions of former sinners, often former prostitutes , constituted a common genre of fiction in the 18th and 19th centuries. They formed a tragic counterpart to the comedies of manners. Through such tales, women learned how to behave or not to behave. In Chapter Forty-Six, Adam has refused to visit Hetty until he has seen that no pardon is likely to come. Only then does he make his final goodbyes. Hetty seems to be completely dependent on Dinah now, and Hetty can hardly seem to stand without her help. Bartle's approval of Dinah is surprising in that he is a confirmed misogynist, but it is unsurprising in that Eliot portrays Dinah as separate from, and perhaps above, other women. A crowd gathering to watch the execution of a criminal was a common occurrence in early England. Especially in such a small, rural area, a hanging was an uncommon event. Even in larger towns and cities, it was quite normal to treat a hanging as a social gathering. Women would bring their knitting and often their children, who would watch and learn their lessons. Charles Dickens ironically describes these scenes in London and Paris in A Tale of Two Cities. Here, in Chapter Forty-Seven, the crowd adds drama to the Hollywood moment when Arthur arrives with his pardon, shouting with surprise as he rides up on horseback. The meeting between Arthur and Adam in Chapter Forty-Eight shows that their fraternal bond is stronger than the love that either of them had for Hetty. Perhaps it is easier for them to make up and shake hands, but for whatever reason, they decide to drop their enmity for one another. The resolution of their argument has an important effect on the community at large, because Arthur proceeds to convince Adam to stay in Hayslope, which has a ripple effect on the others, who have thought that they should move away because Hetty has shamed them. | analysis |
THE first ten days after Hetty's departure passed as quietly as any
other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily
work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least,
perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might
then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had
passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return;
she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one
could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient
to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day
(Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There
was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and
perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty
early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day--Dinah too, if she
were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to
lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.
His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on
Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back
without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the
things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was
surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs.
Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her
believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at
Snowfield. "Though," said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, "you might
tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to
a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her
next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and
leave the children fatherless and motherless."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man
perfectly heart-whole, "it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely
now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Dinah t' come, for
she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful."
So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first
mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah
might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold
morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of
Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky,
and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black
hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the
hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in
silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship.
"Good-bye, lad," said Adam, laying his hand on Seth's shoulder and
looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. "I wish thee
wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am."
"I'm content, Addy, I'm content," said Seth cheerfully. "I'll be an old
bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children."
They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward,
mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of
hymns:
Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by thee:
Joyless is the day's return
Till thy mercy's beams I see:
Till thou inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.
Visit, then, this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief--
Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
Scatter all my unbelief.
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road
at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall
broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm
as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as
they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam's life had his
face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and
this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds
like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him
and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his
own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the
knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty,
who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning
air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being
that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of
more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than
Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that
all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such
sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps
rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close
to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the
other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this
way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this
morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved
that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all
the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country
gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his
own district.
It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty
town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After
this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more
wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows,
but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal
wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and
were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go
south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live
here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the
most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she
must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the
desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat." And when at last
he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was
"fellow to the country," though the stream through the valley where the
great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town
lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Adam
did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him where to find
Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from
the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a
little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged with an elderly
couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam could learn where
they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Dinah might be out
on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home.
Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the
roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile
which belongs to the expectation of a near joy.
He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door.
It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of
the head.
"Is Dinah Morris at home?" said Adam.
"Eh?...no," said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with
a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. "Will you please to
come in?" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself.
"Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?"
"Yes," said Adam, entering. "That was Seth Bede. I'm his brother Adam.
He told me to give his respects to you and your good master."
"Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him,
on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home
from meeting."
Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with
questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one
corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his voice
and would come down them.
"So you're come to see Dinah Morris?" said the old woman, standing
opposite to him. "An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?"
"No," said Adam, "but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as
it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along
with Dinah?"
The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air.
"Gone along wi' her?" she said. "Eh, Dinah's gone to Leeds, a big town
ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's
been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her
journey. You may see her room here," she went on, opening a door and not
noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her, and
darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the
portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large
Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there. He could
not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an
undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Hetty on the
journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension,
that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all.
"It's a pity ye didna know," she said. "Have ye come from your own
country o' purpose to see her?"
"But Hetty--Hetty Sorrel," said Adam, abruptly; "Where is she?"
"I know nobody by that name," said the old woman, wonderingly. "Is it
anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?"
"Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a
fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?"
"Nay; I'n seen no young woman."
"Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes
and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You
couldn't forget her if you saw her."
"Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Dinah went away--there
come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for
the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat
the matter?"
The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam's face. But he
was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could
inquire about Hetty.
"Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a
fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened
to her. I can't stop. Good-bye."
He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the
gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards
the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach
stopped.
No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident
happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to
take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't
stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was
in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness
of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets
looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back
to Oakbourne in his own "taxed cart" this very evening. It was not five
o'clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a meal and yet to get
to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really
wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have
all Monday before him then. Adam, after making an ineffectual attempt
to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale,
declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it
occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman
where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall
Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the
Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had not left any
address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not
recall the name of the "blessed woman" who was Dinah's chief friend in
the Society at Leeds.
During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for
all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very
first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield, the
thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he
tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes
of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable
thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some strange chance,
got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did
not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence
of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct
agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in thinking that she
could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur all the while; and
now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run
away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy
rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Arthur had been dealing
falsely--had written to Hetty--had tempted her to come to him--being
unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides
himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had
given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Adam knew that
Arthur had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it
at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty's, since she had been engaged
to Adam, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful
retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing
hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that
she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who
offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her:
she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with
that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even
deliberately lured her away.
At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman
as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a
fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in
a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went
through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the
horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight to
the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the
most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be
her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief
coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have
sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for
another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or
four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the
inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must of
necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock,
when the coach started.
At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven
Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he
remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her,
quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that
he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not
laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at
the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of
the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town
from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not
start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and
then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of
road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No,
she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam
was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to
what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions
amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him
while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur
Donnithorne's behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for
it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure
might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home
and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he
would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty on the road,
he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make himself certain
how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought
occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but that would be
useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Arthur.
It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant occupation of his mind
about Hetty, should never have alighted on the probability that she had
gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no longer there. Perhaps the
reason was that he could not conceive Hetty's throwing herself on Arthur
uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such
a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two
alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written to her again and
enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage
with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well
enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted.
With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur,
the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to
be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not
tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his
intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he
had traced her as far as possible.
It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached
Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also
to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without
undressing on a bed at the "Waggon Overthrown," and slept hard from pure
weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he
set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a
key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in;
and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious
to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Seth first, and
asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently
along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he
expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided
when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and
in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body
against his master's legs.
Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp's fondling. He threw
himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work
around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them
again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his
master, laid his rough grey head on Adam's knee and wrinkled his brows
to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been
constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no
associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the
light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded
by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the
reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him
with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers,
which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty's use, when his home
should be hers.
Seth had not heard Adam's entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp's
bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing
himself. Seth's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come
home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by
to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than
he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was the
greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had
no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but
he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah's friend and
brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near
her, instead of living so far off!
He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen
into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in
the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated
listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost
like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the
marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at
him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself
trembling so that speech did not come readily.
"God have mercy on us, Addy," he said, in a low voice, sitting down on
the bench beside Adam, "what is it?"
Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the
signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first
approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth's neck and sobbed.
Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of
their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before.
"Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?" he asked, in a low tone, when Adam
raised his head and was recovering himself.
"No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to
Snowfield. Dinah's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a
fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can't find out where she went
after she got to Stoniton."
Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could
suggest to him a reason for Hetty's going away.
"Hast any notion what she's done it for?" he said, at last.
"She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came
nigh--that must be it," said Adam. He had determined to mention no
further reason.
"I hear Mother stirring," said Seth. "Must we tell her?"
"No, not yet," said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair
from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. "I can't have her told
yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to
the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and
thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything
about. I'll go and wash myself now." Adam moved towards the door of the
workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth's
eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, "I must take all the money out
o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be
thine, to take care o' Mother with."
Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret
under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never called Adam
"Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe you'll do anything
as you can't ask God's blessing on."
"Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's
a man's duty."
The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would
only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of
irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she
had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and
self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she
came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a
bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his
paleness and heavy eyes.
He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his
business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to
go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for
he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the
children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be
exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty.
He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at
the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was
an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr.
Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going
to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning, with a
sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's
eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful
companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of
Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil.
"Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not
brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?"
"No, I've not brought 'em," said Adam, turning round, to indicate that
he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser.
"Why," said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, "ye look
bad. Is there anything happened?"
"Yes," said Adam, heavily. "A sad thing's happened. I didna find Hetty
at Snowfield."
Mr. Poyser's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment.
"Not find her? What's happened to her?" he said, his thoughts flying at
once to bodily accident.
"That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went
to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing
of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach."
"Why, you donna mean she's run away?" said Martin, standing still, so
puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a
trouble by him.
"She must ha' done," said Adam. "She didn't like our marriage when it
came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings."
Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting
up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual
slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At
last he looked up, right in Adam's face, saying, "Then she didna deserve
t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and
I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye,
lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt."
Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a
little while, went on, "I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a
lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and
wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her"--he added,
shaking his head slowly and sadly--"I'd thought better on her, nor to
look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got
ready."
Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr.
Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He
had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur.
"It was better it should be so," he said, as quietly as he could, "if
she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than
repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as
she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home."
"I canna look on her as I've done before," said Martin decisively.
"She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on
her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her.
It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back
wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit."
"Dinah wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and
I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds,
else I should ha' brought it you."
"She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin," said Mr. Poyser,
indignantly, "than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n."
"I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser," said Adam, "for I've a deal to see
to."
"Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when
I go home. It's a hard job."
"But," said Adam, "I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet
for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing
how things may turn out."
"Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match
is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me,
lad: I wish I could make thee amends."
There was something in Martin Poyser's throat at that moment which
caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion.
Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men
grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding.
There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth
to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam
Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as
much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the
Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer
that he was gone in search of Hetty.
He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the
impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Irwine,
and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs
to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a
difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If
anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter
concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling which
made Adam shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give
way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides
himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity.
Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Adam
felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty's interest called
on him to speak.
"I must do it," said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread
themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in
an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; "it's the right
thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer."
| The ten days after Hetty leaves pass quietly at the farm, but after two weeks, everyone starts to worry. Adam decides to set out on Sunday to find her and to bring her home on Monday. Seth walks with Adam for the first two miles, saying that he will probably be a bachelor and fuss over Adam's children. Adam is so happy with thinking about Hetty that he feels almost reverent. He reaches Snowfield and finds the cottage where Dinah has lodged with an elderly couple. The old woman tells Adam that Dinah has gone on to Leeds. He is even more alarmed when she tells him that she has not seen Hetty. He inquires where the coach lets off, but nobody has seen Dinah and nothing has happened to the coach. Adam feels agonized by the thought that Dinah has realized that Hetty cannot love him. He wonders if Arthur has perhaps lured her away to Ireland. Adam tracks down the coachman who joked with Hetty, and the coachman tells him about the joke that did not make her laugh. Adam thinks that he will not betray her secret when he goes back to town in case she returns, but he might even follow Arthur to Ireland to see if he lured her there. It never occurs to him that Hetty would travel unbidden to Windsor, knowing as he does that Arthur is not there anymore. Adam returns home and lets himself into the workshop. Seth comes down and sees his brother looking terrible. He sobs and tells Seth that Hetty has run away. He keeps Hetty's secret, saying that she has probably run away because she could not reconcile herself to the thought of marriage. He goes to tell the Poysers and is relieved to see Mr. Poyser out for a walk as well. He tells her that he cannot figure out what Hetty did after taking the coach to Stoniton. Mr. Poyser apologizes, saying that she is not good enough to marry Adam. He says that she has probably gone after a place as a lady's maid. Adam asks Seth to explain to everyone that he has had to go on a journey quite suddenly, and he sets off to speak to Mr. Irwine | summary |
THE first ten days after Hetty's departure passed as quietly as any
other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily
work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least,
perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might
then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had
passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return;
she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one
could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient
to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day
(Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There
was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and
perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty
early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day--Dinah too, if she
were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to
lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.
His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on
Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back
without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the
things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was
surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs.
Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her
believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at
Snowfield. "Though," said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, "you might
tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to
a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her
next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and
leave the children fatherless and motherless."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man
perfectly heart-whole, "it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely
now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Dinah t' come, for
she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful."
So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first
mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah
might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold
morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of
Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky,
and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black
hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the
hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in
silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship.
"Good-bye, lad," said Adam, laying his hand on Seth's shoulder and
looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. "I wish thee
wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am."
"I'm content, Addy, I'm content," said Seth cheerfully. "I'll be an old
bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children."
They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward,
mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of
hymns:
Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by thee:
Joyless is the day's return
Till thy mercy's beams I see:
Till thou inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.
Visit, then, this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief--
Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
Scatter all my unbelief.
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road
at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall
broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm
as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as
they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam's life had his
face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and
this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds
like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him
and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his
own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the
knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty,
who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning
air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being
that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of
more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than
Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that
all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such
sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps
rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close
to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the
other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this
way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this
morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved
that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all
the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country
gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his
own district.
It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty
town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After
this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more
wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows,
but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal
wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and
were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go
south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live
here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the
most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she
must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the
desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat." And when at last
he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was
"fellow to the country," though the stream through the valley where the
great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town
lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Adam
did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him where to find
Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from
the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a
little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged with an elderly
couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam could learn where
they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Dinah might be out
on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home.
Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the
roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile
which belongs to the expectation of a near joy.
He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door.
It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of
the head.
"Is Dinah Morris at home?" said Adam.
"Eh?...no," said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with
a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. "Will you please to
come in?" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself.
"Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?"
"Yes," said Adam, entering. "That was Seth Bede. I'm his brother Adam.
He told me to give his respects to you and your good master."
"Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him,
on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home
from meeting."
Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with
questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one
corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his voice
and would come down them.
"So you're come to see Dinah Morris?" said the old woman, standing
opposite to him. "An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?"
"No," said Adam, "but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as
it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along
with Dinah?"
The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air.
"Gone along wi' her?" she said. "Eh, Dinah's gone to Leeds, a big town
ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's
been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her
journey. You may see her room here," she went on, opening a door and not
noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her, and
darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the
portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large
Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there. He could
not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an
undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Hetty on the
journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension,
that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all.
"It's a pity ye didna know," she said. "Have ye come from your own
country o' purpose to see her?"
"But Hetty--Hetty Sorrel," said Adam, abruptly; "Where is she?"
"I know nobody by that name," said the old woman, wonderingly. "Is it
anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?"
"Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a
fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?"
"Nay; I'n seen no young woman."
"Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes
and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You
couldn't forget her if you saw her."
"Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Dinah went away--there
come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for
the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat
the matter?"
The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam's face. But he
was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could
inquire about Hetty.
"Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a
fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened
to her. I can't stop. Good-bye."
He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the
gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards
the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach
stopped.
No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident
happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to
take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't
stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was
in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness
of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets
looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back
to Oakbourne in his own "taxed cart" this very evening. It was not five
o'clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a meal and yet to get
to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really
wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have
all Monday before him then. Adam, after making an ineffectual attempt
to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale,
declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it
occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman
where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall
Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the
Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had not left any
address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not
recall the name of the "blessed woman" who was Dinah's chief friend in
the Society at Leeds.
During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for
all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very
first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield, the
thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he
tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes
of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable
thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some strange chance,
got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did
not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence
of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct
agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in thinking that she
could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur all the while; and
now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run
away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy
rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Arthur had been dealing
falsely--had written to Hetty--had tempted her to come to him--being
unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides
himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had
given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Adam knew that
Arthur had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it
at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty's, since she had been engaged
to Adam, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful
retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing
hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that
she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who
offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her:
she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with
that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even
deliberately lured her away.
At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman
as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a
fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in
a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went
through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the
horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight to
the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the
most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be
her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief
coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have
sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for
another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or
four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the
inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must of
necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock,
when the coach started.
At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven
Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he
remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her,
quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that
he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not
laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at
the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of
the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town
from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not
start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and
then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of
road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No,
she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam
was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to
what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions
amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him
while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur
Donnithorne's behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for
it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure
might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home
and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he
would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty on the road,
he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make himself certain
how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought
occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but that would be
useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Arthur.
It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant occupation of his mind
about Hetty, should never have alighted on the probability that she had
gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no longer there. Perhaps the
reason was that he could not conceive Hetty's throwing herself on Arthur
uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such
a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two
alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written to her again and
enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage
with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well
enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted.
With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur,
the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to
be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not
tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his
intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he
had traced her as far as possible.
It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached
Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also
to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without
undressing on a bed at the "Waggon Overthrown," and slept hard from pure
weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he
set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a
key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in;
and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious
to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Seth first, and
asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently
along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he
expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided
when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and
in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body
against his master's legs.
Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp's fondling. He threw
himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work
around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them
again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his
master, laid his rough grey head on Adam's knee and wrinkled his brows
to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been
constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no
associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the
light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded
by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the
reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him
with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers,
which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty's use, when his home
should be hers.
Seth had not heard Adam's entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp's
bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing
himself. Seth's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come
home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by
to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than
he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was the
greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had
no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but
he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah's friend and
brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near
her, instead of living so far off!
He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen
into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in
the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated
listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost
like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the
marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at
him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself
trembling so that speech did not come readily.
"God have mercy on us, Addy," he said, in a low voice, sitting down on
the bench beside Adam, "what is it?"
Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the
signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first
approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth's neck and sobbed.
Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of
their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before.
"Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?" he asked, in a low tone, when Adam
raised his head and was recovering himself.
"No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to
Snowfield. Dinah's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a
fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can't find out where she went
after she got to Stoniton."
Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could
suggest to him a reason for Hetty's going away.
"Hast any notion what she's done it for?" he said, at last.
"She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came
nigh--that must be it," said Adam. He had determined to mention no
further reason.
"I hear Mother stirring," said Seth. "Must we tell her?"
"No, not yet," said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair
from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. "I can't have her told
yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to
the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and
thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything
about. I'll go and wash myself now." Adam moved towards the door of the
workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth's
eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, "I must take all the money out
o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be
thine, to take care o' Mother with."
Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret
under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never called Adam
"Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe you'll do anything
as you can't ask God's blessing on."
"Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's
a man's duty."
The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would
only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of
irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she
had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and
self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she
came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a
bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his
paleness and heavy eyes.
He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his
business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to
go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for
he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the
children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be
exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty.
He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at
the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was
an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr.
Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going
to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning, with a
sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's
eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful
companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of
Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil.
"Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not
brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?"
"No, I've not brought 'em," said Adam, turning round, to indicate that
he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser.
"Why," said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, "ye look
bad. Is there anything happened?"
"Yes," said Adam, heavily. "A sad thing's happened. I didna find Hetty
at Snowfield."
Mr. Poyser's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment.
"Not find her? What's happened to her?" he said, his thoughts flying at
once to bodily accident.
"That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went
to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing
of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach."
"Why, you donna mean she's run away?" said Martin, standing still, so
puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a
trouble by him.
"She must ha' done," said Adam. "She didn't like our marriage when it
came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings."
Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting
up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual
slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At
last he looked up, right in Adam's face, saying, "Then she didna deserve
t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and
I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye,
lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt."
Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a
little while, went on, "I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a
lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and
wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her"--he added,
shaking his head slowly and sadly--"I'd thought better on her, nor to
look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got
ready."
Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr.
Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He
had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur.
"It was better it should be so," he said, as quietly as he could, "if
she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than
repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as
she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home."
"I canna look on her as I've done before," said Martin decisively.
"She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on
her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her.
It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back
wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit."
"Dinah wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and
I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds,
else I should ha' brought it you."
"She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin," said Mr. Poyser,
indignantly, "than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n."
"I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser," said Adam, "for I've a deal to see
to."
"Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when
I go home. It's a hard job."
"But," said Adam, "I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet
for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing
how things may turn out."
"Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match
is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me,
lad: I wish I could make thee amends."
There was something in Martin Poyser's throat at that moment which
caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion.
Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men
grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding.
There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth
to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam
Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as
much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the
Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer
that he was gone in search of Hetty.
He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the
impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Irwine,
and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs
to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a
difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If
anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter
concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling which
made Adam shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give
way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides
himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity.
Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Adam
felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty's interest called
on him to speak.
"I must do it," said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread
themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in
an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; "it's the right
thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer."
| Anyone reading the novel at the time that it was published would have understood the delicate position of Hetty in traveling alone. As uncommon as it was for unmarried women to travel long distances alone at that time, it was even more scandalous at the time period in which Eliot sets the novel. Young women who traveled unprotected on the road risked the ruin of their reputations, assault, or even being pressed into service as a prostitute by older women who would gain their confidence by giving them some kind of help. To make matters worse, in Chapter Thirty-Seven, Hetty's sale of her jewelry shows a pitiful combination of basic worldliness and naA-vetA. She has the minimum savvy to realize that her ornaments are of some value, but as an unprotected young girl, she cannot receive their full value because she does not know how to go about selling them. She is glad just to get the bad deal that the landlord offers, because it means that she can avoid going to a shop where a jeweler might ask her uncomfortable, probing questions. Hetty's main concern at this point seems to be to try to get away from people who know anything about her as fast as possible, and she regrets the fact that she has told the landlord the name of the man whom she was looking for. This anxiety to cover her tracks illustrates that Hetty knows that she is doing something quite dangerous and wrong. It also suggests that she might realize that someone might try to find her by trailing her. Therefore, she tries to leave behind as few clues as possible. Chapter Thirty-Eight repeats the pattern of crisis that has been established in the novel. The first small crisis was the relationship between Hetty and Arthur. The prelude to its resolution occurred when Adam found out about it. The crisis of Hetty running away is a greater one, however, and it remains to be seen how Adam's knowledge of this situation will help as it did in the other situation. Adam's guesses about his fiancAe's whereabouts and her possible thoughts reveal once again how little he knows about her. He assumes that she has also heard that Arthur was sent to Ireland. More importantly, he assumes that Hetty would never travel so far without a specific invitation from Arthur. Angrily, Adam assumes that Arthur inveigled away his bride-to-be, an assumption that the reader knows to be far from the truth. Hetty's offstage infanticide is the crisis point that serves as the crux of the novel. Up to this point, we might have wondered where Hetty could possibly turn after her various disappointments and humiliations. There are very few references to her possibly being pregnant, so the fact will have escaped most readers' attention by Chapter Thirty-Nine. The sudden accusation of infanticide will surprise many. The one concrete reference to her condition is when the landlady's eyes "presently returned to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed." Read backwards, this is a clear indication that Hetty is pregnant, but in the regular course of the narrative, it could just as easily have been read as her being careless in showing more of her figure than was advisable on her trip. In Chapter Forty, despite the fact that Methodists have been reviled in the novel for their religion, Dinah is the first person who the people tend to turn to in times of trouble. Part of this choice has to do with the fact that they find Dinah immensely personally appealing, and they know that to gain part or all of her attention, they need only tell her of their great trouble. She enjoys sacrifice, so she sometimes only attends to her neighbors or family if their need is very great. Bartle's threat to his female dog foreshadows the harsh judgment that will come upon Hetty. Women who committed misdeeds of a sexual nature in that period were utterly ruined, since sexual chastity was the primary source of a woman's honor. No one thinks to reproach Arthur in this situation, because it has been assumed that sexual activity is something for men to pursue and women to defend against. In Chapter Forty-One, for the first time at this late stage in the novel, Mr. Irwine acts as a spiritual advisor. His advice is sound: to seek revenge is useless and hurtful to the community. Wrongs tend to multiply; he compares wrongs to the air that men share by breathing in and out. Adam's agreement to do no bodily harm to Arthur demonstrates that he does hold some religious principles, despite the fact that he is not as devout as the Methodists portrayed in the novel. This activity also relieves a plot tension. Given that Hetty's kiss with Arthur ultimately led to her trial, the reader must have also wondered about the results of Adam's initial knocking down of Arthur. In Chapter Forty-Two, due to the great stress that has been put upon him, Adam is behaving somewhat erratically. He goes to the trouble and expense of moving to Stoniton for the duration of the trial, but until this point he has not even seen or tried to speak to Hetty. It is strange that he has not attended the first portion of the trial, if not to comfort Hetty, at least to sate his curiosity about the proceedings and the question of her guilt. The effect that Eliot creates by Bartle telling the story of the beginning of the trial heightens the drama. Adam has to pull the information out of him, wanting him to describe the action in minute detail. Bartle believes that it is Adam's duty to come to the courthouse, and he throws out subtle hints in his description of the scene that this is what Adam should do. In Chapter Forty-Three, the narrative of Hetty's murder of her child is horrifying. This chapter reads almost like a sensationalist news article telling a gruesome tale. Elements of the gothic, which were also used in the chapter about the night before Thias died, are more fully realized in this chapter. Even the wording of the testimony is inclined to make the event sound more gruesome, if possible, than it is. When John Olding says that the first thing that he found when he went back to investigate was a baby hand, the crowd gasps. They, along with the reader, imagine a chopped off, disembodied hand. This is not the case, however, because when Olding continues, it becomes clear that the hand is still attached to the body of the baby, which is partially buried. Adam's unsuccessful action at the end of the trial epitomizes his relationship with Hetty. Even after Hetty has committed the worst crime imaginable, Adam is willing to stay at her side, supporting her. Still, he cannot control Hetty's desire to do wayward things, and they cannot change the past. Thus, when she falls, she must fall unsupported by Adam-as painful as that may feel to him. Arthur's optimistic return home in Chapter Forty-Four is another example of Eliot's use of dramatic irony. The reader knows the news that awaits him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Arthur, by meandering around his house, seems to prolong this process even more. His servants, knowing more than their master, are in a state similar to that of the reader, following Arthur around his home and reminding him that he has letters to read. Arthur looks shocked when he hears the news, but what he plans to do upon reaching Stoniton remains unclear. The scene of Hetty's confession in Chapter Forty-Five is perhaps the most Gothic in the entire book. The women are in a hostile environment, a prison so damp and dark that they can barely see one another's face. Hetty's experience, like Adam's impressions on the night that his father died, has a supernatural tinge transmitted through noises. It is impossible that Hetty could have heard her buried infant crying from such a distance when she buried it. It is instead the sound of her guilt that creates the crying sound in her ears, Hetty asks God to take from her the sound of the crying; she seems to be literally haunted by her dead child. Hetty's confession also contains distinct undertones of the moral novels that some of Eliot's predecessors wrote. The confessions of former sinners, often former prostitutes , constituted a common genre of fiction in the 18th and 19th centuries. They formed a tragic counterpart to the comedies of manners. Through such tales, women learned how to behave or not to behave. In Chapter Forty-Six, Adam has refused to visit Hetty until he has seen that no pardon is likely to come. Only then does he make his final goodbyes. Hetty seems to be completely dependent on Dinah now, and Hetty can hardly seem to stand without her help. Bartle's approval of Dinah is surprising in that he is a confirmed misogynist, but it is unsurprising in that Eliot portrays Dinah as separate from, and perhaps above, other women. A crowd gathering to watch the execution of a criminal was a common occurrence in early England. Especially in such a small, rural area, a hanging was an uncommon event. Even in larger towns and cities, it was quite normal to treat a hanging as a social gathering. Women would bring their knitting and often their children, who would watch and learn their lessons. Charles Dickens ironically describes these scenes in London and Paris in A Tale of Two Cities. Here, in Chapter Forty-Seven, the crowd adds drama to the Hollywood moment when Arthur arrives with his pardon, shouting with surprise as he rides up on horseback. The meeting between Arthur and Adam in Chapter Forty-Eight shows that their fraternal bond is stronger than the love that either of them had for Hetty. Perhaps it is easier for them to make up and shake hands, but for whatever reason, they decide to drop their enmity for one another. The resolution of their argument has an important effect on the community at large, because Arthur proceeds to convince Adam to stay in Hayslope, which has a ripple effect on the others, who have thought that they should move away because Hetty has shamed them. | analysis |
ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone
out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of
strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he
saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.
But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though
there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it
had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one
who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could
hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak
to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had
begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as
he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the
clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said,
but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out,
and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once.
Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the
last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam
watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some
reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost
always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything
but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came
to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us
in our sleep.
Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He
was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange
person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of
remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room.
And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no
notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business.
But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt
in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different
from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter
lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed
glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with
some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door,
as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him.
"You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly
quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation.
"Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more
than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense
that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected
difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to
a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative
reasons.
"I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of
anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll
pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong
other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason."
Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was
t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o'
this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the
parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me."
Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then,
determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.
"She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going
to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to
fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to
Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long
journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm
going."
Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
"Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said.
"It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She
didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt.
There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else
concerned besides me."
A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the
eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on
the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak.
But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr.
Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.
"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and
used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him,
and had felt so ever since we were lads...."
Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm,
which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain,
said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say
it, for God's sake!"
Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the
words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp
on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his
chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it."
"That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no
right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used
to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before
he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.
There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved
her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his
wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said
solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more
than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty
he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as
I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and
I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she
seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she
behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own
feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too
late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive
me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest,
sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away,
and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to
work again till I know what's become of her."
During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him.
It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur
breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a
confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And
if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less
fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel
to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and
misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which
the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it
rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity,
for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad
blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close
upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have
feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes
over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must
inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on
the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said
solemnly:
"Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You
can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both
tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than
any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst
of all sorrows. God help him who has!"
The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling
suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.
"I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is
in Stonyshire--at Stoniton."
Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped
to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said,
persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down.
"She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you
to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever."
Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and
he whispered, "Tell me."
"She has been arrested...she is in prison."
It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance
into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and
sharply, "For what?"
"For a great crime--the murder of her child."
"It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and
making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his
back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't
possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?"
"God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is."
"But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything."
"Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the
constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess
her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no
doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only
that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather
pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the
beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah
Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies
everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made
to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her,
for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own
name."
"But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam,
still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame.
"I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it."
"Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime;
but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read
that letter, Adam."
Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes
steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When
he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't
read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant.
He threw it down at last and clenched his fist.
"It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door,
not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put
HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em
how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to
me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak
and young?"
The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor
Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the
room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of
appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon
me--it's too hard to think she's wicked."
Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter
soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him,
with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in
moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the
deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight
of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow,
moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless,
with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that
short space he was living through all his love again.
"She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as
if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I
forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast
deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll
never make me believe it."
He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce
abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and
look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget
it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall
follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll
drag him myself."
In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and
looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was
present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the
arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you
will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of
going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall
without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his
way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I
know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go
with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as
soon as you can compose yourself."
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the
actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened.
"Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and
act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good
Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to
think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of
duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be
of any use."
In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's
own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of
counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours.
"You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's
pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know."
"Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at
th' Hall Farm?"
"I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall
have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall
return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."
| As he shows Adam in, the butler says that a strange person, who has just left, came for some unknown reason. When Adam sees Mr. Irwine, he looks distressed and has a letter open in front of him. Adam tells him the news about Hetty. When Adam says that he may have some idea about where and to whom Hetty has gone, Mr. Irwine's face looks almost eager. Adam tells him the whole history, as he understands it, between Hetty and Arthur. Mr. Irwine feels guilty remembering that Arthur seemed to be trying to confess something to him at that breakfast. He regrets that he will have to inflict more sorrow on Adam, but he tells him that Hetty is at Stoniton and has been arrested for the murder of her child. The stranger who just left is the constable who arrested her. Adam says that any wrongdoing must be Arthur's, because he was the one who taught her to deceive. Adam resolves to find Arthur, drag him back, and make him see Hetty in misery. Mr. Irwine urges him to stay to see what can be done for Hetty. They set off together to see her immediately | summary |
ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone
out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of
strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he
saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.
But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though
there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it
had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one
who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could
hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak
to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had
begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as
he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the
clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said,
but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out,
and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once.
Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the
last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam
watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some
reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost
always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything
but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came
to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us
in our sleep.
Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He
was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange
person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of
remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room.
And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no
notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business.
But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt
in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different
from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter
lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed
glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with
some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door,
as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him.
"You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly
quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation.
"Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more
than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense
that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected
difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to
a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative
reasons.
"I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of
anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll
pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong
other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason."
Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was
t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o'
this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the
parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me."
Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then,
determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.
"She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going
to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to
fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to
Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long
journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm
going."
Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
"Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said.
"It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She
didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt.
There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else
concerned besides me."
A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the
eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on
the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak.
But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr.
Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.
"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and
used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him,
and had felt so ever since we were lads...."
Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm,
which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain,
said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say
it, for God's sake!"
Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the
words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp
on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his
chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it."
"That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no
right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used
to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before
he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.
There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved
her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his
wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said
solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more
than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty
he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as
I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and
I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she
seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she
behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own
feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too
late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive
me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest,
sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away,
and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to
work again till I know what's become of her."
During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him.
It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur
breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a
confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And
if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less
fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel
to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and
misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which
the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it
rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity,
for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad
blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close
upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have
feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes
over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must
inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on
the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said
solemnly:
"Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You
can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both
tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than
any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst
of all sorrows. God help him who has!"
The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling
suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.
"I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is
in Stonyshire--at Stoniton."
Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped
to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said,
persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down.
"She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you
to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever."
Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and
he whispered, "Tell me."
"She has been arrested...she is in prison."
It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance
into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and
sharply, "For what?"
"For a great crime--the murder of her child."
"It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and
making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his
back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't
possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?"
"God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is."
"But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything."
"Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the
constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess
her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no
doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only
that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather
pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the
beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah
Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies
everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made
to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her,
for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own
name."
"But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam,
still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame.
"I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it."
"Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime;
but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read
that letter, Adam."
Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes
steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When
he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't
read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant.
He threw it down at last and clenched his fist.
"It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door,
not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put
HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em
how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to
me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak
and young?"
The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor
Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the
room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of
appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon
me--it's too hard to think she's wicked."
Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter
soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him,
with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in
moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the
deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight
of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow,
moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless,
with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that
short space he was living through all his love again.
"She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as
if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I
forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast
deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll
never make me believe it."
He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce
abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and
look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget
it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall
follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll
drag him myself."
In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and
looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was
present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the
arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you
will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of
going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall
without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his
way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I
know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go
with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as
soon as you can compose yourself."
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the
actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened.
"Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and
act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good
Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to
think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of
duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be
of any use."
In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's
own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of
counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours.
"You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's
pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know."
"Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at
th' Hall Farm?"
"I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall
have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall
return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."
| Anyone reading the novel at the time that it was published would have understood the delicate position of Hetty in traveling alone. As uncommon as it was for unmarried women to travel long distances alone at that time, it was even more scandalous at the time period in which Eliot sets the novel. Young women who traveled unprotected on the road risked the ruin of their reputations, assault, or even being pressed into service as a prostitute by older women who would gain their confidence by giving them some kind of help. To make matters worse, in Chapter Thirty-Seven, Hetty's sale of her jewelry shows a pitiful combination of basic worldliness and naA-vetA. She has the minimum savvy to realize that her ornaments are of some value, but as an unprotected young girl, she cannot receive their full value because she does not know how to go about selling them. She is glad just to get the bad deal that the landlord offers, because it means that she can avoid going to a shop where a jeweler might ask her uncomfortable, probing questions. Hetty's main concern at this point seems to be to try to get away from people who know anything about her as fast as possible, and she regrets the fact that she has told the landlord the name of the man whom she was looking for. This anxiety to cover her tracks illustrates that Hetty knows that she is doing something quite dangerous and wrong. It also suggests that she might realize that someone might try to find her by trailing her. Therefore, she tries to leave behind as few clues as possible. Chapter Thirty-Eight repeats the pattern of crisis that has been established in the novel. The first small crisis was the relationship between Hetty and Arthur. The prelude to its resolution occurred when Adam found out about it. The crisis of Hetty running away is a greater one, however, and it remains to be seen how Adam's knowledge of this situation will help as it did in the other situation. Adam's guesses about his fiancAe's whereabouts and her possible thoughts reveal once again how little he knows about her. He assumes that she has also heard that Arthur was sent to Ireland. More importantly, he assumes that Hetty would never travel so far without a specific invitation from Arthur. Angrily, Adam assumes that Arthur inveigled away his bride-to-be, an assumption that the reader knows to be far from the truth. Hetty's offstage infanticide is the crisis point that serves as the crux of the novel. Up to this point, we might have wondered where Hetty could possibly turn after her various disappointments and humiliations. There are very few references to her possibly being pregnant, so the fact will have escaped most readers' attention by Chapter Thirty-Nine. The sudden accusation of infanticide will surprise many. The one concrete reference to her condition is when the landlady's eyes "presently returned to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed." Read backwards, this is a clear indication that Hetty is pregnant, but in the regular course of the narrative, it could just as easily have been read as her being careless in showing more of her figure than was advisable on her trip. In Chapter Forty, despite the fact that Methodists have been reviled in the novel for their religion, Dinah is the first person who the people tend to turn to in times of trouble. Part of this choice has to do with the fact that they find Dinah immensely personally appealing, and they know that to gain part or all of her attention, they need only tell her of their great trouble. She enjoys sacrifice, so she sometimes only attends to her neighbors or family if their need is very great. Bartle's threat to his female dog foreshadows the harsh judgment that will come upon Hetty. Women who committed misdeeds of a sexual nature in that period were utterly ruined, since sexual chastity was the primary source of a woman's honor. No one thinks to reproach Arthur in this situation, because it has been assumed that sexual activity is something for men to pursue and women to defend against. In Chapter Forty-One, for the first time at this late stage in the novel, Mr. Irwine acts as a spiritual advisor. His advice is sound: to seek revenge is useless and hurtful to the community. Wrongs tend to multiply; he compares wrongs to the air that men share by breathing in and out. Adam's agreement to do no bodily harm to Arthur demonstrates that he does hold some religious principles, despite the fact that he is not as devout as the Methodists portrayed in the novel. This activity also relieves a plot tension. Given that Hetty's kiss with Arthur ultimately led to her trial, the reader must have also wondered about the results of Adam's initial knocking down of Arthur. In Chapter Forty-Two, due to the great stress that has been put upon him, Adam is behaving somewhat erratically. He goes to the trouble and expense of moving to Stoniton for the duration of the trial, but until this point he has not even seen or tried to speak to Hetty. It is strange that he has not attended the first portion of the trial, if not to comfort Hetty, at least to sate his curiosity about the proceedings and the question of her guilt. The effect that Eliot creates by Bartle telling the story of the beginning of the trial heightens the drama. Adam has to pull the information out of him, wanting him to describe the action in minute detail. Bartle believes that it is Adam's duty to come to the courthouse, and he throws out subtle hints in his description of the scene that this is what Adam should do. In Chapter Forty-Three, the narrative of Hetty's murder of her child is horrifying. This chapter reads almost like a sensationalist news article telling a gruesome tale. Elements of the gothic, which were also used in the chapter about the night before Thias died, are more fully realized in this chapter. Even the wording of the testimony is inclined to make the event sound more gruesome, if possible, than it is. When John Olding says that the first thing that he found when he went back to investigate was a baby hand, the crowd gasps. They, along with the reader, imagine a chopped off, disembodied hand. This is not the case, however, because when Olding continues, it becomes clear that the hand is still attached to the body of the baby, which is partially buried. Adam's unsuccessful action at the end of the trial epitomizes his relationship with Hetty. Even after Hetty has committed the worst crime imaginable, Adam is willing to stay at her side, supporting her. Still, he cannot control Hetty's desire to do wayward things, and they cannot change the past. Thus, when she falls, she must fall unsupported by Adam-as painful as that may feel to him. Arthur's optimistic return home in Chapter Forty-Four is another example of Eliot's use of dramatic irony. The reader knows the news that awaits him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Arthur, by meandering around his house, seems to prolong this process even more. His servants, knowing more than their master, are in a state similar to that of the reader, following Arthur around his home and reminding him that he has letters to read. Arthur looks shocked when he hears the news, but what he plans to do upon reaching Stoniton remains unclear. The scene of Hetty's confession in Chapter Forty-Five is perhaps the most Gothic in the entire book. The women are in a hostile environment, a prison so damp and dark that they can barely see one another's face. Hetty's experience, like Adam's impressions on the night that his father died, has a supernatural tinge transmitted through noises. It is impossible that Hetty could have heard her buried infant crying from such a distance when she buried it. It is instead the sound of her guilt that creates the crying sound in her ears, Hetty asks God to take from her the sound of the crying; she seems to be literally haunted by her dead child. Hetty's confession also contains distinct undertones of the moral novels that some of Eliot's predecessors wrote. The confessions of former sinners, often former prostitutes , constituted a common genre of fiction in the 18th and 19th centuries. They formed a tragic counterpart to the comedies of manners. Through such tales, women learned how to behave or not to behave. In Chapter Forty-Six, Adam has refused to visit Hetty until he has seen that no pardon is likely to come. Only then does he make his final goodbyes. Hetty seems to be completely dependent on Dinah now, and Hetty can hardly seem to stand without her help. Bartle's approval of Dinah is surprising in that he is a confirmed misogynist, but it is unsurprising in that Eliot portrays Dinah as separate from, and perhaps above, other women. A crowd gathering to watch the execution of a criminal was a common occurrence in early England. Especially in such a small, rural area, a hanging was an uncommon event. Even in larger towns and cities, it was quite normal to treat a hanging as a social gathering. Women would bring their knitting and often their children, who would watch and learn their lessons. Charles Dickens ironically describes these scenes in London and Paris in A Tale of Two Cities. Here, in Chapter Forty-Seven, the crowd adds drama to the Hollywood moment when Arthur arrives with his pardon, shouting with surprise as he rides up on horseback. The meeting between Arthur and Adam in Chapter Forty-Eight shows that their fraternal bond is stronger than the love that either of them had for Hetty. Perhaps it is easier for them to make up and shake hands, but for whatever reason, they decide to drop their enmity for one another. The resolution of their argument has an important effect on the community at large, because Arthur proceeds to convince Adam to stay in Hayslope, which has a ripple effect on the others, who have thought that they should move away because Hetty has shamed them. | analysis |