Chapter VII
The Dairy
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 boddice, 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.
