Chapter IX
Hetty's World
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 famuly as the
most charming phiz imaginable."
"Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Hetty in an
artistic light, but I must not have you feeding her vanity and
filling her little noddle with the notion that she's a great
beauty, attractive to fine gentlemen, or you will spoil her for a
poor man's wife--honest Craig's, for example, whom I have seen
bestowing soft glances on her. The little puss seems already to
have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it's a law of
nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty. Apropos of
marrying, I hope our friend Adam will get settled, now the poor
old man's gone. He will only have his mother to keep in future,
and I've a notion that there's a kindness between him and that
nice modest girl, Mary Burge, from something that fell from old
Jonathan one day when I was talking to him. But when I mentioned
the subject to Adam he looked uneasy and turned the conversation.
I suppose the love-making doesn't run smooth, or perhaps Adam
hangs back till he's in a better position. He has independence of
spirit enough for two men--rather an excess of pride, if
anything."
"That would be a capital match for Adam. He would slip into old
Burge's shoes and make a fine thing of that building business,
I'll answer for him. I should like to see him well settled in
this parish; he would be ready then to act as my grand-vizier when
I wanted one. We could plan no end of repairs and improvements
together. I've never seen the girl, though, I think--at least
I've never looked at her."
"Look at her next Sunday at church--she sits with her father on
the left of the reading-desk. You needn't look quite so much at
Hetty Sorrel then. When I've made up my mind that I can't afford
to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took
a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle
between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly
severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old
fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow it upon you."
"Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day though I don't
know that I have any present use for it. Bless me! How the brook
has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now we're at the bottom
of the hill."
That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback; it can be
merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have
escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The two friends were
free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled
up in the lane behind Adam's cottage.
