Chapter XV
The Two Bed-Chambers
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 pigeonlike 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 that 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.
