Chapter XXXIII
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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, afler 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 buisness 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.
