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 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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.