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 pigeon-like 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 than 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.