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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, after 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 Æsop’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
business 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.