Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (44 page)

“No, it isn’t my aunt,” said Hetty, “but I should like the work better.”

“It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit — an’ I gev my consent to that fast enough, sin’ Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you. For if anything was t’ happen, it’s well to know how to turn your hand to different sorts o’ things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my wench; my family’s ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take wage?”

“Na-a-y,” said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor. “But the wench takes arter her mother. I’d hard work t’ hould HER in, an’ she married i’ spite o’ me — a feller wi’ on’y two head o’ stock when there should ha’ been ten on’s farm — she might well die o’ th’ inflammation afore she war thirty.”

It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son’s question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Hetty than to his son’s children. Her mother’s fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel’s blood in her veins.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness. “She’d but bad luck. But Hetty’s got as good a chance o’ getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i’ this country.”

After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day’s repressed sadness.

“Hegh, hegh!” said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, “don’t let’s have any crying. Crying’s for them as ha’ got no home, not for them as want to get rid o’ one. What dost think?” he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab’s antennae.

“Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi’ that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o’ nights. What’s the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?”

“Why, she’s been wanting to go for a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Poyser. “I tell her we can do better for her nor that.”

“I thought she’d got some maggot in her head, she’s gone about wi’ her mouth buttoned up so all day. It’s all wi’ going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it ‘ud be a finer life than being wi’ them as are akin to her and ha’ brought her up sin’ she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there’s nothing belongs to being a lady’s maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I’ll be bound. It’s what rag she can get to stick on her as she’s thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn’t like to be the mawkin i’ the field, for then she’d be made o’ rags inside and out. I’ll never gi’ my consent to her going for a lady’s maid, while she’s got good friends to take care on her till she’s married to somebody better nor one o’ them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an’ must live on the fat o’ the land, an’s like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him.”

“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Poyser, “we must have a better husband for her nor that, and there’s better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and get to bed. I’ll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady’s maid. Let’s hear no more on’t.”

When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, “I canna make it out as she should want to go away, for I thought she’d got a mind t’ Adam Bede. She’s looked like it o’ late.”

“Eh, there’s no knowing what she’s got a liking to, for things take no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell, Molly — as is aggravatin’ enough, for the matter o’ that — but I believe she’d care more about leaving us and the children, for all she’s been here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she’s got this notion o’ being a lady’s maid wi’ going among them servants — we might ha’ known what it ‘ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work. But I’ll put a stop to it pretty quick.”

“Thee’dst be sorry to part wi’ her, if it wasn’t for her good,” said Mr. Poyser. “She’s useful to thee i’ the work.”

“Sorry? Yes, I’m fonder on her nor she deserves — a little hard-hearted hussy, wanting to leave us i’ that way. I can’t ha’ had her about me these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything wi’out caring about her. An’ here I’m having linen spun, an’ thinking all the while it’ll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she’s married, an’ she’ll live i’ the parish wi’ us, and never go out of our sights — like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside it.”

“Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle,” said Mr. Poyser, soothingly. “She’s fond on us, I’ll be bound; but she’s young, an’ gets things in her head as she can’t rightly give account on. Them young fillies ‘ull run away often wi’-ou; knowing why.”

Her uncle’s answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty’s vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.

Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam’s happiness in the matter had never yet visited her.

“Strange!” perhaps you will say, “this rush of impulse to-wards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!”

Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty’s, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!

“Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings.”

But that will not save the vessel — the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.

Chapter XXXI
I

Mrs. Poyser “Has Her Say Out
”

THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very day — no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness to the stranger’s visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought of denying Mr. Casson’s testimony to the fact that he had seen the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating circumstances.

“I see him myself,” he said; “I see him coming along by the Crab-tree Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I’d just been t’ hev a pint — it was half after ten i’ the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg’lar as the clock — and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, ‘You’ll get a bit o’ barley to-day, Knowles,’ I says, ‘if you look about you’; and then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles’on road, and just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i’ top-boots coming along on a bald-faced hoss — I wish I may never stir if I didn’t. And I stood still till he come up, and I says, ‘Good morning, sir,’ I says, for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he was a this-country man; so I says, ‘Good morning, sir: it ‘ll ‘old hup for the barley this morning, I think. There’ll be a bit got hin, if we’ve good luck.’ And he says, ‘Eh, ye may be raight, there’s noo tallin’,’ he says, and I knowed by that” — here Mr. Casson gave a wink — “as he didn’t come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he’d think me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks the right language.”

“The right language!” said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. “You’re about as near the right language as a pig’s squeaking is like a tune played on a key-bugle.”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. “I should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to know what’s the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster.”

“Aye, aye, man,” said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation, “you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth’s goat says ba-a-a, it’s all right — it ‘ud be unnatural for it to make any other noise.”

The rest of the party being Loamsnire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question, which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, “never went boozin’ with that set at Casson’s, a-sittin’ soakin’ in drink, and looking as wise as a lot o’ cod-fish wi’ red faces.”

It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that Mrs. Poyser’s thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting, in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony, followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to herself, “I shouldna wonder if he’s come about that man as is a-going to take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay. But Poyser’s a fool if he does.”

Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire’s visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always remained imaginary.

“Good-day, Mrs. Poyser,” said the old squire, peering at her with his short-sighted eyes — a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser observed, “allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he was going to dab his finger-nail on you.”

However, she said, “Your servant, sir,” and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation.

“Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?”

“Yes, sir; he’s only i’ the rick-yard. I’ll send for him in a minute, if you’ll please to get down and step in.”

“Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter; but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your opinion too.”

“Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in,” said Mrs. Poyser, as they entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty’s curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round furtively.

“What a fine old kitchen this is!” said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. “And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know, beyond any on the estate.”

“Well, sir, since you’re fond of ‘em, I should be glad if you’d let a bit o’ repairs be done to ‘em, for the boarding’s i’ that state as we’re like to be eaten up wi’ rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan’ up to your knees i’ water in’t, if you like to go down; but perhaps you’d rather believe my words. Won’t you please to sit down, sir?”

“Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter,” said the squire, looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. “I think I see the door open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your cream and butter. I don’t expect that Mrs. Satchell’s cream and butter will bear comparison with yours.”

“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure. It’s seldom I see other folks’s butter, though there’s some on it as one’s no need to see — the smell’s enough.”

“Ah, now this I like,” said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. “I’m sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I’ll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I’ve been looking at your wife’s beautiful dairy — the best manager in the parish, is she not?”

Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of “pitching.” As he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.

“Will you please to take this chair, sir?” he said, lifting his father’s arm-chair forward a little: “you’ll find it easy.”

“No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs,” said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. “Do you know, Mrs. Poyser — sit down, pray, both of you — I’ve been far from contented, for some time, with Mrs. Satchell’s dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have.”

“Indeed, sir, I can’t speak to that,” said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought; she wasn’t going to sit down, as if she’d give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.

“And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I’m tired of having a farm on my own hands — nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement.

“If I’m called upon to speak, sir,” said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, “you know better than me; but I don’t see what the Chase Farm is t’ us — we’ve cumber enough wi’ our own farm. Not but what I’m glad to hear o’ anybody respectable coming into the parish; there’s some as ha’ been brought in as hasn’t been looked on i’ that character.”

“You’re likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure you — such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I’m going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his.”

“Indeed, sir, if it’s anything t’ our advantage, it’ll be the first offer o’ the sort I’ve heared on. It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore it’s brought to ‘em.”

“The fact is, Poyser,” said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser’s theory of worldly prosperity, “there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle’s purpose — indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I’m thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures, you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife’s management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land.”

Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up — apparently absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife’s view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel, any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So, after a few moments’ silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, “What dost say?”

Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.

“Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o’ your corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won’t be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I’ll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands, either for love or money; and there’s nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on’y other folks’s love o’ theirselves, and the money as is to go into other folks’s pockets. I know there’s them as is born t’ own the land, and them as is born to sweat on’t” — here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little — “and I know it’s christened folks’s duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood ‘ull bear it; but I’ll not make a martyr o’ myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi’ butter a-coming in’t, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself.”

“No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not,” said the squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion, “you must not overwork yourself; but don’t you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?”

“Aye, that’s true,” said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question.

“I daresay,” said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair — “I daresay it’s true for men as sit i’ th’ chimney-corner and make believe as everything’s cut wi’ ins an’ outs to fit int’ everything else. If you could make a pudding wi’ thinking o’ the batter, it ‘ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk ‘ull be wanted constant? What’s to make me sure as the house won’t be put o’ board wage afore we’re many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o’ nights wi’ twenty gallons o’ milk on my mind — and Dingall ‘ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we’re obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy ‘em, and lose half of ‘em wi’ the measles. And there’s the fetching and carrying, as ‘ud be welly half a day’s work for a man an’ hoss — that’s to be took out o’ the profits, I reckon? But there’s folks ‘ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.”