Adam Bede
led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Dinah
with Totty in her arms—all going to bed by twilight, like the birds.
Mrs. Poyser, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay;
just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a
moment their light regular breathing.
“Come, Hetty, get to bed,” said Mr. Poyser, in a soothing tone, as he
himself turned to go upstairs. “You didna mean to be late, I’ll be
bound, but your aunt’s been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench,
good-night.”
Chapter XV
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