Adam Bede
jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end of
the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and
nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps
jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However it
was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious
brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout
and handle.
“Did ever anybody see the like?” she said, with a suddenly lowered
tone, after a moment’s bewildered glance round the room. “The jugs are
bewitched, _I_ think. It’s them nasty glazed handles—they slip o’er the
finger like a snail.”
“Why, thee’st let thy own whip fly i’ thy face,” said her husband, who
had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.
“It’s all very fine to look on and grin,” rejoined Mrs. Poyser; “but
there’s times when the crockery seems alive an’ flies out o’ your hand
like a bird. It’s like the glass, sometimes, ’ull crack as it stands.
What is to be broke _will_ be broke, for I never dropped a thing i’ my
life for want o’ holding it, else I should never ha’ kept the crockery
all these ’ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
Whativer do you mean by coming down i’ that way, and making one think
as there’s a ghost a-walking i’ th’ house?”
A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused,
less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than
by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt. The
little minx had found a black gown of her aunt’s, and pinned it close
round her neck to look like Dinah’s, had made her hair as flat as she
could, and had tied on one of Dinah’s high-crowned borderless net caps.
The thought of Dinah’s pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the
sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise
enough to see them replaced by Hetty’s round rosy cheeks and coquettish
dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping
their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up
from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser went into the
back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter
measure, which had some chance of being free from bewitchment.
“Why, Hetty, lass, are ye turned Methodist?” said Mr. Poyser, with that
comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout
people. “You must pull your face a deal longer before you’ll do for
one; mustna she, Adam? How come you put them things on, eh?”
“Adam said he liked Dinah’s cap and gown better nor my clothes,” said
Hetty, sitting down demurely. “He says folks looks better in ugly
clothes.”
“Nay, nay,” said Adam, looking at her admiringly; “I only said they
seemed to suit Dinah. But if I’d said you’d look pretty in ’em, I
should ha’ said nothing but what was true.”
“Why, thee thought’st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?” said Mr. Poyser to
his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. “Thee look’dst as
scared as scared.”
“It little sinnifies how I looked,” said Mrs. Poyser; “looks ’ull mend
no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I’m sorry you’ve to
wait so long for your ale, but it’s coming in a minute. Make yourself
at home wi’ th’ cold potatoes: I know you like ’em. Tommy, I’ll send
you to bed this minute, if you don’t give over laughing. What is there
to laugh at, I should like to know? I’d sooner cry nor laugh at the
sight o’ that poor thing’s cap; and there’s them as ’ud be better if
they could make theirselves like her i’ more ways nor putting on her
cap. It little becomes anybody i’ this house to make fun o’ my sister’s
child, an’ her just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part
wi’ her. An’ I know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an’ I was to
be laid up i’ my bed, an’ the children was to die—as there’s no knowing
but what they will—an’ the murrain was to come among the cattle again,
an’ everything went to rack an’ ruin, I say we might be glad to get
sight o’ Dinah’s cap again, wi’ her own face under it, border or no
border. For she’s one o’ them things as looks the brightest on a rainy
day, and loves you the best when you’re most i’ need on’t.”
Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, was aware that nothing would be so likely to
expel the comic as the terrible. Tommy, who was of a susceptible
disposition, and very fond of his mother, and who had, besides, eaten
so many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual,
was so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible
future that he began to cry; and the good-natured father, indulgent to
all weaknesses but those of negligent farmers, said to Hetty, “You’d
better take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see
’em.”
Hetty went upstairs again, and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable
diversion; for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap, which could
not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser; and then followed a
discussion on the secrets of good brewing, the folly of stinginess in
“hopping,” and the doubtful economy of a farmer’s making his own malt.
Mrs. Poyser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with weight
on these subjects that by the time supper was ended, the ale-jug
refilled, and Mr. Poyser’s pipe alight she was once more in high good
humour, and ready, at Adam’s request, to fetch the broken
spinning-wheel for his inspection.
“Ah,” said Adam, looking at it carefully, “here’s a nice bit o’ turning
wanted. It’s a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in
the village and do it there, for I’ve no convenence for turning at
home. If you’ll send it to Mr. Burge’s shop i’ the morning, I’ll get it
done for you by Wednesday. I’ve been turning it over in my mind,” he
continued, looking at Mr. Poyser, “to make a bit more convenence at
home for nice jobs o’ cabinet-making. I’ve always done a deal at such
little things in odd hours, and they’re profitable, for there’s more
workmanship nor material in ’em. I look for me and Seth to get a little
business for ourselves i’ that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as
’ull take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get
orders for round about.”
Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step
towards Adam’s becoming a “master-man,” and Mrs. Poyser gave her
approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to
be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in
the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own
dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm
evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could
see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up
to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for
at this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being
sleepy at five o’clock in the morning.
“I shall take a step farther,” said Adam, “and go on to see Mester
Massey, for he wasn’t at church yesterday, and I’ve not seen him for a
week past. I’ve never hardly known him to miss church before.”
“Aye,” said Mr. Poyser, “we’ve heared nothing about him, for it’s the
boys’ hollodays now, so we can give you no account.”
“But you’ll niver think o’ going there at this hour o’ the night?” said
Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting.
“Oh, Mester Massey sits up late,” said Adam. “An’ the night-school’s
not over yet. Some o’ the men don’t come till late—they’ve got so far
to walk. And Bartle himself’s never in bed till it’s gone eleven.”
“I wouldna have him to live wi’ me, then,” said Mrs. Poyser,
“a-dropping candle-grease about, as you’re like to tumble down o’ the
floor the first thing i’ the morning.”
“Aye, eleven o’clock’s late—it’s late,” said old Martin. “I ne’er sot
up so i’ _my_ life, not to say as it warna a marr’in’, or a
christenin’, or a wake, or th’ harvest supper. Eleven o’clock’s late.”
“Why, I sit up till after twelve often,” said Adam, laughing, “but it
isn’t t’ eat and drink extry, it’s to work extry. Good-night, Mrs.
Poyser; good-night, Hetty.”
Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp
with currant-juice; but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large
palm that was held out to them, and said, “Come again, come again!”
“Aye, think o’ that now,” said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the
causeway. “Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye’ll not find
many men o’ six-an’ twenty as ’ull do to put i’ the shafts wi’ him. If
you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you’ll ride i’ your own
spring-cart some day, I’ll be your warrant.”
Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, so her uncle did
not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him. To
ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.
Chapter XXI
The Night-School and the Schoolmaster
Bartle Massey’s was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a
common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it
in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had
his hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless
window, that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks,
lighted by thin dips.
When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey
merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had
not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full
of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in
Hetty’s presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was
over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It
was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he
knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle
Massey’s handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster’s head, by way of
keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs
of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above
the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out
of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had
long ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think
how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native
element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the
old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had
turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a
well-seasoned meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as
familiar as the scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent
to it, and even in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a
momentary stirring of the old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough
men painfully holding pen or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly
labouring through their reading lesson.
The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster’s
desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known
it only by seeing Bartle Massey’s face as he looked over his
spectacles, which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not
requiring them for present purposes. The face wore its mildest
expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute
angle of compassionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed
with a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a
helpful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression was the
more interesting because the schoolmaster’s nose, an irregular aquiline
twisted a little on one side, had rather a formidable character; and
his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension which always impresses