Adam Bede by George Eliot (ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📖

of gaiety she did what she had very often done before—stuck the rose in her hair a little above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam’s face was slightly shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hetty’s love of finery was just the thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to her.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase; they’ve mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i’ their hair, but somehow I don’t like to see ’em; they allays put me i’ mind o’ the painted women outside the shows at Treddles’on Fair. What can a woman have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like yours? If a woman’s young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris looks very nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a woman’s face doesna want flowers; it’s almost like a flower itself. I’m sure yours is.”

“Oh, very well,” said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the rose out of her hair. “I’ll put one o’ Dinah’s caps on when we go in, and you’ll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can take the pattern.”

“Nay, nay, I don’t want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah’s. I daresay it’s a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as it was nonsense for her to dress different t’ other people; but I never rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and then I thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th ‘acorn-cup fits th’ acorn, and I shouldn’t like to see her so well without it. But you’ve got another sort o’ face; I’d have you just as you are now, without anything t’ interfere with your own looks. It’s like when a man’s singing a good tune—you don’t want t’ hear bells tinkling and interfering wi’ the sound.”

He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly. He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should come over this evening’s happiness. For the world he would not have spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blest with the right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with very little at present. So he took up the basket of currants once more, and they went on towards the house.

The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Adam had been in the garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it, after dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering, amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many “whups” from Tim the ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek, intelligent heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were likely to rush wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was come back from the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the house-place, Mr. Poyser was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached “shop-rag” that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past twelve o’clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for Alick and his companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about to-morrow morning’s work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was at hand to hear it.

“Well, Adam, I’m glad to see ye,” said Mr. Poyser. “What! ye’ve been helping Hetty to gether the curran’s, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye down. Why, it’s pretty near a three-week since y’ had your supper with us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I’m glad ye’re come.”

“Hetty,” said Mrs. Poyser, as she looked into the basket of currants to see if the fruit was fine, “run upstairs and send Molly down. She’s putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th’ ale, for Nancy’s busy yet i’ the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her run away from you along wi’ Tommy for, and stuff herself wi’ fruit as she can’t eat a bit o’ good victual?”

This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser was strict in adherence to her own rules of propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not to spoil—just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must not try to balk another of a customer.

Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to her aunt’s question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and Tommy and bring them in to supper.

Soon they were all seated—the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle. Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest pineapple.

“What a time that gell is drawing th’ ale, to be sure!” said Mrs. Poyser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. “I think she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there’s nothing you can’t believe o’ them wenches: they’ll set the empty kettle o’ the fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils.”

“She’s drawin’ for the men too,” said Mr. Poyser. “Thee shouldst ha’ told her to bring our jug up first.”

“Told her?” said Mrs. Poyser. “Yes, I might spend all the wind i’ my body, an’ take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything as their own sharpness wonna tell ’em. Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you’re i’ the right not. It spoils the flavour o’ the chine, to my thinking. It’s poor eating where the flavour o’ the meat lies i’ the cruets. There’s folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t’ hide it.”

Mrs. Poyser’s attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly, carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full of ale or small beer—an interesting example of the prehensile power possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly’s mouth was rather wider open than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her mistress’s eye.

“Molly, I niver knew your equils—to think o’ your poor mother as is a widow, an’ I took you wi’ as good as no character, an’ the times an’ times I’ve told you....”

Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her cans—caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious “Ello!” from Mr. Poyser, who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.

“There you go!” resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the fragments of pottery. “It’s what I told you ’ud come, over and over again; and there’s your month’s wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug as I’ve had i’ the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to’t before; but the crockery you’ve broke sin’ here in th’ house you’ve been ’ud make a parson swear—God forgi’ me for saying so—an’ if it had been boiling wort out o’ the copper, it ’ud ha’ been the same, and you’d ha’ been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there’s no knowing but what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody ’ud think you’d got the St. Vitus’s Dance, to see the things you’ve throwed down. It’s a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it’s neither seeing nor hearing as ’ull make much odds to you—anybody ’ud think you war case-hardened.”

Poor Molly’s tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick’s legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser, opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.

“Ah,” she went on, “you’ll do no good wi’ crying an’ making more wet to wipe up. It’s all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there’s nobody no call to break anything if they’ll only go the right way to work. But wooden folks had need ha’ wooden things t’ handle. And here must I take the brown-and-white jug, as it’s niver been used three times this year, and go down i’ the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid up wi’ inflammation....”

Mrs. Poyser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white 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