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

donna know it, my wench. It wouldn’t be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i’ life. I’d like you to stay wi’ us till you’ve got a good husband: you’re my own niece, and I wouldn’t have you go to service, though it was a gentleman’s house, as long as I’ve got a home for you.”

Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.

“I like the needlework,” said Hetty, “and I should get good wages.”

“Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi’ you?” said Mr. Poyser, not noticing Hetty’s further argument. “You mustna mind that, my wench—she does it for your good. She wishes you well; an’ there isn’t many aunts as are no kin to you ’ud ha’ done by you as she has.”

“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 antennæ.

“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’out 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 towards 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.