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<h2> Chapter XXXIII </h2>
<h3> More Links </h3>
<p>THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by
without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and nuts
were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the farm-houses,
and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods behind the Chase,
and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour under the dark
low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant basketfuls of
purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its lads and lasses
leaving or seeking service and winding along between the yellow hedges,
with their bundles under their arms. But though Michaelmas was come, Mr.
Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to the Chase Farm, and the old
squire, after all, had been obliged to put in a new bailiff. It was known
throughout the two parishes that the squire's plan had been frustrated
because the Poysers had refused to be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's
outbreak was discussed in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only
heightened by frequent repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from
Egypt was comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy
was nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had
heard a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception
of the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any
quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure of
laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his
mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs.
Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage that
she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips.</p>
<p>"No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular
justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not
countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I have
taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good influence I
have over the old man."</p>
<p>"Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs.
Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers. And
she says such sharp things too."</p>
<p>"Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original in
her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with
proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig—that
he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now
that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence."</p>
<p>"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of the
farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine.</p>
<p>"Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne
is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them out.
But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must move
heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are must
not go."</p>
<p>"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs.
Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little
shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age.
It's only women who have a right to live as long as that."</p>
<p>"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,"
said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.</p>
<p>Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice to
quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"—one
of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really too
hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is
not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects
under that hard condition.</p>
<p>Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser
household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in
Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she seemed
as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes," but she
thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite eagerly,
without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted to go out
now—indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt's
putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the
least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she had set her
heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady's maid
must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between
them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty
seemed to be in better spirits and to talk more than at other times,
though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or any other admirer happened
to pay a visit there.</p>
<p>Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave way
to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's
letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again—not without
dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the
house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser for
a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might presently
tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step that he
knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you been?" Adam
was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the changed look
there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw her smiling as if
she were pleased to see him—looking the same as ever at a first
glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen her in
before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at her again and
again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a change: the
cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she had ever done
of late, but there was something different in her eyes, in the expression
of her face, in all her movements, Adam thought—something harder,
older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he said to himself, "that's allays
likely. It's because she's had her first heartache. But she's got a spirit
to bear up under it. Thank God for that."</p>
<p>As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see him—turning
up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to understand that she
was glad for him to come—and going about her work in the same
equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe that her
feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had imagined
in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able to think of
her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would marry her as
a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was, as he had
sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be—her heart
was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she knew to
have a serious love for her.</p>
<p>Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his
interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a
sensible man to behave as he did—falling in love with a girl who
really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing
imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after
she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a
patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him.
But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to
find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible
men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see
through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine
themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper
occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every respect—indeed,
so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden ladies in their
neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then
in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was one. For my own part,
however, I respect him none the less—nay, I think the deep love he
had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose
inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of
his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness,
pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its wondrous harmonies
searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life
where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past
and present in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with
all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the
toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or
resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy,
blending your present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with
all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought
upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the
liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her
lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say
more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul
that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the
thought that prompted them. It is more than a woman's love that moves us
in a woman's eyes—it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come
near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the
dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness—by
their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The
noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty (it
is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed
who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is
often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the
beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to
continue for a long time to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are
ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.</p>
<p>Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for
Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of
knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him. He
only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the
spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him. How
could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her? He created the
mind he believed in out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender.</p>
<p>The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards
Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;
they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position ought
to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of playfulness
about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger and had
prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As the new
promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy began to
die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that she liked him
best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the friendship which
had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days to come, and he
would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods, but would like
them better because they were Arthur's. For this new promise of happiness
following so quickly on the shock of pain had an intoxicating effect on
the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to much hardship and
moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy lot after all? It
seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it
impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his mind to offer him a
share in the business, without further condition than that he should
continue to give his energies to it and renounce all thought of having a
separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam had made
himself too necessary to be parted with, and his headwork was so much more
important to Burge than his skill in handicraft that his having the
management of the woods made little difference in the value of his
services; and as to the bargains about the squire's timber, it would be
easy to call in a third person. Adam saw here an opening into a broadening
path of prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing
ever since he was a lad: he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall,
or a factory, for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge's
building business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great
tree. So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his
mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be
shocked when I say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans
for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the
cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite
scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of
iron girder. What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our
love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the
air, exalting its power by a subtle presence.</p>
<p>Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his
mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very soon,
and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps be more
contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he would not
be hasty—he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it had had
time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church, he would go
to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he knew, would like
it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if Hetty's eyes
brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had to fill his
mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of late must not
hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home and told his
mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by almost crying
for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual because of this
good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for the coming change by
talking of the old house being too small for them all to go on living in
it always.</p>
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