 CHAPTER V THE RECTOR Before twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the water lay in deep gutters on the side of the gravel walks in the garden of Broxton Parsonage. The great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate stemmed border flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy morning. Because it was nearly time, hay harvest should begin, and instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded. But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr. Irvine would not have been in the dining room playing a chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that dining room and show you the reverent Adolphus Irvine, Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest church reformer would have found difficult to look sour. We will enter very softly and stand still in the doorway without awaking the glossy brown setter who is stretched across the hearth with her two puppies beside her or the pug who is dozing with his black muzzle aloft like a sleepy president. The room is a large and lofty one with an ample maligned orial window at one end. The walls you see are new and not yet painted, but the furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty, and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the large dining table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls. But on this cloth there is a massive silver waiter which at the canter of water on it of the same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard with a coat of arms conspicuous in their center. You suspect at once that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth, and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irvine had a finely cut nostril and upper lip, but at present we can only see that he has a broad, flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward and tied behind with a black ribbon, a bit of conservatism in costume which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his mother, a beautiful aged brunette whose rich-toned complexion is well set off by the complex wrappings of pure white camber and lace about her head and neck. She is, as erect in her cumbly embone point, as a statue of cerries, and her dark face with its delicate aquiline nose, firm, proud mouth, and small, intense black eye is so keen and sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the chessmen, and imagine her telling your fortune. The small, brown hand, with which she is lifting her queen, is laden with pearls, diamonds, and turquoises, and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the morning, but it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so. She is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their right divine and never met with anyone so absurd as to question it. There, Daphon, tell me what that is, says the magnificent old lady as she deposits her queen very quietly, and folds her arms. I should be sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings. Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before we began. You've not won that game by fair means now, so don't pretend it. Yes, yes. That's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors. But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board to show you more clearly what a foolish move you made with the pawn. Come, shall I give you another chance? No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience now it's clearing up. We must go and plash up the mud a little mustn't we do know? This was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. But I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholder's funeral just as I was going before. It's of no use, child, she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of her worst headaches this morning. Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same. She's never too ill to care about that. If you know how much a human speech is mere purposeless impulse or habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection had been made and had received the same kind of answer many hundred times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irvine's sister Anne had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies who take a long time to dress in the morning have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters. But while Mr. Irvine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, if you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you if you are at liberty. Let him be shown in here, said Mrs. Irvine, taking up her knitting. I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes would be dirty, but seated he wipes them, Carol. In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential bows, which, however, were far from conciliating pug who gave a sharp bark and ran across the room to reconnoiter the stranger's legs while the two puppies were guarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf and ribbed worsted stockings. From a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over them in great enjoyment. In the meantime Mr. Irvine turned round to his chair and said, well, Joshua, anything to matter at Heyslope, that you've come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind dogs. Give them a friendly kick. Hear, pug, you rascal. It is very pleasant to see some men turn around, pleasant as a sudden rush of warm air in winter or the flash of firelight in the chilled dusk. Mr. Irvine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to his mother, that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the face itself. The lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face might have been called jolly. But that was not the right word for its mixture of bonnemy and distinction. Thank you, reverence, answered Mr. Rann, endeavoring to look unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the puppies. I'll stand, if you please, as more be coming. I hope I see you and Mrs. Irvine well, and Mrs. Irvine, and Mrs. Anne, I hope, as well as you as well. Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats us younger people hollow. But what's the matter? Well, sir, I had come to Brock's, on to deliver some works, and I thought it, but right to call and let you know the goings on as there's been in the village, such as I had a scene in my time. And I've lived in it, man and boy, 60 years come, St. Thomas, and collected Easter Jews from Mr. Blick before your reverence come into the parish, and been on the rigging and every bell, and the digging every grave, and sung in the choir long before Bartle Marcy came from nobody knows where, with his counter singing and his fine anthems, and his puts everybody out by himself, one taken up after another like a sheep, a bleak, and a default. I know what belongs to being a parish clerk, and I know, as I should be wanting in respect to your reverence and church and king, if I was to allow such goings on without speaking, I was took by surprise and knowed nothing on it beforehand, and I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd lost my tools. I had slept more than four hours this night as it passed and gone, and then it was nothing but a nightmare as tired me worse and awakened. Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been in the church again? Thieves? No, sir, and yet, as I may say, it is thieves, and a thief in the church, too. It's domestic, as is like to get up a hand in the parish, if your reverence and his honor squired on us on, don't I think well to say the word and forbid it? Not as I dictate into you, sir. I'm not forgetting myself so far as to be wise above my betters. However, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there. But what I've got to say, I say, as the young Methodist woman, as is Mr. Poyers, was a preaching and a praying on the green last night, as sure as I must stand in the four-year reverence now. Preaching on the green, said Mr. Irwin, looking surprised but quite serene. What, that pale young woman I've seen at Poyers. I saw she was a Methodist or a Quaker or something of that sort by her dress. But I didn't know she was a preacher. It's a true word, as I say, sir, rejoined Mr. Man, compressing his mouth into a semi-circular form and pausing long enough to indicate three notes of exclamation. She preached on the green last night, and she laid old of Chad's best as the girl benefits well he ever sinned. Well, Bessie Crange is a hearty-looking lass. I daresay she'll come around again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits? No, sir, I cannot say as they did. But there's no knowing what will come if we're to have such preaching as that going on every week. There'll be no living in the village. For their Methodists make folks believers. They take a mug of drink extra and make themselves a bit comfortable. They'll have to go to Elford, sure as they're born. I'm not a tippling man nor a drunkard. Nobody could say it on me. But I like extra quarter-easter, a Christmas time. And it's natural when we're going around to singing and folks offer you for nothing. Or when I'm a collectin' the dues, and I like a point with my pipe, and enably chat at Mr. Caston's now and then. For I was brought up in a church, thank God. I've been a Paris clerk this two and thirty years. I should know what the church religion is. Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done? Well, your reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again, the young woman. She's well enough if she'd let her own preachin' as I hear she's goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Poise's own niece in her. I don't wish to say was always disrespectful of the family of the hallfarm as I measured for shoes. Little and big, will he ever since, I've been a shoemaker. Well, there's that will-maskery, sir, as is the rampageous method it says can be, and I make no doubt it was him who stirred up the young woman to preach last night. And he'll be bringin' other folks to preach from trellis on if it's coming cut a bit. And I think as he should be let know, as he is in the have the makin' and amending the church carts and implements, let noone stay in that house as yard as a squire donethones. Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew anyone come to preach on the green before. Why should you think they'll come again? The Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hay Slope where there's only a handful of laborers, too tired to listen to them. They might as well go and preach on the Benton Hills. Will-maskery is no preacher himself, I think. They, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together with our book. He'll be struck fast like a cow where we're clay, but he's got tongue enough to speak disrespectful about neighbors. For he said, as I was blind Pharisee, I use in the Bible that way to find nicknames for folks as are his elders and betters, and what's worse, he's been heard to say very unbecoming words about your reverence, for I could bring them as it's where he called you a dumb dog and an idle shepherd. You'll forgive me for sayin' such things over again. Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken. Will-maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his wife, they told me. Now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he interferes with his neighbors and creates any disturbance, I shall think of my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about trifles, as if we thought the church was in danger because Will-maskery lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people in the green. We must live and let live, Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty as parish clerk and sextant, as well as you've always done it, and making those capital-thick boots for your neighbors, and things won't go far wrong in Heyslope, depend on it. Your evidence is very good to say so, and I'm sensible as you're not living it a parish, there's more upon my shoulders. To be sure, and you must mind and not lower the church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua, I shall trust to your good sense. Now to take no notice at all of what Will-maskery says either about you or me. You and your neighbors can go on taking your pot of beer soberly when you've done your day's work like good churchmen, and if Will-maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go to a prayer meeting at Tradleston instead, let him, let's know business of yours, as long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And that's the people saying a few idle words about us. We must not mind that any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks calling about it. Will-maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon and does his wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does that he must be less alone. Ah, sir, but when he comes to church he sits and shakes his head and looks as sour as an oxy when we're a singing, as I should like to fetch him a wrap across the chow, God forgive me, and miss Irwin, and your reverence too for speaking as I will for you. And he said as our Christmas singing was no better nor the crackling of thorns under a pot. Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden heads, you know it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in haste up brown to his opinion while you go on singing as well as you do. Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach to hear the scripture misused that way. I know as much of the words of the Bible as he does, and could say to Psalms right through my sleep if you were to pinch me, but I know better nor to take him to say in my own way with, I might as well take the sacrament cup home and use it as meals. That's a very sensible remark of you, Joshua. But as I said before, while Mr Irwin was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance hall, and Joshua ran, moved hastily aside from the doorway, to make room for someone who paused there and said in a ringing tenor voice, Godson Arthur, may he come in. Come in, come in, Godson, Mrs Irwin answered in the deep half masculine tone, which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress with his right arm in a sling, whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing interjections and hand shakings and how I use, mingled with joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine members of the family, which tells us that the visitor is on the best terms with the visitor. The young gentleman was Arthur Donathon, known in Heyslope variously as the young squire, the heir, and the captain. He was only a captain in the Lone, Shear, Militia, but to the Heyslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's Regalist. The unshun them as the planet Jupiter outshines to Milky Way. If you want to know more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some tawny, whiskered, brown-locked, clear, complexioned, young Englishman, whom you have met within a foreign town and have been proud of as a fellow, countryman, well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as if he could deliver well from the left shoulder and floor his man, I will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the difference of costume and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and glow-top boots. Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donathon said, But don't let me interrupt Joshua's business, he has something to say. Humbly you're begging your honours pardon, said Joshua Bowinglow. There was one thing I had to say to his reverence as other things drove out my head. Outwarded Joshua quickly, said Mr Erwin. But linhaang sir, you had not erowed as fire-speeds dead drowned this morning, or more like overnight, in the Willowbrook, again at the bridge, right-foot house, I exclaimed both the gentleman at once as if they were a good deal interested in the information. And said bug- views spin to me this morning, and he wished me to tell your reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular- till our father's grave to be dug by the wiped on because his mother sat right on it on a kind of a dream she had and they had come themselves to ask you but they got so much to see after with the crown and that and the mothers took on so and wants to make sure the spot for fear somebody else should take it and if your reverence sees well and good I'll send my boy to tell him as soon as I get home and that's why I make bold to trouble you with is honor being present to be sure Joshua to be sure they shall have it I'll ride round to Adam myself and see him send your boy however to say that they shall have the grave that's anything should happen to detain me and now good morning Joshua go into the kitchen and have some ale poor old Thais said Mr. Irvine when Joshua was gone I'm afraid the drink helped the Brooke to drown him I should have been glad for the load to have been taken off my friend Adam's shoulders in a less painful way that fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the last five or six years he's our regular Trump is Adam said captain Donna's one when I was a little fellow and Adam was a strapping lad of 15 and taught me carpenting I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan I would make Adam my grand vassia and I believe now he should bear the exaltation as well as any poor wise man in the eastern story if ever I live to be a large a good man instead of a poor devil with a mortgage allowance of pocket money I'll have Adam for my right hand he shall manage my woods for me for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any man I've ever met with and I know he would make twice the money of them that my grandfather does with that miserable old satchel to manage who understands no more about timber than an old carp I've mentioned the subject to my grandfather once or twice but for some reason or other he has a dislike to Adam and I can do nothing but come your reverence are you for a ride with me it's splendid out of doors now we can go to Adams together if you like but I want to call at the hall farm on my way look at the quelps poison is keeping for me you must stay and have lunch first Arthur said Mrs. Irwin it's nearly two Carol will bring it in directly I want to go to the hall farm to Mr. Irwin to take another look at a little Methodist who is staying there Joshua tells me she was preaching on the green last night oh by Jove said captain turn toward laughing why she looks as quiet as a mouse there's something rather striking about her though I positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her she was sitting stooping over her suing in the sunshine outside the house when I rode up and called out without noticing that she was a stranger his Martin Poiser at home I declare when she got up and looked at me and just said he's in the house I believe I go and call him I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her she looked like st. Catherine in a quake address it's a type of face one rarely sees among our common people I should like to see the young woman Dauphin said Mrs. Irwin make her come here on some pretext or other I don't know how I can manage that mother it will hardly do for me to patronize the Methodist preacher even if she would consent to be patronized by an idle shepherd as will masquerade calls me you should have come in a little sooner Arthur to hear Joshua's denunciation of his neighbor will masquerade the old fellow wants me to excommunicate the wheel right and then deliver him over to the civil arm that is to say to your grandfather to be turned out of house and yard if I chose to interfere in this business now I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as the Methodist need desire to publish in the next number of their magazine it wouldn't take me much trouble to persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bullheaded fellows that they would be doing an acceptable service at a church by hunting will masquerade the village with rope ends and pitchforks and then when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after their exertions I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last 30 years it's really incident of the man though to call you an idle shepherd in a dumb dog said Mrs. Irwin I should be inclined to check him a little there you're too easy tempered often why mother you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of will masquerade besides I'm not so sure they are aspersions I am a lazy fellow and get terribly heavy in my saddle not to mention that I'm always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar so that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asked me for sixpence those poor lean cobblers who think that they can help to regenerate mankind by setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they have begun their day's work may well have a poor opinion of me but come let us have a lunch in isn't Kate coming to lunch miss Irwin told Bridget to take our lunch upstairs said Carol she can't leave miss Anne oh very well tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see miss Anne presently you can use your right arm quite well now Arthur Mr. Irwin continued observing that Captain Dunnison had taken his arm out of the sling yes pretty well but goodwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for some time to come I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment though in the beginning of August it is a desperately dull business being shut up at the chase in the summer months when one can neither hunt nor shoot so as to make oneself pleasantly sleepy in the evening however we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July my grandfather has given me carte blanche for once and I promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion the world shall not see the grand epoch of my majority twice I think I shall have a lofty throne for you grand mama or rather to one in the lawn and another in the ballroom that you may sit and look down upon us like Olympian goddess I mean to bring out my best brocade that I wore at your christening 20 years ago said Mrs. Irwin yeah I think I shall like your poor mother flitting about in her white dress which looked to me almost like a shroud that very day and it was her shroud only three months after and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too she had set her heart on that sweet so thank God you take after your mother's family Arthur if you had been a puny wiry yellow baby I wouldn't have stood grandmother to you I should have been sure you would turn out a donathan but you were such a broad faced broad chested loud screaming rascal I knew you were every inch of you a tragic but you might have been a little too hasty there mother said Mr. Irwin smiling don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups one of them was the very image of its mother but it had two or three of its father's tricks not withstanding nature is clever enough to cheat even you mother nonsense child nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff you'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by the outsides if I don't like a man's looks depend upon it I shall never like him I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable any more than I want to taste dishes that look good disagreeable if they make me shudder at the first glance I say take them away an ugly pig is your fishy eye now makes me feel quite ill it's like a bad smell talking of eyes said Captain Donalcorn that reminds me that I've got a book I meant to bring you Grandma it came down in a parcel from London the other day I know you were fond of queer wizard like stories it's a volume of poems lyrical ballads most of them seem to be twaddling stuff but the first is in a different style the ancient Mariner is the title I can hardly make head or tail of it is a story but it's a strange striking thing I'll send it over to you and there are some other books that you may like Irwin pamphlets about anti-nominism and evangelicalism whatever they may be I can't think what the fellow means by sending such things to me I've written to him to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on anything that ends with ism well I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself but I may as well look at the pamphlets they let one see what is going on I have a little matter to attend to us or continue to Mr. Irwin rising to leave the room and then I shall be ready to go out with you the little matter that Mr. Irwin had to attend to tuck him up the stone staircase part of the house was very old and made him pause before a door at which he knocked gently come in said a woman's voice and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that Miss Kate the tin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside would not have had light enough for any sort of work for any other sort of work than knitting which lay under the little table near her but at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light sponging the aching head that lay under pillow with fresh vinegar it was a small face that of the poor sufferer perhaps it had once been pretty but now it was worn and sallow Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered don't speak to her she can't bear to be spoken to today and eyes were closed and her brow contracted as if from intense pain Mr. Irwin went to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worthwhile to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that he lingered a moment looking at her and then turned away and left the room treading very gently he had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots will not think this last detail insignificant and Mr. Irwin sisters as any person of the family within ten miles of Brockston could have testified were such stupid uninteresting women it was quite a pity handsome clever Mrs. Irwin should have had such commonplace daughters that fine old lady herself was worth driving ten miles to see any day her beauty or well preserved faculties and her old fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in turn with the king's health the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses the news from Egypt and Lord Daisy's lawsuit which was fretting poor lady Daisy to death but no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss Irwins except the poor people in Brockston village who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine and spoke of them vaguely as the gentle folks if anyone had asked old Job Domelo who gave him his flannel jacket he would have answered the gentle folks last winter and widow steam dwelt much under virtues of the stuff the gentle folks gave her for her cough under this name too they were used to great effect as a means of taming refractory children so the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanors and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to hit farmer Britain's ducks but for all who saw them through a less mythical medium the Miss Irwins were quite superfluous existences in artistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect Miss Anne indeed if her chronic headaches could have been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love might have had some romantic interest attached to her but no such story had either been known or invented concerning her and the general impression was quite in accordance with the fact that both the sisters were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer. Nevertheless to speak paradoxically the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic and in other ways to play no small part in the tragedy of life and if that handsome generous blooded clergyman the reverent Adolphus Irwin had not had these two hopelessly made in sisters his lot would have been shaped quite differently he would very likely have taken a commonly wife and his youth and now when his hair was getting gray under the powder would have had tall sons and blooming daughters such possessions in turn as men commonly think will repay them for all the labor they take under the sun as it was having with all his three livings no more than 700 a year and seeking no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister not to reckon a second sister who was usually spoken of without any adjective in such lady like ease as became their birth and habits and at the same time providing for family of his own he remained you see at the age of eight and forty a bachelor not making any merit of that renunciation but saying laughingly if anyone alluded to it that he had made an excuse for many indulgences which a wife would never have allowed him and perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous for his was one of those large hearted sweet blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought epicurean if you will with no enthusiasm no self-scorching sense of duty but yet as you have seen of a sufficiently subtle moral fiber to have an unwearing tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering it was his large hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her daughters which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting fondness towards himself he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults see the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you walk by his side in familiar talk or look at him in his home and the figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level or even in the eyes of a critical neighbor who thinks of him as an embodied system or opinion rather than as a man Mr. Rowe the traveling preacher stationed at Treadleston had included Mr. Irvine in a general statement concerning the church clergy in the surrounding district whom he described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life hunting and shooting and adorning their houses asking what shall we eat and what shall we drink and wherewithal shall we be clothed careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the past in the historical office in parishes where there's not as much as look on the faces of the people more than once a year the ecclesiastical historian too looking into parliamentary reports of that period finds honorable members zealous for the church and untainted with any sympathy for the tribe of canting Methodists making statements scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Rowe and it is impossible for me to say that Mr. Irvine was altogether belied by the general classification assigned him he really had no very lofty aims no theological enthusiasm if I were closely questioned I should be obliged to confess that he felt no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners and would have taught it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening matter to old faith or theft or even to Chad Crainage the blacksmith if he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically he would perhaps have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds was that of certain dim but strong emotions suffusing themselves as a hallowing influence over the family affections and neighborly duties he thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine and that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his fathers worshiped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried where but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of liturgy or the sermon clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an earnest man he was founder of church history than of divinity and had much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions he was neither laborious nor obviously self denying no very copious in arms giving and his theology you perceive was lacks his mental palette indeed was rather pagan and found the savoriness in quotation from Sophocles or theacritus that was quite absent from any text in Isaiah or Amos but if you feed your young setter on raw flesh how can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in afterlife and Mr. Irwin's recollections of young enthusiasm and ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from the Bible on the other hand I must plead for I have an affectionate partiality towards directors memory that he was not vindictive and some philanthropists have been so and that he was not intolerant there is a rumor that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from that blemish and although he would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any public cause and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the poor he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious virtue he was tender to other men's failings and unwilling to impute evil he was one of those men and they are not the commonest of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace the platform and the pulpit entering with them into their own homes hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hardstone and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday complaints who take all their kindness as a matter of course and not as a subject for pedagiric such men happily have lived in times when great abuses flourished and have sometimes even been delivering representatives of the abuses that is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite fact that it is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the thresholds of their homes but whatever you think of Mr. Irwin now if you had met him that June afternoon riding on his gray cub with his dogs running beside him portly upright manly with a good-natured smile on his finally turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay mare you must have felt that however ill he harmonized with sound theories of the clerical office he somehow harmonized extremely well with that peaceful landscape see them in the bright sunlight interrupted every now and then by rolling masses of cloud ascending the slope from the broxton side with the tall gables and elms of the refectory predominate over the tiny whitewashed church they will soon be in the parish of hastep the great church tower and village roofs lie before them to the left and further on to the right they can just see the chimneys of the hall farm this ends chapter five of adam bead by george elliott chapter six of adam bead this is a liber vox recording all liber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liber vox dot org adam bead by george elliott the hall farm evidently the gate is never opened for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it and if we're opened it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone built pillars to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars it would be easy enough by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars to climb over the brick wall with its smooth stone coping but by putting our eyes to the rusty bars the gate we can see the house well enough and all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure it is a very fine old place of red brick softened by a pale powdery lichen which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity so as to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables the windows and the door place but the windows are patched with wooden panes and the door i think is like the gate it is never opened how it would groan and grate against the floor if it were for it is a solid heavy handsome door and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a sonorous bang behind the liveried lackey who had just seen his master and mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair but at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a chancery suit and that the fruit from that grand double-row walnut trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among the grass if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing from the great buildings of the back and now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk yes the house must be inhabited and we will see by whom for imagination is a licensed trespasser it has no fear of dogs but may climb over walls and peep in windows with impunity put your face to one of the glass panes in the right hand window what do you see a large open fireplace with rusty dogs in it and a bare-boarded floor at the far end fleeces of wolves stacked up in the middle of the floor some empty corn bags that is the furniture of the dining room and what through the left hand window several clothes horses a pillion a spinning wheel and an old box wide open and stuffed full of colored rags at the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll which so far as mutilation is concerned bears a strong resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture and especially in the total loss of its nose near it there's a little chair and the butt end of a boy's leather long lash twip the history of the house is plain now it was once the residence of a country squire whose family probably dwindling down to mere spinster hood got merged in the more territorial name of Donnythorn it was once the hall now it is the hall farm like the life in some coast town that was once a watering place and is now a port where the gentile streets are silent and grass grown and the docks and warehouses are busy and resonant the life of the hall has changed its focus and no longer radiates from the parlor but from the kitchen and the farm yard plenty of life there though this is the drowsiest time of the year just before the hay harvest and it is the drowsiest time of day too for it is close upon three by the sun and it is half past three by mrs poisers handsome eight-day clock but there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain and now he is pouring down his beams and making sparkles among the wet straw and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow shed and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow billed ducks who are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible there is quite a concert of noises the great bulldog chained against the stables is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach of a cock to near the mouth of his kennel and sends forth a thundering bark which is answered by two foxhounds shut up in the opposite cowhouse the old top-knotted hens scratching with their chicks among the straw set up a sympathetic croaking as the disconfident cock joins them a sow with her brood all very muddy to the legs and curled as to the tail throws in some deep staccato notes our friends the calves are bleeding from the homecroft and under all the fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices for the great barn doors are thrown wide open and men are busy there mending the harness under the superintendents of Mr. Gobi the widow otherwise saddler who entertains them with the latest tredleston gossip it is certainly rather an unfortunate day that alec the shepherd has chosen for having the widows since the morning has turned out so wet and mrs poiser has spoken her mind pretty strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought into the house at dinnertime indeed she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject though it is now nearly three hours since dinner and the house is pretty clean again as clean as everything else in that wonderful house place where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt coffer and put your finger on the high mantel shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure for at this time of year of course everyone goes to bed while it is yet light or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them surely nowhere else could an oak clock case and an oak table have got such a polish by hand genuine elbow polish as mrs poiser called it for she thanks to god she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house heady sorrel often took the opportunity when her aunt's back was turned of looking at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished services for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen and was more for ornament than for use and she could see herself sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were arranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner table or in the hubs of the great which always shown like jasper everything was looking at its brightest at this moment for the sun shone right on the pewter dishes and from their reflecting services pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass and on a still pleasanter object than these for some of the rays fell on dina's finely molded cheek and lit up her pale red hair to auburn as she bent over the heavy household linens which she was mending for her aunt no scene could have been more peaceful if mrs poiser who was ironing a few things that still remained from the monday's wash had not been making a frequent clicking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool carrying the keen glance of her blue gray eye from the kitchen to the dairy where he was making up the butter and from the dairy back to the kitchen where nancy was taking the pies out of the oven do not suppose however that mrs poiser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance she was a good-looking woman not more than eight and thirty a fair complexion and sandy hair well-shapen light-footed the most conspicuous article in her attire was the ample checkered linen apron which almost covered her skirt and nothing could be planer or less noticeable than her cap and gown for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity and the preference of ornament to utility the family likeness between her and her niece dina morris with a contrast between her keenness and dina's surrific gentleness of expression might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for amartha and mary their eyes were just of the same color but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanor of trip the black and tan terrier whenever that much suspected dog unwearly exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of mrs poiser's glance her tongue was not less keen than her eye and whenever a damsel came with an ear shot seemed to take up an unfinished lecture as a barrel organ takes up a tune precisely at the point where it had left off the fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was inconvenient to have the widows and why consequently mrs poiser should scold molly the housemaid with unusual severity to all appearance molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary manner had cleans herself with great dispatch and now came to ask submissibly if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time but this blameless conduct according to mrs poiser shrouded a secret indulgence of unbecoming wishes which she now dragged forth and held up to molly's view with cutting eloquence spinning indeed it isn't spinning you'd be at i'll be bound and let you have your own way i never knew your equals for gallowsness to think of a gal of your age wanting to go and sit with half a dozen men i'd have been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if i'd have been you and you as have been here since last michael mus and i hired you at trellston's statutes without a bit of character as i say you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place and you knew no more what belongs to work when you came here than the mockens in the field as poor a two-fisted thing as i ever saw you know you was who taught you to scrub a floor i should like to know why you'd leave the dirt in heaps in the corners anybody had think you'd never been brought up among christians and as for spinning why you've wasted as much as your wage in the flags you've spoiled learning to spin and you've a right to feel that and not to go out as gaping and as thoughtless as if you'd been beholding to nobody comb the wool for the widows indeed that's what you'd like to be doing is it that's the way with you that's the road you'd all like to go headlongs to ruin you're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as yourself you think you'll be finally off when you're married i dare say and you've got a three leg stool to sit on and never a blanket to cover you and a bit of oat cake for your dinner as three children are snatching at i'm sure i don't want to go with the widows malay said whimpering and quite overcome by the dantean picture of her future only we always used to comb the wool for in it mr. oatley's and so i just asked you i don't want to set eyes on the widows again i wish i may never stir if i do mr. oatley's indeed it's fine talking to what you did at mr. oatley's your mrs. there might like her floors dirtied with widows for what i know there's no knowing what people won't like such ways as i never heard of i never heard a girl come into my house as seemed to know what cleaning was i think people live like pigs for my part and as to that betty as was dairy made at trends before she come to me she'd left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end and the dairy thralls i might have wrote my name on them when i come downstairs after my illness as the doctor said it was inflammation it was a mercy i got well of it and to think of your knowing no better molly and been here are going on nine months not for one or talking to you neither and what are you standing there for like a jack as his rundown instead of getting your wheel out you are a raren for sitting down to your work a little while after it's time to put by money my irons twight told please put it down to warm the small chirping voice that uttered this request came from a little sunny-haired girl between three and four who seated on a high chair at the end of the ironing table was arduously clutching the handle of a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist and ironing rags with an acidity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as anatomy would allow cold is it my darling bless your sweet face said mrs poiser who was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her official objugatory to one of fondness or a friendly converse never mind mother's done her ironing now she's going to put the ironing things away money i did like to do into the barn to tommy to see the widod no no no toddy get her feet wet said mrs poiser carrying away her iron run into the dairy and see your cousin heady make butter i did like a bit of pump take rejoined toddy who seemed to be provided with several relays of requests at the same time taking the opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of starch and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable completeness onto the ironing sheet did ever anybody see the like screamed mrs poiser running towards the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream the child's always in mischief if your backs turned a minute what shall i do to you you naughty naughty girl toddy however had descended from her chair with great swiftness and was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig the white starch having been wiped up by molly's help and the ironing apparatus put by mrs poiser took up her knitting which always lay ready at hand and was the work she liked best because she could carry it on automatically as she walked to and fro but now she came and sat down opposite dina whom she looked at in a meditative way as she knitted her worsted gray stocking you look the image of your aunt judith dina when you sit a sewing i could almost fancy it was 30 years back and i was a little girl at home looking at judith as she sat at her work after she'd done the house up only it was a little cottage bothers was and not a big rambling house is gets dirty in one corner as fast as you clean it in another but for all that i could fancy you was your aunt judith only her hair was a deal darker than yours and she was stouter and broader in the shoulders judith and me always hung together though she had such queer ways but your mother and her could never agree i your mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the very pattern of judith and leave her an orphan too for judith to take care on and bring up with a spoon when she was in the graveyard at stonerton i always said that at judith as she'd bear a pound weight any day to save anybody else carrying an ounce and she was just the same from the first of my remembering her it made no difference in her as i could see when she took to the Methodists only she talked a bit different and wore a different sort of cap but she'd never in her life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent she was a blessed woman said dina god had given her a loving self-forgetting nature and he perfected it by grace and she was very fond of you too aunt rachel i often heard her talk of you in the same sort of way when she had that bad illness and i was only 11 years old she used to say you'll have a friend on earth in your aunt rachel if i'm taken from you for she has a kind heart and i'm sure i've found it so i don't know how child anybody'd be cunning to do anything for you i think you're like the birds of the air and live nobody knows how and i have been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister if you'd come and live in this country where there's some shelter and victor for man and beast and folks don't live on the naked hills like poultry is scratching on a gravel bank and then you might get married to some decent man and there'd be plenty ready to have you if only you'd leave off that preaching as is 10 times worse than anything your aunt judith ever did and even if you'd marry seth bead as is a poor wool gathering methodist and is never like to have a penny beforehand i know your uncle to help you with a pig and very like a cow where he's always been good natured to my kin for all their poor and made him welcome to the house and to do for you i'll be bound as much as ever he'd do for heady though she's his own niece and there's linen in the house as i could well spare you for i got lots of sheeting and table clothing and touting isn't made up there's a piece of sheeting i could give you as that squinting katie spun she was a rare girl to spin for all she squinted and the children couldn't abide her and you know spinning's going on constant and there's new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears out but where's the use of talking if you want to be persuaded and settle down like any other woman in her senses instead of wearing yourself out with walking and preaching and giving away every penny you get so as you've nothing saved against sickness and all the things you've gotten the world i verily believe that go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese and all because you got notions in your head about religion more than what's in the catechism in the prayer book but not more than what's in the bible and said dina yes in the bible too for that matter mrs poiser rejoined rather sharply else why shouldn't them is no best what's in the bible the parson's and people has have got nothing better to do but learn it do the same as you but for the matter of that if everybody was to do like you the world must come to a standstill for if everybody tried to do without house and home and with poor eating and drinking was always talking as we must despise things of the world as you say i should like to know where the pick of the stock and the corn and the best new milk cheeses that have to go everybody would be wanting bread made of tail ends and everybody'd be running after everybody else to preach to them instead of bringing up their families and laying by against a bad harvest it stands to sense is that can't be the right religion nay dear aunt you never heard me say that all people are called to forsake their work and their families it's quite right the land should be plowed and sowed and the precious corn stored and the things of this life cared for and write that people should rejoice in their families and provide for them so that this is done in fear of the lord and that they are not unmindful of the souls once while they are caring for the body we can all be servants of god wherever our lot is cast but he gives us different sorts of work recording as he fits us for it and calls us to it i can no more help spending my life in trying to do what i can for the souls of others then you could help running if you heard little toddy crying at the other end of the house the voice would go to your heart you would think the dear child was in trouble or in danger and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort her ah said mrs poiser rising and walking toward the door i know it would be just the same if i talked to you for hours you'd make me the same answer at the end i might as well talk to the running brook and tell it to stand still the causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for mrs poiser to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard the gray worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the while but she had not been standing there more than five minutes before she came in again and said to dina in a rather flurried ostrich and tone if there isn't captain donny thorn and mr urwin are coming into the yard i'll lay my life they're coming to speak about your preaching on the green dina it's you must answer them for i am dumb i've said enough already about your bringing such disgrace upon your uncle's family i wouldn't have minded if you'd been mr poiser's own niece folks must put up with their own kin as they put up with their own noses it's their own flesh and blood but to think a niece of mine being the cause of my husband's being turned out of his farm and me brought him no fording but my savings nay dear aunt rachel dina said gently you've no cause for such fears i've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my uncle and the children from anything i've done i didn't preach without direction direction i know well what you mean by direction said mrs poiser knitting in a rapid agitated manner when there's a bigger maggot than usual in your head you call a direction and then nothing can stir you you look like the steady on the outside of the tredleston church a staring and a smiling whether it's fair whether or foul i had a common patience with you by this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got down from their horses it was plain they meant to come in mrs poiser advanced to the door to meet them curt seeing low and trembling between anger with dina and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety on the occasion for in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a whispering awe at the sight of the gentry such as men of old felt when they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape well mrs poiser how are you after this stormy morning said mr urwin with his stately cordiality our feet are quite dry we shall not soil your beautiful floor oh sir don't mention it said mrs poiser will you and the captain please walk into the parlor no indeed thank you mrs poiser the captain said looking eagerly around the kitchen as if as i were seeking something it could not find i delight in your kitchen i think it the most charming room i know i should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a pattern oh you're pleased to say so sir pray take a seat said mrs poiser relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident good humor but still glancing anxiously at mr urwin who she saw was looking at dina and advancing towards her poiser is not at home is he said captain donnie thorn sitting himself where he could see along the short passage to the open dairy door no sir he isn't he's gone to rosseter to see mr west the factor about the wall but there's father in barn sir if he'd be of any use no thank you i'll just look at the welbs and leave a message about them with your shepherd i must come another day and see your husband i want to have a consultation with him about horses do you know when he's likely to be at liberty why sir you can hardly miss him except it's on tredleston market day that's of a friday you know for if he's anywhere on the farm we can send for him in a minute if we got rid of the scant lands we should have no outlying fields and i should be glad of it for anything happens he's sure to be gone to the scant lands things always happen so contrary if they have a chance and it's an unnatural thing to have one bit of your farm in one county and all the rest in another ah the scant lands would go much better with choices farm especially as he wants dairy land and we've got plenty i think yours is the prettiest farm in the estate though and do you know mrs poiser if i were going to marry and settle down i should be tempted to turn you out and do up this fine old house and turn farmer myself oh sir said mrs poiser rather alarmed you wouldn't like it at all as for farming it's putting money into your pocket with your right hand and fetching it out with your left as far as i can see it's raising victors for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your children as you go along not as you'd be like a poor man as wants to get his bread you could afford to lose as much money as you liked in farming but it's poor fun losing money i should think though i understand it's what the great folks in london play at more than anything for my husband heard at market as lord daisies eldest son had lost thousands upon thousands to the prince of wales and they said my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him but you know more about that than i do sir but as for farming sir can i think as you'd like it in this house the drafts in it are enough to cut you through and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten and the rats in the cellar are beyond anything why that's a terrible picture mrs poiser i think i should be doing you a service to turn you out of such a place but there's no chance of that i'm not likely to settle for the next 20 years till i'm a stout gentleman of 40 and my grandfather would never consent to part with such good tenants as you well sir if he thinks so well i'm mr poiser as a tenant i wish you could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the five closes for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired and to think of what he's done for the farm and's never had a penny allowed to him be the times good or bad and as i've said to my husband often and often i'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it it wouldn't be so not as i wish to speak disrespectful of them has got power in their hands but it's more than flesh and blood a layer sometimes to be toiling and striving and up early and down late and hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may swell or the cows may slip their calf or the wheat may grow green again in the sheaf and after all at the end of the year it's like as if you've been cooking a feast and it got a smell of it for your pains this is poiser once launched into conversation always sailed along without any check from her preliminary of gentry the confidence she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that overcame all resistance i'm afraid i should only do him harm instead of good if i were to speak about the gates mrs poiser the captain said though i assure you there's no man on the estate i would sooner say a word for than your husband i know his farm is in better order than any other within 10 miles of us and as for the kitchen he added smiling i don't believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it by the by i've never seen your dairy i must see your dairy mrs poiser indeed sir it's not fit for you to go in for headies in the middle of making butter for the churning was thrown late and i'm quite ashamed this mrs poiser said blushing and believing that the captain was really interested in her milk pans and would adjust his opinion of her to the appearance of her dairy oh i've no doubt it's in capital order take me in said the captain himself leading the way all mrs poiser followed end of chapter six the hall farm chapter seven of adam bed this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org this reading by lucy bergoine adam bed by george elliot chapter seven the dairy the dairy was certainly worth looking at it was a scene to sicken for a sword of calenture in hot and dusty streets such coolness such purity such fresh fragrance of new pressed cheese of firm butter of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water such soft colouring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces brown wood and polished tin grey limestone and rich orange red rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges but one gets only a confused notion of these details when they surround a distractingly pretty girl of 17 standing on little patterns and rounding her dimpled arms to lift a pound of butter out of the scale heady blushed a deep rose colour when captain donny thorn entered the dairy and spoke to her but it was not at all a distressed blush for it was in rift with smiles and dimples and with sparkles from under long curled dark eyelashes and while her aunt was discoursing to him about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and cheese so long as the cars were not all weaned and a large quantity but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn which had been bought on experiment together with other matters which must be interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord heady toast and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed coquettish air slowly conscience but no turn of her head was lost there are various orders of beauty causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles from the desperate to the sheepish but there is one order a beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men but of all intelligent mammals even of women it is a beauty like that of kittens or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills or babies just beginning to total and to engage in conscience mischief a beauty with which you can never be angry but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you heady sorrows was that sort of beauty her aunt mrs poiser who professed to desire all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors continually gazed at heady's charms by the sly fascinated in spite of herself and after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety to do well by her husband's niece who had no mother of her own to scold her poor thing she would often confess to her husband when they were safe out of hearing that she firmly believed the naughty of the little hussy behaved the prettier she looked it is of little use for me to tell you that heady's cheek was like a rose petal that dimples played about her pouting lips that her large dark eyes hit a soft raugishness under their long lashes and that her curly hair though all push back under a round cap while she was at work stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead and about her white shell like ears it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of their pink and white neckerchief tucked into her low plum colored stuffed bodice or how the linen butter making apron with its bib seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses since it fell in such charming lines or how her brown stockings and thick sole buckle shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle of little use unless you have seen a woman who effected you as heady affected her beholders for otherwise though you might conduit up the image of a lovely woman she would not in the least resemble that distracting kitten life maiden I might mention all the divine charms of the bright spring day that if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh open blossoms filled them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles where would be the use of my descriptive catalog I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring day hetties was a spring tide beauty it was the beauty of young frisking things round lint gambling circumventing you by a false air of innocence the innocence of a young star brown calf for example that being inclined for a promenade out of bounds led you a severe steeple chase over hedge and ditch and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog and they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown in making up butter tossing movements that give a charming curve to the arm and a sideward inclination of the round white neck little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand and nice adaptions and finishings which cannot at all be affected without a great play at the pouting mouth and the dark eyes and then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm it is so pure so sweet-centred it is turned off the mold with such a beautiful firm surface like marble in a pale yellow light moreover hettie was particularly clever at making up the butter it was the one performance of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism so she handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastering i hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the 30th of july mrs poiser said captain donny thorn when he had sufficiently admired the dairy and given several improvised opinions on sweet turnips and shorthorns you know what is to happen then and i shall expect you to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest will you promise me your hand for two dances miss hettie if i don't get your promise now i know i shall hardly have a chance for all the smart young farmers will take care to secure you hettie smiled and blushed but before she could answer mrs poiser interposed scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire could be excluded by any meaner partners indeed sir you are very kind to take that notice of her and i'm sure whenever you're pleased to dance with her she'll be proud and thankful if she stood still or the rest of the evening oh no no that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who can dance but you will promise me two dances won't you the captain continued determined to make hettie look at him and speak to him hettie dropped the prettiest little curtsy and stole a half shy half coquettish glanced at him as she said yes thank you sir and you must bring all your children you know mrs poiser your little totty as well as the boys i want all the youngest children on the estate to be there all those who will be fine young men and women when i am a bald old fellow oh dear sir that you'll be a long time first said mrs poiser quite overcome at the young squire speaking so lightly of himself and thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this remarkable specimen of highborn humor the captain was thought to be very full of jokes and was a great favourite throughout the estate on account of his free manners every tenant was quite sure things would be different when the reins got into his hands there was to be a millennial abundance of new goats allowances of line and returns of 10 but where is totty today he said i want to see her where is the little one heady said mrs poiser she came in here not long ago i don't know she went into the brew house to nancy i think the proud mother unable to resist the temptation to show her totty passed at once into the back kitchen in search of her not however without misgivings less something should have happened to render her person and attire unfit for presentation and do you carry the butter to market when you've made it said captain to heady meanwhile oh no sir not when it's so heavy i'm not strong enough to carry it alec takes it on horseback no i'm sure your pretty arms were never meant to such heavy weights but you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings don't you why don't you have a walk in the chase sometimes now it's so green and pleasant i hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church aunt doesn't like me to go a walking only when i'm going somewhere said heady but i go through the chase sometimes and don't you ever go to see mrs best the housekeeper i think i saw you once in the housekeeper's room it isn't mrs best it's mrs pomper it the lady's made as i go to see she's teaching me tent stitch and the lace mending i'm going to tea with her tomorrow afternoon the reason why there had been space for this tether can only be known by looking into the back kitchen where totty had been discovered rubbing a stray blue bag against her nose and in the same moment allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore but now she appeared holding her mother's hand the end of her round nose rather shiny from a recent unhurried application of soap and water here she is said the captain lifting her up and setting her on the low stone shelf he's totty by the by what's her other name she wasn't christen totty oh sir we call her sadly out of her name charlotte's her christen name it's her name i mr poiser's family his grandmother was named charlotte but we began with calling her lotty and now it's got to totty to be sure it's more like a name for a dog than a christian child totty's a capital name why she looks like a totty has she got a pocket on said the captain feeling in his own waistcoat pockets totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock and showed a tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse a dot nothing in it she said as she looked down at it very earnestly no what a pity such a pretty pocket well i think i've got some things in mind that will make a pretty jingle in it yes i declare i've got five little round silver things and here what a pretty noise they make in totty's pink pocket here he shook the pocket with the five sixpences in it and totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in a great glee but divining that there was nothing more to be got by staying she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in the hearing of nancy while her mother called after her oh for shame you naughty girl not to thank the captain for what he's given you i'm sure sir it's very kind of you but she spoiled shameful her father won't have her said no in anything and there's no managing her it's been the youngest and the only girl oh she's a funny little fatty i wouldn't have her different but i must be going now for i suppose the rector is waiting for me with a goodbye a bright glance and about to hetty Arthur left the dairy but he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for the rector had been so much interested in his conversation with diner that he would not have chosen to close it earlier and you shall hear now what they had been saying to each other end of chapter seven chapter eight of adam bead this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org reading by robin codder october 2007 adam bead by george eliot chapter eight a vocation dina who had risen when the gentleman came in but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending curtsied respectfully when she saw mr urwine looking at her and advancing towards her he had never yet spoken to her or stood face to face with her and her first thought as her eyes met his was what a well-favored countenance oh that the good seed might fall in that soil for it would surely flourish the agreeable impression must have been mutual for mr urwine bowed to her with a benign and a difference which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance you are only a visitor in this neighborhood i think were his first words as he seated himself opposite to her no sir i come from snowfield in stonisher but my aunt was very kind wanting me to have rest from my work there because i'd been ill and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while ah i remember snowfield very well i once had occasion to go there it's a dreary bleak place they were building a cotton mill there but that's many years ago now i suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment that mill must have brought it is changed so far as the mill has brought people there who get a livelihood for themselves by working in it and make it better for the trades folks i work in it myself and have reason to be grateful for thereby i have enough and to spare but it's still a bleak place as you say sir very different from this country you have relations living there probably so that you are attached to the place as your home i had an aunt there once she brought me up for i was an orphan but she was taken away seven years ago and i have no other kindred that i know of besides my aunt poiser who is very good to me and would have me come and live in this country which to be sure is a good land wherein they eat bread without scarceness but i'm not free to leave snowfield where i was first planted and have grown deep into it like the small grass on the hilltop ah i dare say you have many religious friends and companions there you are a Methodist a Wesleyan i think yes my aunt at snowfield belong to the society and i have caused to be thankful for the privileges i have had thereby from my earliest childhood and have you been long in the habit of preaching for i understand you preached at haste slope last night i first took to the work four years ago when i was twenty one your society sanctions women's preaching then it doesn't forbid them sir when they have a clear call to the work and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of god's people mrs. Fletcher as you may have heard about was the first woman to preach in the society i believe before she was married when she was miss bosan quit and mr. Wesley approved of her undertaking the work she had a great gift and there are many others now living who are precious fellow helpers in the work of the ministry i understand there's been voices raised against it in the society of late but i cannot but think their counsel will come to not it isn't for men to make channels for god's spirit as they make channels for the water courses flow here but flow not there but don't you find some danger among your people i don't mean to say that it is so with you far from it but don't you find sometimes that both men and women fancy themselves channels for god's spirit and are quite mistaken so that they set about a work for which they are unfit and bring holy things into contempt doubtless it is so sometimes for there have been evildoers among us who have sought to deceive the brethren and some there are who deceive their own selves but we are not without discipline and correction to put a check upon these things there's a very strict order kept among us and the brethren and sisters watch for each other's souls as they that must give account they don't go everyone his own way and say am i my brother's keeper but tell me if i may ask and i'm really interested in knowing it how you first came to think of preaching indeed sir i didn't think of it at all i'd been used from the time i was sixteen to talk to the little children and teach them and sometimes i had had my heart enlarged to speak in class and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick but i had felt no call to preach for when i'm not greatly wrought upon i'm too much given to sit still and keep by myself it seems as if i could sit silent all day long with the thought of god overflowing my soul as the pebbles lie bathed in the willow brook for thoughts are so great aren't they sir they seem to lie upon us like a deep flood and it's my besetment to forget where i am and everything about me and lose myself in thoughts that i could give no account of for i could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words that was my way as long as i can remember but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own and words were given to me that came out as the tears come because our hearts are full and we can't help it and those were always times of great blessing though i had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people but sir we are let on like little children by a way that we know not i was called to preach quite suddenly and since then i have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me but tell me the circumstances just how it was the very day you began to preach it was one sunday i walked with brother marlowe who was an aged man one of the local preachers all the way to henten deeps that's a village where the people get their living by working in the lead mines and where there's no church nor preacher but they live like sheep without a shepherd it's better than 12 miles from snowfield so we set out early in the morning for it was summertime and i had a wonderful sense of the divine love as we walked over the hills where there's no trees you know sir as there is here to make the sky look smaller but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent and you feel the everlasting arms around you but before we got to henten brother marlowe was seized with the dizziness that made him afraid of falling for he overworked himself sadly at his years in watching and praying and walking so many miles to speak the word as well as carrying on his trade of linen weaving and when we got to the village the people were expecting him for he'd appointed the time and the place when he was there before and such of them as cared to hear the word of life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest so as others might be drawn to come but he felt as he couldn't stand up to preach and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to so i went to tell the people thinking we'd go into one of the houses and i would read and pray with them but as i passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors and the hard looks of the men who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky i felt a great movement in my soul and i trembled as if i was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body and i went to where the little flock of people was gathered together and stepped on the low wall that was built against the green hillside and i spoke the words that were given to me abundantly and they all came round me out of all the cottages and many wept over their sins and have since been joined to the Lord that was the beginning of my preaching sir and i've preached ever since dina had let her work fall during this narrative which she uttered in her usual simple way but with that sincere articulate thrilling trouble by which she always mastered her audience she stooped now to gather up her sewing and then went on with it as before Mr. Irwin was deeply interested he said to himself he must be a miserable prig who would act the pedagogue here one might as well go and lecture the trees for growing in their own shape and you never feel any embarrassment from the sense of your youth that you were a lovely young woman on whom men's eyes are fixed he said aloud no i've no room for such feelings and i don't believe the people ever take notice about that i think sir when god makes his presence felt through us we are like the burning bush moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was he only saw the brightness of the lord i've preached to his rough ignorant people as can be in the villages about snowfield men that looked very hard and wild but they never said an uncivil word to me and often thanked me kindly as they made way for me to pass through the midst of them that i can believe that i can well believe said mr. Irwin emphatically and what did you think of your hearers last night now did you find them quiet and attentive very quiet sir but i saw no signs of any great work upon them except in a young girl named bessie cranage towards whom my heart yearned greatly when my eyes first fell on her blooming youth given up to folly and vanity i had some private talk and prayer with her afterwards and i trust her heart is touched but i've noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters tilling the ground and tending the cattle there's a strange deadness to the word as different as can be from the great towns like leads where i once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there it's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high walled streets where you seem to walk as in a prison yard and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil i think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at ease why yes our farm laborers are not easily roused they take life almost as slowly as the sheep and cows but we have some intelligent workmen about here i dare say you know the beads seth bead by the by is a methodist yes i know seth well and his brother adam a little seth is a gracious young man sincere and without offense and adam is like the patriarch joseph for his great skill and knowledge and the kindness he shows to his brother and his parents perhaps you don't know the trouble that has just happened to them their father matias bead was drowned in the willowbrook last night not far from his own door i'm going now to see adam ah their poor aged mother said dina dropping her hands and looking before her with pitying eyes as if she saw the object of her sympathy she will mourn heavily for seth has told me she's of an anxious troubled heart i must go and see if i can give her any help as she rose and was beginning to fold up her work captain donathan having exhausted all plausible pretext for remaining among the milkpans came out of the dairy followed by mrs poiser mr urwine now rose also and advancing towards dina held out his hand and said goodbye i hear you are going away soon but this will not be the last visit you will pay your aunt so we shall meet again i hope his cordiality towards dina said all mrs poiser's anxieties at rest and her face was brighter than usual as she said i've never asked after mrs urwine and the miss urwine sir i hope they're as well as usual yes thank you mrs poiser except that miss an has one of her bad headaches today by the by we all liked that nice cream cheese you sent us my mother especially i'm very glad indeed sir it has been seldom i make one but i remembered mrs urwine was fond of him pleased to give my duty to her and to miss kate and miss an they've never been to look at my poultry this long while and i've got some beautiful speckled chickens black and white as miss kate might like to have some amongst hers well i'll tell her she must come and see them goodbye said the rector mounting his horse just ride slowly on urwine said captain dona thorn mounting also i'll overtake you in three minutes i'm only going to speak to the shepherd about the welps goodbye mrs poiser tell your husband i shall come and have a long talk with him soon mrs poiser curtsy duly and watched the two horses until they had disappeared from the yard amidst great excitement on the part of the pigs and the poultry and under the furious indignation of the bulldog who performed a pyrrhic dance that every moment seemed to threaten the breaking of his chain mrs poiser delighted in this noisy exit it was a fresh assurance to her that the farmyard was well guarded and that no loiterers could enter unobserved and it was not until the gate had closed behind the captain that she turned into the kitchen again where diana stood with her bonnet in her hand waiting to speak to her aunt before she set out for lisbeth beads cottage mrs poiser however though she noticed the bonnet deferred remarking on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at mr urwine's behavior why mr urwine wasn't angry then what did he say to you diana didn't he scold you for preaching no he was not at all angry he was very friendly to me i was quite drawn out to speak to him i hardly know how for i'd always thought of him as a worldly sadici but his countenance is as pleasant as the morning sunshine pleasant and what else did you expect to find him but pleasant said mrs poiser impatiently resuming her knitting i should think his countenance is pleasant indeed and him a gentleman born and's got a mother like a picture you may go the country round and not find such another woman turned sixty six it's somewhat like to see such a man as that at the desk of a sunday as i say to poiser it's like looking at a crop full of wheat or a pasture with a fine dairy of cows in it it makes you think the world's comfortable like but as for such creatures as you methodices run after i'd soon go to look at a lot of bare ribbed runts on a common find folks there to tell you what's right as a look as if they'd never tasted nothing better than bacon sword and sour cake in their lives but what did mr urwine say to you about that fool's trick of preaching on the green he only said he'd heard of it he didn't seem to feel any displeasure about it but dear aunt don't think any more about that he told me something that i'm sure will cause you sorrow as it does me tie his speed was drowned last night in the willowbrook and i'm thinking that the aged mother will be greatly in need of comfort perhaps i can be of use to her so i fetched my bonnet and i'm going to set out dear heart dear heart but you must have a cup of tea first child said mrs. poiser falling at once from the key of b with five sharps to the frank and genial c the kettle's boiling will have it ready in a minute and the young ones will be in and wanting theirs directly i'm quite willing you should go and see the old woman for your one as his allies welcome in trouble methodist or no methodist but for the matter of that it's the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the difference some cheeses are made of skimmed milk and some a new milk and it's no matter what you call them you may tell which is which by the look and the smell but as to tie his bead he's better out of the way nor in god forgive me for saying so for he's done little this 10 year but make trouble for them as belong to him and i think it'd be well for you to take a little bottle of rum for the old woman for i dare say she's got never a drop of nothing to comfort her inside sit down child and be easy for you shan't stir out till you've had a cup of tea and so i tell you during the latter part of this speech mrs. poiser had been reaching down the tea things from the shelves and was on her way towards the pantry for the loaf followed close by toddy who had made her appearance on the rattling of the teacups when heady came out of the dairy relieving her tired arms by lifting them up and clasping her hands at the back of her head molly she said rather languidly just run out and get me a bunch of dock leaves the butters ready to pack up now do you hear what's happened heady said her aunt no how should i hear anything was the answer in a pettish tone not as you'd care much i dare say if you did hear for your two feather-headed to mind if everybody was dead so as you could stay upstairs addressing yourself for two hours by the clock but anybody besides yourself had mined about such things happening to them as think a deal more of you than you deserve but adam bead and all his kin might be grounded for what you'd care you'd be perking at the glass the next minute adam bead drowned said heady letting her arms fall and looking rather bewildered but suspecting that her aunt was as usual exaggerating with a didactic purpose no my dear no said dine a kindly for mrs. poiser had passed on to the pantry without deigning more precise information not adam adam's father the old man is drowned he was drowned last night in the willowbrook mr. irwin has just told me about it oh how dreadful said heady looking serious but not deeply affected and as maulie now entered with the dock leaves she took them silently and returned to the dairy without asking further questions end of chapter eight chapter nine heady's world while she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant butter as the primrose is set off by its nest of green i'm afraid heady was thinking a great deal more of the looks captain donathan had cast at her than of adam and his troubles bright admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman with white hands a gold chain occasional regimentals and wealth and grandeur immeasurable those were the warm rays that set poor heady's heart vibrating and playing its little foolish tunes over and over again we do not hear that memnon statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind or in response to any other influence divine or human than certain short-lived sunbeams of mourning and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony heady was quite used to the thought that people like to look at her she was not blind to the fact that young luke britain of broxton came to haste look church on a sunday afternoon on purpose that he might see her and that he would have made much more decided advances if her uncle poiser thinking but lightly of a young man whose father's land was so foul as old luke britains had not forbidden her aunt to encourage him by any civilities she was aware too that mr craig the gardener at the chase was overhead new ears in love with her and had lately made unmistakable of vowels in luscious strawberries and hyperbolic opies she knew still better that adam bead tall upright clever brave adam bead who carried such authority with all the people around about and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening saying that adam knew a fine sight more the nature of things than those who thought themselves as betters she knew that this adam who was often rather stern to other people and not much given to run after the losses could be made to turn pale or read any day by a word or a look from her heady sphere of comparison was not large but she couldn't help perceiving that adam was something like a man always knew what to say about things could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel and had men at the churn in no time knew with only looking at it the value of the chestnut tree that was blown down and why the damp came in the walls and what they must do to stop the rats and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off and could do figures in his head a degree of accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that countryside not at all like that slouching luke britain who when she once walked with him all the way from broxton to haselope had only broken silence to remark that the gray goose had begun to lay and as for mr craig the gardener he was a sensible man enough to be sure but he was knock need and had a queer sort of sing song in his talk moreover on the most charitable supposition he must be far on the weight of forty heady was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage adam and would be pleased for her to marry him for those were times when there was no rigid demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan and on the home earth as well as in the public house they might be seem taking their jug of ale together the farmer having a latent sense of capital and of weight and parish affairs which sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority and conversation martin poiser was not a frequenter of public houses but he liked to friendly chat over his own home brood and though it was pleasant to lay down the lot to a stupid neighbor who had no notion how to make the best of his farm it was also an agreeable variety to learn something from a clever fellow like adam bead accordingly for the last three years ever since he had super intended the building of the new barn adam had always been made welcome at the hall farm especially of a winter evening when the whole family in patriarchal fashion master and mistress children and servants were assembled in that glorious kitchen at well-graduated distances from the blazing fire and for the last two years at least heady had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say adam bead may be working for wage now but he'll be a master man someday assures i sit in this chair mr burge is in the right aunt to want him to go partners and marry his daughter if it's true what they say the woman is mary sim will have a good take be it lady day or michael miss a remark which mrs poiser always followed up with her cordial ascent ah she would say it's all very fine having already made a rich man but may happen he'll be already made fool and it's no use filling your pocket full of money if you've got a hole in the corner it'll do you no good to sit in a spring car to your own if you've got a soft to drive you he'll soon turn you over into the ditch i always said i'd never marry a man who's got no brains for where's the use of a woman having brains of her own if she's tackled to a geckos everybody's a laughing at she might as well dress herself fine to sit backwards on a donkey these expressions though figurative sufficiently indicated the bent of mrs poiser's mind with regard to adam and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if heady had been a daughter of their own it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with adam for a penniless niece for what could heady have been but a servant elsewhere if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt whose health since the birth of taughty had not been equal to more positive labor than the superintendents of servants and children but heady had never given adam any steady encouragement even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his superiority to her other admirers she had never brought herself to think of accepting him she liked to feel that the strong skillful keen-eyed man was in her power and would have been indignant if he had shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle mary burge who would have been grateful enough for the most trifling notice of him mary burge indeed such a solo faced girl if she put on a bit of pink ribbon she looked as yellow as a crowflower and her hair was as straight as a hank of cotton and always when adam stayed away for several weeks from the hall farm and otherwise made some show of resistance to his passion as a foolish one heady took care to entice him back into the net by little heirs of meekness and timidity as if she were in trouble at his neglect but as to marrying adam that was a very different affair there was nothing in the world to tempt her to do that her cheeks never grew as shade deeper when his name was mentioned she felt no thrill when she saw him passing along the causeway by the window or advancing towards her unexpectedly in the footpath across the meadow she felt nothing when his eyes rested on her but the cold triumph of knowing that he loved her and would not care to look at mary burge he could no more stir in her the emotions that make the sweet intoxication of young love than the mere picture of a sunken stir the spring sap in the subtle fibers of the plant she saw him as he was a poor man with old parents to keep who would not be able for a long while to come to give her even such luxuries as she shared in her uncle's house and heady's dreams were all of luxuries to sit in a carpeted parlor and always wear white stockings to have some large beautiful earrings such as were all the fashion to have knottingham lace around the top of her gown and something to make her handkerchief smell nice like miss lydia donathorns when she drew it out at church and not to be obliged to get up early or be scolded by anybody she thought if adam had been rich and could have given her these things she loved him well enough to marry him but for the last few weeks new influence had come over heady vague atmospheric shaping itself into no self-confessed hopes or prospects but producing a pleasant narcotic effect making her tread the ground and go about her work in a sort of dream unconscious of weight or effort and showing her all things through a soft liquid veil as if she were living not in this solid world of brick and stone but in a beatified world such as the sunlight's up for us in the waters heady had become aware that mr. arthur donathan would take a good deal of trouble for the chance of seeing her that he always placed himself at church so as to have the fullest view of her both sitting and standing that he was constantly finding reason for calling at the hall farm and always would contrive to say something for the sake of making her speak to him and look at him the poor child no more conceived at present the idea that the young squire could ever be her lover than a baker's pretty daughter in the crowd whom a young emperor distinguishes by an imperial but admiring smile conceives that she shall be made empress but the baker's daughter goes home and dreams of the handsome young emperor and perhaps weighs the flower a miss while she is thinking what a heavenly lot it must be to have him for a husband and so poor heady had got a face and a presence haunting her waking and sleeping dreams bright soft glances had penetrated her and suffused her life with a strange happy langer the eyes that shed those glances were really not half so fine as atoms which sometimes looked at her with a sad beseeching tenderness but they had found a ready medium in heady's little silly imagination whereas atoms could get no entrance through that atmosphere for three weeks at least her inward life had consisted of little else than living through in memory the looks and words arthur had directed towards her of little else than recalling the sensations with which she heard his voice outside the house and saw him enter and became conscious that his eyes were fixed on her and then became conscious that a tall figure looking down on her with eyes that seemed to touch her was coming near in clothes of beautiful texture with an odor like that of a flower garden born on the evening breeze foolish thoughts but all this happened you must remember nearly 60 years ago and heady was quite uneducated a simple farmer's girl to whom a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an olympian god until today she had never looked farther into the future than to the next time captain donathan would come to the farm or the next sunday when she should see him at church but now she thought perhaps he would try to meet her when she went to the chase tomorrow and if he should speak to her and walk a little way when nobody was by that had never happened yet and now her imagination instead of retracing the past was busy fashioning what would happen tomorrow were about in the chase she should see him coming towards her how she should put her new rose colored ribbon on which she had never seen and what he would say to her to make her return his glance the glance which she would be living through in her memory over and over again all the rest of the day in this state of mind how could heady give any feeling to adam's troubles or think much about poor old dais being drowned young souls in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as butterfly's sipping nectar they are isolated from all appears by a barrier of dreams by invisible looks and impalpable arms while heady's hands were busy packing up the butter in her head filled with these pictures of the morrow arthur donathan riding by mr urwin's side towards the valley of the willow brook had also certain indistinct anticipations running as an undercurrent in his mind while he was listening to mr urwin's account of dyna indistinct yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when mr urwin suddenly said what fascinated you so and mrs poiser's dairy arthur have you become an amateur of damp quarries and skimming dishes arthur knew the rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use so he said with his accustomed frankness no i want to look at the pretty butter maker heady sorrel she's a perfect hebe and if i were an artist i would paint her it's amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmer's daughters when the men are such clowns that common round red face one sees sometimes in the men all cheeky no features like martin poisers comes out in the women of the family is the most charming fizz imaginable well i have no objection to your contemplating heavy in an artistic light but i must not have you feeding her vanity and filling her little noodle with the notion that she's a great beauty attractive to find gentlemen or you will spoil her for a poor man's wife honest craigs for example whom i have seen bestowing soft glances on her the little puss seems all ready to have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it's a law of nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty apropos of marrying i hope our friend adam will get settled now the poor old man's gone he will only have his mother to keep him in the future and i have a notion that there's a kindness between him and that nice modest girl mary burge from something that fell from all jonathan one day when i was talking to him but when i mentioned the subject to adam he looked uneasy and turned the conversation i suppose the love making doesn't run smooth or perhaps adam hangs back till he's in a better position he has independence of spirit enough for two men rather an excess of pride if anything that would be a capital match for adam he would slip into old burge's shoes and make a fine thing of that building business i'll answer for him i should like to see him well settled in this parish he would be ready then to act as my grand vizier when i wanted one we could plan no end of her pairs and improvements together i've never seen the girl though i think at least i've never looked at her look at her next sunday at church she sits with her father on the left of the reading desk you needn't look quite so much at heady sorrel then when i've made up my mind that i can't afford to buy a tempting dog i take no notice of him because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe i peek myself on my wisdom there arthur and as an old fellow to whom wisdom has become cheap i bestow it upon you thank you it may stand me in good stead someday though i don't know that i have any present use for it bless me how the brook has overflowed suppose we have a canter now we're at the bottom of the hill that is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter and one might have escaped from socrates himself in the saddle the two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in the lane behind adams cottage end of chapter nine