initial commit of ebook 507HEADmain

1 files changed, 21047 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/507-0.txt b/507-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d68de58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/507-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21047 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adam Bede, by George Eliot
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Adam Bede
+
+Author: George Eliot [pseudonym of Mary Anne Evans]
+
+Release Date: April, 1996 [eBook #507]
+[Most recently updated: December 2, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADAM BEDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Adam Bede
+
+by George Eliot
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ Book First
+ Chapter I — The Workshop
+ Chapter II — The Preaching
+ Chapter III — After the Preaching
+ Chapter IV — Home and Its Sorrows
+ Chapter V — The Rector
+ Chapter VI — The Hall Farm
+ Chapter VII — The Dairy
+ Chapter VIII — A Vocation
+ Chapter IX — Hetty’s World
+ Chapter X — Dinah Visits Lisbeth
+ Chapter XI — In the Cottage
+ Chapter XII — In the Wood
+ Chapter XIII — Evening in the Wood
+ Chapter XIV — The Return Home
+ Chapter XV — The Two Bed-Chambers
+ Chapter XVI — Links
+
+ Book Second
+ Chapter XVII — In Which the Story Pauses a Little
+ Chapter XVIII — Church
+ Chapter XIX — Adam on a Working Day
+ Chapter XX — Adam Visits the Hall Farm
+ Chapter XXI — The Night-School and the Schoolmaster
+
+ Book Third
+ Chapter XXII — Going to the Birthday Feast
+ Chapter XXIII — Dinner-Time
+ Chapter XXIV — The Health-Drinking
+ Chapter XXV — The Games
+ Chapter XXVI — The Dance
+
+ Book Fourth
+ Chapter XXVII — A Crisis
+ Chapter XXVIII — A Dilemma
+ Chapter XXIX — The Next Morning
+ Chapter XXX — The Delivery of the Letter
+ Chapter XXXI — In Hetty’s Bed-Chamber
+ Chapter XXXII — Mrs. Poyser “Has Her Say Out”
+ Chapter XXXIII — More Links
+ Chapter XXXIV — The Betrothal
+ Chapter XXXV — The Hidden Dread
+
+ Book Fifth
+ Chapter XXXVI — The Journey of Hope
+ Chapter XXXVII — The Journey in Despair
+ Chapter XXXVIII — The Quest
+ Chapter XXXIX — The Tidings
+ Chapter XL — The Bitter Waters Spread
+ Chapter XLI — The Eve of the Trial
+ Chapter XLII — The Morning of the Trial
+ Chapter XLIII — The Verdict
+ Chapter XLIV — Arthur’s Return
+ Chapter XLV — In the Prison
+ Chapter XLVI — The Hours of Suspense
+ Chapter XLVII — The Last Moment
+ Chapter XLVIII — Another Meeting in the Wood
+
+ Book Sixth
+ Chapter XLIX — At the Hall Farm
+ Chapter L — In the Cottage
+ Chapter LI — Sunday Morning
+ Chapter LII — Adam and Dinah
+ Chapter LIII — The Harvest Supper
+ Chapter LIV — The Meeting on the Hill
+ Chapter LV — Marriage Bells
+
+ Epilogue
+
+
+
+
+Book First
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+The Workshop
+
+
+With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer
+undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the
+past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of
+ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr.
+Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as
+it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.
+
+The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors
+and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike
+pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of
+the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the
+open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the
+transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the
+fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall.
+On a heap of those soft shavings a rough, grey shepherd dog had made
+himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his
+fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the
+tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of
+a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone
+belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing—
+
+Awake, my soul, and with the sun
+Thy daily stage of duty run;
+Shake off dull sloth...
+
+
+Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated
+attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it
+presently broke out again with renewed vigour—
+
+Let all thy converse be sincere,
+Thy conscience as the noonday clear.
+
+
+Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest
+belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a
+back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to
+take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier
+standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm
+that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long
+supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of
+skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified
+his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its
+contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes
+that shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows,
+indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly
+hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an
+expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.
+
+It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam’s brother. He is
+nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair
+and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to
+render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in
+form and face. Seth’s broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes are
+grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his
+brother’s; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and
+benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is
+not thick and straight, like Adam’s, but thin and wavy, allowing you to
+discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very
+decidedly over the brow.
+
+The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth;
+they scarcely ever spoke to Adam.
+
+The concert of the tools and Adam’s voice was at last broken by Seth,
+who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed it
+against the wall, and said, “There! I’ve finished my door to-day,
+anyhow.”
+
+The workmen all looked up; Jim Salt, a burly, red-haired man known as
+Sandy Jim, paused from his planing, and Adam said to Seth, with a sharp
+glance of surprise, “What! Dost think thee’st finished the door?”
+
+“Aye, sure,” said Seth, with answering surprise; “what’s awanting
+to’t?”
+
+A loud roar of laughter from the other three workmen made Seth look
+round confusedly. Adam did not join in the laughter, but there was a
+slight smile on his face as he said, in a gentler tone than before,
+“Why, thee’st forgot the panels.”
+
+The laughter burst out afresh as Seth clapped his hands to his head,
+and coloured over brow and crown.
+
+“Hoorray!” shouted a small lithe fellow called Wiry Ben, running
+forward and seizing the door. “We’ll hang up th’ door at fur end o’ th’
+shop an’ write on’t ‘Seth Bede, the Methody, his work.’ Here, Jim,
+lend’s hould o’ th’ red pot.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Adam. “Let it alone, Ben Cranage. You’ll mayhap be
+making such a slip yourself some day; you’ll laugh o’ th’ other side o’
+your mouth then.”
+
+“Catch me at it, Adam. It’ll be a good while afore my head’s full o’
+th’ Methodies,” said Ben.
+
+“Nay, but it’s often full o’ drink, and that’s worse.”
+
+Ben, however, had now got the “red pot” in his hand, and was about to
+begin writing his inscription, making, by way of preliminary, an
+imaginary S in the air.
+
+“Let it alone, will you?” Adam called out, laying down his tools,
+striding up to Ben, and seizing his right shoulder. “Let it alone, or
+I’ll shake the soul out o’ your body.”
+
+Ben shook in Adam’s iron grasp, but, like a plucky small man as he was,
+he didn’t mean to give in. With his left hand he snatched the brush
+from his powerless right, and made a movement as if he would perform
+the feat of writing with his left. In a moment Adam turned him round,
+seized his other shoulder, and, pushing him along, pinned him against
+the wall. But now Seth spoke.
+
+“Let be, Addy, let be. Ben will be joking. Why, he’s i’ the right to
+laugh at me—I canna help laughing at myself.”
+
+“I shan’t loose him till he promises to let the door alone,” said Adam.
+
+“Come, Ben, lad,” said Seth, in a persuasive tone, “don’t let’s have a
+quarrel about it. You know Adam will have his way. You may’s well try
+to turn a waggon in a narrow lane. Say you’ll leave the door alone, and
+make an end on’t.”
+
+“I binna frighted at Adam,” said Ben, “but I donna mind sayin’ as I’ll
+let ’t alone at your askin’, Seth.”
+
+“Come, that’s wise of you, Ben,” said Adam, laughing and relaxing his
+grasp.
+
+They all returned to their work now; but Wiry Ben, having had the worst
+in the bodily contest, was bent on retrieving that humiliation by a
+success in sarcasm.
+
+“Which was ye thinkin’ on, Seth,” he began—“the pretty parson’s face or
+her sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?”
+
+“Come and hear her, Ben,” said Seth, good-humouredly; “she’s going to
+preach on the Green to-night; happen ye’d get something to think on
+yourself then, instead o’ those wicked songs you’re so fond on. Ye
+might get religion, and that ’ud be the best day’s earnings y’ ever
+made.”
+
+“All i’ good time for that, Seth; I’ll think about that when I’m
+a-goin’ to settle i’ life; bachelors doesn’t want such heavy earnin’s.
+Happen I shall do the coortin’ an’ the religion both together, as _ye_
+do, Seth; but ye wouldna ha’ me get converted an’ chop in atween ye an’
+the pretty preacher, an’ carry her aff?”
+
+“No fear o’ that, Ben; she’s neither for you nor for me to win, I
+doubt. Only you come and hear her, and you won’t speak lightly on her
+again.”
+
+“Well, I’m half a mind t’ ha’ a look at her to-night, if there isn’t
+good company at th’ Holly Bush. What’ll she take for her text? Happen
+ye can tell me, Seth, if so be as I shouldna come up i’ time for’t.
+Will’t be—what come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto
+you, and more than a prophetess—a uncommon pretty young woman.”
+
+“Come, Ben,” said Adam, rather sternly, “you let the words o’ the Bible
+alone; you’re going too far now.”
+
+“What! Are _ye_ a-turnin’ roun’, Adam? I thought ye war dead again th’
+women preachin’, a while agoo?”
+
+“Nay, I’m not turnin’ noway. I said nought about the women preachin’. I
+said, You let the Bible alone: you’ve got a jest-book, han’t you, as
+you’re rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that.”
+
+“Why, y’ are gettin’ as big a saint as Seth. Y’ are goin’ to th’
+preachin’ to-night, I should think. Ye’ll do finely t’ lead the
+singin’. But I don’ know what Parson Irwine ’ull say at his gran’
+favright Adam Bede a-turnin’ Methody.”
+
+“Never do you bother yourself about me, Ben. I’m not a-going to turn
+Methodist any more nor you are—though it’s like enough you’ll turn to
+something worse. Mester Irwine’s got more sense nor to meddle wi’
+people’s doing as they like in religion. That’s between themselves and
+God, as he’s said to me many a time.”
+
+“Aye, aye; but he’s none so fond o’ your dissenters, for all that.”
+
+“Maybe; I’m none so fond o’ Josh Tod’s thick ale, but I don’t hinder
+you from making a fool o’ yourself wi’t.”
+
+There was a laugh at this thrust of Adam’s, but Seth said, very
+seriously. “Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody’s religion’s
+like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the
+Methodists have got the root o’ the matter as well as the church
+folks.”
+
+“Nay, Seth, lad; I’m not for laughing at no man’s religion. Let ’em
+follow their consciences, that’s all. Only I think it ’ud be better if
+their consciences ’ud let ’em stay quiet i’ the church—there’s a deal
+to be learnt there. And there’s such a thing as being oversperitial; we
+must have something beside Gospel i’ this world. Look at the canals,
+an’ th’ aqueduc’s, an’ th’ coal-pit engines, and Arkwright’s mills
+there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them
+things, I reckon. But t’ hear some o’ them preachers, you’d think as a
+man must be doing nothing all’s life but shutting’s eyes and looking
+what’s agoing on inside him. I know a man must have the love o’ God in
+his soul, and the Bible’s God’s word. But what does the Bible say? Why,
+it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the
+tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a
+nice hand. And this is my way o’ looking at it: there’s the sperrit o’
+God in all things and all times—weekday as well as Sunday—and i’ the
+great works and inventions, and i’ the figuring and the mechanics. And
+God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our
+souls; and if a man does bits o’ jobs out o’ working hours—builds a
+oven for ’s wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at
+his bit o’ garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o’ one, he’s doin’
+more good, and he’s just as near to God, as if he was running after
+some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning.”
+
+“Well done, Adam!” said Sandy Jim, who had paused from his planing to
+shift his planks while Adam was speaking; “that’s the best sarmunt I’ve
+heared this long while. By th’ same token, my wife’s been a-plaguin’ on
+me to build her a oven this twelvemont.”
+
+“There’s reason in what thee say’st, Adam,” observed Seth, gravely.
+“But thee know’st thyself as it’s hearing the preachers thee find’st so
+much fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un.
+It’s the preacher as empties th’ alehouse; and if a man gets religion,
+he’ll do his work none the worse for that.”
+
+“On’y he’ll lave the panels out o’ th’ doors sometimes, eh, Seth?” said
+Wiry Ben.
+
+“Ah, Ben, you’ve got a joke again’ me as ’ll last you your life. But it
+isna religion as was i’ fault there; it was Seth Bede, as was allays a
+wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, the more’s the
+pity.”
+
+“Ne’er heed me, Seth,” said Wiry Ben, “y’ are a down-right good-hearted
+chap, panels or no panels; an’ ye donna set up your bristles at every
+bit o’ fun, like some o’ your kin, as is mayhap cliverer.”
+
+“Seth, lad,” said Adam, taking no notice of the sarcasm against
+himself, “thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I
+said just now. Some ’s got one way o’ looking at things and some ’s got
+another.”
+
+“Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean’st me no unkindness,” said Seth, “I know
+that well enough. Thee’t like thy dog Gyp—thee bark’st at me sometimes,
+but thee allays lick’st my hand after.”
+
+All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock
+began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim
+had loosed his plane and was reaching his jacket; Wiry Ben had left a
+screw half driven in, and thrown his screwdriver into his tool-basket;
+Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept silence throughout the
+previous conversation, had flung down his hammer as he was in the act
+of lifting it; and Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was
+putting out his hand towards his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on with
+his work as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the
+tools, he looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation, “Look there,
+now! I can’t abide to see men throw away their tools i’ that way, the
+minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i’ their
+work and was afraid o’ doing a stroke too much.”
+
+Seth looked a little conscious, and began to be slower in his
+preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence, and said, “Aye,
+aye, Adam lad, ye talk like a young un. When y’ are six-an’-forty like
+me, istid o’ six-an’-twenty, ye wonna be so flush o’ workin’ for
+nought.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Adam, still wrathful; “what’s age got to do with it, I
+wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man’s
+arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock’s fairly struck,
+just as if he’d never a bit o’ pride and delight in ’s work. The very
+grindstone ’ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.”
+
+“Bodderation, Adam!” exclaimed Wiry Ben; “lave a chap aloon, will ’ee?
+Ye war afinding faut wi’ preachers a while agoo—y’ are fond enough o’
+preachin’ yoursen. Ye may like work better nor play, but I like play
+better nor work; that’ll ’commodate ye—it laves ye th’ more to do.”
+
+With this exit speech, which he considered effective, Wiry Ben
+shouldered his basket and left the workshop, quickly followed by Mum
+Taft and Sandy Jim. Seth lingered, and looked wistfully at Adam, as if
+he expected him to say something.
+
+“Shalt go home before thee go’st to the preaching?” Adam asked, looking
+up.
+
+“Nay; I’ve got my hat and things at Will Maskery’s. I shan’t be home
+before going for ten. I’ll happen see Dinah Morris safe home, if she’s
+willing. There’s nobody comes with her from Poyser’s, thee know’st.”
+
+“Then I’ll tell mother not to look for thee,” said Adam.
+
+“Thee artna going to Poyser’s thyself to-night?” said Seth rather
+timidly, as he turned to leave the workshop.
+
+“Nay, I’m going to th’ school.”
+
+Hitherto Gyp had kept his comfortable bed, only lifting up his head and
+watching Adam more closely as he noticed the other workmen departing.
+But no sooner did Adam put his ruler in his pocket, and begin to twist
+his apron round his waist, than Gyp ran forward and looked up in his
+master’s face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would
+doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his
+emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear
+more phlegmatic than nature had made him.
+
+“What! Art ready for the basket, eh, Gyp?” said Adam, with the same
+gentle modulation of voice as when he spoke to Seth.
+
+Gyp jumped and gave a short bark, as much as to say, “Of course.” Poor
+fellow, he had not a great range of expression.
+
+The basket was the one which on workdays held Adam’s and Seth’s dinner;
+and no official, walking in procession, could look more resolutely
+unconscious of all acquaintances than Gyp with his basket, trotting at
+his master’s heels.
+
+On leaving the workshop Adam locked the door, took the key out, and
+carried it to the house on the other side of the woodyard. It was a low
+house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant and
+mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and
+speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb
+tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped
+linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled
+fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory
+expectation of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman’s sight seemed to
+be dim, for she did not recognize Adam till he said, “Here’s the key,
+Dolly; lay it down for me in the house, will you?”
+
+“Aye, sure; but wunna ye come in, Adam? Miss Mary’s i’ th’ house, and
+Mester Burge ’ull be back anon; he’d be glad t’ ha’ ye to supper wi’m,
+I’ll be’s warrand.”
+
+“No, Dolly, thank you; I’m off home. Good evening.”
+
+Adam hastened with long strides, Gyp close to his heels, out of the
+workyard, and along the highroad leading away from the village and down
+to the valley. As he reached the foot of the slope, an elderly
+horseman, with his portmanteau strapped behind him, stopped his horse
+when Adam had passed him, and turned round to have another long look at
+the stalwart workman in paper cap, leather breeches, and dark-blue
+worsted stockings.
+
+Adam, unconscious of the admiration he was exciting, presently struck
+across the fields, and now broke out into the tune which had all day
+long been running in his head:
+
+Let all thy converse be sincere,
+Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
+For God’s all-seeing eye surveys
+Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+The Preaching
+
+
+About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement
+in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its little
+street, from the Donnithorne Arms to the churchyard gate, the
+inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something
+more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The
+Donnithorne Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small
+farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a
+pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise
+of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him
+for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the
+heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson,
+the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his
+hands in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and
+looking towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the
+middle of it, which he knew to be the destination of certain
+grave-looking men and women whom he had observed passing at intervals.
+
+Mr. Casson’s person was by no means of that common type which can be
+allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to
+consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to
+each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere
+might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the
+upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and
+tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Casson’s head was
+not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a “spotty globe,”
+as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head
+and face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression—which
+was chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight
+knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth
+mention—was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of
+personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and
+bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in
+a man who had been butler to “the family” for fifteen years, and who,
+in his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with
+his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of
+his curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr.
+Casson had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but
+when he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets,
+and thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his
+head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous
+indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were
+diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to
+have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door
+of the Donnithorne Arms.
+
+“Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler,” said the traveller
+to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound
+of the horse’s hoofs.
+
+“Why, what’s up in your pretty village, landlord?” he continued,
+getting down. “There seems to be quite a stir.”
+
+“It’s a Methodis’ preaching, sir; it’s been gev hout as a young woman’s
+a-going to preach on the Green,” answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and
+wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. “Will you please to step
+in, sir, an’ tek somethink?”
+
+“No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my
+horse. And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman
+preaching just under his nose?”
+
+“Parson Irwine, sir, doesn’t live here; he lives at Brox’on, over the
+hill there. The parsonage here’s a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for
+gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir,
+an’ puts up his hoss here. It’s a grey cob, sir, an’ he sets great
+store by’t. He’s allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I
+hed the Donnithorne Arms. I’m not this countryman, you may tell by my
+tongue, sir. They’re cur’ous talkers i’ this country, sir; the gentry’s
+hard work to hunderstand ’em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir,
+an’ got the turn o’ their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you
+think the folks here says for ‘hevn’t you?’—the gentry, you know, says,
+‘hevn’t you’—well, the people about here says ‘hanna yey.’ It’s what
+they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That’s what I’ve
+heared Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it’s the dileck, says he.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said the stranger, smiling. “I know it very well. But
+you’ve not got many Methodists about here, surely—in this agricultural
+spot? I should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a
+Methodist to be found about here. You’re all farmers, aren’t you? The
+Methodists can seldom lay much hold on _them_.”
+
+“Why, sir, there’s a pretty lot o’ workmen round about, sir. There’s
+Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good
+bit o’ building an’ repairs. An’ there’s the stone-pits not far off.
+There’s plenty of emply i’ this countryside, sir. An’ there’s a fine
+batch o’ Methodisses at Treddles’on—that’s the market town about three
+mile off—you’ll maybe ha’ come through it, sir. There’s pretty nigh a
+score of ’em on the Green now, as come from there. That’s where our
+people gets it from, though there’s only two men of ’em in all
+Hayslope: that’s Will Maskery, the wheelwright, and Seth Bede, a young
+man as works at the carpenterin’.”
+
+“The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?”
+
+“Nay, sir, she comes out o’ Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off.
+But she’s a-visitin’ hereabout at Mester Poyser’s at the Hall Farm—it’s
+them barns an’ big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She’s own
+niece to Poyser’s wife, an’ they’ll be fine an’ vexed at her for making
+a fool of herself i’ that way. But I’ve heared as there’s no holding
+these Methodisses when the maggit’s once got i’ their head: many of ’em
+goes stark starin’ mad wi’ their religion. Though this young woman’s
+quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I’ve not seen her
+myself.”
+
+“Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I’ve
+been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that
+place in the valley. It’s Squire Donnithorne’s, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that’s Donnithorne Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn’t
+there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I’ve lived butler there
+a-going i’ fifteen year. It’s Captain Donnithorne as is th’ heir,
+sir—Squire Donnithorne’s grandson. He’ll be comin’ of hage this
+’ay-’arvest, sir, an’ we shall hev fine doin’s. He owns all the land
+about here, sir, Squire Donnithorne does.”
+
+“Well, it’s a pretty spot, whoever may own it,” said the traveller,
+mounting his horse; “and one meets some fine strapping fellows about
+too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about half
+an hour ago, before I came up the hill—a carpenter, a tall,
+broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along
+like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French.”
+
+“Aye, sir, that’s Adam Bede, that is, I’ll be bound—Thias Bede’s son
+everybody knows him hereabout. He’s an uncommon clever stiddy fellow,
+an’ wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir—if you’ll hexcuse me for
+saying so—he can walk forty mile a-day, an’ lift a matter o’ sixty
+ston’. He’s an uncommon favourite wi’ the gentry, sir: Captain
+Donnithorne and Parson Irwine meks a fine fuss wi’ him. But he’s a
+little lifted up an’ peppery-like.”
+
+“Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on.”
+
+“Your servant, sir; good evenin’.”
+
+The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when
+he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right
+hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with
+the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity
+to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to
+get to the end of his journey, and he paused.
+
+The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road
+branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the
+church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the
+side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of
+thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on
+the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view
+of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of
+distant hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which
+Hayslope belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire,
+overlooked by its barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may
+sometimes be seen linked in the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother;
+and in two or three hours’ ride the traveller might exchange a bleak
+treeless region, intersected by lines of cold grey stone, for one where
+his road wound under the shelter of woods, or up swelling hills,
+muffled with hedgerows and long meadow-grass and thick corn; and where
+at every turn he came upon some fine old country-seat nestled in the
+valley or crowning the slope, some homestead with its long length of
+barn and its cluster of golden ricks, some grey steeple looking out
+from a pretty confusion of trees and thatch and dark-red tiles. It was
+just such a picture as this last that Hayslope Church had made to the
+traveller as he began to mount the gentle slope leading to its pleasant
+uplands, and now from his station near the Green he had before him in
+one view nearly all the other typical features of this pleasant land.
+High up against the horizon were the huge conical masses of hill, like
+giant mounds intended to fortify this region of corn and grass against
+the keen and hungry winds of the north; not distant enough to be
+clothed in purple mystery, but with sombre greenish sides visibly
+specked with sheep, whose motion was only revealed by memory, not
+detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the changing hours, but
+responding with no change in themselves—left for ever grim and sullen
+after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of the April noonday, the
+parting crimson glory of the ripening summer sun. And directly below
+them the eye rested on a more advanced line of hanging woods, divided
+by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops, and not yet deepened
+into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but still showing the
+warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of the ash and lime.
+Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker, as if they had
+rolled down and hurried together from the patches left smooth on the
+slope, that they might take the better care of the tall mansion which
+lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke among them.
+Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy pool in
+front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would not let
+our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead a
+foreground which was just as lovely—the level sunlight lying like
+transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
+and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
+the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of the
+scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
+flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.
+
+He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned a
+little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge’s
+pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
+the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
+living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
+from old “Feyther Taft” in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
+nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long
+while, leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little
+round heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there
+was a new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his
+supper, came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze,
+willing to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no
+means excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join
+the Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with
+the expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not
+have disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the “preacher
+woman”—they had only come out to see “what war a-goin’ on, like.” The
+men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith’s
+shop. But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never
+swarm: a whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as
+incapable of an undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns
+his back on his interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as
+if he meant to run away from the answer, and walking a step or two
+farther off when the interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group
+in the vicinity of the blacksmith’s door was by no means a close one,
+and formed no screen in front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself,
+who stood with his black brawny arms folded, leaning against the
+door-post, and occasionally sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own
+jokes, giving them a marked preference over the sarcasms of Wiry Ben,
+who had renounced the pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of
+seeing life under a new form. But both styles of wit were treated with
+equal contempt by Mr. Joshua Rann. Mr. Rann’s leathern apron and
+subdued griminess can leave no one in any doubt that he is the village
+shoemaker; the thrusting out of his chin and stomach and the twirling
+of his thumbs are more subtle indications, intended to prepare unwary
+strangers for the discovery that they are in the presence of the parish
+clerk. “Old Joshway,” as he is irreverently called by his neighbours,
+is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his
+lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of
+a violoncello, “Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for
+ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever”—a
+quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present
+occasion, but, as with every other anomaly, adequate knowledge will
+show it to be a natural sequence. Mr. Rann was inwardly maintaining the
+dignity of the Church in the face of this scandalous irruption of
+Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up with his own sonorous
+utterance of the responses, his argument naturally suggested a
+quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday afternoon.
+
+The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
+the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
+and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
+was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright’s to
+serve as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs
+had been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with
+their eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
+continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
+with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
+Cranage, the blacksmith’s buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
+Chad’s Bess, who wondered “why the folks war amakin’ faces a that’ns.”
+Chad’s Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
+being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
+exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
+red cheeks—namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
+in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
+cousin and namesake Timothy’s Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
+often wished “them ear-rings” might come to good.
+
+Timothy’s Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
+familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a
+handsome set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the
+heavy baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five
+in knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck
+by way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad’s small terrier.
+This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy’s Bess’s
+Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty,
+had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking
+round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide
+open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical
+accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by
+the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy’s Bess’s Ben
+first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge
+behind his father’s legs.
+
+“Ye gallows young dog,” said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, “if
+ye donna keep that stick quiet, I’ll tek it from ye. What dy’e mane by
+kickin’ foulks?”
+
+“Here! Gie him here to me, Jim,” said Chad Cranage; “I’ll tie hirs up
+an’ shoe him as I do th’ hosses. Well, Mester Casson,” he continued, as
+that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, “how are ye t’
+naight? Are ye coom t’ help groon? They say folks allays groon when
+they’re hearkenin’ to th’ Methodys, as if they war bad i’ th’ inside. I
+mane to groon as loud as your cow did th’ other naight, an’ then the
+praicher ’ull think I’m i’ th’ raight way.”
+
+“I’d advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad,” said Mr. Casson,
+with some dignity; “Poyser wouldn’t like to hear as his wife’s niece
+was treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn’t be fond of her
+taking on herself to preach.”
+
+“Aye, an’ she’s a pleasant-looked un too,” said Wiry Ben. “I’ll stick
+up for the pretty women preachin’; I know they’d persuade me over a
+deal sooner nor th’ ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore
+the night’s out, an’ begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede.”
+
+“Why, Seth’s looking rether too high, I should think,” said Mr. Casson.
+“This woman’s kin wouldn’t like her to demean herself to a common
+carpenter.”
+
+“Tchu!” said Ben, with a long treble intonation, “what’s folks’s kin
+got to do wi’t? Not a chip. Poyser’s wife may turn her nose up an’
+forget bygones, but this Dinah Morris, they tell me, ’s as poor as iver
+she was—works at a mill, an’s much ado to keep hersen. A strappin’
+young carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Seth, wouldna be a bad
+match for her. Why, Poysers make as big a fuss wi’ Adam Bede as if he
+war a nevvy o’ their own.”
+
+“Idle talk! idle talk!” said Mr. Joshua Rann. “Adam an’ Seth’s two men;
+you wunna fit them two wi’ the same last.”
+
+“Maybe,” said Wiry Ben, contemptuously, “but Seth’s the lad for me,
+though he war a Methody twice o’er. I’m fair beat wi’ Seth, for I’ve
+been teasin’ him iver sin’ we’ve been workin’ together, an’ he bears me
+no more malice nor a lamb. An’ he’s a stout-hearted feller too, for
+when we saw the old tree all afire a-comin’ across the fields one
+night, an’ we thought as it war a boguy, Seth made no more ado, but he
+up to’t as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o’ Will
+Maskery’s; an’ there’s Will hisself, lookin’ as meek as if he couldna
+knock a nail o’ the head for fear o’ hurtin’t. An’ there’s the pretty
+preacher woman! My eye, she’s got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit
+nearer.”
+
+Several of the men followed Ben’s lead, and the traveller pushed his
+horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly and in advance of
+her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was
+near Seth’s tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the
+cart, and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle
+height of woman, though in reality she did not exceed it—an effect
+which was due to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her
+black stuff dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her
+approach and mount the cart—surprise, not so much at the feminine
+delicacy of her appearance, as at the total absence of
+self-consciousness in her demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her
+advance with a measured step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he
+had felt sure that her face would be mantled with the smile of
+conscious saintship, or else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He
+knew but two types of Methodist—the ecstatic and the bilious. But Dinah
+walked as simply as if she were going to market, and seemed as
+unconscious of her outward appearance as a little boy: there was no
+blush, no tremulousness, which said, “I know you think me a pretty
+woman, too young to preach”; no casting up or down of the eyelids, no
+compression of the lips, no attitude of the arms that said, “But you
+must think of me as a saint.” She held no book in her ungloved hands,
+but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and
+turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keenness in the eyes;
+they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they
+had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to
+give out, rather than impressed by external objects. She stood with her
+left hand towards the descending sun, and leafy boughs screened her
+from its rays; but in this sober light the delicate colouring of her
+face seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at evening. It was
+a small oval face, of a uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like
+line of cheek and chin, a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and
+a low perpendicular brow, surmounted by a rising arch of parting
+between smooth locks of pale reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight
+back behind the ears, and covered, except for an inch or two above the
+brow, by a net Quaker cap. The eyebrows, of the same colour as the
+hair, were perfectly horizontal and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes,
+though no darker, were long and abundant—nothing was left blurred or
+unfinished. It was one of those faces that make one think of white
+flowers with light touches of colour on their pure petals. The eyes had
+no peculiar beauty, beyond that of expression; they looked so simple,
+so candid, so gravely loving, that no accusing scowl, no light sneer
+could help melting away before their glance. Joshua Rann gave a long
+cough, as if he were clearing his throat in order to come to a new
+understanding with himself; Chad Cranage lifted up his leather
+skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben wondered how Seth had
+the pluck to think of courting her.
+
+“A sweet woman,” the stranger said to himself, “but surely nature never
+meant her for a preacher.”
+
+Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical
+properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and
+psychology, “makes up,” her characters, so that there may be no mistake
+about them. But Dinah began to speak.
+
+“Dear friends,” she said in a clear but not loud voice “let us pray for
+a blessing.”
+
+She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in
+the same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her:
+“Saviour of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the
+well to draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee
+not; she had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy.
+But Thou didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her
+that her life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her
+that blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst
+of us, and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor
+woman—if their minds are dark, their lives unholy—if they have come out
+not seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according
+to the free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord,
+open their ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and
+make them thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.
+
+“Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the
+night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with
+them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee:
+open their eyes that they may see Thee—see Thee weeping over them, and
+saying ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life’—see Thee
+hanging on the cross and saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know
+not what they do’—see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to
+judge them at the last. Amen.”
+
+Dinah opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of
+villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.
+
+“Dear friends,” she began, raising her voice a little, “you have all of
+you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman read
+these words: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
+anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.’ Jesus Christ spoke those
+words—he said he came _to preach the Gospel to the poor:_ I don’t know
+whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you
+when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of
+evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up
+took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I
+remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white
+hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had
+ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and
+this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody I
+had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from the
+sky to preach to us, and I said, ‘Aunt, will he go back to the sky
+to-night, like the picture in the Bible?’
+
+“That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our
+blessed Lord did—preaching the Gospel to the poor—and he entered into
+his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after,
+but I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one
+thing he told us in his sermon. He told us as ‘Gospel’ meant ‘good
+news.’ The Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.
+
+“Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as
+I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down
+for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear
+friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have
+been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven’t been to
+school much, nor read books, and we don’t know much about anything but
+what happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to
+hear good news. For when anybody’s well off, they don’t much mind about
+hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman’s in
+trouble and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a
+letter to tell ’em they’ve got a friend as will help ’em. To be sure,
+we can’t help knowing something about God, even if we’ve never heard
+the Gospel, the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know
+everything comes from God: don’t you say almost every day, ‘This and
+that will happen, please God,’ and ‘We shall begin to cut the grass
+soon, please God to send us a little more sunshine’? We know very well
+we are altogether in the hands of God. We didn’t bring ourselves into
+the world, we can’t keep ourselves alive while we’re sleeping; the
+daylight, and the wind, and the corn, and the cows to give us
+milk—everything we have comes from God. And he gave us our souls and
+put love between parents and children, and husband and wife. But is
+that as much as we want to know about God? We see he is great and
+mighty, and can do what he will: we are lost, as if we was struggling
+in great waters, when we try to think of him.
+
+“But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
+notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
+and the wise and the rich. It doesn’t cost him much to give us our
+little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
+cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
+garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
+when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick
+and helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the
+blight come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain
+and trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good,
+he seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?
+
+“Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
+does other good news signify if we haven’t that? For everything else
+comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
+everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?”
+
+Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind of
+God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
+dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.
+
+“So you see, dear friends,” she went on, “Jesus spent his time almost
+all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
+he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
+them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
+to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
+he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
+feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
+very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
+friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
+their sins.
+
+“Ah, wouldn’t you love such a man if you saw him—if he were here in
+this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
+to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.
+
+“Well, dear friends, who _was_ this man? Was he only a good man—a very
+good man, and no more—like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
+us?... He was the Son of God—‘in the image of the Father,’ the Bible
+says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
+things—the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that Jesus
+showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
+understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
+spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think
+what God was before—the God who made the world and the sky and the
+thunder and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the
+things he had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as
+we might well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour
+has showed us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can
+understand; he has showed us what God’s heart is, what are his feelings
+towards us.
+
+“But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.
+Another time he said, ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost’;
+and another time, ‘I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
+repentance.’
+
+“The _lost!... Sinners!_... Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and
+me?”
+
+Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will by
+the charm of Dinah’s mellow treble tones, which had a variety of
+modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious
+skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like
+novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear it
+sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of
+conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the
+truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her
+hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no
+longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly,
+though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any
+transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the
+effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her
+voice, and when she came to the question, “Will God take care of us
+when we die?” she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that
+the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased
+to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the
+attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she
+could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which
+must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist
+preacher, until she came to the words, “Lost!—Sinners!” when there was
+a great change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause
+before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating
+thoughts that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became
+paler; the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears
+half-gather without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an
+expression of appalled pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a
+destroying angel hovering over the heads of the people. Her voice
+became deep and muffled, but there was still no gesture. Nothing could
+be less like the ordinary type of the Ranter than Dinah. She was not
+preaching as she heard others preach, but speaking directly from her
+own emotions and under the inspiration of her own simple faith.
+
+But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner
+became less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried
+to bring home to the people their guilt, their wilful darkness, their
+state of disobedience to God—as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin,
+the Divine holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour, by which a way
+had been opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her
+yearning desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied
+by addressing her hearers as a body. She appealed first to one and then
+to another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was
+yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin,
+feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their
+Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching
+for their return.
+
+There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow-Methodists,
+but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little
+smouldering vague anxiety that might easily die out again was the
+utmost effect Dinah’s preaching had wrought in them at present. Yet no
+one had retired, except the children and “old Feyther Taft,” who being
+too deaf to catch many words, had some time ago gone back to his
+inglenook. Wiry Ben was feeling very uncomfortable, and almost wishing
+he had not come to hear Dinah; he thought what she said would haunt him
+somehow. Yet he couldn’t help liking to look at her and listen to her,
+though he dreaded every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and
+address him in particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was
+now holding the baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man
+had rubbed away some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of
+being a better fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the
+Stone-pits, and cleaning himself more regularly of a Sunday.
+
+In front of Sandy Jim stood Chad’s Bess, who had shown an unwonted
+quietude and fixity of attention ever since Dinah had begun to speak.
+Not that the matter of the discourse had arrested her at once, for she
+was lost in a puzzling speculation as to what pleasure and satisfaction
+there could be in life to a young woman who wore a cap like Dinah’s.
+Giving up this inquiry in despair, she took to studying Dinah’s nose,
+eyes, mouth, and hair, and wondering whether it was better to have such
+a sort of pale face as that, or fat red cheeks and round black eyes
+like her own. But gradually the influence of the general gravity told
+upon her, and she became conscious of what Dinah was saying. The gentle
+tones, the loving persuasion, did not touch her, but when the more
+severe appeals came she began to be frightened. Poor Bessy had always
+been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was
+necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She
+couldn’t find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often
+been tittering when she “curcheyed” to Mr. Irwine; and these religious
+deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor
+morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class
+of feminine characters with whom you may venture to “eat an egg, an
+apple, or a nut.” All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto
+had not been greatly ashamed of it. But now she began to feel very much
+as if the constable had come to take her up and carry her before the
+justice for some undefined offence. She had a terrified sense that God,
+whom she had always thought of as very far off, was very near to her,
+and that Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see
+him. For Dinah had that belief in visible manifestations of Jesus,
+which is common among the Methodists, and she communicated it
+irresistibly to her hearers: she made them feel that he was among them
+bodily, and might at any moment show himself to them in some way that
+would strike anguish and penitence into their hearts.
+
+“See!” she exclaimed, turning to the left, with her eyes fixed on a
+point above the heads of the people. “See where our blessed Lord stands
+and weeps and stretches out his arms towards you. Hear what he says:
+‘How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens
+under her wings, and ye would not!’... and ye would not,” she repeated,
+in a tone of pleading reproach, turning her eyes on the people again.
+“See the print of the nails on his dear hands and feet. It is your sins
+that made them! Ah! How pale and worn he looks! He has gone through all
+that great agony in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful
+even unto death, and the great drops of sweat fell like blood to the
+ground. They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they
+mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders. Then
+they nailed him up. Ah, what pain! His lips are parched with thirst,
+and they mock him still in this great agony; yet with those parched
+lips he prays for them, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what
+they do.’ Then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and he felt
+what sinners feel when they are for ever shut out from God. That was
+the last drop in the cup of bitterness. ‘My God, my God!’ he cries,
+‘why hast Thou forsaken me?’
+
+“All this he bore for you! For you—and you never think of him; for
+you—and you turn your backs on him; you don’t care what he has gone
+through for you. Yet he is not weary of toiling for you: he has risen
+from the dead, he is praying for you at the right hand of God—‘Father,
+forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And he is upon this
+earth too; he is among us; he is there close to you now; I see his
+wounded body and his look of love.”
+
+Here Dinah turned to Bessy Cranage, whose bonny youth and evident
+vanity had touched her with pity.
+
+“Poor child! Poor child! He is beseeching you, and you don’t listen to
+him. You think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never
+think of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. Your cheeks
+will be shrivelled one day, your hair will be grey, your poor body will
+be thin and tottering! Then you will begin to feel that your soul is
+not saved; then you will have to stand before God dressed in your sins,
+in your evil tempers and vain thoughts. And Jesus, who stands ready to
+help you now, won’t help you then; because you won’t have him to be
+your Saviour, he will be your judge. Now he looks at you with love and
+mercy and says, ‘Come to me that you may have life’; then he will turn
+away from you, and say, ‘Depart from me into ever-lasting fire!’”
+
+Poor Bessy’s wide-open black eyes began to fill with tears, her great
+red cheeks and lips became quite pale, and her face was distorted like
+a little child’s before a burst of crying.
+
+“Ah, poor blind child!” Dinah went on, “think if it should happen to
+you as it once happened to a servant of God in the days of her vanity.
+_She_ thought of her lace caps and saved all her money to buy ’em; she
+thought nothing about how she might get a clean heart and a right
+spirit—she only wanted to have better lace than other girls. And one
+day when she put her new cap on and looked in the glass, she saw a
+bleeding Face crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you
+now”—here Dinah pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy—“Ah, tear off
+those follies! Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging
+adders. They _are_ stinging you—they are poisoning your soul—they are
+dragging you down into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for
+ever, and for ever, and for ever, further away from light and God.”
+
+Bessy could bear it no longer: a great terror was upon her, and
+wrenching her ear-rings from her ears, she threw them down before her,
+sobbing aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be “laid
+hold on” too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as
+nothing less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at
+his anvil by way of reassuring himself. “Folks mun ha’ hoss-shoes,
+praichin’ or no praichin’: the divil canna lay hould o’ me for that,”
+he muttered to himself.
+
+But now Dinah began to tell of the joys that were in store for the
+penitent, and to describe in her simple way the divine peace and love
+with which the soul of the believer is filled—how the sense of God’s
+love turns poverty into riches and satisfies the soul so that no uneasy
+desire vexes it, no fear alarms it: how, at last, the very temptation
+to sin is extinguished, and heaven is begun upon earth, because no
+cloud passes between the soul and God, who is its eternal sun.
+
+“Dear friends,” she said at last, “brothers and sisters, whom I love as
+those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great
+blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too. I am
+poor, like you: I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor
+lady can be so happy as me, if they haven’t got the love of God in
+their souls. Think what it is—not to hate anything but sin; to be full
+of love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that
+all things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our
+Father’s will; to know that nothing—no, not if the earth was to be
+burnt up, or the waters come and drown us—nothing could part us from
+God who loves us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because
+we are sure that whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.
+
+“Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it
+is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like
+the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest
+can have. God is without end; his love is without end—”
+
+Its streams the whole creation reach,
+    So plenteous is the store;
+Enough for all, enough for each,
+    Enough for evermore.
+
+
+Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of
+the parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words.
+The stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if
+it had been the development of a drama—for there is this sort of
+fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one
+the inward drama of the speaker’s emotions—now turned his horse aside
+and pursued his way, while Dinah said, “Let us sing a little, dear
+friends”; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the
+Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of
+exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+After the Preaching
+
+
+In less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah’s
+side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
+corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
+taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her
+hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
+twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly
+as he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say
+to her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity—of
+absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment
+or with her own personality—an expression that is most of all
+discouraging to a lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that
+quiet elasticity that asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he
+said to himself, “She’s too good and holy for any man, let alone me,”
+and the words he had been summoning rushed back again before they had
+reached his lips. But another thought gave him courage: “There’s no man
+could love her better and leave her freer to follow the Lord’s work.”
+They had been silent for many minutes now, since they had done talking
+about Bessy Cranage; Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth’s
+presence, and her pace was becoming so much quicker that the sense of
+their being only a few minutes’ walk from the yard-gates of the Hall
+Farm at last gave Seth courage to speak.
+
+“You’ve quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o’ Saturday,
+Dinah?”
+
+“Yes,” said Dinah, quietly. “I’m called there. It was borne in upon my
+mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who’s in
+a decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of
+thin white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me.
+And this morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words
+my eyes fell on were, ‘And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
+endeavoured to go into Macedonia.’ If it wasn’t for that clear showing
+of the Lord’s will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
+my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
+I’ve been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
+a token that there may be mercy in store for her.”
+
+“God grant it,” said Seth. “For I doubt Adam’s heart is so set on her,
+he’ll never turn to anybody else; and yet it ’ud go to my heart if he
+was to marry her, for I canna think as she’d make him happy. It’s a
+deep mystery—the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the
+rest he’s seen i’ the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven
+year for _her_, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other
+woman for th’ asking. I often think of them words, ‘And Jacob served
+seven years for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the
+love he had to her.’ I know those words ’ud come true with me, Dinah,
+if so be you’d give me hope as I might win you after seven years was
+over. I know you think a husband ’ud be taking up too much o’ your
+thoughts, because St. Paul says, ‘She that’s married careth for the
+things of the world how she may please her husband’; and may happen
+you’ll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you
+told me o’ your mind last Saturday. But I’ve been thinking it over
+again by night and by day, and I’ve prayed not to be blinded by my own
+desires, to think what’s only good for me must be good for you too. And
+it seems to me there’s more texts for your marrying than ever you can
+find against it. For St. Paul says as plain as can be in another place,
+‘I will that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house,
+give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully’; and then
+‘two are better than one’; and that holds good with marriage as well as
+with other things. For we should be o’ one heart and o’ one mind,
+Dinah. We both serve the same Master, and are striving after the same
+gifts; and I’d never be the husband to make a claim on you as could
+interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I’d make a
+shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty—more than you
+can have now, for you’ve got to get your own living now, and I’m strong
+enough to work for us both.”
+
+When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
+almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
+had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
+flushed as he went on, his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
+voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
+those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
+office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
+Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, “Seth Bede, I thank
+you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
+than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
+free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
+blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but ‘as God has distributed to
+every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.’ God has
+called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
+own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
+that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
+my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave
+the brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very
+little of this world’s good; where the trees are few, so that a child
+might count them, and there’s very hard living for the poor in the
+winter. It has been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the
+little flock there and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled
+with these things from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too
+short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for
+myself in this world. I’ve not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth,
+for when I saw as your love was given to me, I thought it might be a
+leading of Providence for me to change my way of life, and that we
+should be fellow-helpers; and I spread the matter before the Lord. But
+whenever I tried to fix my mind on marriage, and our living together,
+other thoughts always came in—the times when I’ve prayed by the sick
+and dying, and the happy hours I’ve had preaching, when my heart was
+filled with love, and the Word was given to me abundantly. And when
+I’ve opened the Bible for direction, I’ve always lighted on some clear
+word to tell me where my work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that
+you would try to be a help and not a hindrance to my work; but I see
+that our marriage is not God’s will—He draws my heart another way. I
+desire to live and die without husband or children. I seem to have no
+room in my soul for wants and fears of my own, it has pleased God to
+fill my heart so full with the wants and sufferings of his poor
+people.”
+
+Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
+they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, “Well, Dinah, I must seek
+for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
+But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
+I could never joy in anything any more. I think it’s something passing
+the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
+your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I
+trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
+for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I
+feel more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often
+can’t help saying of you what the hymn says—
+
+In darkest shades if she appear,
+    My dawning is begun;
+She is my soul’s bright morning-star,
+    And she my rising sun.
+
+
+That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn’t be
+displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this
+country and go to live at Snowfield?”
+
+“No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
+leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord’s clear
+bidding. It’s a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
+Goshen you’ve been used to. We mustn’t be in a hurry to fix and choose
+our own lot; we must wait to be guided.”
+
+“But you’d let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
+wanted to tell you?”
+
+“Yes, sure; let me know if you’re in any trouble. You’ll be continually
+in my prayers.”
+
+They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, “I won’t go in,
+Dinah, so farewell.” He paused and hesitated after she had given him
+her hand, and then said, “There’s no knowing but what you may see
+things different after a while. There may be a new leading.”
+
+“Let us leave that, Seth. It’s good to live only a moment at a time, as
+I’ve read in one of Mr. Wesley’s books. It isn’t for you and me to lay
+plans; we’ve nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.”
+
+Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
+then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk
+lingeringly home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to
+turn back along the fields through which he and Dinah had already
+passed; and I think his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears
+long before he had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his
+face steadily homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just
+learned what it is to love—to love with that adoration which a young
+man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than
+himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious
+feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or
+art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under
+the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic
+statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness
+that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love
+and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression
+into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object
+and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift
+of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since
+the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed
+in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there
+was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his
+fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after
+exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.
+
+That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
+of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
+or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men
+and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
+culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
+imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
+suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
+Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
+that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
+low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
+and hypocritical jargon—elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
+analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.
+
+That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
+anything else than Methodists—not indeed of that modern type which
+reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
+but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
+instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
+drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
+hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
+not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
+for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
+liberal. Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and
+charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility
+to the three concords, and it is possible—thank Heaven!—to have very
+erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which
+clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to
+her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously
+inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
+that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.
+
+Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath
+our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
+of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
+horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.
+
+Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
+was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
+him to “hold on tight”; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
+apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
+homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be
+less bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah
+does.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+Home and Its Sorrows
+
+
+A green valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
+overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
+Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
+passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the
+basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of
+timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.
+
+The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
+she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
+watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
+few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
+Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
+come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
+clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
+linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
+buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made
+of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the
+hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey
+petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a
+strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are
+somewhat dim now—perhaps from too much crying—but her broadly marked
+eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands
+knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she
+has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of
+water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and
+the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not
+from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of
+large-hearted intelligence.
+
+Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great
+tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us
+by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and
+ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every
+movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the
+thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah, so like our mother’s!—averted from
+us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the
+air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years
+ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage—the mechanical
+instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the
+modelling hand—galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the
+long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own
+wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours
+and irrational persistence.
+
+It is such a fond anxious mother’s voice that you hear, as Lisbeth
+says, “Well, my lad, it’s gone seven by th’ clock. Thee’t allays stay
+till the last child’s born. Thee wants thy supper, I’ll warrand.
+Where’s Seth? Gone arter some o’s chapellin’, I reckon?”
+
+“Aye, aye, Seth’s at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where’s
+father?” said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into
+the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. “Hasn’t he
+done the coffin for Tholer? There’s the stuff standing just as I left
+it this morning.”
+
+“Done the coffin?” said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting
+uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. “Eh, my
+lad, he went aff to Treddles’on this forenoon, an’s niver come back. I
+doubt he’s got to th’ ‘Waggin Overthrow’ again.”
+
+A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam’s face. He said nothing,
+but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.
+
+“What art goin’ to do, Adam?” said the mother, with a tone and look of
+alarm. “Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi’out ha’in thy bit o’
+supper?”
+
+Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother
+threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm,
+and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, “Nay, my lad, my lad,
+thee munna go wi’out thy supper; there’s the taters wi’ the gravy in
+’em, just as thee lik’st ’em. I saved ’em o’ purpose for thee. Come an’
+ha’ thy supper, come.”
+
+“Let be!” said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the
+planks that stood against the wall. “It’s fine talking about having
+supper when here’s a coffin promised to be ready at Brox’on by seven
+o’clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha’ been there now, and not a
+nail struck yet. My throat’s too full to swallow victuals.”
+
+“Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready,” said Lisbeth. “Thee’t work
+thyself to death. It ’ud take thee all night to do’t.”
+
+“What signifies how long it takes me? Isn’t the coffin promised? Can
+they bury the man without a coffin? I’d work my right hand off sooner
+than deceive people with lies i’ that way. It makes me mad to think
+on’t. I shall overrun these doings before long. I’ve stood enough of
+’em.”
+
+Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she
+had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the
+next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never
+to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping
+bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make
+her voice very piteous, she burst out into words.
+
+“Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an’ break thy mother’s
+heart, an’ leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha’ ’em carry me
+to th’ churchyard, an’ thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i’ my grave
+if I donna see thee at th’ last; an’ how’s they to let thee know as I’m
+a-dyin’, if thee’t gone a-workin’ i’ distant parts, an’ Seth belike
+gone arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for’s hand
+shakin’, besides not knowin’ where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy
+feyther—thee munna be so bitter again’ him. He war a good feyther to
+thee afore he took to th’ drink. He’s a clever workman, an’ taught thee
+thy trade, remember, an’s niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill
+word—no, not even in ’s drink. Thee wouldstna ha’ ’m go to the
+workhus—thy own feyther—an’ him as was a fine-growed man an’ handy at
+everythin’ amost as thee art thysen, five-an’-twenty ’ear ago, when
+thee wast a baby at the breast.”
+
+Lisbeth’s voice became louder, and choked with sobs—a sort of wail, the
+most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and
+real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently.
+
+“Now, Mother, don’t cry and talk so. Haven’t I got enough to vex me
+without that? What’s th’ use o’ telling me things as I only think too
+much on every day? If I didna think on ’em, why should I do as I do,
+for the sake o’ keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking
+where it’s no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i’stead o’
+talking.”
+
+“I know thee dost things as nobody else ’ud do, my lad. But thee’t
+allays so hard upo’ thy feyther, Adam. Thee think’st nothing too much
+to do for Seth: thee snapp’st me up if iver I find faut wi’ th’ lad.
+But thee’t so angered wi’ thy feyther, more nor wi’ anybody else.”
+
+“That’s better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way,
+I reckon, isn’t it? If I wasn’t sharp with him he’d sell every bit o’
+stuff i’ th’ yard and spend it on drink. I know there’s a duty to be
+done by my father, but it isn’t my duty to encourage him in running
+headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no
+harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with
+the work.”
+
+Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking
+to console herself somewhat for Adam’s refusal of the supper she had
+spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it,
+by feeding Adam’s dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his
+master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual
+course of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him,
+and moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting
+him to supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated
+on his haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam
+noticed Gyp’s mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less
+tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as
+much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that
+love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are
+dumb?
+
+“Go, Gyp; go, lad!” Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and
+Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed
+Lisbeth into the house-place.
+
+But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his
+master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women
+who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if
+Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he
+compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy
+day, he had not a vixen in his eye—a fury with long nails, acrid and
+selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but
+in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make
+uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending
+nothing on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example—at once
+patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the
+livelong day over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen
+to-morrow, and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a
+certain awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when
+he said, “Leave me alone,” she was always silenced.
+
+So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the
+sound of Adam’s tools. At last he called for a light and a draught of
+water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth
+ventured to say as she took it in, “Thy supper stan’s ready for thee,
+when thee lik’st.”
+
+“Donna thee sit up, mother,” said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked
+off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his
+mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with
+which at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. “I’ll see to
+Father when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall
+be easier if thee’t i’ bed.”
+
+“Nay, I’ll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon.”
+
+It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of the
+days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth
+entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.
+
+“Why, Mother,” he said, “how is it as Father’s working so late?”
+
+“It’s none o’ thy feyther as is a-workin’—thee might know that well
+anoof if thy head warna full o’ chapellin’—it’s thy brother as does
+iverything, for there’s niver nobody else i’ th’ way to do nothin’.”
+
+Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and
+usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed
+by her awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to
+his mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the
+gentle. But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop
+and said, “Addy, how’s this? What! Father’s forgot the coffin?”
+
+“Aye, lad, th’ old tale; but I shall get it done,” said Adam, looking
+up and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. “Why,
+what’s the matter with thee? Thee’t in trouble.”
+
+Seth’s eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
+mild face.
+
+“Yes, Addy, but it’s what must be borne, and can’t be helped. Why,
+thee’st never been to the school, then?”
+
+“School? No, that screw can wait,” said Adam, hammering away again.
+
+“Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed,” said Seth.
+
+“No, lad, I’d rather go on, now I’m in harness. Thee’t help me to carry
+it to Brox’on when it’s done. I’ll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat
+thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn’t hear Mother’s talk.”
+
+Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be
+persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy
+heart, into the house-place.
+
+“Adam’s niver touched a bit o’ victual sin’ home he’s come,” said
+Lisbeth. “I reckon thee’st hed thy supper at some o’ thy Methody
+folks.”
+
+“Nay, Mother,” said Seth, “I’ve had no supper yet.”
+
+“Come, then,” said Lisbeth, “but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam
+’ull happen ate ’em if I leave ’em stannin’. He loves a bit o’ taters
+an’ gravy. But he’s been so sore an’ angered, he wouldn’t ate ’em, for
+all I’d putten ’em by o’ purpose for him. An’ he’s been a-threatenin’
+to go away again,” she went on, whimpering, “an’ I’m fast sure he’ll go
+some dawnin’ afore I’m up, an’ niver let me know aforehand, an’ he’ll
+niver come back again when once he’s gone. An’ I’d better niver ha’ had
+a son, as is like no other body’s son for the deftness an’ th’
+handiness, an’ so looked on by th’ grit folks, an’ tall an’ upright
+like a poplar-tree, an’ me to be parted from him an’ niver see ’m no
+more.”
+
+“Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain,” said Seth, in a soothing
+voice. “Thee’st not half so good reason to think as Adam ’ull go away
+as to think he’ll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he’s in
+wrath—and he’s got excuse for being wrathful sometimes—but his heart
+’ud never let him go. Think how he’s stood by us all when it’s been
+none so easy—paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier,
+an’ turnin’ his earnin’s into wood for father, when he’s got plenty o’
+uses for his money, and many a young man like him ’ud ha’ been married
+and settled before now. He’ll never turn round and knock down his own
+work, and forsake them as it’s been the labour of his life to stand
+by.”
+
+“Donna talk to me about’s marr’in’,” said Lisbeth, crying afresh. “He’s
+set’s heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as ’ull niver save a penny, an’ ’ull
+toss up her head at’s old mother. An’ to think as he might ha’ Mary
+Burge, an’ be took partners, an’ be a big man wi’ workmen under him,
+like Mester Burge—Dolly’s told me so o’er and o’er again—if it warna as
+he’s set’s heart on that bit of a wench, as is o’ no more use nor the
+gillyflower on the wall. An’ he so wise at bookin’ an’ figurin’, an’
+not to know no better nor that!”
+
+“But, Mother, thee know’st we canna love just where other folks ’ud
+have us. There’s nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could
+ha’ wished myself as Adam could ha’ made another choice, but I wouldn’t
+reproach him for what he can’t help. And I’m not sure but what he tries
+to o’ercome it. But it’s a matter as he doesn’t like to be spoke to
+about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him.”
+
+“Aye, thee’t allays ready enough at prayin’, but I donna see as thee
+gets much wi’ thy prayin’. Thee wotna get double earnin’s o’ this side
+Yule. Th’ Methodies ’ll niver make thee half the man thy brother is,
+for all they’re a-makin’ a preacher on thee.”
+
+“It’s partly truth thee speak’st there, Mother,” said Seth, mildly;
+“Adam’s far before me, an’s done more for me than I can ever do for
+him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good.
+But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it
+brings us what no money can buy—a power to keep from sin and be content
+with God’s will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray
+to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so
+uneasy about things.”
+
+“Unaisy? I’m i’ th’ right on’t to be unaisy. It’s well seen on _thee_
+what it is niver to be unaisy. Thee’t gi’ away all thy earnin’s, an’
+niver be unaisy as thee’st nothin’ laid up again’ a rainy day. If Adam
+had been as aisy as thee, he’d niver ha’ had no money to pay for thee.
+Take no thought for the morrow—take no thought—that’s what thee’t
+allays sayin’; an’ what comes on’t? Why, as Adam has to take thought
+for thee.”
+
+“Those are the words o’ the Bible, Mother,” said Seth. “They don’t mean
+as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn’t be overanxious and
+worreting ourselves about what’ll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and
+leave the rest to God’s will.”
+
+“Aye, aye, that’s the way wi’ thee: thee allays makes a peck o’ thy own
+words out o’ a pint o’ the Bible’s. I donna see how thee’t to know as
+‘take no thought for the morrow’ means all that. An’ when the Bible’s
+such a big book, an’ thee canst read all thro’t, an’ ha’ the pick o’
+the texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna
+mean so much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that’n; I can
+understan’ the tex as he’s allays a-sayin’, ‘God helps them as helps
+theirsens.’”
+
+“Nay, Mother,” said Seth, “that’s no text o’ the Bible. It comes out of
+a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles’on. It was wrote by a
+knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying’s partly
+true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God.”
+
+“Well, how’m I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what’s th’ matter wi’
+th’ lad? Thee’t hardly atin’ a bit o’ supper. Dostna mean to ha’ no
+more nor that bit o’ oat-cake? An’ thee lookst as white as a flick o’
+new bacon. What’s th’ matter wi’ thee?”
+
+“Nothing to mind about, Mother; I’m not hungry. I’ll just look in at
+Adam again, and see if he’ll let me go on with the coffin.”
+
+“Ha’ a drop o’ warm broth?” said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now
+got the better of her “nattering” habit. “I’ll set two-three sticks
+a-light in a minute.”
+
+“Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee’t very good,” said Seth, gratefully; and
+encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: “Let me pray a bit
+with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us—it’ll comfort thee,
+happen, more than thee thinkst.”
+
+“Well, I’ve nothin’ to say again’ it.”
+
+Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her
+conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort
+and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her
+from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.
+
+So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor
+wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And
+when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set up
+his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and
+comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth’s
+ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.
+
+When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said,
+“Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?”
+
+“No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself.”
+
+Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
+something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
+the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she
+had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
+and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
+rather timidly on the bench by Adam’s side and said, “Thee canst pick a
+bit while thee’t workin’. I’ll bring thee another drop o’ water.”
+
+“Aye, Mother, do,” said Adam, kindly; “I’m getting very thirsty.”
+
+In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house
+but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam’s
+tools. The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out
+at twelve o’clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing,
+twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.
+
+Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
+mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with
+Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as
+passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and
+probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the
+other in swift succession.
+
+He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the
+coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his
+father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son’s glance—would sit
+down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning
+before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while
+Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready,
+that he had slinked off and left undone—for Lisbeth was always the
+first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam’s
+severity towards his father.
+
+“So it will go on, worsening and worsening,” thought Adam; “there’s no
+slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you ’ve begun to
+slip down.” And then the day came back to him when he was a little
+fellow and used to run by his father’s side, proud to be taken out to
+work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
+fellow-workmen how “the little chap had an uncommon notion o’
+carpentering.” What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
+people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of
+distinction as he answered, “I’m Thias Bede’s lad.” He was quite sure
+everybody knew Thias Bede—didn’t he make the wonderful pigeon-house at
+Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was
+three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to
+be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness,
+when Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
+public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
+plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of
+shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish,
+shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the
+“Waggon Overthrown.” He had run away once when he was only eighteen,
+making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle
+over his shoulder, and his “mensuration book” in his pocket, and saying
+to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no
+longer—he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the
+crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got
+to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure
+everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution
+failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his
+mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.
+
+“No!” Adam said to himself to-night, “that must never happen again. It
+’ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my
+poor old mother stood o’ the wrong side. My back’s broad enough and
+strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave
+the troubles to be borne by them as aren’t half so able. ‘They that are
+strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to
+please themselves.’ There’s a text wants no candle to show’t; it shines
+by its own light. It’s plain enough you get into the wrong road i’ this
+life if you run after this and that only for the sake o’ making things
+easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough
+and think o’ nothing outside it; but if you’ve got a man’s heart and
+soul in you, you can’t be easy a-making your own bed an’ leaving the
+rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I’ll never slip my neck out o’ the
+yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father’s a sore
+cross to me, an’s likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?
+I’ve got th’ health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it.”
+
+At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the
+house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected,
+gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door
+and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it
+an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars
+showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of
+visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except
+a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again,
+wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it
+called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not
+help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told
+him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam
+was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of
+the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more
+help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help
+trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination
+which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region
+of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his
+hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal
+religion, and he often checked Seth’s argumentative spiritualism by
+saying, “Eh, it’s a big mystery; thee know’st but little about it.” And
+so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a
+new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a
+divine judgment, he would have said, “May be; but the bearing o’ the
+roof and walls wasn’t right, else it wouldn’t ha’ come down”; yet he
+believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his
+breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow
+wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its
+natural elements—in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose
+our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
+
+But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity
+for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer
+was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any,
+might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take
+up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled.
+Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was
+still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden
+grass in front of the cottage.
+
+Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late
+years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there
+was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his
+drunkenness at the “Waggon Overthrown.” Besides, to Adam, the
+conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of
+his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by
+the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought
+that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread
+lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his
+mother were breathing regularly.
+
+Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, “I won’t open
+the door again. It’s no use staring about to catch sight of a sound.
+Maybe there’s a world about us as we can’t see, but th’ ear’s quicker
+than the eye and catches a sound from’t now and then. Some people think
+they get a sight on’t too, but they’re mostly folks whose eyes are not
+much use to ’em at anything else. For my part, I think it’s better to
+see when your perpendicular’s true than to see a ghost.”
+
+Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as
+daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time
+the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on
+the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the
+willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the
+promise redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already
+moving overhead, and presently came downstairs.
+
+“Now, lad,” said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, “the coffin’s done,
+and we can take it over to Brox’on, and be back again before half after
+six. I’ll take a mouthful o’ oat-cake, and then we’ll be off.”
+
+The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers,
+and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the
+little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but
+about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their
+road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the
+pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the
+birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and
+elm. It was a strangely mingled picture—the fresh youth of the summer
+morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength
+of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin
+on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small
+farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o’clock the task was
+done, the coffin nailed down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home.
+They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the
+fields and the brook in front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to
+Seth what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient
+impression from it himself to say, “Seth, lad, if Father isn’t come
+home by the time we’ve had our breakfast, I think it’ll be as well for
+thee to go over to Treddles’on and look after him, and thee canst get
+me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work;
+we can make that up. What dost say?”
+
+“I’m willing,” said Seth. “But see what clouds have gathered since we
+set out. I’m thinking we shall have more rain. It’ll be a sore time for
+th’ haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook’s fine and
+full now: another day’s rain ’ud cover the plank, and we should have to
+go round by the road.”
+
+They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture
+through which the brook ran.
+
+“Why, what’s that sticking against the willow?” continued Seth,
+beginning to walk faster. Adam’s heart rose to his mouth: the vague
+anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no
+answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark
+uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.
+
+This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom
+he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to
+live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with
+that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through
+Adam’s conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out
+the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and
+when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt
+and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was
+need for action—forgetting everything but that their father lay dead
+before them. Adam was the first to speak.
+
+“I’ll run to Mother,” he said, in a loud whisper. “I’ll be back to thee
+in a minute.”
+
+Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons’ breakfast, and their porridge
+was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
+cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
+her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.
+
+“The lads ’ull be fine an’ hungry,” she said, half-aloud, as she
+stirred the porridge. “It’s a good step to Brox’on, an’ it’s hungry air
+o’er the hill—wi’ that heavy coffin too. Eh! It’s heavier now, wi’ poor
+Bob Tholer in’t. Howiver, I’ve made a drap more porridge nor common
+this mornin’. The feyther ’ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he’ll
+ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn’orth o’ ale, an’ saves a
+hap’orth o’ por-ridge—that’s his way o’ layin’ by money, as I’ve told
+him many a time, an’ am likely to tell him again afore the day’s out.
+Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there’s no denyin’ that.”
+
+But now Lisbeth heard the heavy “thud” of a running footstep on the
+turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter,
+looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed
+towards him before he had time to speak.
+
+“Hush, Mother,” Adam said, rather hoarsely, “don’t be frightened.
+Father’s tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
+Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
+the fire.”
+
+In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew
+there was no other way of repressing his mother’s impetuous wailing
+grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.
+
+He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
+heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
+Seth’s, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
+Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth’s chief feeling was awe
+and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father’s soul; but
+Adam’s mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
+When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
+that we repent of, but our severity.
+
+
+
+
+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 sides 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. Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at
+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 Rev. Adolphus Irwine,
+Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist
+at whom the severest Church reformer would have found it difficult to
+look sour. We will enter very softly and stand still in the open
+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 mullioned oriel 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 with a decanter 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 centre. 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. Irwine 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 cambric and lace
+about her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a
+statue of Ceres; 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 chess-men 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 any one so absurd
+as to question it.
+
+“There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!” says this 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 that 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, mus’n’t we,
+Juno?” 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 Tholer’s funeral just when 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 of 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. Irwine’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. Irwine 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. Irwine, taking up her knitting.
+“I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be
+dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll.”
+
+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 reconnoitre the stranger’s legs; while
+the two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann’s prominent calf and ribbed worsted
+stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over
+them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair
+and said, “Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you’ve
+come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs;
+give them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!”
+
+It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden
+rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill
+dusk. Mr. Irwine 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 bonhomie and distinction.
+
+“Thank Your Reverence,” answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
+unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off
+the puppies; “I’ll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see
+you an’ Mrs. Irwine well, an’ Miss Irwine—an’ Miss Anne, I hope’s as
+well as usual.”
+
+“Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She
+beats us younger people hollow. But what’s the matter?”
+
+“Why, sir, I had to come to Brox’on to deliver some work, and I thought
+it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there’s been i’
+the village, such as I hanna seen i’ my time, and I’ve lived in it man
+and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th’ Easter dues for
+Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the
+ringin’ o’ every bell, and the diggin’ o’ every grave, and sung i’ the
+choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi’ his
+counter-singin’ and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself—one
+takin’ it up after another like sheep a-bleatin’ i’ th’ fold. I know
+what belongs to bein’ a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin’
+i’ respect to Your Reverence, an’ church, an’ king, if I was t’ allow
+such goins-on wi’out speakin’. I was took by surprise, an’ knowed
+nothin’ on it beforehand, an’ I was so flustered, I was clean as if I’d
+lost my tools. I hanna slep’ more nor four hour this night as is past
+an’ gone; an’ then it was nothin’ but nightmare, as tired me worse nor
+wakin’.”
+
+“Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at
+the church lead again?”
+
+“Thieves! No, sir—an’ yet, as I may say, it _is_ thieves, an’
+a-thievin’ the church, too. It’s the Methodisses as is like to get th’
+upper hand i’ th’ parish, if Your Reverence an’ His Honour, Squire
+Donnithorne, doesna think well to say the word an’ forbid it. Not as
+I’m a-dictatin’ to you, sir; I’m not forgettin’ myself so far as to be
+wise above my betters. Howiver, whether I’m wise or no, that’s neither
+here nor there, but what I’ve got to say I say—as the young Methodis
+woman as is at Mester Poyser’s was a-preachin’ an’ a-prayin’ on the
+Green last night, as sure as I’m a-stannin’ afore Your Reverence now.”
+
+“Preaching on the Green!” said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite
+serene. “What, that pale pretty young woman I’ve seen at Poyser’s? I
+saw she was a Methodist, or 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. Rann, compressing his
+mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate
+three notes of exclamation. “She preached on the Green last night; an’
+she’s laid hold of Chad’s Bess, as the girl’s been i’ fits welly iver
+sin’.”
+
+“Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she’ll come
+round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?”
+
+“No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there’s no knowin’ what’ll come,
+if we’re t’ have such preachin’s as that a-goin’ on ivery week—there’ll
+be no livin’ i’ th’ village. For them Methodisses make folks believe as
+if they take a mug o’ drink extry, an’ make theirselves a bit
+comfortable, they’ll have to go to hell for’t as sure as they’re born.
+I’m not a tipplin’ man nor a drunkard—nobody can say it on me—but I
+like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat’ral when
+we’re goin’ the rounds a-singin’, an’ folks offer’t you for nothin’; or
+when I’m a-collectin’ the dues; an’ I like a pint wi’ my pipe, an’ a
+neighbourly chat at Mester Casson’s now an’ then, for I was brought up
+i’ the Church, thank God, an’ ha’ been a parish clerk this
+two-an’-thirty year: 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 alone preachin’; an’ I hear as
+she’s a-goin’ away back to her own country soon. She’s Mr. Poyser’s own
+niece, an’ I donna wish to say what’s anyways disrespectful o’ th’
+family at th’ Hall Farm, as I’ve measured for shoes, little an’ big,
+welly iver sin’ I’ve been a shoemaker. But there’s that Will Maskery,
+sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an’ I make no doubt it
+was him as stirred up th’ young woman to preach last night, an’ he’ll
+be a-bringin’ other folks to preach from Treddles’on, if his comb isn’t
+cut a bit; an’ I think as he should be let know as he isna t’ have the
+makin’ an’ mendin’ o’ church carts an’ implemen’s, let alone stayin’ i’
+that house an’ yard as is Squire Donnithorne’s.”
+
+“Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one 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 Hayslope,
+where there’s only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them.
+They might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will
+Maskery is no preacher himself, I think.”
+
+“Nay, sir, he’s no gift at stringin’ the words together wi’out book;
+he’d be stuck fast like a cow i’ wet clay. But he’s got tongue enough
+to speak disrespectful about’s neebors, for he said as I was a blind
+Pharisee—a-usin’ the Bible i’ that way to find nick-names for folks as
+are his elders an’ betters!—and what’s worse, he’s been heard to say
+very unbecomin’ words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as
+’ud swear as he called you a ‘dumb dog,’ an’ a ‘idle shepherd.’ You’ll
+forgi’e 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 neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall
+think it 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 on 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 sexton, as well as you’ve always done
+it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and
+things won’t go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it.”
+
+“Your Reverence is very good to say so; an’ I’m sensable as, you not
+livin’ i’ the parish, there’s more upo’ 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 neighbours 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 Treddleston instead, let him;
+that’s no business of yours, so long as he doesn’t hinder you from
+doing what you like. And as to people saying a few idle words about us,
+we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the
+rooks cawing 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 let alone.”
+
+“Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an’ shakes his head, an’
+looks as sour an’ as coxy when we’re a-singin’ as I should like to
+fetch him a rap across the jowl—God forgi’e me—an’ Mrs. Irwine, an’
+Your Reverence too, for speakin’ so afore you. An’ he said as our
+Christmas singin’ was no better nor the cracklin’ o’ 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
+Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you
+do.”
+
+“Yes, sir, but it turns a man’s stomach t’ hear the Scripture misused
+i’ that way. I know as much o’ the words o’ the Bible as he does, an’
+could say the Psalms right through i’ my sleep if you was to pinch me;
+but I know better nor to take ’em to say my own say wi’. I might as
+well take the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals.”
+
+“That’s a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
+before——”
+
+While Mr. Irwine 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 Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some
+one who paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,
+
+“Godson Arthur—may he come in?”
+
+“Come in, come in, godson!” Mrs. Irwine 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 are you’s?” mingled with
+joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine
+members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best
+terms with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne,
+known in Hayslope, variously, as “the young squire,” “the heir,” and
+“the captain.” He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to
+the Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young
+gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty’s regulars—he outshone them
+as the planet Jupiter outshines the 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 with in a foreign town, and 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 low top-boots.
+
+Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, “But don’t let
+me interrupt Joshua’s business—he has something to say.”
+
+“Humbly begging Your Honour’s pardon,” said Joshua, bowing low, “there
+was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove
+out o’ my head.”
+
+“Out with it, Joshua, quickly!” said Mr. Irwine.
+
+“Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede’s dead—drownded this
+morning, or more like overnight, i’ the Willow Brook, again’ the bridge
+right i’ front o’ the house.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal
+interested in the information.
+
+“An’ Seth Bede’s been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell
+Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t’ allow
+his father’s grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother’s
+set her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an’ they’d ha’
+come theirselves to ask you, but they’ve so much to see after with the
+crowner, an’ that; an’ their mother’s took on so, an’ wants ’em to make
+sure o’ the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An’ if Your
+Reverence sees well and good, I’ll send my boy to tell ’em as soon as I
+get home; an’ that’s why I make bold to trouble you wi’ it, His Honour
+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 they shall
+have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good
+morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale.”
+
+“Poor old Thias!” said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. “I’m afraid
+the drink helped the brook 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 a regular trump, is Adam,” said Captain Donnithorne. “When I was
+a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
+carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
+Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
+well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
+large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged 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 ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of
+them that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell 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 Adam’s together, if you like; but I want to
+call at the Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is
+keeping for me.”
+
+“You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur,” said Mrs. Irwine. “It’s
+nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly.”
+
+“I want to go to the Hall Farm too,” said Mr. Irwine, “to have another
+look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
+was preaching on the Green last night.”
+
+“Oh, by Jove!” said Captain Donnithorne, 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 sewing in the sunshine outside the house,
+when I rode up and called out, without noticing that she was a
+stranger, ‘Is Martin Poyser at home?’ I declare, when she got up and
+looked at me and just said, ‘He’s in the house, I believe: I’ll go and
+call him,’ I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her.
+She looked like St. Catherine in a Quaker dress. It’s a type of face
+one rarely sees among our common people.”
+
+“I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin,” said Mrs. Irwine.
+“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 a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
+patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
+have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua’s denunciation of
+his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate
+the wheelwright, 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 Methodists 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 bull-headed fellows that
+they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
+Maskery out of 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 thirty years.”
+
+“It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an ‘idle
+shepherd’ and a ‘dumb dog,’” said Mrs. Irwine. “I should be inclined to
+check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin.”
+
+“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
+Maskery? Besides, I’m not so sure that 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 asks me for sixpence. Those
+poor lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by
+setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their
+day’s work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have
+our luncheon. Isn’t Kate coming to lunch?”
+
+“Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs,” said Carroll;
+“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.
+Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm
+out of the sling.
+
+“Yes, pretty well; but Godwin 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’s 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 one’s self 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 will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I
+shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the
+lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon
+us like an Olympian goddess.”
+
+“I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
+twenty years ago,” said Mrs. Irwine. “Ah, I think I shall see 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 soul! Thank God you take
+after your mother’s family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry,
+yellow baby, I wouldn’t have stood godmother to you. I should have been
+sure you would turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced,
+broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you
+a Tradgett.”
+
+“But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother,” said Mr.
+Irwine, 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 notwithstanding. 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
+their 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
+disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take
+them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite
+ill; it’s like a bad smell.”
+
+“Talking of eyes,” said Captain Donnithorne, “that reminds me that I’ve
+got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel
+from London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike
+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 as
+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 to see,
+Irwine—pamphlets about Antinomianism 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 in _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’ve a
+little matter to attend to, Arthur,” continued Mr. Irwine, rising to
+leave the room, “and then I shall be ready to set out with you.”
+
+The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old
+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 thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not
+have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting
+which lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing
+what required only the dimmest light—sponging the aching head that lay
+on the 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 to-day.” Anne’s eyes were
+closed, and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine
+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
+worth-while 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. Irwine’s sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of
+Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It
+was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such
+commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten
+miles to see, any day; her beauty, her 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 Dacey’s lawsuit, which was
+fretting poor Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of
+mentioning the Miss Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village,
+who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them
+vaguely as “the gentlefolks.” If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who
+gave him his flannel jacket, he would have answered, “the gentlefolks,
+last winter”; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the “stuff”
+the gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were
+used with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so
+that at the sight of poor Miss Anne’s sallow face, several small
+urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst
+misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they
+had intended to hit Farmer Britton’s ducks. But for all who saw them
+through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous
+existences—inartistic 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 Rev. Adolphus Irwine,
+had not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have
+been shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely
+wife in his youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the
+powder, would have had tall sons and blooming daughters—such
+possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for all
+the labour they take under the sun. As it was—having with all his three
+livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing 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
+ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time
+providing for a 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 any one alluded to it, that he made it 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-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a
+sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying 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 neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system or
+opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the “travelling preacher”
+stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine 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 own 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
+pastoral office in parishes where they did not so 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 honourable 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. Roe. And it is impossible for
+me to say that Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic
+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 thought it a mere loss of time to talk
+in a doctrinal and awakening manner to old “Feyther Taft,” or even to
+Chad Cranage 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 neighbourly 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 worshipped and the
+sacred piece of turf where they lay buried were but slightly dependent
+on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or the sermon. Clearly the
+rector was not what is called in these days an “earnest” man: he was
+fonder 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, nor very copious in alms-giving,
+and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental palate, indeed, was
+rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation from Sophocles or
+Theocritus 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 after-life? And Mr.
+Irwine’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 the rector’s memory, that he was not vindictive—and some
+philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant—and there is a
+rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from
+that blemish; that 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 hearthstone, and
+witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
+companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not
+as a subject for panegyric.
+
+Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished,
+and have sometimes even been the living 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 threshold of their homes.
+
+But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that
+June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
+him—portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
+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,
+where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
+whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the
+grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and
+farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
+Farm.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+The Hall Farm
+
+
+Evidently that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great
+hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were 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 close
+to the rusty bars of 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 stone 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 a 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 of
+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 great buildings at 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 at 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 wool 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 coloured
+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 is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy’s leather
+long-lashed whip.
+
+The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a
+country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere
+spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne.
+It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some
+coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the
+genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and
+warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its
+focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen
+and the farmyard.
+
+Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
+just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too,
+for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by
+Mrs. Poyser’s 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 bull-dog,
+chained against the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the
+unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends
+forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in
+the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their
+chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the
+discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to
+the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato
+notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and,
+under all, a 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 superintendence of Mr. Goby, the
+“whittaw,” otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest
+Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that
+Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the
+morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser 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-floor is perfectly 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, every one 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 to such a polish by the hand:
+genuine “elbow polish,” as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God
+she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel
+often took the opportunity, when her aunt’s back was turned, of looking
+at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, 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 ranged on the shelves above the long deal
+dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like
+jasper.
+
+Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun
+shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces
+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
+Dinah’s finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn,
+as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for
+her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who
+was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday’s wash,
+had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and
+fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her
+blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up
+the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was
+taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs.
+Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a
+good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion
+and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article
+in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered
+her skirt; and nothing could be plainer 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 Dinah Morris, with the contrast
+between her keenness and Dinah’s seraphic gentleness of expression,
+might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and
+Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of
+the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip,
+the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily
+exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser’s glance. Her
+tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came
+within earshot, 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 whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Poyser
+should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
+appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
+manner, had “cleaned herself” with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
+submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
+But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, 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 as 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 gell o’ your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen
+men! I’d ha’ been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I’d
+been you. And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I
+hired you at Treddles’on stattits, without a bit o’ character—as I say,
+you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place;
+and you knew no more o’ what belongs to work when you come here than
+the mawkin i’ the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I 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 i’ the corners—anybody ’ud think
+you’d never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why,
+you’ve wasted as much as your wage i’ the flax you’ve spoiled learning
+to spin. And you’ve a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping
+and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for
+the whittaws, 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 finely off when you’re married, I
+daresay, and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a
+blanket to cover you, and a bit o’ oat-cake for your dinner, as three
+children are a-snatching at.”
+
+“I’m sure I donna want t’ go wi’ the whittaws,” said Molly, whimpering,
+and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, “on’y we
+allays used to comb the wool for ’n at Mester Ottley’s; an’ so I just
+axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
+never stir if I do.”
+
+“Mr. Ottley’s, indeed! It’s fine talking o’ what you did at Mr.
+Ottley’s. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi’ whittaws
+for what I know. There’s no knowing what people _wonna_ like—such ways
+as I’ve heard of! I never had a gell 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 dairymaid at Trent’s before she come to me,
+she’d ha’ left the cheeses without turning from week’s end to week’s
+end, and the dairy thralls, I might ha’ wrote my name on ’em, 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 o’ your
+knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i’ nine months, and not
+for want o’ talking to, neither—and what are you stanning there for,
+like a jack as is run down, instead o’ getting your wheel out? You’re a
+rare un for sitting down to your work a little while after it’s time to
+put by.”
+
+“Munny, my iron’s twite told; pease put it down to warm.”
+
+The small chirruping 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
+assiduity 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. Poyser, who
+was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her
+official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. “Never
+mind! Mother’s done her ironing now. She’s going to put the ironing
+things away.”
+
+“Munny, I tould ’ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd.”
+
+“No, no, no; Totty ’ud get her feet wet,” said Mrs. Poyser, carrying
+away her iron. “Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the
+butter.”
+
+“I tould ’ike a bit o’ pum-take,” rejoined Totty, 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 on to the ironing sheet.
+
+“Did ever anybody see the like?” screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards
+the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. “The child’s
+allays i’ mischief if your back’s turned a minute. What shall I do to
+you, you naughty, naughty gell?”
+
+Totty, 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 starch having been wiped up by Molly’s help, and the ironing
+apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser 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 Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she
+knitted her grey worsted stocking.
+
+“You look th’ image o’ your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing.
+I could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
+at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she’d done the
+house up; only it was a little cottage, Father’s was, and not a big
+rambling house as gets dirty i’ 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
+i’ the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
+such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
+mother little thought as she’d have a daughter just cut out after the
+very pattern o’ 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 Stoniton. I allays said that o’ Judith, as she’d bear a pound weight
+any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the
+same from the first o’ 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 o’ cap; but she’d never in her
+life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent.”
+
+“She was a blessed woman,” said Dinah; “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 eleven 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 ’ud be cunning to do anything for
+you, I think; you’re like the birds o’ th’ air, and live nobody knows
+how. I’d ha’ been glad to behave to you like a mother’s sister, if
+you’d come and live i’ this country where there’s some shelter and
+victual for man and beast, and folks don’t live on the naked hills,
+like poultry a-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
+you’d only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than
+anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you’d marry Seth Bede,
+as is a poor wool-gathering Methodist and’s never like to have a penny
+beforehand, I know your uncle ’ud help you with a pig, and very like a
+cow, for he’s allays been good-natur’d to my kin, for all they’re poor,
+and made ’em welcome to the house; and ’ud do for you, I’ll be bound,
+as much as ever he’d do for Hetty, though she’s his own niece. And
+there’s linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I’ve got lots
+o’ sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn’t made up.
+There’s a piece o’ sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty
+spun—she was a rare girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the
+children couldn’t abide her; and, you know, the spinning’s going on
+constant, and there’s new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears
+out. But where’s the use o’ talking, if ye wonna be persuaded, and
+settle down like any other woman in her senses, i’stead o’ 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 got i’ the world, I verily believe, ’ud go into a bundle
+no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you’ve got notions i’
+your head about religion more nor what’s i’ the Catechism and the
+Prayer-book.”
+
+“But not more than what’s in the Bible, Aunt,” said Dinah.
+
+“Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter,” Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather
+sharply; “else why shouldn’t them as know best what’s in the Bible—the
+parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it—do the same
+as you do? But, for the matter o’ 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, and was
+allays talking as we must despise the things o’ the world as you say, I
+should like to know where the pick o’ the stock, and the corn, and the
+best new-milk cheeses ’ud have to go. Everybody ’ud be wanting bread
+made o’ tail ends and everybody ’ud be running after everybody else to
+preach to ’em, istead o’ bringing up their families, and laying by
+against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as 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 ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things of
+this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their
+families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the
+Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul’s wants 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, according 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, than you could help
+running if you heard little Totty 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. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, “I know it
+’ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You’d make me
+the same answer, at th’ end. I might as well talk to the running brook
+and tell it to stan’ still.”
+
+The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs.
+Poyser to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the
+yard, the grey 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 Dinah, in rather a
+flurried, awe-stricken tone, “If there isn’t Captain Donnithorne and
+Mr. Irwine a-coming into the yard! I’ll lay my life they’re come to
+speak about your preaching on the Green, Dinah; it’s you must answer
+’em, for I’m dumb. I’ve said enough a’ready about your bringing such
+disgrace upo’ your uncle’s family. I wouldn’t ha’ minded if you’d been
+Mr. Poyser’s own niece—folks must put up wi’ their own kin, as they put
+up wi’ their own noses—it’s their own flesh and blood. But to think of
+a niece o’ mine being cause o’ my husband’s being turned out of his
+farm, and me brought him no fortin but my savin’s——”
+
+“Nay, dear Aunt Rachel,” said Dinah 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 very well what you mean by direction,” said Mrs.
+Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. “When there’s a bigger
+maggot than usual in your head you call it ‘direction’; and then
+nothing can stir you—you look like the statty o’ the outside o’
+Treddles’on church, a-starin’ and a-smilin’ whether it’s fair weather
+or foul. I hanna 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. Poyser
+advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between
+anger with Dinah 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 of old men felt when
+they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?” said Mr.
+Irwine, with his stately cordiality. “Our feet are quite dry; we shall
+not soil your beautiful floor.”
+
+“Oh, sir, don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Poyser. “Will you and the
+captain please to walk into the parlour?”
+
+“No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser,” said the captain, looking eagerly
+round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not
+find. “I delight in your kitchen. I think it is 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.
+Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain’s evident
+good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw,
+was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her.
+
+“Poyser is not at home, is he?” said Captain Donnithorne, seating
+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 wool. But there’s Father i’ the barn, sir, if he’d be of any
+use.”
+
+“No, thank you; I’ll just look at the whelps 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 o’ Treddles’on
+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’d got rid o’ the
+Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of
+it, for if ever anything happens, he’s sure to be gone to the
+Scantlands. Things allays happen so contrairy, if they’ve a chance; and
+it’s an unnat’ral thing to have one bit o’ your farm in one county and
+all the rest in another.”
+
+“Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce’s farm, especially
+as he wants dairyland and you’ve got plenty. I think yours is the
+prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if
+I were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out,
+and do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, “you wouldn’t like it at
+all. As for farming, it’s putting money into your pocket wi’ your right
+hand and fetching it out wi’ your left. As fur as I can see, it’s
+raising victual 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 i’ farming—but it’s poor fun losing money, I should think,
+though I understan’ it’s what the great folks i’ London play at more
+than anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey’s eldest
+son had lost thousands upo’ thousands to the Prince o’ 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, I canna think
+as you’d like it; and this house—the draughts in it are enough to cut
+you through, and it’s my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten,
+and the rats i’ the cellar are beyond anything.”
+
+“Why, that’s a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. 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 twenty years, till I’m a
+stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to
+part with such good tenants as you.”
+
+“Well, sir, if he thinks so well o’ Mr. Poyser for 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 o’ what he’s done for the farm, and’s never had a penny allowed
+him, be the times bad or good. 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 o’ them as have got the
+power i’ their hands, but it’s more than flesh and blood ’ull bear
+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 i’ the sheaf—and after all, at th’ end o’ the year, it’s like as
+if you’d been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your
+pains.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along
+without any check from her preliminary awe of the 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 harm instead of good, if I were to speak
+about the gates, Mrs. Poyser,” said the captain, “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 ten
+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. Poyser.”
+
+“Indeed, sir, it’s not fit for you to go in, for Hetty’s in the middle
+o’ making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I’m quite
+ashamed.” This Mrs. Poyser 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, while Mrs. Poyser followed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+The Dairy
+
+
+The dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
+with a sort 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 seventeen, standing on little
+pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
+the scale.
+
+Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
+dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
+it was inwreathed 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 calves 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, Hetty
+tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
+coquettish air, slyly conscious that 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 of 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
+toddle and to engage in conscious 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. Hetty Sorrel’s
+was that sort of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to
+despise all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of
+mentors, continually gazed at Hetty’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 naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she
+looked.”
+
+It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty’s cheek was like a
+rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
+dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
+curly hair, though all pushed back under her 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 her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
+plum-coloured stuff 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-soled
+buckled 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 affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
+otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
+would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
+might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but 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-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty
+like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
+catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
+day. Hetty’s was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
+frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false
+air of innocence—the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
+example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
+a severe steeplechase 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 adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be
+effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes.
+And then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm—it is so
+pure, so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a
+beautiful firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover,
+Hetty 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
+mastery.
+
+“I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
+Mrs. Poyser,” said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently
+admired the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede
+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 Hetty? 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.”
+
+Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
+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 all the rest o’ th’ 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 Hetty look at him and speak to him.
+
+Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
+half-coquettish glance at him as she said, “Yes, thank you, sir.”
+
+“And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; 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’m a bald old fellow.”
+
+“Oh dear, sir, that ’ull be a long time first,” said Mrs. Poyser, quite
+overcome at the young squire’s speaking so lightly of himself, and
+thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount
+this remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought
+to be “very full of his 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 gates, allowances of lime, and
+returns of ten per cent.
+
+“But where _is_ Totty to-day?” he said. “I want to see her.”
+
+“Where is the little un, Hetty?” said Mrs. Poyser. “She came in here
+not long ago.”
+
+“I don’t know. She went into the brewhouse 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 lest 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 the
+Captain to Hetty, meanwhile.
+
+“Oh no, sir; not when it’s so heavy. I’m not strong enough to carry it.
+Alick takes it on horseback.”
+
+“No, I’m sure your pretty arms were never meant for 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 Hetty. “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. Pomfret, the lady’s maid, as I go to
+see. She’s teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I’m going to
+tea with her to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+The reason why there had been space for this _tête-à-tête_ 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 and hurried application of soap and
+water.
+
+“Here she is!” said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the
+low stone shelf. “Here’s Totty! By the by, what’s her other name? She
+wasn’t christened Totty.”
+
+“Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte’s her christened
+name. It’s a name i’ Mr. Poyser’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.
+
+“It dot notin’ 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 mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare
+I’ve got five little round silver things, and hear 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 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 gell! Not to thank the captain for what he’s given you, I’m
+sure, sir, it’s very kind of you; but she’s spoiled shameful; her
+father won’t have her said nay in anything, and there’s no managing
+her. It’s being the youngest, and th’ only gell.”
+
+“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 “good-bye,” a bright glance, and a bow 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 Dinah that he
+would not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what
+they had been saying to each other.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+A Vocation
+
+
+Dinah, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of
+the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr.
+Irwine 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-favoured countenance! Oh that
+the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish.”
+The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to
+her with a benignant deference, 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 neighbourhood, I think?” were his first
+words, as he seated himself opposite to her.
+
+“No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. 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
+tradesfolks. 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 Poyser, 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 hill-top.”
+
+“Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there;
+you are a Methodist—a Wesleyan, I think?”
+
+“Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause 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 Hayslope last night.”
+
+“I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one.”
+
+“Your Society sanctions women’s preaching, then?”
+
+“It doesn’t forbid them, sir, when they’ve 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 Bosanquet; 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
+nought. It isn’t for men to make channels for God’s Spirit, as they
+make channels for the watercourses, and say, ‘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 evil-doers 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 every one his own way and say,
+‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”
+
+“But tell me—if I may ask, and I am 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 led on, like the 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 Hetton-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 twelve 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 Hetton,
+brother Marlowe was seized with a 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.”
+
+Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in
+her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling
+treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to
+gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Irwine
+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 are 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 as 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. Irwine,
+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 Bessy 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 Leeds, 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 seemed 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-labourers are not easily roused. They take life
+almost as slowly as the sheep and cows. But we have some intelligent
+workmen about here. I daresay you know the Bedes; Seth Bede, 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 offence; 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, Matthias Bede, was drowned in the Willow Brook last
+night, not far from his own door. I’m going now to see Adam.”
+
+“Ah, their poor aged mother!” said Dinah, 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 Donnithorne,
+having exhausted all plausible pretexts for remaining among the
+milk-pans, came out of the dairy, followed by Mrs. Poyser. Mr. Irwine
+now rose also, and, advancing towards Dinah, held out his hand, and
+said, “Good-bye. 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 Dinah set all Mrs. Poyser’s anxieties at rest,
+and her face was brighter than usual, as she said, “I’ve never asked
+after Mrs. Irwine and the Miss Irwines, sir; I hope they’re as well as
+usual.”
+
+“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poyser, except that Miss Anne has one of her bad
+headaches to-day. By the by, we all liked that nice cream-cheese you
+sent us—my mother especially.”
+
+“I’m very glad, indeed, sir. It is but seldom I make one, but I
+remembered Mrs. Irwine was fond of ’em. Please to give my duty to her,
+and to Miss Kate and Miss Anne. 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 of amongst hers.”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell her; she must come and see them. Good-bye,” said the
+rector, mounting his horse.
+
+“Just ride slowly on, Irwine,” said Captain Donnithorne, mounting also.
+“I’ll overtake you in three minutes. I’m only going to speak to the
+shepherd about the whelps. Good-bye, Mrs. Poyser; tell your husband I
+shall come and have a long talk with him soon.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser curtsied 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
+bull-dog, who performed a Pyrrhic dance, that every moment seemed to
+threaten the breaking of his chain. Mrs. Poyser delighted in this noisy
+exit; it was a fresh assurance to her that the farm-yard 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 Dinah stood with her bonnet in her hand, waiting
+to speak to her aunt, before she set out for Lisbeth Bede’s cottage.
+
+Mrs. Poyser, however, though she noticed the bonnet, deferred remarking
+on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at Mr. Irwine’s
+behaviour.
+
+“Why, Mr. Irwine wasn’t angry, then? What did he say to you, Dinah?
+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 had always thought
+of him as a worldly Sadducee. But his countenance is as pleasant as the
+morning sunshine.”
+
+“Pleasant! and what else did y’ expect to find him but pleasant?” said
+Mrs. Poyser impatiently, resuming her knitting. “I should think his
+countenance _is_ pleasant indeed! And him a gentleman born, and’s got a
+mother like a picter. You may go the country round and not find such
+another woman turned sixty-six. It’s summat-like to see such a man as
+that i’ the desk of a Sunday! As I say to Poyser, it’s like looking at
+a full crop o’ wheat, or a pasture with a fine dairy o’ cows in it; it
+makes you think the world’s comfortable-like. But as for such creaturs
+as you Methodisses run after, I’d as soon go to look at a lot o’
+bare-ribbed runts on a common. Fine folks they are to tell you what’s
+right, as look as if they’d never tasted nothing better than
+bacon-sword and sour-cake i’ their lives. But what did Mr. Irwine say
+to you about that fool’s trick o’ 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. Thias
+Bede was drowned last night in the Willow Brook, 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 have fetched my bonnet and am going to set out.”
+
+“Dear heart, dear heart! But you must have a cup o’ tea first, child,”
+said Mrs. Poyser, falling at once from the key of B with five sharps to
+the frank and genial C. “The kettle’s boiling—we’ll have it ready in a
+minute; and the young uns ’ull be in and wanting theirs directly. I’m
+quite willing you should go and see th’ old woman, for you’re one as is
+allays welcome in trouble, Methodist or no Methodist; but, for the
+matter o’ that, it’s the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the
+difference. Some cheeses are made o’ skimmed milk and some o’ new milk,
+and it’s no matter what you call ’em, you may tell which is which by
+the look and the smell. But as to Thias Bede, he’s better out o’ the
+way nor in—God forgi’ me for saying so—for he’s done little this ten
+year but make trouble for them as belonged to him; and I think it ’ud
+be well for you to take a little bottle o’ rum for th’ old woman, for I
+daresay she’s got never a drop o’ nothing to comfort her inside. Sit
+down, child, and be easy, for you shan’t stir out till you’ve had a cup
+o’ tea, and so I tell you.”
+
+During the latter part of this speech, Mrs. Poyser had been reaching
+down the tea-things from the shelves, and was on her way towards the
+pantry for the loaf (followed close by Totty, who had made her
+appearance on the rattling of the tea-cups), when Hetty 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 butter’s ready to pack up now.”
+
+“D’ you hear what’s happened, Hetty?” said her aunt.
+
+“No; how should I hear anything?” was the answer, in a pettish tone.
+
+“Not as you’d care much, I daresay, if you did hear; for you’re too
+feather-headed to mind if everybody was dead, so as you could stay
+upstairs a-dressing yourself for two hours by the clock. But anybody
+besides yourself ’ud mind about such things happening to them as think
+a deal more of you than you deserve. But Adam Bede and all his kin
+might be drownded for what you’d care—you’d be perking at the glass the
+next minute.”
+
+“Adam Bede—drowned?” said Hetty, 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 Dinah kindly, for Mrs. Poyser 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
+Willow Brook. Mr. Irwine has just told me about it.”
+
+“Oh, how dreadful!” said Hetty, looking serious, but not deeply
+affected; and as Molly now entered with the dock-leaves, she took them
+silently and returned to the dairy without asking further questions.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+Hetty’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 am afraid
+Hetty was thinking a great deal more of the looks Captain Donnithorne
+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 Hetty’s heart vibrating and playing its
+little foolish tunes over and over again. We do not hear that Memnon’s
+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 morning; 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.
+
+Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her.
+She was not blind to the fact that young Luke Britton of Broxton came
+to Hayslope 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 Poyser, thinking but lightly of a young man whose father’s land
+was so foul as old Luke Britton’s, had not forbidden her aunt to
+encourage him by any civilities. She was aware, too, that Mr. Craig,
+the gardener at the Chase, was over head and ears in love with her, and
+had lately made unmistakable avowals in luscious strawberries and
+hyperbolical peas. She knew still better, that Adam Bede—tall, upright,
+clever, brave Adam Bede—who carried such authority with all the people
+round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an
+evening, saying that “Adam knew a fine sight more o’ the natur o’
+things than those as thought themselves his betters”—she knew that this
+Adam, who was often rather stern to other people and not much given to
+run after the lasses, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a
+word or a look from her. Hetty’s 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 mended 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
+Britton, who, when she once walked with him all the way from Broxton to
+Hayslope, had only broken silence to remark that the grey 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-kneed, and had a queer sort of
+sing-song in his talk; moreover, on the most charitable supposition, he
+must be far on the way to forty.
+
+Hetty 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 hearth, as well as in the public house, they
+might be seen taking their jug of ale together; the farmer having a
+latent sense of capital, and of weight in parish affairs, which
+sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority in conversation. Martin
+Poyser was not a frequenter of public houses, but he liked a friendly
+chat over his own home-brewed; and though it was pleasant to lay down
+the law to a stupid neighbour 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 Bede. Accordingly, for the last three
+years—ever since he had superintended 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, Hetty had been in the habit of hearing her
+uncle say, “Adam Bede may be working for wage now, but he’ll be a
+master-man some day, as sure as I sit in this chair. Mester Burge is in
+the right on’t to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if
+it’s true what they say; the woman as marries him ’ull have a good
+take, be’t Lady day or Michaelmas,” a remark which Mrs. Poyser always
+followed up with her cordial assent. “Ah,” she would say, “it’s all
+very fine having a ready-made rich man, but mayhappen he’ll be a
+ready-made fool; and it’s no use filling your pocket full o’ money if
+you’ve got a hole in the corner. It’ll do you no good to sit in a
+spring-cart o’ your own, if you’ve got a soft to drive you: he’ll soon
+turn you over into the ditch. I allays said I’d never marry a man as
+had got no brains; for where’s the use of a woman having brains of her
+own if she’s tackled to a geck as everybody’s a-laughing at? She might
+as well dress herself fine to sit back’ards on a donkey.”
+
+These expressions, though figurative, sufficiently indicated the bent
+of Mrs. Poyser’s mind with regard to Adam; and though she and her
+husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty 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 Hetty 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
+Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the
+superintendence of servants and children? But Hetty 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
+this strong, skilful, 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 from him. “Mary Burge, indeed! Such a sallow-faced girl: if she
+put on a bit of pink ribbon, she looked as yellow as a crow-flower 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, Hetty took
+care to entice him back into the net by little airs 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 a 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 sun can stir the spring sap in the subtle fibres 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 Hetty’s dreams were all of luxuries:
+to sit in a carpeted parlour, and always wear white stockings; to have
+some large beautiful ear-rings, such as were all the fashion; to have
+Nottingham lace round the top of her gown, and something to make her
+handkerchief smell nice, like Miss Lydia Donnithorne’s 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 a new influence had come over Hetty—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 sun lights up for us in the waters. Hetty
+had become aware that Mr. Arthur Donnithorne 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 flour amiss while she is thinking what
+a heavenly lot it must be to have him for a husband. And so, poor Hetty
+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 languor. The eyes that shed those glances were really
+not half so fine as Adam’s, which sometimes looked at her with a sad,
+beseeching tenderness, but they had found a ready medium in Hetty’s
+little silly imagination, whereas Adam’s 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 nearer in clothes of beautiful
+texture with an odour like that of a flower-garden borne on the evening
+breeze. Foolish thoughts! But all this happened, you must remember,
+nearly sixty years ago, and Hetty was quite uneducated—a simple
+farmer’s girl, to whom a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an
+Olympian god. Until to-day, she had never looked farther into the
+future than to the next time Captain Donnithorne 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
+to-morrow—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
+to-morrow—whereabout in the Chase she should see him coming towards
+her, how she should put her new rose-coloured ribbon on, which he had
+never seen, and what he would say to her to make her return his
+glance—a 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 Hetty give any feeling to Adam’s
+troubles, or think much about poor old Thias being drowned? Young
+souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as
+butterflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a
+barrier of dreams—by invisible looks and impalpable arms.
+
+While Hetty’s hands were busy packing up the butter, and her head
+filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by
+Mr. Irwine’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. Irwine’s account of
+Dinah—indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious
+when Mr. Irwine suddenly said, “What fascinated you so in Mrs. Poyser’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
+went to look at the pretty butter-maker Hetty 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 farmers’ daughters, when the men are
+such clowns. That common, round, red face one sees sometimes in the
+men—all cheek and no features, like Martin Poyser’s—comes out in the
+women of the family as the most charming phiz imaginable.”
+
+“Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Hetty in an artistic
+light, but I must not have you feeding her vanity and filling her
+little noddle with the notion that she’s a great beauty, attractive to
+fine gentlemen, or you will spoil her for a poor man’s wife—honest
+Craig’s, for example, whom I have seen bestowing soft glances on her.
+The little puss seems already 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 in
+future, and I’ve a notion that there’s a kindness between him and that
+nice modest girl, Mary Burge, from something that fell from old
+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 repairs 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 Hetty 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 pique myself on my
+wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become
+cheap, I bestow it upon you.”
+
+“Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day 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 Adam’s cottage.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+Dinah Visits Lisbeth
+
+
+At five o’clock Lisbeth came downstairs with a large key in her hand:
+it was the key of the chamber where her husband lay dead. Throughout
+the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing grief, she had
+been in incessant movement, performing the initial duties to her dead
+with the awe and exactitude that belong to religious rites. She had
+brought out her little store of bleached linen, which she had for long
+years kept in reserve for this supreme use. It seemed but
+yesterday—that time so many midsummers ago, when she had told Thias
+where this linen lay, that he might be sure and reach it out for her
+when _she_ died, for she was the elder of the two. Then there had been
+the work of cleansing to the strictest purity every object in the
+sacred chamber, and of removing from it every trace of common daily
+occupation. The small window, which had hitherto freely let in the
+frosty moonlight or the warm summer sunrise on the working man’s
+slumber, must now be darkened with a fair white sheet, for this was the
+sleep which is as sacred under the bare rafters as in ceiled houses.
+Lisbeth had even mended a long-neglected and unnoticeable rent in the
+checkered bit of bed-curtain; for the moments were few and precious now
+in which she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love
+for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some
+consciousness. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten
+them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our
+penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the
+kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. And the aged
+peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious. Decent
+burial was what Lisbeth had been thinking of for herself through years
+of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should know when she
+was being carried to the churchyard, followed by her husband and her
+sons; and now she felt as if the greatest work of her life were to be
+done in seeing that Thias was buried decently before her—under the
+white thorn, where once, in a dream, she had thought she lay in the
+coffin, yet all the while saw the sunshine above and smelt the white
+blossoms that were so thick upon the thorn the Sunday she went to be
+churched after Adam was born.
+
+But now she had done everything that could be done to-day in the
+chamber of death—had done it all herself, with some aid from her sons
+in lifting, for she would let no one be fetched to help her from the
+village, not being fond of female neighbours generally; and her
+favourite Dolly, the old housekeeper at Mr. Burge’s, who had come to
+condole with her in the morning as soon as she heard of Thias’s death,
+was too dim-sighted to be of much use. She had locked the door, and now
+held the key in her hand, as she threw herself wearily into a chair
+that stood out of its place in the middle of the house floor, where in
+ordinary times she would never have consented to sit. The kitchen had
+had none of her attention that day; it was soiled with the tread of
+muddy shoes and untidy with clothes and other objects out of place. But
+what at another time would have been intolerable to Lisbeth’s habits of
+order and cleanliness seemed to her now just what should be: it was
+right that things should look strange and disordered and wretched, now
+the old man had come to his end in that sad way; the kitchen ought not
+to look as if nothing had happened. Adam, overcome with the agitations
+and exertions of the day after his night of hard work, had fallen
+asleep on a bench in the workshop; and Seth was in the back kitchen
+making a fire of sticks that he might get the kettle to boil, and
+persuade his mother to have a cup of tea, an indulgence which she
+rarely allowed herself.
+
+There was no one in the kitchen when Lisbeth entered and threw herself
+into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and
+confusion on which the bright afternoon’s sun shone dismally; it was
+all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind—that confusion which
+belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul
+is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of a vast
+city, and wakes up in dreary amazement, not knowing whether it is the
+growing or the dying day—not knowing why and whence came this
+illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds himself desolate
+in the midst of it.
+
+At another time Lisbeth’s first thought would have been, “Where is
+Adam?” but the sudden death of her husband had restored him in these
+hours to that first place in her affections which he had held
+six-and-twenty years ago. She had forgotten his faults as we forget the
+sorrows of our departed childhood, and thought of nothing but the young
+husband’s kindness and the old man’s patience. Her eyes continued to
+wander blankly until Seth came in and began to remove some of the
+scattered things, and clear the small round deal table that he might
+set out his mother’s tea upon it.
+
+“What art goin’ to do?” she said, rather peevishly.
+
+“I want thee to have a cup of tea, Mother,” answered Seth, tenderly.
+“It’ll do thee good; and I’ll put two or three of these things away,
+and make the house look more comfortable.”
+
+“Comfortable! How canst talk o’ ma’in’ things comfortable? Let a-be,
+let a-be. There’s no comfort for me no more,” she went on, the tears
+coming when she began to speak, “now thy poor feyther’s gone, as I’n
+washed for and mended, an’ got’s victual for him for thirty ’ear, an’
+him allays so pleased wi’ iverything I done for him, an’ used to be so
+handy an’ do the jobs for me when I war ill an’ cumbered wi’ th’ babby,
+an’ made me the posset an’ brought it upstairs as proud as could be,
+an’ carried the lad as war as heavy as two children for five mile an’
+ne’er grumbled, all the way to Warson Wake, ’cause I wanted to go an’
+see my sister, as war dead an’ gone the very next Christmas as e’er
+come. An’ him to be drownded in the brook as we passed o’er the day we
+war married an’ come home together, an’ he’d made them lots o’ shelves
+for me to put my plates an’ things on, an’ showed ’em me as proud as
+could be, ’cause he know’d I should be pleased. An’ he war to die an’
+me not to know, but to be a-sleepin’ i’ my bed, as if I caredna nought
+about it. Eh! An’ me to live to see that! An’ us as war young folks
+once, an’ thought we should do rarely when we war married. Let a-be,
+lad, let a-be! I wonna ha’ no tay. I carena if I ne’er ate nor drink no
+more. When one end o’ th’ bridge tumbles down, where’s th’ use o’ th’
+other stannin’? I may’s well die, an’ foller my old man. There’s no
+knowin’ but he’ll want me.”
+
+Here Lisbeth broke from words into moans, swaying herself backwards and
+forwards on her chair. Seth, always timid in his behaviour towards his
+mother, from the sense that he had no influence over her, felt it was
+useless to attempt to persuade or soothe her till this passion was
+past; so he contented himself with tending the back kitchen fire and
+folding up his father’s clothes, which had been hanging out to dry
+since morning—afraid to move about in the room where his mother was,
+lest he should irritate her further.
+
+But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some
+minutes, she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, “I’ll go an’
+see arter Adam, for I canna think where he’s gotten; an’ I want him to
+go upstairs wi’ me afore it’s dark, for the minutes to look at the
+corpse is like the meltin’ snow.”
+
+Seth overheard this, and coming into the kitchen again, as his mother
+rose from her chair, he said, “Adam’s asleep in the workshop, mother.
+Thee’dst better not wake him. He was o’erwrought with work and
+trouble.”
+
+“Wake him? Who’s a-goin’ to wake him? I shanna wake him wi’ lookin’ at
+him. I hanna seen the lad this two hour—I’d welly forgot as he’d e’er
+growed up from a babby when’s feyther carried him.”
+
+Adam was seated on a rough bench, his head supported by his arm, which
+rested from the shoulder to the elbow on the long planing-table in the
+middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few
+minutes’ rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first
+attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday,
+looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his
+forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon
+watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an
+expression of weariness and pain. Gyp was evidently uneasy, for he sat
+on his haunches, resting his nose on his master’s stretched-out leg,
+and dividing the time between licking the hand that hung listlessly
+down and glancing with a listening air towards the door. The poor dog
+was hungry and restless, but would not leave his master, and was
+waiting impatiently for some change in the scene. It was owing to this
+feeling on Gyp’s part that, when Lisbeth came into the workshop and
+advanced towards Adam as noiselessly as she could, her intention not to
+awaken him was immediately defeated; for Gyp’s excitement was too great
+to find vent in anything short of a sharp bark, and in a moment Adam
+opened his eyes and saw his mother standing before him. It was not very
+unlike his dream, for his sleep had been little more than living
+through again, in a fevered delirious way, all that had happened since
+daybreak, and his mother with her fretful grief was present to him
+through it all. The chief difference between the reality and the vision
+was that in his dream Hetty was continually coming before him in bodily
+presence—strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which
+she had nothing to do. She was even by the Willow Brook; she made his
+mother angry by coming into the house; and he met her with her smart
+clothes quite wet through, as he walked in the rain to Treddleston, to
+tell the coroner. But wherever Hetty came, his mother was sure to
+follow soon; and when he opened his eyes, it was not at all startling
+to see her standing near him.
+
+“Eh, my lad, my lad!” Lisbeth burst out immediately, her wailing
+impulse returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of
+associating its loss and its lament with every change of scene and
+incident, “thee’st got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee
+and be a burden to thee. Thy poor feyther ’ull ne’er anger thee no
+more; an’ thy mother may’s well go arter him—the sooner the better—for
+I’m no good to nobody now. One old coat ’ull do to patch another, but
+it’s good for nought else. Thee’dst like to ha’ a wife to mend thy
+clothes an’ get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An’ I shall be
+nought but cumber, a-sittin’ i’ th’ chimney-corner. (Adam winced and
+moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of
+Hetty.) But if thy feyther had lived, he’d ne’er ha’ wanted me to go to
+make room for another, for he could no more ha’ done wi’out me nor one
+side o’ the scissars can do wi’out th’ other. Eh, we should ha’ been
+both flung away together, an’ then I shouldna ha’ seen this day, an’
+one buryin’ ’ud ha’ done for us both.”
+
+Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence—he could not speak
+otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help
+being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Lisbeth to
+know how it affected Adam any more than it is possible for a wounded
+dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all
+complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed,
+and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more
+bitterly.
+
+“I know thee couldst do better wi’out me, for thee couldst go where
+thee likedst an’ marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say
+thee nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I’d ne’er open my lips to
+find faut, for when folks is old an’ o’ no use, they may think
+theirsens well off to get the bit an’ the sup, though they’n to swallow
+ill words wi’t. An’ if thee’st set thy heart on a lass as’ll bring thee
+nought and waste all, when thee mightst ha’ them as ’ud make a man on
+thee, I’ll say nought, now thy feyther’s dead an’ drownded, for I’m no
+better nor an old haft when the blade’s gone.”
+
+Adam, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and
+walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Lisbeth followed him.
+
+“Thee wutna go upstairs an’ see thy feyther then? I’n done everythin’
+now, an’ he’d like thee to go an’ look at him, for he war allays so
+pleased when thee wast mild to him.”
+
+Adam turned round at once and said, “Yes, mother; let us go upstairs.
+Come, Seth, let us go together.”
+
+They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key
+was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But
+Adam did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to
+encounter more of his mother’s querulous grief, and he went to rest on
+his bed. Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she
+threw her apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock
+herself as before. Seth thought, “She will be quieter by and by, now we
+have been upstairs”; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend
+his little fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have
+some tea.
+
+Lisbeth had been rocking herself in this way for more than five
+minutes, giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body,
+when she suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble
+voice said to her, “Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can
+be a comfort to you.”
+
+Lisbeth paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron
+from her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister’s
+spirit come back to her from the dead after all those years? She
+trembled and dared not look.
+
+Dinah, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for
+the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her
+bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Seth, who, on hearing her voice,
+had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of
+Lisbeth’s chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a
+friendly presence.
+
+Slowly Lisbeth drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim dark
+eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face—a pure, pale face, with
+loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder
+increased; perhaps it _was_ an angel. But in the same instant Dinah had
+laid her hand on Lisbeth’s again, and the old woman looked down at it.
+It was a much smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and
+delicate, for Dinah had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand
+bore the traces of labour from her childhood upwards. Lisbeth looked
+earnestly at the hand for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on
+Dinah’s face, said, with something of restored courage, but in a tone
+of surprise, “Why, ye’re a workin’ woman!”
+
+“Yes, I am Dinah Morris, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at
+home.”
+
+“Ah!” said Lisbeth slowly, still wondering; “ye comed in so light, like
+the shadow on the wall, an’ spoke i’ my ear, as I thought ye might be a
+sperrit. Ye’ve got a’most the face o’ one as is a-sittin’ on the grave
+i’ Adam’s new Bible.”
+
+“I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Poyser—she’s my aunt, and
+she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I’m come
+to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your
+sons Adam and Seth, and I know you have no daughter; and when the
+clergyman told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went
+out towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the
+place of a daughter in this grief, if you will let me.”
+
+“Ah! I know who y’ are now; y’ are a Methody, like Seth; he’s tould me
+on you,” said Lisbeth fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain
+returning, now her wonder was gone. “Ye’ll make it out as trouble’s a
+good thing, like _he_ allays does. But where’s the use o’ talkin’ to me
+a-that’n? Ye canna make the smart less wi’ talkin’. Ye’ll ne’er make me
+believe as it’s better for me not to ha’ my old man die in’s bed, if he
+must die, an’ ha’ the parson to pray by him, an’ me to sit by him, an’
+tell him ne’er to mind th’ ill words I’ve gi’en him sometimes when I
+war angered, an’ to gi’ him a bit an’ a sup, as long as a bit an’ a sup
+he’d swallow. But eh! To die i’ the cold water, an’ us close to him,
+an’ ne’er to know; an’ me a-sleepin’, as if I ne’er belonged to him no
+more nor if he’d been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!”
+
+Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, “Yes,
+dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to
+say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn’t send me to you
+to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let
+me. If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with
+your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down
+and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those
+good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your
+labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won’t
+send me away? You’re not angry with me for coming?”
+
+“Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come.
+An’ Seth, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some
+for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o’ gettin’ ’t for them as
+wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin’, for
+it’s little wage ye get by walkin’ through the wet fields to see an old
+woman like me.... Nay, I’n got no daughter o’ my own—ne’er had one—an’
+I warna sorry, for they’re poor queechy things, gells is; I allays
+wanted to ha’ lads, as could fend for theirsens. An’ the lads ’ull be
+marryin’—I shall ha’ daughters eno’, an’ too many. But now, do ye make
+the tay as ye like it, for I’n got no taste i’ my mouth this day—it’s
+all one what I swaller—it’s all got the taste o’ sorrow wi’t.”
+
+Dinah took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted
+Lisbeth’s invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old
+woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day
+of hard work and fasting.
+
+Seth was so happy now Dinah was in the house that he could not help
+thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief
+incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached
+himself—it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father’s sad
+death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Dinah _would_ triumph—it was
+like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And
+the feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his
+mother’s notice, while she was drinking her tea.
+
+“Thee may’st well talk o’ trouble bein’ a good thing, Seth, for thee
+thriv’st on’t. Thee look’st as if thee know’dst no more o’ care an’
+cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin’ awake i’ th’ cradle. For
+thee’dst allays lie still wi’ thy eyes open, an’ Adam ne’er ’ud lie
+still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o’ meal as
+can ne’er be bruised—though, for the matter o’ that, thy poor feyther
+war just such another. But _ye_’ve got the same look too” (here Lisbeth
+turned to Dinah). “I reckon it’s wi’ bein’ a Methody. Not as I’m
+a-findin’ faut wi’ ye for’t, for ye’ve no call to be frettin’, an’
+somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o’
+trouble, they’re like to thrive: it’s a pity they canna ha’t all, an’
+take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha’ gi’en ’em plenty;
+for when I’d gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and
+now he’s gone, I’d be glad for the worst o’er again.”
+
+“Yes,” said Dinah, careful not to oppose any feeling of Lisbeth’s, for
+her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance,
+always issued in that finest woman’s tact which proceeds from acute and
+ready sympathy; “yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed
+for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence
+that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup
+of tea and eat a little more.”
+
+“What!” said Lisbeth, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous
+tone, “had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about
+your aunt?”
+
+“No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a
+baby. She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me
+up as tenderly as if I’d been her own child.”
+
+“Eh, she’d fine work wi’ ye, I’ll warrant, bringin’ ye up from a babby,
+an’ her a lone woman—it’s ill bringin’ up a cade lamb. But I daresay ye
+warna franzy, for ye look as if ye’d ne’er been angered i’ your life.
+But what did ye do when your aunt died, an’ why didna ye come to live
+in this country, bein’ as Mrs. Poyser’s your aunt too?”
+
+Dinah, seeing that Lisbeth’s attention was attracted, told her the
+story of her early life—how she had been brought up to work hard, and
+what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life
+there—all the details that she thought likely to interest Lisbeth. The
+old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to
+the soothing influence of Dinah’s face and voice. After a while she was
+persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this,
+believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in
+disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her
+side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that
+Dinah would like to be left alone with his mother.
+
+Lisbeth sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and
+said at last, “Ye’ve got a notion o’ cleanin’ up. I wouldna mind ha’in
+ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad’s wage i’ fine clothes
+an’ waste. Ye’re not like the lasses o’ this countryside. I reckon
+folks is different at Snowfield from what they are here.”
+
+“They have a different sort of life, many of ’em,” said Dinah; “they
+work at different things—some in the mill, and many in the mines, in
+the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere,
+and there are the children of this world and the children of light
+there as well as elsewhere. But we’ve many more Methodists there than
+in this country.”
+
+“Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there’s Will
+Maskery’s wife, as they say’s a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at,
+at all. I’d as lief look at a tooad. An’ I’m thinkin’ I wouldna mind if
+ye’d stay an’ sleep here, for I should like to see ye i’ th’ house i’
+th’ mornin’. But mayhappen they’ll be lookin for ye at Mester
+Poyser’s.”
+
+“No,” said Dinah, “they don’t expect me, and I should like to stay, if
+you’ll let me.”
+
+“Well, there’s room; I’n got my bed laid i’ th’ little room o’er the
+back kitchen, an’ ye can lie beside me. I’d be glad to ha’ ye wi’ me to
+speak to i’ th’ night, for ye’ve got a nice way o’ talkin’. It puts me
+i’ mind o’ the swallows as was under the thack last ’ear when they fust
+begun to sing low an’ soft-like i’ th’ mornin’. Eh, but my old man war
+fond o’ them birds! An’ so war Adam, but they’n ne’er comed again this
+’ear. Happen they’re dead too.”
+
+“There,” said Dinah, “now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear
+Mother—for I’m your daughter to-night, you know—I should like you to
+wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did,
+when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive he
+fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor
+drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child.
+But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and
+anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when
+they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now
+the child was dead, he said, ‘While the child was yet alive, I fasted
+and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me,
+that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?
+Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return
+to me.’”
+
+“Eh, that’s a true word,” said Lisbeth. “Yea, my old man wonna come
+back to me, but I shall go to him—the sooner the better. Well, ye may
+do as ye like wi’ me: there’s a clean cap i’ that drawer, an’ I’ll go
+i’ the back kitchen an’ wash my face. An’ Seth, thee may’st reach down
+Adam’s new Bible wi’ th’ picters in, an’ she shall read us a chapter.
+Eh, I like them words—‘I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to
+me.’”
+
+Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater
+quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had
+been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence
+from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience
+among the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled
+through poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception
+of the mode in which they could best be touched and softened into
+willingness to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As
+Dinah expressed it, “she was never left to herself; but it was always
+given her when to keep silence and when to speak.” And do we not all
+agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of
+inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must
+still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds
+are all given to us.
+
+And so there was earnest prayer—there was faith, love, and hope pouring
+forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful
+Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any
+course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love,
+and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing
+life. She couldn’t understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under
+the subduing influence of Dinah’s spirit, she felt that she must be
+patient and still.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+In the Cottage
+
+
+It was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying
+awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the
+little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very
+quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was
+astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog’s
+pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but
+Dinah was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be
+Seth, for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night
+before. Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the
+opening door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at
+last by Dinah’s unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any
+bodily weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work;
+and so when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with
+hours of tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier
+morning sleep than was usual with him.
+
+But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual
+impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and
+subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in
+the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to
+work again when he had had his breakfast.
+
+“There’s nothing but what’s bearable as long as a man can work,” he
+said to himself; “the natur o’ things doesn’t change, though it seems
+as if one’s own life was nothing but change. The square o’ four is
+sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight,
+is as true when a man’s miserable as when he’s happy; and the best o’
+working is, it gives you a grip hold o’ things outside your own lot.”
+
+As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely
+himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick
+black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the
+workshop to look out the wood for his father’s coffin, intending that
+he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge’s and have the
+coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not
+see and hear the sad task going forward at home.
+
+He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light
+rapid foot on the stairs—certainly not his mother’s. He had been in bed
+and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered
+whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him
+strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to
+be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the
+clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he
+had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination
+interpreted for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became
+suffused with a timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the
+kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so
+much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along
+the dusty path; and Adam’s imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark
+bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a
+rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle. A very
+foolish thought—it could not be Hetty; but the only way of dismissing
+such nonsense from his head was to go and see _who_ it was, for his
+fancy only got nearer and nearer to belief while he stood there
+listening. He loosed the plank and went to the kitchen door.
+
+“How do you do, Adam Bede?” said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing
+from her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. “I trust you
+feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the
+day.”
+
+It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam
+had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was
+not very vividly conscious of any woman’s presence except Hetty’s, and
+he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in
+love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn
+towards her for his brother’s sake. But now her slim figure, her plain
+black gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force
+that belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the
+first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the
+concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which
+he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in
+her life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the
+dark penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the
+mildness and timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which
+deepened as she wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his
+forgetfulness.
+
+“I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see
+my mother in her trouble,” he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his
+quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. “I hope my mother
+was thankful to have you,” he added, wondering rather anxiously what
+had been Dinah’s reception.
+
+“Yes,” said Dinah, resuming her work, “she seemed greatly comforted
+after a while, and she’s had a good deal of rest in the night, by
+times. She was fast asleep when I left her.”
+
+“Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?” said Adam, his thoughts
+reverting to some one there; he wondered whether _she_ had felt
+anything about it.
+
+“It was Mr. Irwine, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved for
+your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my
+uncle, I’m sure, now he’s heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all
+yesterday. They’ll look for you there as soon as you’ve got time to go,
+for there’s nobody round that hearth but what’s glad to see you.”
+
+Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was
+longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was
+too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived
+to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way of
+cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary
+hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while
+disbelieves. Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was
+directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when
+Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done
+before.
+
+“But you won’t be there yourself any longer?” he said to Dinah.
+
+“No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to
+Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must
+go back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt
+and her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would
+like me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night.”
+
+“Ah, then, she’s sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at
+the beginning, she’s sure to get fond of ’em; but she’s a strange way
+of not liking young women. Though, to be sure,” Adam went on, smiling,
+“her not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn’t like
+you.”
+
+Hitherto Gyp had been assisting at this conversation in motionless
+silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his
+master’s face to watch its expression and observing Dinah’s movements
+about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Adam uttered the last
+words was apparently decisive with Gyp of the light in which the
+stranger was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting
+aside her sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle
+against her hand in a friendly way.
+
+“You see Gyp bids you welcome,” said Adam, “and he’s very slow to
+welcome strangers.”
+
+“Poor dog!” said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, “I’ve a strange
+feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a
+trouble to ’em because they couldn’t. I can’t help being sorry for the
+dogs always, though perhaps there’s no need. But they may well have
+more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can’t say
+half what we feel, with all our words.”
+
+Seth came down now, and was pleased to find Adam talking with Dinah; he
+wanted Adam to know how much better she was than all other women. But
+after a few words of greeting, Adam drew him into the workshop to
+consult about the coffin, and Dinah went on with her cleaning.
+
+By six o’clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as
+clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open,
+and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood,
+thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the
+cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the
+others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had
+got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just
+what his mother gave them for breakfast. Lisbeth had been unusually
+silent since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to
+adjust her ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a
+lady to find all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new
+sensations seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last,
+after tasting the porridge, she broke silence:
+
+“Ye might ha’ made the parridge worse,” she said to Dinah; “I can ate
+it wi’out its turnin’ my stomach. It might ha’ been a trifle thicker
+an’ no harm, an’ I allays putten a sprig o’ mint in mysen; but how’s ye
+t’ know that? The lads arena like to get folks as ’ll make their
+parridge as I’n made it for ’em; it’s well if they get onybody as ’ll
+make parridge at all. But ye might do, wi’ a bit o’ showin’; for ye’re
+a stirrin’ body in a mornin’, an’ ye’ve a light heel, an’ ye’ve cleaned
+th’ house well enough for a ma’shift.”
+
+“Makeshift, mother?” said Adam. “Why, I think the house looks
+beautiful. I don’t know how it could look better.”
+
+“Thee dostna know? Nay; how’s thee to know? Th’ men ne’er know whether
+the floor’s cleaned or cat-licked. But thee’lt know when thee gets thy
+parridge burnt, as it’s like enough to be when I’n gi’en o’er makin’
+it. Thee’lt think thy mother war good for summat then.”
+
+“Dinah,” said Seth, “do come and sit down now and have your breakfast.
+We’re all served now.”
+
+“Aye, come an’ sit ye down—do,” said Lisbeth, “an’ ate a morsel; ye’d
+need, arter bein’ upo’ your legs this hour an’ half a’ready. Come,
+then,” she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Dinah sat down
+by her side, “I’ll be loath for ye t’ go, but ye canna stay much
+longer, I doubt. I could put up wi’ ye i’ th’ house better nor wi’ most
+folks.”
+
+“I’ll stay till to-night if you’re willing,” said Dinah. “I’d stay
+longer, only I’m going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be
+with my aunt to-morrow.”
+
+“Eh, I’d ne’er go back to that country. My old man come from that
+Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an’ i’ the
+right on’t too; for he said as there war no wood there, an’ it ’ud ha’
+been a bad country for a carpenter.”
+
+“Ah,” said Adam, “I remember father telling me when I was a little lad
+that he made up his mind if ever he moved it should be south’ard. But
+I’m not so sure about it. Bartle Massey says—and he knows the South—as
+the northern men are a finer breed than the southern, harder-headed and
+stronger-bodied, and a deal taller. And then he says in some o’ those
+counties it’s as flat as the back o’ your hand, and you can see nothing
+of a distance without climbing up the highest trees. I couldn’t abide
+that. I like to go to work by a road that’ll take me up a bit of a
+hill, and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town,
+or a bit of a steeple here and there. It makes you feel the world’s a
+big place, and there’s other men working in it with their heads and
+hands besides yourself.”
+
+“I like th’ hills best,” said Seth, “when the clouds are over your head
+and you see the sun shining ever so far off, over the Loamford way, as
+I’ve often done o’ late, on the stormy days. It seems to me as if that
+was heaven where there’s always joy and sunshine, though this life’s
+dark and cloudy.”
+
+“Oh, I love the Stonyshire side,” said Dinah; “I shouldn’t like to set
+my face towards the countries where they’re rich in corn and cattle,
+and the ground so level and easy to tread; and to turn my back on the
+hills where the poor people have to live such a hard life and the men
+spend their days in the mines away from the sunlight. It’s very blessed
+on a bleak cold day, when the sky is hanging dark over the hill, to
+feel the love of God in one’s soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare,
+stone houses, where there’s nothing else to give comfort.”
+
+“Eh!” said Lisbeth, “that’s very well for ye to talk, as looks welly
+like the snowdrop-flowers as ha’ lived for days an’ days when I’n
+gethered ’em, wi’ nothin’ but a drop o’ water an’ a peep o’ daylight;
+but th’ hungry foulks had better leave th’ hungry country. It makes
+less mouths for the scant cake. But,” she went on, looking at Adam,
+“donna thee talk o’ goin’ south’ard or north’ard, an’ leavin’ thy
+feyther and mother i’ the churchyard, an’ goin’ to a country as they
+know nothin’ on. I’ll ne’er rest i’ my grave if I donna see thee i’ the
+churchyard of a Sunday.”
+
+“Donna fear, mother,” said Adam. “If I hadna made up my mind not to go,
+I should ha’ been gone before now.”
+
+He had finished his breakfast now, and rose as he was speaking.
+
+“What art goin’ to do?” asked Lisbeth. “Set about thy feyther’s
+coffin?”
+
+“No, mother,” said Adam; “we’re going to take the wood to the village
+and have it made there.”
+
+“Nay, my lad, nay,” Lisbeth burst out in an eager, wailing tone; “thee
+wotna let nobody make thy feyther’s coffin but thysen? Who’d make it so
+well? An’ him as know’d what good work war, an’s got a son as is the
+head o’ the village an’ all Treddles’on too, for cleverness.”
+
+“Very well, mother, if that’s thy wish, I’ll make the coffin at home;
+but I thought thee wouldstna like to hear the work going on.”
+
+“An’ why shouldna I like ’t? It’s the right thing to be done. An’
+what’s liking got to do wi’t? It’s choice o’ mislikings is all I’n got
+i’ this world. One morsel’s as good as another when your mouth’s out o’
+taste. Thee mun set about it now this mornin’ fust thing. I wonna ha’
+nobody to touch the coffin but thee.”
+
+Adam’s eyes met Seth’s, which looked from Dinah to him rather
+wistfully.
+
+“No, Mother,” he said, “I’ll not consent but Seth shall have a hand in
+it too, if it’s to be done at home. I’ll go to the village this
+forenoon, because Mr. Burge ’ull want to see me, and Seth shall stay at
+home and begin the coffin. I can come back at noon, and then he can
+go.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” persisted Lisbeth, beginning to cry, “I’n set my heart on’t
+as thee shalt ma’ thy feyther’s coffin. Thee’t so stiff an’ masterful,
+thee’t ne’er do as thy mother wants thee. Thee wast often angered wi’
+thy feyther when he war alive; thee must be the better to him now he’s
+gone. He’d ha’ thought nothin’ on’t for Seth to ma’s coffin.”
+
+“Say no more, Adam, say no more,” said Seth, gently, though his voice
+told that he spoke with some effort; “Mother’s in the right. I’ll go to
+work, and do thee stay at home.”
+
+He passed into the workshop immediately, followed by Adam; while
+Lisbeth, automatically obeying her old habits, began to put away the
+breakfast things, as if she did not mean Dinah to take her place any
+longer. Dinah said nothing, but presently used the opportunity of
+quietly joining the brothers in the workshop.
+
+They had already got on their aprons and paper caps, and Adam was
+standing with his left hand on Seth’s shoulder, while he pointed with
+the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at.
+Their backs were turned towards the door by which Dinah entered, and
+she came in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till
+they heard her voice saying, “Seth Bede!” Seth started, and they both
+turned round. Dinah looked as if she did not see Adam, and fixed her
+eyes on Seth’s face, saying with calm kindness, “I won’t say farewell.
+I shall see you again when you come from work. So as I’m at the farm
+before dark, it will be quite soon enough.”
+
+“Thank you, Dinah; I should like to walk home with you once more. It’ll
+perhaps be the last time.”
+
+There was a little tremor in Seth’s voice. Dinah put out her hand and
+said, “You’ll have sweet peace in your mind to-day, Seth, for your
+tenderness and long-suffering towards your aged mother.”
+
+She turned round and left the workshop as quickly and quietly as she
+had entered it. Adam had been observing her closely all the while, but
+she had not looked at him. As soon as she was gone, he said, “I don’t
+wonder at thee for loving her, Seth. She’s got a face like a lily.”
+
+Seth’s soul rushed to his eyes and lips: he had never yet confessed his
+secret to Adam, but now he felt a delicious sense of disburdenment, as
+he answered, “Aye, Addy, I do love her—too much, I doubt. But she
+doesna love me, lad, only as one child o’ God loves another. She’ll
+never love any man as a husband—that’s my belief.”
+
+“Nay, lad, there’s no telling; thee mustna lose heart. She’s made out
+o’ stuff with a finer grain than most o’ the women; I can see that
+clear enough. But if she’s better than they are in other things, I
+canna think she’ll fall short of ’em in loving.”
+
+No more was said. Seth set out to the village, and Adam began his work
+on the coffin.
+
+“God help the lad, and me too,” he thought, as he lifted the board.
+“We’re like enough to find life a tough job—hard work inside and out.
+It’s a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his
+teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at
+only a look from one woman out of all the rest i’ the world. It’s a
+mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting
+o’ the seed, for that matter.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+In the Wood
+
+
+That same Thursday morning, as Arthur Donnithorne was moving about in
+his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in
+the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green
+piece of tapestry, by Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens, who ought to
+have been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with
+himself, which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling
+over his shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution.
+
+“I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so,” he said aloud.
+“I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready
+by half-past eleven.”
+
+The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution,
+here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he
+hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar’s Opera,
+“When the heart of a man is oppressed with care.” Not an heroic strain;
+nevertheless Arthur felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the
+stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was
+necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite
+gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never
+yet forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his
+own virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly;
+candour was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man’s candour
+be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But
+he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous
+kind—impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty,
+reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything
+mean, dastardly, or cruel. “No! I’m a devil of a fellow for getting
+myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my
+own shoulders.” Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in
+hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their
+worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly
+expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme
+of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides
+himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of
+the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a
+prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be
+the model of an English gentleman—mansion in first-rate order, all
+elegance and high taste—jolly housekeeping, finest stud in
+Loamshire—purse open to all public objects—in short, everything as
+different as possible from what was now associated with the name of
+Donnithorne. And one of the first good actions he would perform in that
+future should be to increase Irwine’s income for the vicarage of
+Hayslope, so that he might keep a carriage for his mother and sisters.
+His hearty affection for the rector dated from the age of frocks and
+trousers. It was an affection partly filial, partly fraternal—fraternal
+enough to make him like Irwine’s company better than that of most
+younger men, and filial enough to make him shrink strongly from
+incurring Irwine’s disapprobation.
+
+You perceive that Arthur Donnithorne was “a good fellow”—all his
+college friends thought him such. He couldn’t bear to see any one
+uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for
+any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had
+the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole
+sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless
+and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a
+question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but
+twenty-one, you remember, and we don’t inquire too closely into
+character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will
+have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes—who, if he should
+unfortunately break a man’s legs in his rash driving, will be able to
+pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman’s
+existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive _bon-bons_,
+packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be
+prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the
+character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly
+epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that
+fine intuition which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see
+at once that he is “nice.” The chances are that he will go through life
+without scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would
+refuse to insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which
+sometimes make terribly evident some flaw in their construction that
+would never have been discoverable in smooth water; and many a “good
+fellow,” through a disastrous combination of circumstances, has
+undergone a like betrayal.
+
+But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries
+concerning Arthur Donnithorne, who this morning proves himself capable
+of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear:
+Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect
+comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that
+border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults
+from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of
+Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole.
+
+It was about ten o’clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly;
+everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday’s rain. It is a
+pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel
+on one’s way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of
+the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among the
+soothing influences of a man’s life, always brought with it some
+irritation to Arthur. There was no having his own way in the stables;
+everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather
+persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever
+could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a
+succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had
+lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on
+Arthur’s bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one
+can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a
+scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh and
+blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of
+misanthropy.
+
+Old John’s wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met
+Arthur’s eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for
+him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could
+never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead.
+
+“You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past
+eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do
+you hear?”
+
+“Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap’n,” said old John very deliberately,
+following the young master into the stable. John considered a young
+master as the natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in
+general as a poor contrivance for carrying on the world.
+
+Arthur went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as
+possible to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper
+before breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables,
+and turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a
+tiny spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably
+curled up on her back.
+
+“Well, Meg, my pretty girl,” said Arthur, patting her neck, “we’ll have
+a glorious canter this morning.”
+
+“Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be,” said John.
+
+“Not be? Why not?”
+
+“Why, she’s got lamed.”
+
+“Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?”
+
+“Why, th’ lad took her too close to Dalton’s hosses, an’ one on ’em
+flung out at her, an’ she’s got her shank bruised o’ the near foreleg.”
+
+The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued.
+You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled
+with soothing “who-ho’s” while the leg was examined; that John stood by
+with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved
+crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed
+the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went.
+
+He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was
+not another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg
+and Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the
+way for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a
+combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken
+arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself at
+Windsor—shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of
+affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at
+every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such
+circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off
+the irritation by some excess or other. “Salkeld would have drunk a
+bottle of port every day,” he muttered to himself, “but I’m not well
+seasoned enough for that. Well, since I can’t go to Eagledale, I’ll
+have a gallop on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with
+Gawaine.”
+
+Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he
+lunched with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the
+Chase again till nearly five, when Hetty would be safe out of his sight
+in the housekeeper’s room; and when she set out to go home, it would be
+his lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way
+altogether. There really would have been no harm in being kind to the
+little thing, and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles
+only to look at Hetty for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not
+take any more notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as
+Irwine had hinted; though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not
+by any means so soft and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found
+them twice as cool and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm
+in Hetty’s case, it was out of the question: Arthur Donnithorne
+accepted his own bond for himself with perfect confidence.
+
+So the twelve o’clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by
+good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine
+leaps for Rattler. Nothing like “taking” a few bushes and ditches for
+exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs,
+with their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a
+reputation in history.
+
+After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine
+was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely cleared
+the last stroke of three when Arthur returned through the
+entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the
+house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men since
+his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then
+galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite
+stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round
+upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our
+own.
+
+“The cap’n’s been ridin’ the devil’s own pace,” said Dalton the
+coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe
+against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler.
+
+“An’ I wish he’d get the devil to do’s grooming for’n,” growled John.
+
+“Aye; he’d hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now,” observed
+Dalton—and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon
+the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth in
+order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with a
+silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the
+beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants’ hall.
+
+When Arthur went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was
+inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the
+day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now to
+dwell on the remembrance—impossible to recall the feelings and
+reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to
+recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he
+first opened his window. The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like
+an ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which
+this trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as
+he brushed his hair—pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was
+because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of
+it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing
+Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all
+Irwine’s fault. “If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn’t have thought
+half so much of Hetty as of Meg’s lameness.” However, it was just the
+sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish
+Dr. Moore’s _Zeluco_ there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in
+Fir-tree Grove—the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall
+Farm. So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a
+mere circumstance of his walk, not its object.
+
+Arthur’s shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the
+Chase than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a
+warm afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o’clock when he stood
+before the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine
+wood which skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree
+Grove, not because the firs were many, but because they were few. It
+was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a light
+silver-stemmed birch—just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs:
+you see their white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or
+peeping from behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you
+hear their soft liquid laughter—but if you look with a too curious
+sacrilegious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you
+believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they
+metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and
+mocks you from the topmost bough. It was not a grove with measured
+grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow,
+hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate
+moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the
+trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen
+of the white-footed nymphs.
+
+It was along the broadest of these paths that Arthur Donnithorne
+passed, under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still
+afternoon—the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper
+boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its
+edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises
+her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm
+downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Arthur strolled
+along carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the
+ground as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes _would_ fix themselves
+on the distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely
+appear before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of
+colour, like a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure,
+with a round hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a
+deep-blushing, almost frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her
+curtsy with a fluttered yet happy glance, as Arthur came up to her. If
+Arthur had had time to think at all, he would have thought it strange
+that he should feel fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too—in
+fact, look and feel as foolish as if he had been taken by surprise
+instead of meeting just what he expected. Poor things! It was a pity
+they were not in that golden age of childhood when they would have
+stood face to face, eyeing each other with timid liking, then given
+each other a little butterfly kiss, and toddled off to play together.
+Arthur would have gone home to his silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her
+home-spun pillow, and both would have slept without dreams, and
+to-morrow would have been a life hardly conscious of a yesterday.
+
+Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty’s side without giving a reason.
+They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering
+presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this
+little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet
+rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had
+forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her
+limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting
+on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a
+contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and
+confidence from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of
+mind from what he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full
+as he was of vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of
+silence, for the thought that his previous debates and scruples were
+needless.
+
+“You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase,” he
+said at last, looking down at Hetty; “it is so much prettier as well as
+shorter than coming by either of the lodges.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice.
+She didn’t know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur,
+and her very vanity made her more coy of speech.
+
+“Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?”
+
+“Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she’s got to go out with Miss
+Donnithorne.”
+
+“And she’s teaching you something, is she?”
+
+“Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the
+stocking-mending—it looks just like the stocking, you can’t tell it’s
+been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too.”
+
+“What! are _you_ going to be a lady’s maid?”
+
+“I should like to be one very much indeed.” Hetty spoke more audibly
+now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as
+stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.
+
+“I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?”
+
+“She expects me at four o’clock. I’m rather late to-day, because my
+aunt couldn’t spare me; but the regular time is four, because that
+gives us time before Miss Donnithorne’s bell rings.”
+
+“Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the
+Hermitage. Did you ever see it?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I’ll
+show it you some other time, if you’d like to see it.”
+
+“Yes, please, sir.”
+
+“Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to
+come so lonely a road?”
+
+“Oh no, sir, it’s never late; I always set out by eight o’clock, and
+it’s so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I
+didn’t get home before nine.”
+
+“Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?”
+
+A deep blush overspread Hetty’s face and neck. “I’m sure he doesn’t;
+I’m sure he never did; I wouldn’t let him; I don’t like him,” she said
+hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had
+done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt
+ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her
+happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round
+her, and a gentle voice said, “Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn’t
+mean to vex you. I wouldn’t vex you for the world, you little blossom.
+Come, don’t cry; look at me, else I shall think you won’t forgive me.”
+
+Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and
+was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty
+lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards
+her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those
+three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love
+is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a
+sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud
+first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such
+young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches
+that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two
+brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple
+with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While
+Arthur gazed into Hetty’s dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference
+to him what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had
+been in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then
+that Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.
+
+But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on
+the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty’s basket; all her little
+workwoman’s matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing a
+capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in
+picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Arthur hung the basket
+over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his
+look and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and
+tone that were almost chilling to her, “I have been hindering you; I
+must not keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house.
+Good-bye.”
+
+Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried
+back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Hetty to
+pursue her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in
+bewildering delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness.
+Would he meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as
+if he were displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She
+cried, hardly knowing why.
+
+Arthur too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a
+more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood
+in the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench,
+slammed it after him, pitched _Zeluco_ into the most distant corner,
+and thrusting his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five
+times up and down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated
+himself on the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do
+when we wish not to abandon ourselves to feeling.
+
+He was getting in love with Hetty—that was quite plain. He was ready to
+pitch everything else—no matter where—for the sake of surrendering
+himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It
+was no use blinking the fact now—they would get too fond of each other,
+if he went on taking notice of her—and what would come of it? He should
+have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be
+miserable. He _must not_ see her alone again; he must keep out of her
+way. What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine’s!
+
+He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the
+afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the
+Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out
+and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution
+sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any
+longer. He had made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he
+might give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be
+if circumstances were different—how pleasant it would have been to meet
+her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and
+look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were
+thinking of him too—twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were
+with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a
+day with looking at them, and he _must_ see her again—he must see her,
+simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner to
+her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her—just to
+prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes,
+that would be the best thing to do after all.
+
+It was a long while—more than an hour before Arthur had brought his
+meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no
+longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until
+he should see Hetty again. And it was already late enough to go and
+dress for dinner, for his grandfather’s dinner-hour was six.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+Evening in the Wood
+
+
+It happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight quarrel with Mrs. Best,
+the housekeeper, on this Thursday morning—a fact which had two
+consequences highly convenient to Hetty. It caused Mrs. Pomfret to have
+tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired that exemplary lady’s maid
+with so lively a recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best’s
+conduct, and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly the
+inferiority as an interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret, that Hetty required
+no more presence of mind than was demanded for using her needle, and
+throwing in an occasional “yes” or “no.” She would have wanted to put
+on her hat earlier than usual; only she had told Captain Donnithorne
+that she usually set out about eight o’clock, and if he _should_ go to
+the Grove again expecting to see her, and she should be gone! Would he
+come? Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory
+and dubious expectation. At last the minute-hand of the old-fashioned
+brazen-faced timepiece was on the last quarter to eight, and there was
+every reason for its being time to get ready for departure. Even Mrs.
+Pomfret’s preoccupied mind did not prevent her from noticing what
+looked like a new flush of beauty in the little thing as she tied on
+her hat before the looking-glass.
+
+“That child gets prettier and prettier every day, I do believe,” was
+her inward comment. “The more’s the pity. She’ll get neither a place
+nor a husband any the sooner for it. Sober well-to-do men don’t like
+such pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired than if I had
+been so very pretty. However, she’s reason to be grateful to me for
+teaching her something to get her bread with, better than farm-house
+work. They always told me I was good-natured—and that’s the truth, and
+to my hurt too, else there’s them in this house that wouldn’t be here
+now to lord it over me in the housekeeper’s room.”
+
+Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which
+she had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig, to whom she could
+hardly have spoken civilly. How relieved she was when she had got
+safely under the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even then she
+was as ready to be startled as the deer that leaped away at her
+approach. She thought nothing of the evening light that lay gently in
+the grassy alleys between the fern, and made the beauty of their living
+green more visible than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon:
+she thought of nothing that was present. She only saw something that
+was possible: Mr. Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the
+Fir-tree Grove. That was the foreground of Hetty’s picture; behind it
+lay a bright hazy something—days that were not to be as the other days
+of her life had been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god,
+who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery
+heaven. There was no knowing what would come, since this strange
+entrancing delight had come. If a chest full of lace and satin and
+jewels had been sent her from some unknown source, how could she but
+have thought that her whole lot was going to change, and that to-morrow
+some still more bewildering joy would befall her? Hetty had never read
+a novel; if she had ever seen one, I think the words would have been
+too hard for her; how then could she find a shape for her expectations?
+They were as formless as the sweet languid odours of the garden at the
+Chase, which had floated past her as she walked by the gate.
+
+She is at another gate now—that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters
+the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes,
+the fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how
+dreary it was—the thought of going out at the other end of the wood,
+into the unsheltered road, without having seen him. She reaches the
+first turning towards the Hermitage, walking slowly—he is not there.
+She hates the leveret that runs across the path; she hates everything
+that is not what she longs for. She walks on, happy whenever she is
+coming to a bend in the road, for perhaps he is behind it. No. She is
+beginning to cry: her heart has swelled so, the tears stand in her
+eyes; she gives one great sob, while the corners of her mouth quiver,
+and the tears roll down.
+
+She doesn’t know that there is another turning to the Hermitage, that
+she is close against it, and that Arthur Donnithorne is only a few
+yards from her, full of one thought, and a thought of which she only is
+the object. He is going to see Hetty again: that is the longing which
+has been growing through the last three hours to a feverish thirst.
+Not, of course, to speak in the caressing way into which he had
+unguardedly fallen before dinner, but to set things right with her by a
+kindness which would have the air of friendly civility, and prevent her
+from running away with wrong notions about their mutual relation.
+
+If Hetty had known he was there, she would not have cried; and it would
+have been better, for then Arthur would perhaps have behaved as wisely
+as he had intended. As it was, she started when he appeared at the end
+of the side-alley, and looked up at him with two great drops rolling
+down her cheeks. What else could he do but speak to her in a soft,
+soothing tone, as if she were a bright-eyed spaniel with a thorn in her
+foot?
+
+“Has something frightened you, Hetty? Have you seen anything in the
+wood? Don’t be frightened—I’ll take care of you now.”
+
+Hetty was blushing so, she didn’t know whether she was happy or
+miserable. To be crying again—what did gentlemen think of girls who
+cried in that way? She felt unable even to say “no,” but could only
+look away from him and wipe the tears from her cheek. Not before a
+great drop had fallen on her rose-coloured strings—she knew that quite
+well.
+
+“Come, be cheerful again. Smile at me, and tell me what’s the matter.
+Come, tell me.”
+
+Hetty turned her head towards him, whispered, “I thought you wouldn’t
+come,” and slowly got courage to lift her eyes to him. That look was
+too much: he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too
+lovingly in return.
+
+“You little frightened bird! Little tearful rose! Silly pet! You won’t
+cry again, now I’m with you, will you?”
+
+Ah, he doesn’t know in the least what he is saying. This is not what he
+meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is
+tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the
+round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a
+long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for
+aught he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he
+may be Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche—it is all one.
+
+There was no speaking for minutes after. They walked along with beating
+hearts till they came within sight of the gate at the end of the wood.
+Then they looked at each other, not quite as they had looked before,
+for in their eyes there was the memory of a kiss.
+
+But already something bitter had begun to mingle itself with the
+fountain of sweets: already Arthur was uncomfortable. He took his arm
+from Hetty’s waist, and said, “Here we are, almost at the end of the
+Grove. I wonder how late it is,” he added, pulling out his watch.
+“Twenty minutes past eight—but my watch is too fast. However, I’d
+better not go any further now. Trot along quickly with your little
+feet, and get home safely. Good-bye.”
+
+He took her hand, and looked at her half-sadly, half with a constrained
+smile. Hetty’s eyes seemed to beseech him not to go away yet; but he
+patted her cheek and said “Good-bye” again. She was obliged to turn
+away from him and go on.
+
+As for Arthur, he rushed back through the wood, as if he wanted to put
+a wide space between himself and Hetty. He would not go to the
+Hermitage again; he remembered how he had debated with himself there
+before dinner, and it had all come to nothing—worse than nothing. He
+walked right on into the Chase, glad to get out of the Grove, which
+surely was haunted by his evil genius. Those beeches and smooth
+limes—there was something enervating in the very sight of them; but the
+strong knotted old oaks had no bending languor in them—the sight of
+them would give a man some energy. Arthur lost himself among the narrow
+openings in the fern, winding about without seeking any issue, till the
+twilight deepened almost to night under the great boughs, and the hare
+looked black as it darted across his path.
+
+He was feeling much more strongly than he had done in the morning: it
+was as if his horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute
+his mastery. He was dissatisfied with himself, irritated, mortified. He
+no sooner fixed his mind on the probable consequences of giving way to
+the emotions which had stolen over him to-day—of continuing to notice
+Hetty, of allowing himself any opportunity for such slight caresses as
+he had been betrayed into already—than he refused to believe such a
+future possible for himself. To flirt with Hetty was a very different
+affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his own station: that was
+understood to be an amusement on both sides, or, if it became serious,
+there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be
+spoken ill of directly, if she happened to be seen walking with him;
+and then those excellent people, the Poysers, to whom a good name was
+as precious as if they had the best blood in the land in their veins—he
+should hate himself if he made a scandal of that sort, on the estate
+that was to be his own some day, and among tenants by whom he liked,
+above all, to be respected. He could no more believe that he should so
+fall in his own esteem than that he should break both his legs and go
+on crutches all the rest of his life. He couldn’t imagine himself in
+that position; it was too odious, too unlike him.
+
+And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get too fond of
+each other, and then there could be nothing but the misery of parting,
+after all. No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer’s niece.
+There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish.
+
+And yet he had been so determined this morning, before he went to
+Gawaine’s; and while he was there something had taken hold of him and
+made him gallop back. It seemed he couldn’t quite depend on his own
+resolution, as he had thought he could; he almost wished his arm would
+get painful again, and then he should think of nothing but the comfort
+it would be to get rid of the pain. There was no knowing what impulse
+might seize him to-morrow, in this confounded place, where there was
+nothing to occupy him imperiously through the livelong day. What could
+he do to secure himself from any more of this folly?
+
+There was but one resource. He would go and tell Irwine—tell him
+everything. The mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial; the
+temptation would vanish, as the charm of fond words vanishes when one
+repeats them to the indifferent. In every way it would help him to tell
+Irwine. He would ride to Broxton Rectory the first thing after
+breakfast to-morrow.
+
+Arthur had no sooner come to this determination than he began to think
+which of the paths would lead him home, and made as short a walk
+thither as he could. He felt sure he should sleep now: he had had
+enough to tire him, and there was no more need for him to think.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+The Return Home
+
+
+While that parting in the wood was happening, there was a parting in
+the cottage too, and Lisbeth had stood with Adam at the door, straining
+her aged eyes to get the last glimpse of Seth and Dinah, as they
+mounted the opposite slope.
+
+“Eh, I’m loath to see the last on her,” she said to Adam, as they
+turned into the house again. “I’d ha’ been willin’ t’ ha’ her about me
+till I died and went to lie by my old man. She’d make it easier
+dyin’—she spakes so gentle an’ moves about so still. I could be fast
+sure that pictur’ was drawed for her i’ thy new Bible—th’ angel
+a-sittin’ on the big stone by the grave. Eh, I wouldna mind ha’in a
+daughter like that; but nobody ne’er marries them as is good for
+aught.”
+
+“Well, Mother, I hope thee wilt have her for a daughter; for Seth’s got
+a liking for her, and I hope she’ll get a liking for Seth in time.”
+
+“Where’s th’ use o’ talkin’ a-that’n? She caresna for Seth. She’s goin’
+away twenty mile aff. How’s she to get a likin’ for him, I’d like to
+know? No more nor the cake ’ull come wi’out the leaven. Thy figurin’
+books might ha’ tould thee better nor that, I should think, else thee
+mightst as well read the commin print, as Seth allays does.”
+
+“Nay, Mother,” said Adam, laughing, “the figures tell us a fine deal,
+and we couldn’t go far without ’em, but they don’t tell us about
+folks’s feelings. It’s a nicer job to calculate _them_. But Seth’s as
+good-hearted a lad as ever handled a tool, and plenty o’ sense, and
+good-looking too; and he’s got the same way o’ thinking as Dinah. He
+deserves to win her, though there’s no denying she’s a rare bit o’
+workmanship. You don’t see such women turned off the wheel every day.”
+
+“Eh, thee’t allays stick up for thy brother. Thee’st been just the
+same, e’er sin’ ye war little uns together. Thee wart allays for
+halving iverything wi’ him. But what’s Seth got to do with marryin’, as
+is on’y three-an’-twenty? He’d more need to learn an’ lay by sixpence.
+An’ as for his desarving her—she’s two ’ear older nor Seth: she’s
+pretty near as old as thee. But that’s the way; folks mun allays choose
+by contrairies, as if they must be sorted like the pork—a bit o’ good
+meat wi’ a bit o’ offal.”
+
+To the feminine mind in some of its moods, all things that might be
+receive a temporary charm from comparison with what is; and since Adam
+did not want to marry Dinah himself, Lisbeth felt rather peevish on
+that score—as peevish as she would have been if he _had_ wanted to
+marry her, and so shut himself out from Mary Burge and the partnership
+as effectually as by marrying Hetty.
+
+It was more than half-past eight when Adam and his mother were talking
+in this way, so that when, about ten minutes later, Hetty reached the
+turning of the lane that led to the farmyard gate, she saw Dinah and
+Seth approaching it from the opposite direction, and waited for them to
+come up to her. They, too, like Hetty, had lingered a little in their
+walk, for Dinah was trying to speak words of comfort and strength to
+Seth in these parting moments. But when they saw Hetty, they paused and
+shook hands; Seth turned homewards, and Dinah came on alone.
+
+“Seth Bede would have come and spoken to you, my dear,” she said, as
+she reached Hetty, “but he’s very full of trouble to-night.”
+
+Hetty answered with a dimpled smile, as if she did not quite know what
+had been said; and it made a strange contrast to see that sparkling
+self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Dinah’s calm pitying face, with
+its open glance which told that her heart lived in no cherished secrets
+of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the
+world. Hetty liked Dinah as well as she had ever liked any woman; how
+was it possible to feel otherwise towards one who always put in a kind
+word for her when her aunt was finding fault, and who was always ready
+to take Totty off her hands—little tiresome Totty, that was made such a
+pet of by every one, and that Hetty could see no interest in at all?
+Dinah had never said anything disapproving or reproachful to Hetty
+during her whole visit to the Hall Farm; she had talked to her a great
+deal in a serious way, but Hetty didn’t mind that much, for she never
+listened: whatever Dinah might say, she almost always stroked Hetty’s
+cheek after it, and wanted to do some mending for her. Dinah was a
+riddle to her; Hetty looked at her much in the same way as one might
+imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to
+bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow or the mounting of the lark;
+but she did not care to solve such riddles, any more than she cared to
+know what was meant by the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress, or in
+the old folio Bible that Marty and Tommy always plagued her about on a
+Sunday.
+
+Dinah took her hand now and drew it under her own arm.
+
+“You look very happy to-night, dear child,” she said. “I shall think of
+you often when I’m at Snowfield, and see your face before me as it is
+now. It’s a strange thing—sometimes when I’m quite alone, sitting in my
+room with my eyes closed, or walking over the hills, the people I’ve
+seen and known, if it’s only been for a few days, are brought before
+me, and I hear their voices and see them look and move almost plainer
+than I ever did when they were really with me so as I could touch them.
+And then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if
+it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and
+resting in His love, on their behalf as well as my own. And so I feel
+sure you will come before me.”
+
+She paused a moment, but Hetty said nothing.
+
+“It has been a very precious time to me,” Dinah went on, “last night
+and to-day—seeing two such good sons as Adam and Seth Bede. They are so
+tender and thoughtful for their aged mother. And she has been telling
+me what Adam has done, for these many years, to help his father and his
+brother; it’s wonderful what a spirit of wisdom and knowledge he has,
+and how he’s ready to use it all in behalf of them that are feeble. And
+I’m sure he has a loving spirit too. I’ve noticed it often among my own
+people round Snowfield, that the strong, skilful men are often the
+gentlest to the women and children; and it’s pretty to see ’em carrying
+the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the
+babies always seem to like the strong arm best. I feel sure it would be
+so with Adam Bede. Don’t you think so, Hetty?”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty abstractedly, for her mind had been all the while in
+the wood, and she would have found it difficult to say what she was
+assenting to. Dinah saw she was not inclined to talk, but there would
+not have been time to say much more, for they were now at the
+yard-gate.
+
+The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint
+struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a sound
+to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the stable. It was
+about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were all gone to roost,
+and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw outside his kennel, with
+the black-and-tan terrier by his side, when the falling-to of the gate
+disturbed them and set them barking, like good officials, before they
+had any distinct knowledge of the reason.
+
+The barking had its effect in the house, for, as Dinah and Hetty
+approached, the doorway was filled by a portly figure, with a ruddy
+black-eyed face which bore in it the possibility of looking extremely
+acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a
+predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well
+known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in
+their criticism of other men’s scholarship have yet been of a relenting
+and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man
+meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with
+his right he inflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who
+had betrayed a brutal ignorance of Hebrew. Weaknesses and errors must
+be forgiven—alas! they are not alien to us—but the man who takes the
+wrong side on the momentous subject of the Hebrew points must be
+treated as the enemy of his race. There was the same sort of antithetic
+mixture in Martin Poyser: he was of so excellent a disposition that he
+had been kinder and more respectful than ever to his old father since
+he had made a deed of gift of all his property, and no man judged his
+neighbours more charitably on all personal matters; but for a farmer,
+like Luke Britton, for example, whose fallows were not well cleaned,
+who didn’t know the rudiments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a
+small share of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Martin Poyser
+was as hard and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could
+not make a remark, even on the weather, but Martin Poyser detected in
+it a taint of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable
+in all his farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the
+pewter pint to his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day,
+and the mere sight of him on the other side of the road brought a
+severe and critical expression into his black eyes, as different as
+possible from the fatherly glance he bent on his two nieces as they
+approached the door. Mr. Poyser had smoked his evening pipe, and now
+held his hands in his pockets, as the only resource of a man who
+continues to sit up after the day’s business is done.
+
+“Why, lasses, ye’re rather late to-night,” he said, when they reached
+the little gate leading into the causeway. “The mother’s begun to
+fidget about you, an’ she’s got the little un ill. An’ how did you
+leave the old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man?
+He’d been but a poor bargain to her this five year.”
+
+“She’s been greatly distressed for the loss of him,” said Dinah, “but
+she’s seemed more comforted to-day. Her son Adam’s been at home all
+day, working at his father’s coffin, and she loves to have him at home.
+She’s been talking about him to me almost all the day. She has a loving
+heart, though she’s sorely given to fret and be fearful. I wish she had
+a surer trust to comfort her in her old age.”
+
+“Adam’s sure enough,” said Mr. Poyser, misunderstanding Dinah’s wish.
+“There’s no fear but he’ll yield well i’ the threshing. He’s not one o’
+them as is all straw and no grain. I’ll be bond for him any day, as
+he’ll be a good son to the last. Did he say he’d be coming to see us
+soon? But come in, come in,” he added, making way for them; “I hadn’t
+need keep y’ out any longer.”
+
+The tall buildings round the yard shut out a good deal of the sky, but
+the large window let in abundant light to show every corner of the
+house-place.
+
+Mrs. Poyser, seated in the rocking-chair, which had been brought out of
+the “right-hand parlour,” was trying to soothe Totty to sleep. But
+Totty was not disposed to sleep; and when her cousins entered, she
+raised herself up and showed a pair of flushed cheeks, which looked
+fatter than ever now they were defined by the edge of her linen
+night-cap.
+
+In the large wicker-bottomed arm-chair in the left-hand chimney-nook
+sat old Martin Poyser, a hale but shrunken and bleached image of his
+portly black-haired son—his head hanging forward a little, and his
+elbows pushed backwards so as to allow the whole of his forearm to rest
+on the arm of the chair. His blue handkerchief was spread over his
+knees, as was usual indoors, when it was not hanging over his head; and
+he sat watching what went forward with the quiet _outward_ glance of
+healthy old age, which, disengaged from any interest in an inward
+drama, spies out pins upon the floor, follows one’s minutest motions
+with an unexpectant purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the
+flame or the sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor,
+watches even the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a
+rhythm in the tick.
+
+“What a time o’ night this is to come home, Hetty!” said Mrs. Poyser.
+“Look at the clock, do; why, it’s going on for half-past nine, and I’ve
+sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they’ve
+got to get up at half after four, and the mowers’ bottles to fill, and
+the baking; and here’s this blessed child wi’ the fever for what I
+know, and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to
+give her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there’s been, and
+half of it spilt on her night-gown—it’s well if she’s swallowed more
+nor ’ull make her worse i’stead o’ better. But folks as have no mind to
+be o’ use have allays the luck to be out o’ the road when there’s
+anything to be done.”
+
+“I did set out before eight, aunt,” said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with
+a slight toss of her head. “But this clock’s so much before the clock
+at the Chase, there’s no telling what time it’ll be when I get here.”
+
+“What! You’d be wanting the clock set by gentlefolks’s time, would you?
+An’ sit up burnin’ candle, an’ lie a-bed wi’ the sun a-bakin’ you like
+a cowcumber i’ the frame? The clock hasn’t been put forrard for the
+first time to-day, I reckon.”
+
+The fact was, Hetty had really forgotten the difference of the clocks
+when she told Captain Donnithorne that she set out at eight, and this,
+with her lingering pace, had made her nearly half an hour later than
+usual. But here her aunt’s attention was diverted from this tender
+subject by Totty, who, perceiving at length that the arrival of her
+cousins was not likely to bring anything satisfactory to her in
+particular, began to cry, “Munny, munny,” in an explosive manner.
+
+“Well, then, my pet, Mother’s got her, Mother won’t leave her; Totty be
+a good dilling, and go to sleep now,” said Mrs. Poyser, leaning back
+and rocking the chair, while she tried to make Totty nestle against
+her. But Totty only cried louder, and said, “Don’t yock!” So the
+mother, with that wondrous patience which love gives to the quickest
+temperament, sat up again, and pressed her cheek against the linen
+night-cap and kissed it, and forgot to scold Hetty any longer.
+
+“Come, Hetty,” said Martin Poyser, in a conciliatory tone, “go and get
+your supper i’ the pantry, as the things are all put away; an’ then you
+can come and take the little un while your aunt undresses herself, for
+she won’t lie down in bed without her mother. An’ I reckon _you_ could
+eat a bit, Dinah, for they don’t keep much of a house down there.”
+
+“No, thank you, Uncle,” said Dinah; “I ate a good meal before I came
+away, for Mrs. Bede would make a kettle-cake for me.”
+
+“I don’t want any supper,” said Hetty, taking off her hat. “I can hold
+Totty now, if Aunt wants me.”
+
+“Why, what nonsense that is to talk!” said Mrs. Poyser. “Do you think
+you can live wi’out eatin’, an’ nourish your inside wi’ stickin’ red
+ribbons on your head? Go an’ get your supper this minute, child;
+there’s a nice bit o’ cold pudding i’ the safe—just what you’re fond
+of.”
+
+Hetty complied silently by going towards the pantry, and Mrs. Poyser
+went on speaking to Dinah.
+
+“Sit down, my dear, an’ look as if you knowed what it was to make
+yourself a bit comfortable i’ the world. I warrant the old woman was
+glad to see you, since you stayed so long.”
+
+“She seemed to like having me there at last; but her sons say she
+doesn’t like young women about her commonly; and I thought just at
+first she was almost angry with me for going.”
+
+“Eh, it’s a poor look-out when th’ ould folks doesna like the young
+uns,” said old Martin, bending his head down lower, and seeming to
+trace the pattern of the quarries with his eye.
+
+“Aye, it’s ill livin’ in a hen-roost for them as doesn’t like fleas,”
+said Mrs. Poyser. “We’ve all had our turn at bein’ young, I reckon,
+be’t good luck or ill.”
+
+“But she must learn to ’commodate herself to young women,” said Mr.
+Poyser, “for it isn’t to be counted on as Adam and Seth ’ull keep
+bachelors for the next ten year to please their mother. That ’ud be
+unreasonable. It isn’t right for old nor young nayther to make a
+bargain all o’ their own side. What’s good for one’s good all round i’
+the long run. I’m no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know
+the difference atween a crab an’ a apple; but they may wait o’er long.”
+
+“To be sure,” said Mrs. Poyser; “if you go past your dinner-time,
+there’ll be little relish o’ your meat. You turn it o’er an’ o’er wi’
+your fork, an’ don’t eat it after all. You find faut wi’ your meat, an’
+the faut’s all i’ your own stomach.”
+
+Hetty now came back from the pantry and said, “I can take Totty now,
+Aunt, if you like.”
+
+“Come, Rachel,” said Mr. Poyser, as his wife seemed to hesitate, seeing
+that Totty was at last nestling quietly, “thee’dst better let Hetty
+carry her upstairs, while thee tak’st thy things off. Thee’t tired.
+It’s time thee wast in bed. Thee’t bring on the pain in thy side
+again.”
+
+“Well, she may hold her if the child ’ull go to her,” said Mrs. Poyser.
+
+Hetty went close to the rocking-chair, and stood without her usual
+smile, and without any attempt to entice Totty, simply waiting for her
+aunt to give the child into her hands.
+
+“Wilt go to Cousin Hetty, my dilling, while mother gets ready to go to
+bed? Then Totty shall go into Mother’s bed, and sleep there all night.”
+
+Before her mother had done speaking, Totty had given her answer in an
+unmistakable manner, by knitting her brow, setting her tiny teeth
+against her underlip, and leaning forward to slap Hetty on the arm with
+her utmost force. Then, without speaking, she nestled to her mother
+again.
+
+“Hey, hey,” said Mr. Poyser, while Hetty stood without moving, “not go
+to Cousin Hetty? That’s like a babby. Totty’s a little woman, an’ not a
+babby.”
+
+“It’s no use trying to persuade her,” said Mrs. Poyser. “She allays
+takes against Hetty when she isn’t well. Happen she’ll go to Dinah.”
+
+Dinah, having taken off her bonnet and shawl, had hitherto kept quietly
+seated in the background, not liking to thrust herself between Hetty
+and what was considered Hetty’s proper work. But now she came forward,
+and, putting out her arms, said, “Come Totty, come and let Dinah carry
+her upstairs along with Mother: poor, poor Mother! she’s so tired—she
+wants to go to bed.”
+
+Totty turned her face towards Dinah, and looked at her an instant, then
+lifted herself up, put out her little arms, and let Dinah lift her from
+her mother’s lap. Hetty turned away without any sign of ill humour,
+and, taking her hat from the table, stood waiting with an air of
+indifference, to see if she should be told to do anything else.
+
+“You may make the door fast now, Poyser; Alick’s been come in this long
+while,” said Mrs. Poyser, rising with an appearance of relief from her
+low chair. “Get me the matches down, Hetty, for I must have the
+rushlight burning i’ my room. Come, Father.”
+
+The heavy wooden bolts began to roll in the house doors, and old Martin
+prepared to move, by gathering up his blue handkerchief, and reaching
+his bright knobbed walnut-tree stick from the corner. Mrs. Poyser then
+led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Dinah
+with Totty in her arms—all going to bed by twilight, like the birds.
+Mrs. Poyser, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay;
+just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a
+moment their light regular breathing.
+
+“Come, Hetty, get to bed,” said Mr. Poyser, in a soothing tone, as he
+himself turned to go upstairs. “You didna mean to be late, I’ll be
+bound, but your aunt’s been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench,
+good-night.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+The Two Bed-Chambers
+
+
+Hetty and Dinah both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each
+other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light,
+which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of the
+moon—more than enough strength to enable Hetty to move about and
+undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the
+old painted linen-press on which she hung her hat and gown; she could
+see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin-cushion; she could see a
+reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as
+distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her
+hair and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking-glass! Hetty got
+into an ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been
+considered a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought
+into the Poyser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of
+genteel household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something
+for it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a
+firm mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a
+decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest
+corners, without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it
+had a brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an
+aristocratic air to the very last. But Hetty objected to it because it
+had numerous dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing
+would remove, and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards,
+it was fixed in an upright position, so that she could only get one
+good view of her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting
+down on a low chair before her dressing-table. And the dressing-table
+was no dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the
+most awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass
+handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn’t get near the glass at
+all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to
+prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this
+evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual.
+
+Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the
+large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of the
+lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax
+candle—secretly bought at Treddleston—and stuck them in the two brass
+sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the
+candles; and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-glass,
+without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look
+first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning
+her head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her
+brush and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her
+hair, and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia
+Donnithorne’s dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacinthine
+curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling
+hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate
+rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and
+form a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then
+she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms
+before her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn’t
+help sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty’s
+stays were not of white satin—such as I feel sure heroines must
+generally wear—but of a dark greenish cotton texture.
+
+Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thought so. Prettier
+than anybody about Hayslope—prettier than any of the ladies she had
+ever seen visiting at the Chase—indeed it seemed fine ladies were
+rather old and ugly—and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller’s
+daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Hetty looked at
+herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had
+ever felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on
+her like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and
+over again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was
+round her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still.
+The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till
+she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
+
+But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting,
+for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the
+linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer
+from which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of
+rents, but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set
+off the whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little
+ear-rings she had in her ears—oh, how her aunt had scolded her for
+having her ears bored!—and put in those large ones. They were but
+coloured glass and gilding, but if you didn’t know what they were made
+of, they looked just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat
+down again, with the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace
+scarf adjusted round her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no
+arms could be prettier down to a little way below the elbow—they were
+white and plump, and dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the
+wrist, she thought with vexation that they were coarsened by
+butter-making and other work that ladies never did.
+
+Captain Donnithorne couldn’t like her to go on doing work: he would
+like to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings,
+perhaps with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much—no one
+else had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He
+would want to marry her and make a lady of her; she could hardly dare
+to shape the thought—yet how else could it be? Marry her quite
+secretly, as Mr. James, the doctor’s assistant, married the doctor’s
+niece, and nobody ever found it out for a long while after, and then it
+was of no use to be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in
+Hetty’s hearing. She didn’t know how it would be, but it was quite
+plain the old Squire could never be told anything about it, for Hetty
+was ready to faint with awe and fright if she came across him at the
+Chase. He might have been earth-born, for what she knew. It had never
+entered her mind that he had been young like other men; he had always
+been the old Squire at whom everybody was frightened. Oh, it was
+impossible to think how it would be! But Captain Donnithorne would
+know; he was a great gentleman, and could have his way in everything,
+and could buy everything he liked. And nothing could be as it had been
+again: perhaps some day she should be a grand lady, and ride in her
+coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded silk, with feathers in her
+hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like Miss Lydia and Lady
+Dacey, when she saw them going into the dining-room one evening as she
+peeped through the little round window in the lobby; only she should
+not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same thickness like
+Lady Dacey, but very pretty, with her hair done in a great many
+different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes in a white
+one—she didn’t know which she liked best; and Mary Burge and everybody
+would perhaps see her going out in her carriage—or rather, they would
+_hear_ of it: it was impossible to imagine these things happening at
+Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this splendour,
+Hetty got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the little
+red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with a
+bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision to
+care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace
+with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room,
+in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf
+round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears.
+
+How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the
+easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a
+sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark
+rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great dark
+eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an
+imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.
+
+Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hetty! How
+the men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging
+on his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young,
+round, soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper
+just as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything
+ever goes wrong, it must be the husband’s fault there: he can make her
+what he likes—that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the
+little darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so
+bewitching, he wouldn’t consent to her being a bit wiser; those
+kittenlike glances and movements are just what one wants to make one’s
+hearth a paradise. Every man under such circumstances is conscious of
+being a great physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her
+own, which she uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an
+adept in the language. Nature has written out his bride’s character for
+him in those exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those
+eyelids delicate as petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen
+of a flower, in the dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she
+will dote on her children! She is almost a child herself, and the
+little pink round things will hang about her like florets round the
+central flower; and the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able,
+whenever he chooses, to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom,
+towards which his sweet wife will look reverently, and never lift the
+curtain. It is a marriage such as they made in the golden age, when the
+men were all wise and majestic and the women all lovely and loving.
+
+It was very much in this way that our friend Adam Bede thought about
+Hetty; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she
+behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only
+because she doesn’t love me well enough; and he was sure that her love,
+whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could
+possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration,
+pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of any
+pretty woman—if you ever _could_, without hard head-breaking
+demonstration, believe evil of the _one_ supremely pretty woman who has
+bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think
+of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.
+
+Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so
+far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a
+dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering
+tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and
+if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines
+himself being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so
+clingingly fond of him. God made these dear women so—and it is a
+convenient arrangement in case of sickness.
+
+After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way
+sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they
+deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we
+don’t know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty
+reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.
+Long dark eyelashes, now—what can be more exquisite? I find it
+impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with
+a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that
+they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in
+the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there
+has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at
+length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and
+morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair
+one’s grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.
+
+No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty’s; and now, while she
+walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on
+her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to
+perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim ill-defined pictures
+that her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future; but of
+every picture she is the central figure in fine clothes; Captain
+Donnithorne is very close to her, putting his arm round her, perhaps
+kissing her, and everybody else is admiring and envying her—especially
+Mary Burge, whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the side
+of Hetty’s resplendent toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle
+with this dream of the future—any loving thought of her second
+parents—of the children she had helped to tend—of any youthful
+companion, any pet animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not
+one. There are some plants that have hardly any roots: you may tear
+them from their native nook of rock or wall, and just lay them over
+your ornamental flower-pot, and they blossom none the worse. Hetty
+could have cast all her past life behind her and never cared to be
+reminded of it again. I think she had no feeling at all towards the old
+house, and did not like the Jacob’s Ladder and the long row of
+hollyhocks in the garden better than other flowers—perhaps not so well.
+It was wonderful how little she seemed to care about waiting on her
+uncle, who had been a good father to her—she hardly ever remembered to
+reach him his pipe at the right time without being told, unless a
+visitor happened to be there, who would have a better opportunity of
+seeing her as she walked across the hearth. Hetty did not understand
+how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people. And as for those
+tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Totty, they had been the very
+nuisance of her life—as bad as buzzing insects that will come teasing
+you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the eldest, was a
+baby when she first came to the farm, for the children born before him
+had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after the other,
+toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on wet days in
+the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were out of hand
+now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than either of the
+others had been, because there was more fuss made about her. And there
+was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hetty would have been
+glad to hear that she should never see a child again; they were worse
+than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to
+be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs _were_ got rid
+of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys, Hetty would
+have hated the very word “hatching,” if her aunt had not bribed her to
+attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds of one out of
+every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under their
+mother’s wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was not the
+sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the
+prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston
+Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled, so
+charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the
+hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to
+suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose
+and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs.
+Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid face
+showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown
+earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.
+
+It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral
+deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of beauty, so it is not
+surprising that Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity
+for observation, should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what
+might be expected from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of
+indignation she had sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject
+to her husband.
+
+“She’s no better than a peacock, as ’ud strut about on the wall and
+spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i’ the parish was
+dying: there’s nothing seems to give her a turn i’ th’ inside, not even
+when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o’ that dear
+cherub! And we found her wi’ her little shoes stuck i’ the mud an’
+crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit. But Hetty never
+minded it, I could see, though she’s been at the nussin’ o’ the child
+ever since it was a babby. It’s my belief her heart’s as hard as a
+pebble.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, “thee mustn’t judge Hetty too hard. Them
+young gells are like the unripe grain; they’ll make good meal by and
+by, but they’re squashy as yet. Thee’t see Hetty ’ll be all right when
+she’s got a good husband and children of her own.”
+
+“_I_ don’t want to be hard upo’ the gell. She’s got cliver fingers of
+her own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her
+wi’ the butter, for she’s got a cool hand. An’ let be what may, I’d
+strive to do my part by a niece o’ yours—an’ that I’ve done, for I’ve
+taught her everything as belongs to a house, an’ I’ve told her her duty
+often enough, though, God knows, I’ve no breath to spare, an’ that
+catchin’ pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi’ them three gells in the
+house I’d need have twice the strength to keep ’em up to their work.
+It’s like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you’ve basted
+one, another’s burnin’.”
+
+Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal
+from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a
+sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery
+which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die
+with shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the
+door, and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about
+decked in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she
+always bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It
+was well: for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping
+heart, rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer.
+She dared not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her
+scarf, and let it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again.
+We shall know how it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for
+a short time and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered
+Totty to her mother’s arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom,
+adjoining Hetty’s.
+
+Dinah delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of
+that tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness
+of the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where
+she could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering
+her room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful
+fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow
+elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying, and
+next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in
+silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be
+only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a
+long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene,
+for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms. She thought of
+all the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these
+peaceful fields, and who would now have a place in her loving
+remembrance for ever. She thought of the struggles and the weariness
+that might lie before them in the rest of their life’s journey, when
+she would be away from them, and know nothing of what was befalling
+them; and the pressure of this thought soon became too strong for her
+to enjoy the unresponding stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed
+her eyes, that she might feel more intensely the presence of a Love and
+Sympathy deeper and more tender than was breathed from the earth and
+sky. That was often Dinah’s mode of praying in solitude. Simply to
+close her eyes and to feel herself enclosed by the Divine Presence;
+then gradually her fears, her yearning anxieties for others, melted
+away like ice-crystals in a warm ocean. She had sat in this way
+perfectly still, with her hands crossed on her lap and the pale light
+resting on her calm face, for at least ten minutes when she was
+startled by a loud sound, apparently of something falling in Hetty’s
+room. But like all sounds that fall on our ears in a state of
+abstraction, it had no distinct character, but was simply loud and
+startling, so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted it
+rightly. She rose and listened, but all was quiet afterwards, and she
+reflected that Hetty might merely have knocked something down in
+getting into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now, owing to the
+suggestions of this sound, her thoughts became concentrated on
+Hetty—that sweet young thing, with life and all its trials before
+her—the solemn daily duties of the wife and mother—and her mind so
+unprepared for them all, bent merely on little foolish, selfish
+pleasures, like a child hugging its toys in the beginning of a long
+toilsome journey in which it will have to bear hunger and cold and
+unsheltered darkness. Dinah felt a double care for Hetty, because she
+shared Seth’s anxious interest in his brother’s lot, and she had not
+come to the conclusion that Hetty did not love Adam well enough to
+marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of any warm, self-devoting
+love in Hetty’s nature to regard the coldness of her behaviour towards
+Adam as any indication that he was not the man she would like to have
+for a husband. And this blank in Hetty’s nature, instead of exciting
+Dinah’s dislike, only touched her with a deeper pity: the lovely face
+and form affected her as beauty always affects a pure and tender mind,
+free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent divine gift, that
+gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow with which it was
+mingled, as the canker in a lily-white bud is more grievous to behold
+than in a common pot-herb.
+
+By the time Dinah had undressed and put on her night-gown, this feeling
+about Hetty had gathered a painful intensity; her imagination had
+created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow, in which she saw the poor
+thing struggling torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and
+finding none. It was in this way that Dinah’s imagination and sympathy
+acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a
+deep longing to go now and pour into Hetty’s ear all the words of
+tender warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Hetty
+was already asleep. Dinah put her ear to the partition and heard still
+some slight noises, which convinced her that Hetty was not yet in bed.
+Still she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction;
+the voice that told her to go to Hetty seemed no stronger than the
+other voice which said that Hetty was weary, and that going to her now
+in an unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more
+obstinately. Dinah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable
+guidance than those inward voices. There was light enough for her, if
+she opened her Bible, to discern the text sufficiently to know what it
+would say to her. She knew the physiognomy of every page, and could
+tell on what book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing
+title or number. It was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the
+edges. Dinah laid it sideways on the window ledge, where the light was
+strongest, and then opened it with her forefinger. The first words she
+looked at were those at the top of the left-hand page: “And they all
+wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him.” That was enough for
+Dinah; she had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul
+had felt bound to open his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She
+hesitated no longer, but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped
+on Hetty’s. We know she had to tap twice, because Hetty had to put out
+her candles and throw off her black lace scarf; but after the second
+tap the door was opened immediately. Dinah said, “Will you let me come
+in, Hetty?” and Hetty, without speaking, for she was confused and
+vexed, opened the door wider and let her in.
+
+What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that
+mingled twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed and her eyes
+glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare,
+her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in
+her ears. Dinah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full
+of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has
+returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love. They were
+nearly of the same height; Dinah evidently a little the taller as she
+put her arm round Hetty’s waist and kissed her forehead.
+
+“I knew you were not in bed, my dear,” she said, in her sweet clear
+voice, which was irritating to Hetty, mingling with her own peevish
+vexation like music with jangling chains, “for I heard you moving; and
+I longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one
+that I shall be here, and we don’t know what may happen to-morrow to
+keep us apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Hetty, hastily turning round and reaching the second
+chair in the room, glad that Dinah looked as if she did not notice her
+ear-rings.
+
+Dinah sat down, and Hetty began to brush together her hair before
+twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which
+belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Dinah’s
+eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details.
+
+“Dear Hetty,” she said, “It has been borne in upon my mind to-night
+that you may some day be in trouble—trouble is appointed for us all
+here below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help
+than the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever
+you are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and
+love you, you have got that friend in Dinah Morris at Snowfield, and if
+you come to her, or send for her, she’ll never forget this night and
+the words she is speaking to you now. Will you remember it, Hetty?”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty, rather frightened. “But why should you think I shall
+be in trouble? Do you know of anything?”
+
+Hetty had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Dinah leaned
+forwards and took her hands as she answered, “Because, dear, trouble
+comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it
+isn’t God’s will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people
+we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are
+not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our
+feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into
+trouble with our fellow-men. There is no man or woman born into this
+world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some
+of them must happen to you; and I desire for you, that while you are
+young you should seek for strength from your Heavenly Father, that you
+may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day.”
+
+Dinah paused and released Hetty’s hands that she might not hinder her.
+Hetty sat quite still; she felt no response within herself to Dinah’s
+anxious affection; but Dinah’s words uttered with solemn pathetic
+distinctness, affected her with a chill fear. Her flush had died away
+almost to paleness; she had the timidity of a luxurious
+pleasure-seeking nature, which shrinks from the hint of pain. Dinah saw
+the effect, and her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest,
+till Hetty, full of a vague fear that something evil was some time to
+befall her, began to cry.
+
+It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand
+the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower.
+But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we
+learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with
+bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and
+fancying our space wider than it is. Dinah had never seen Hetty
+affected in this way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness,
+she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the
+sobbing thing, and began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Hetty
+was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no
+calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another,
+and for the first time she became irritated under Dinah’s caress. She
+pushed her away impatiently, and said, with a childish sobbing voice,
+“Don’t talk to me so, Dinah. Why do you come to frighten me? I’ve never
+done anything to you. Why can’t you let me be?”
+
+Poor Dinah felt a pang. She was too wise to persist, and only said
+mildly, “Yes, my dear, you’re tired; I won’t hinder you any longer.
+Make haste and get into bed. Good-night.”
+
+She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had
+been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on
+her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that
+filled her heart.
+
+As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again—her waking dreams being
+merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+Links
+
+
+Arthur Donnithorne, you remember, is under an engagement with himself
+to go and see Mr. Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and
+dressing so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of
+after. The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the
+ladies of the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will
+have an early ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say
+everything best over a meal.
+
+The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy
+and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable
+ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father
+confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly
+conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in
+an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an
+appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more
+barbarous times would have been made in the brusque form of a
+pistol-shot, is quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has
+become a request for a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between
+the second and third glasses of claret.
+
+Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they
+committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed:
+when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and
+are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more
+likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if
+you were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany
+with a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have
+nothing particular to say.
+
+However, Arthur Donnithorne, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on
+horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open
+his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he
+passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this
+honest purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now,
+for getting in the hay, about which the farmers have been fearful; and
+there is something so healthful in the sharing of a joy that is general
+and not merely personal, that this thought about the hay-harvest reacts
+on his state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A
+man about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to
+be felt out of a child’s story-book; but when you are among the fields
+and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to
+simple natural pleasures.
+
+Arthur had passed the village of Hayslope and was approaching the
+Broxton side of the hill, when, at a turning in the road, he saw a
+figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to
+mistake for any one else than Adam Bede, even if there had been no
+grey, tailless shepherd-dog at his heels. He was striding along at his
+usual rapid pace, and Arthur pushed on his horse to overtake him, for
+he retained too much of his boyish feeling for Adam to miss an
+opportunity of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that
+good fellow did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage: our
+friend Arthur liked to do everything that was handsome, and to have his
+handsome deeds recognized.
+
+Adam looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse’s
+heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head
+with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam
+would have done more for Arthur Donnithorne than for any other young
+man in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have
+lost than the two-feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket; it
+was Arthur’s present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a
+fair-haired lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam’s
+lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the
+house with gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had
+quite a pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling
+had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into
+the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the
+influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect
+to every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a
+philosopher or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a
+stout-limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his
+nature, which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he
+saw very clear grounds for questioning them. He had no theories about
+setting the world to rights, but he saw there was a great deal of
+damage done by building with ill-seasoned timber—by ignorant men in
+fine clothes making plans for outhouses and workshops and the like
+without knowing the bearings of things—by slovenly joiners’ work, and
+by hasty contracts that could never be fulfilled without ruining
+somebody; and he resolved, for his part, to set his face against such
+doings. On these points he would have maintained his opinion against
+the largest landed proprietor in Loamshire or Stonyshire either; but he
+felt that beyond these it would be better for him to defer to people
+who were more knowing than himself. He saw as plainly as possible how
+ill the woods on the estate were managed, and the shameful state of the
+farm-buildings; and if old Squire Donnithorne had asked him the effect
+of this mismanagement, he would have spoken his opinion without
+flinching, but the impulse to a respectful demeanour towards a
+“gentleman” would have been strong within him all the while. The word
+“gentleman” had a spell for Adam, and, as he often said, he “couldn’t
+abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxy to’s
+betters.” I must remind you again that Adam had the blood of the
+peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime half a century
+ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be obsolete.
+
+Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Adam’s was
+assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that
+he thought far more of Arthur’s good qualities, and attached far more
+value to very slight actions of his, than if they had been the
+qualities and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it
+would be a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young squire
+came into the estate—such a generous open-hearted disposition as he
+had, and an “uncommon” notion about improvements and repairs,
+considering he was only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect
+and affection in the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Arthur
+Donnithorne rode up.
+
+“Well, Adam, how are you?” said Arthur, holding out his hand. He never
+shook hands with any of the farmers, and Adam felt the honour keenly.
+“I could swear to your back a long way off. It’s just the same back,
+only broader, as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember?”
+
+“Aye, sir, I remember. It ’ud be a poor look-out if folks didn’t
+remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no
+more about old friends than we do about new uns, then.”
+
+“You’re going to Broxton, I suppose?” said Arthur, putting his horse on
+at a slow pace while Adam walked by his side. “Are you going to the
+rectory?”
+
+“No, sir, I’m going to see about Bradwell’s barn. They’re afraid of the
+roof pushing the walls out, and I’m going to see what can be done with
+it before we send the stuff and the workmen.”
+
+“Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Adam, doesn’t he? I
+should think he will make you his partner soon. He will, if he’s wise.”
+
+“Nay, sir, I don’t see as he’d be much the better off for that. A
+foreman, if he’s got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his
+business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn’t give a penny for a
+man as ’ud drive a nail in slack because he didn’t get extra pay for
+it.”
+
+“I know that, Adam; I know you work for him as well as if you were
+working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now,
+and could turn the business to better account perhaps. The old man must
+give up his business sometime, and he has no son; I suppose he’ll want
+a son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of
+his own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into
+the business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest
+some money in that way, for the sake of having you settled on the
+estate. I’m sure I should profit by it in the end. And perhaps I shall
+be better off in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I’m
+of age; and when I’ve paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look
+about me.”
+
+“You’re very good to say so, sir, and I’m not unthankful. But”—Adam
+continued, in a decided tone—“I shouldn’t like to make any offers to
+Mr. Burge, or t’ have any made for me. I see no clear road to a
+partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that
+’ud be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair
+interest then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time.”
+
+“Very well, Adam,” said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwine had said
+about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge,
+“we’ll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be
+buried?”
+
+“On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine’s coming earlier on purpose. I shall be
+glad when it’s over, for I think my mother ’ull perhaps get easier
+then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they’ve no way
+o’ working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the
+withered tree.”
+
+“Ah, you’ve had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam.
+I don’t think you’ve ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like
+other youngsters. You’ve always had some care on your mind.”
+
+“Why, yes, sir; but that’s nothing to make a fuss about. If we’re men
+and have men’s feelings, I reckon we must have men’s troubles. We can’t
+be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they’ve got their
+wings, and never know their kin when they see ’em, and get a fresh lot
+every year. I’ve had enough to be thankful for: I’ve allays had health
+and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it
+a great thing as I’ve had Bartle Massey’s night-school to go to. He’s
+helped me to knowledge I could never ha’ got by myself.”
+
+“What a rare fellow you are, Adam!” said Arthur, after a pause, in
+which he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. “I
+could hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you
+would knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you.”
+
+“God forbid I should ever do that, sir,” said Adam, looking round at
+Arthur and smiling. “I used to fight for fun, but I’ve never done that
+since I was the cause o’ poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a
+fortnight. I’ll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a
+scoundrel. If you get hold of a chap that’s got no shame nor conscience
+to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up.”
+
+Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that
+made him say presently, “I should think now, Adam, you never have any
+struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had
+made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you
+would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean,
+you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won’t
+do a thing, and then doing it after all?”
+
+“Well,” said Adam, slowly, after a moment’s hesitation, “no. I don’t
+remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I’d made my mind up, as
+you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o’ my mouth for
+things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after ’em. I’ve
+seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never
+do what’s wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever
+see. It’s like a bit o’ bad workmanship—you never see th’ end o’ the
+mischief it’ll do. And it’s a poor look-out to come into the world to
+make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o’ better. But there’s a
+difference between the things folks call wrong. I’m not for making a
+sin of every little fool’s trick, or bit o’ nonsense anybody may be let
+into, like some o’ them dissenters. And a man may have two minds
+whether it isn’t worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a
+bit o’ fun. But it isn’t my way to be see-saw about anything: I think
+my fault lies th’ other way. When I’ve said a thing, if it’s only to
+myself, it’s hard for me to go back.”
+
+“Yes, that’s just what I expected of you,” said Arthur. “You’ve got an
+iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man’s
+resolution may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and
+then. We may determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands
+sturdily in our pockets, but we can’t prevent our mouths from
+watering.”
+
+“That’s true, sir, but there’s nothing like settling with ourselves as
+there’s a deal we must do without i’ this life. It’s no use looking on
+life as if it was Treddles’on Fair, where folks only go to see shows
+and get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where’s the
+use o’ me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do.”
+
+“I’m not so sure of that, Adam. You’ve had four or five years of
+experience more than I’ve had, and I think your life has been a better
+school to you than college has been to me.”
+
+“Why, sir, you seem to think o’ college something like what Bartle
+Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders—just
+good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ’em. But he’s
+got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has—it never touches anything
+but it cuts. Here’s the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as
+you’re going to the rectory.”
+
+“Good-bye, Adam, good-bye.”
+
+Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked
+along the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew
+that the rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on
+the left hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small
+low room, belonging to the old part of the house—dark with the sombre
+covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery
+this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun
+fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood
+on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor
+breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group
+which would have made any room enticing. In the crimson damask
+easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that radiant freshness which he always
+had when he came from his morning toilet; his finely formed plump white
+hand was playing along Juno’s brown curly back; and close to Juno’s
+tail, which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure, the two brown pups
+were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On
+a cushion a little removed sat Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who
+looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses, which she made as
+little show as possible of observing. On the table, at Mr. Irwine’s
+elbow, lay the first volume of the Foulis Æschylus, which Arthur knew
+well by sight; and the silver coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing
+in, sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a
+bachelor breakfast.
+
+“Hallo, Arthur, that’s a good fellow! You’re just in time,” said Mr.
+Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill.
+“Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven’t you got some
+cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days,
+Arthur; you haven’t been to breakfast with me these five years.”
+
+“It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast,” said Arthur;
+“and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with
+you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at
+any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn’t agree with
+him.”
+
+Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose.
+He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine’s presence than the
+confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared
+the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of
+shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he
+make Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little
+scenes in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a
+fool? And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine’s, and doing
+the very opposite of what he intended! Irwine would think him a
+shilly-shally fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an
+unpremeditated way; the conversation might lead up to it.
+
+“I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day,” said
+Mr. Irwine. “No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a
+clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by
+me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that
+regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become
+studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has
+killed a hare, and when I’ve got through my ‘justicing,’ as Carroll
+calls it, I’m inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back I
+meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a
+mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I’m always the
+same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the
+stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D’Oyley left
+Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should
+have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn’t run
+in your family blood.”
+
+“No indeed. It’s well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to
+adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. ‘Cras
+ingens iterabimus aequor,’ and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps
+stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them.
+But I don’t think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a
+country gentleman; as far as I can see, he’d much better have a
+knowledge of manures. I’ve been reading your friend Arthur Young’s
+books lately, and there’s nothing I should like better than to carry
+out some of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of
+their land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the
+same dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My
+grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives, but
+there’s nothing I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire
+side of the estate—it’s in a dismal condition—and set improvements on
+foot, and gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I
+should like to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats
+to me with a look of goodwill.”
+
+“Bravo, Arthur! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn’t make
+a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing the
+quantity of food to maintain scholars—and rectors who appreciate
+scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may I
+be there to see. You’ll want a portly rector to complete the picture,
+and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard
+work. Only don’t set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to
+get in consequence. I’m not sure that men are the fondest of those who
+try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the
+whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make it
+quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old
+boy—popularity or usefulness—else you may happen to miss both.”
+
+“Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn’t make himself
+personally agreeable to his tenants. I don’t believe there’s anything
+you can’t prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I
+couldn’t live in a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved.
+And it’s very pleasant to go among the tenants here—they seem all so
+well inclined to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since
+I was a little lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if
+fair allowances were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one
+could persuade them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are.”
+
+“Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don’t get a wife
+who will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself.
+My mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says,
+‘I’ll never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he
+falls in love with.’ She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the
+moon rules the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil
+you know, and I maintain that you’re not of that watery quality. So
+mind you don’t disgrace my judgment.”
+
+Arthur winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Irwine’s opinion
+about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be
+sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and
+getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this
+point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination
+to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and
+lived a great deal in other people’s opinions and feelings concerning
+himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate
+friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such
+serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own
+belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a
+thing to make a fuss about; and what could Irwine do for him that he
+could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg’s
+lameness—go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the
+old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the next
+minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how
+thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwine. No! He
+would not be vacillating again—he _would_ do what he had meant to do,
+this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the
+conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics,
+his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause
+for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, “But I think
+it is hardly an argument against a man’s general strength of character
+that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution
+doesn’t insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable
+diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a
+sort of witchery from a woman.”
+
+“Yes; but there’s this difference between love and smallpox, or
+bewitchment either—that if you detect the disease at an early stage and
+try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any
+further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative
+doses which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant
+consequences before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass
+through which you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her
+true outline; though I’m afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to
+be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a
+man fortified with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an
+imprudent marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in
+the Prometheus.”
+
+The smile that flitted across Arthur’s face was a faint one, and
+instead of following Mr. Irwine’s playful lead, he said, quite
+seriously—“Yes, that’s the worst of it. It’s a desperately vexatious
+thing, that after all one’s reflections and quiet determinations, we
+should be ruled by moods that one can’t calculate on beforehand. I
+don’t think a man ought to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into
+doing things in that way, in spite of his resolutions.”
+
+“Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his
+reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with
+his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional
+action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any
+particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we
+carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.”
+
+“Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of
+circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise.”
+
+“Why, yes, a man can’t very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note
+lies within convenient reach; but he won’t make us think him an honest
+man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way.”
+
+“But surely you don’t think a man who struggles against a temptation
+into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at
+all?”
+
+“No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they
+foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis.
+Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible
+consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went
+before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it
+is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what
+may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined
+for moral discussion, Arthur? Is it some danger of your own that you
+are considering in this philosophical, general way?”
+
+In asking this question, Mr. Irwine pushed his plate away, threw
+himself back in his chair, and looked straight at Arthur. He really
+suspected that Arthur wanted to tell him something, and thought of
+smoothing the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken.
+Brought suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Arthur
+shrank back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The
+conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended—it
+would quite mislead Irwine—he would imagine there was a deep passion
+for Hetty, while there was no such thing. He was conscious of
+colouring, and was annoyed at his boyishness.
+
+“Oh no, no danger,” he said as indifferently as he could. “I don’t know
+that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are
+little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might
+happen in the future.”
+
+Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur’s
+which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our
+mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of
+the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not
+acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a
+small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion
+of the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized
+agent secretly busy in Arthur’s mind at this moment—possibly it was the
+fear lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession
+to the rector a serious annoyance, in case he should _not_ be able
+quite to carry out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was
+not so. The human soul is a very complex thing.
+
+The idea of Hetty had just crossed Mr. Irwine’s mind as he looked
+inquiringly at Arthur, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed
+the thought which had quickly followed—that there could be nothing
+serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever
+saw her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs.
+Poyser; and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no
+more serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to
+rouse the little chit’s vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic
+drama of her life. Arthur would soon join his regiment, and be far
+away: no, there could be no danger in that quarter, even if Arthur’s
+character had not been a strong security against it. His honest,
+patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him
+was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a
+lower kind of folly. If there had been anything special on Arthur’s
+mind in the previous conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to
+enter into details, and Mr. Irwine was too delicate to imply even a
+friendly curiosity. He perceived a change of subject would be welcome,
+and said, “By the way, Arthur, at your colonel’s birthday fête there
+were some transparencies that made a great effect in honour of
+Britannia, and Pitt, and the Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the
+‘generous youth,’ the hero of the day. Don’t you think you should get
+up something of the same sort to astonish our weak minds?”
+
+The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating, the rope to
+which he might have clung had drifted away—he must trust now to his own
+swimming.
+
+In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Irwine was called for on business,
+and Arthur, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense
+of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off
+for Eagledale without an hour’s delay.
+
+
+
+
+Book Second
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+In Which the Story Pauses a Little
+
+
+“This Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!” I hear one of
+my readers exclaim. “How much more edifying it would have been if you
+had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have
+put into his mouth the most beautiful things—quite as good as reading a
+sermon.”
+
+Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to
+represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of
+course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own
+liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and
+put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it
+happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such
+arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as
+they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless
+defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection
+faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as
+I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box,
+narrating my experience on oath.
+
+Sixty years ago—it is a long time, so no wonder things have changed—all
+clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to believe that the
+number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is probable that if one
+among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Hayslope
+in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you like Mr.
+Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet,
+methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium
+required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you
+will say, “Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more
+accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to
+possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it up with a
+tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed
+entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act
+unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong
+side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a
+glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall
+be able to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our
+prepossessions: we shall hate and despise with that true ruminant
+relish which belongs to undoubting confidence.”
+
+But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner
+who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed
+vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his
+regretted predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul
+with her one failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really
+kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured
+things about you since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent
+husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not
+wiping his shoes? These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as
+they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their
+wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst
+whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity,
+and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people
+whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you
+should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would
+not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create
+a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to
+do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder
+eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real
+breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or
+injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your
+fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
+
+So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things
+seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity,
+which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread.
+Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a
+delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the
+larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we
+mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real
+unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that
+even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to
+say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder
+than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact truth.
+
+It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in
+many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a
+source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous
+homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my
+fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic
+suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from
+cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an
+old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner,
+while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls
+on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her
+stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious
+necessaries of life to her—or I turn to that village wedding, kept
+between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance
+with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and
+middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and
+probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of
+unmistakable contentment and goodwill. “Foh!” says my idealistic
+friend, “what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these
+pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low
+phase of life! What clumsy, ugly people!”
+
+But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I
+hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not
+been ugly, and even among those “lords of their kind,” the British,
+squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not
+startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst
+us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the
+Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet
+to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their
+miniatures—flattering, but still not lovely—are kissed in secret by
+motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have
+never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of
+yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered
+kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of
+young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite
+sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana,
+and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a
+wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty
+rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with
+resistless force and brings beauty with it.
+
+All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate
+it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our
+houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret
+of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an
+angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the
+celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face
+upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not
+impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of
+Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those
+heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs
+and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done
+the rough work of the world—those homes with their tin pans, their
+brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this
+world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no
+picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should
+remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of
+our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a
+world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them;
+therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a
+life to the faithful representing of commonplace things—men who see
+beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly
+the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world;
+few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can’t afford to give all
+my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those
+feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the
+foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I
+touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are
+picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your
+common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but
+creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should
+have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who
+weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than
+with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers—more needful
+that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of
+gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with
+me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too
+corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than
+at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at
+the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived
+by an able novelist.
+
+And so I come back to Mr. Irwine, with whom I desire you to be in
+perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the
+clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not—as he ought to have
+been—a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national
+church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people in
+Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their
+clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it
+can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love, I
+must believe that Mr. Irwine’s influence in his parish was a more
+wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty
+years afterwards, when Mr. Irwine had been gathered to his fathers. It
+is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the
+Reformation, visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was
+severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh—put a stop, indeed, to
+the Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness
+and too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam
+Bede, to whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few
+clergymen could be less successful in winning the hearts of their
+parishioners than Mr. Ryde. They learned a great many notions about
+doctrine from him, so that almost every church-goer under fifty began
+to distinguish as well between the genuine gospel and what did not come
+precisely up to that standard, as if he had been born and bred a
+Dissenter; and for some time after his arrival there seemed to be quite
+a religious movement in that quiet rural district. “But,” said Adam,
+“I’ve seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion’s
+something else besides notions. It isn’t notions sets people doing the
+right thing—it’s feelings. It’s the same with the notions in religion
+as it is with math’matics—a man may be able to work problems straight
+off in’s head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has
+to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution
+and love something else better than his own ease. Somehow, the
+congregation began to fall off, and people began to speak light o’ Mr.
+Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom; but, you see, he was
+sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices with the people as
+worked for him; and his preaching wouldn’t go down well with that
+sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i’ the parish, punishing
+folks for doing wrong; and he scolded ’em from the pulpit as if he’d
+been a Ranter, and yet he couldn’t abide the Dissenters, and was a deal
+more set against ’em than Mr. Irwine was. And then he didn’t keep
+within his income, for he seemed to think at first go-off that six
+hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr. Donnithorne. That’s
+a sore mischief I’ve often seen with the poor curates jumping into a
+bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a deal thought on at a
+distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for math’matics and the
+natur o’ things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He was very knowing
+about doctrines, and used to call ’em the bulwarks of the Reformation;
+but I’ve always mistrusted that sort o’ learning as leaves folks
+foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Irwine was as
+different as could be: as quick!—he understood what you meant in a
+minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you’d made a
+good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and
+th’ old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never
+saw _him_ interfering and scolding, and trying to play th’ emperor. Ah,
+he was a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to’s mother and
+sisters. That poor sickly Miss Anne—he seemed to think more of her than
+of anybody else in the world. There wasn’t a soul in the parish had a
+word to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they
+were so old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their
+work.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “that was an excellent way of preaching in the
+weekdays; but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to
+life again, and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather
+ashamed that he didn’t preach better after all your praise of him.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back
+in his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, “nobody has
+ever heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher. He didn’t go into
+deep speritial experience; and I know there’s a deal in a man’s inward
+life as you can’t measure by the square, and say, ‘Do this and that ’ll
+follow,’ and, ‘Do that and this ’ll follow.’ There’s things go on in
+the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty
+wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a’most, so you
+look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as
+you can’t bottle up in a ‘do this’ and ‘do that’; and I’ll go so far
+with the strongest Methodist ever you’ll find. That shows me there’s
+deep speritial things in religion. You can’t make much out wi’ talking
+about it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn’t go into those things—he
+preached short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted
+pretty much up to what he said; he didn’t set up for being so different
+from other folks one day, and then be as like ’em as two peas the next.
+And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor
+stirring up their gall wi’ being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say—you
+know she would have her word about everything—she said, Mr. Irwine was
+like a good meal o’ victual, you were the better for him without
+thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’ physic, he gripped you
+and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same.”
+
+“But didn’t Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part
+of religion that you talk of, Adam? Couldn’t you get more out of his
+sermons than out of Mr. Irwine’s?”
+
+“Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I’ve seen pretty
+clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion’s something else
+besides doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was
+like finding names for your feelings, so as you can talk of ’em when
+you’ve never known ’em, just as a man may talk o’ tools when he knows
+their names, though he’s never so much as seen ’em, still less handled
+’em. I’ve heard a deal o’ doctrine i’ my time, for I used to go after
+the Dissenting preachers along wi’ Seth, when I was a lad o’ seventeen,
+and got puzzling myself a deal about th’ Arminians and the Calvinists.
+The Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Seth, who could
+never abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held
+fast by the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a
+hole or two in their notions, and I got disputing wi’ one o’ the class
+leaders down at Treddles’on, and harassed him so, first o’ this side
+and then o’ that, till at last he said, ‘Young man, it’s the devil
+making use o’ your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the
+simplicity o’ the truth.’ I couldn’t help laughing then, but as I was
+going home, I thought the man wasn’t far wrong. I began to see as all
+this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and
+whether folks are saved all by God’s grace, or whether there goes an
+ounce o’ their own will to’t, was no part o’ real religion at all. You
+may talk o’ these things for hours on end, and you’ll only be all the
+more coxy and conceited for’t. So I took to going nowhere but to
+church, and hearing nobody but Mr. Irwine, for he said nothing but what
+was good and what you’d be the wiser for remembering. And I found it
+better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o’ God’s dealings,
+and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand. And
+they’re poor foolish questions after all; for what have we got either
+inside or outside of us but what comes from God? If we’ve got a
+resolution to do right, He gave it us, I reckon, first or last; but I
+see plain enough we shall never do it without a resolution, and that’s
+enough for me.”
+
+Adam, you perceive, was a warm admirer, perhaps a partial judge, of Mr.
+Irwine, as, happily, some of us still are of the people we have known
+familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty
+order of minds who pant after the ideal, and are oppressed by a general
+sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit
+objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with
+the confidence of these select natures, and find them to concur in the
+experience that great men are overestimated and small men are
+insupportable; that if you would love a woman without ever looking back
+on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and
+if you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must
+never make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly
+shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what
+my own experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with
+hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting
+nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with
+French literature can command at a moment’s notice. Human converse, I
+think some wise man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I
+herewith discharge my conscience, and declare that I have had quite
+enthusiastic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke
+the worst English, who were occasionally fretful in their temper, and
+who had never moved in a higher sphere of influence than that of parish
+overseer; and that the way in which I have come to the conclusion that
+human nature is lovable—the way I have learnt something of its deep
+pathos, its sublime mysteries—has been by living a great deal among
+people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps
+hear nothing very surprising if you were to inquire about them in the
+neighbourhoods where they dwelt. Ten to one most of the small
+shopkeepers in their vicinity saw nothing at all in them. For I have
+observed this remarkable coincidence, that the select natures who pant
+after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great
+enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison
+with the narrowest and pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr.
+Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye
+on his neighbours in the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of
+the people in his own parish—and they were all the people he knew—in
+these emphatic words: “Aye, sir, I’ve said it often, and I’ll say it
+again, they’re a poor lot i’ this parish—a poor lot, sir, big and
+little.” I think he had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a
+distant parish, he might find neighbours worthy of him; and indeed he
+did subsequently transfer himself to the Saracen’s Head, which was
+doing a thriving business in the back street of a neighbouring
+market-town. But, oddly enough, he has found the people up that back
+street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants of Shepperton—“a
+poor lot, sir, big and little, and them as comes for a go o’ gin are no
+better than them as comes for a pint o’ twopenny—a poor lot.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+Church
+
+
+“Hetty, Hetty, don’t you know church begins at two, and it’s gone half
+after one a’ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good
+Sunday as poor old Thias Bede’s to be put into the ground, and him
+drownded i’ th’ dead o’ the night, as it’s enough to make one’s back
+run cold, but you must be ’dizening yourself as if there was a wedding
+i’stid of a funeral?”
+
+“Well, Aunt,” said Hetty, “I can’t be ready so soon as everybody else,
+when I’ve got Totty’s things to put on. And I’d ever such work to make
+her stand still.”
+
+Hetty was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poyser, in her plain bonnet and
+shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been
+made of roses, that girl was Hetty in her Sunday hat and frock. For her
+hat was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a
+white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except in
+her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poyser was
+provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any
+mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she
+turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door,
+followed by Hetty, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some
+one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she
+trod on.
+
+And now the little procession set off. Mr. Poyser was in his Sunday
+suit of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon
+having a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from
+that promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk
+handkerchief of a yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed
+stockings, knitted by Mrs. Poyser’s own hand, setting off the
+proportions of his leg. Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his
+leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other
+fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a
+pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. Still less had he reason to be
+ashamed of his round jolly face, which was good humour itself as he
+said, “Come, Hetty—come, little uns!” and giving his arm to his wife,
+led the way through the causeway gate into the yard.
+
+The “little uns” addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and
+seven, in little fustian tailed coats and knee-breeches, relieved by
+rosy cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very
+small elephant is like a very large one. Hetty walked between them, and
+behind came patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Totty through the
+yard and over all the wet places on the road; for Totty, having
+speedily recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to
+church to-day, and especially on wearing her red-and-black necklace
+outside her tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be
+carried over this afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the
+morning, though now the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering
+silvery masses on the horizon.
+
+You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the
+farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning
+subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would
+have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed
+to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on
+the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together
+with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow
+stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an
+excellent spring-bed on his mother’s fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd,
+in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting,
+half-standing on the granary steps. Alick was of opinion that church,
+like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who
+had the weather and the ewes on his mind. “Church! Nay—I’n gotten
+summat else to think on,” was an answer which he often uttered in a
+tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure
+Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a
+speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed
+going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and “Whissuntide.” But
+he had a general impression that public worship and religious
+ceremonies, like other non-productive employments, were intended for
+people who had leisure.
+
+“There’s Father a-standing at the yard-gate,” said Martin Poyser. “I
+reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It’s wonderful what sight
+he has, and him turned seventy-five.”
+
+“Ah, I often think it’s wi’ th’ old folks as it is wi’ the babbies,”
+said Mrs. Poyser; “they’re satisfied wi’ looking, no matter what
+they’re looking at. It’s God A’mighty’s way o’ quietening ’em, I
+reckon, afore they go to sleep.”
+
+Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching,
+and held it wide open, leaning on his stick—pleased to do this bit of
+work; for, like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he
+liked to feel that he was still useful—that there was a better crop of
+onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing—and that the cows
+would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon
+to look on. He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, but not very
+regularly at other times; on wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of
+rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis
+instead.
+
+“They’ll ha’ putten Thias Bede i’ the ground afore ye get to the
+churchyard,” he said, as his son came up. “It ’ud ha’ been better luck
+if they’d ha’ buried him i’ the forenoon when the rain was fallin’;
+there’s no likelihoods of a drop now; an’ the moon lies like a boat
+there, dost see? That’s a sure sign o’ fair weather—there’s a many as
+is false but that’s sure.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said the son, “I’m in hopes it’ll hold up now.”
+
+“Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my lads,” said
+Grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious of
+a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling,
+a little, secretly, during the sermon.
+
+“Dood-bye, Dandad,” said Totty. “Me doin’ to church. Me dot my neklace
+on. Dive me a peppermint.”
+
+Grandad, shaking with laughter at this “deep little wench,” slowly
+transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and
+slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Totty had
+fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation.
+
+And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again,
+watching them across the lane along the Home Close, and through the far
+gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the
+hedgerows in those days shut out one’s view, even on the better-managed
+farms; and this afternoon, the dog-roses were tossing out their pink
+wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale
+honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and
+over all an ash or a sycamore every now and then threw its shadow
+across the path.
+
+There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let
+them pass: at the gate of the Home Close there was half the dairy of
+cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that
+their large bodies might be in the way; at the far gate there was the
+mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured
+foal with its head towards its mother’s flank, apparently still much
+embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely
+through Mr. Poyser’s own fields till they reached the main road leading
+to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops as
+they went along, while Mrs. Poyser was ready to supply a running
+commentary on them all. The woman who manages a dairy has a large share
+in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on
+stock and their “keep”—an exercise which strengthens her understanding
+so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most
+other subjects.
+
+“There’s that shorthorned Sally,” she said, as they entered the Home
+Close, and she caught sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud
+and looking at her with a sleepy eye. “I begin to hate the sight o’ the
+cow; and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid
+of her the better, for there’s that little yallow cow as doesn’t give
+half the milk, and yet I’ve twice as much butter from her.”
+
+“Why, thee’t not like the women in general,” said Mr. Poyser; “they
+like the shorthorns, as give such a lot o’ milk. There’s Chowne’s wife
+wants him to buy no other sort.”
+
+“What’s it sinnify what Chowne’s wife likes? A poor soft thing, wi’ no
+more head-piece nor a sparrow. She’d take a big cullender to strain her
+lard wi’, and then wonder as the scratchin’s run through. I’ve seen
+enough of her to know as I’ll niver take a servant from her house
+again—all hugger-mugger—and you’d niver know, when you went in, whether
+it was Monday or Friday, the wash draggin’ on to th’ end o’ the week;
+and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in a tin
+last year. And then she talks o’ the weather bein’ i’ fault, as there’s
+folks ’ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i’ their
+boots.”
+
+“Well, Chowne’s been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if
+thee lik’st,” said Mr. Poyser, secretly proud of his wife’s superior
+power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days he
+had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of
+shorthorns. “Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may’s well buy up
+the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs
+may’s well go after it. Eh! Talk o’ legs, there’s legs for you,” Mrs.
+Poyser continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry,
+toddled on in front of her father and mother. “There’s shapes! An’
+she’s got such a long foot, she’ll be her father’s own child.”
+
+“Aye, she’ll be welly such a one as Hetty i’ ten years’ time, on’y
+she’s got _thy_ coloured eyes. I niver remember a blue eye i’ my
+family; my mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Hetty’s.”
+
+“The child ’ull be none the worse for having summat as isn’t like
+Hetty. An’ I’m none for having her so overpretty. Though for the matter
+o’ that, there’s people wi’ light hair an’ blue eyes as pretty as them
+wi’ black. If Dinah had got a bit o’ colour in her cheeks, an’ didn’t
+stick that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows,
+folks ’ud think her as pretty as Hetty.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, “thee
+dostna know the pints of a woman. The men ’ud niver run after Dinah as
+they would after Hetty.”
+
+“What care I what the men ’ud run after? It’s well seen what choice the
+most of ’em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o’ wives you
+see, like bits o’ gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour’s
+gone.”
+
+“Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice
+when I married thee,” said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little
+conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; “and thee wast twice as
+buxom as Dinah ten year ago.”
+
+“I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a
+house. There’s Chowne’s wife ugly enough to turn the milk an’ save the
+rennet, but she’ll niver save nothing any other way. But as for Dinah,
+poor child, she’s niver likely to be buxom as long as she’ll make her
+dinner o’ cake and water, for the sake o’ giving to them as want. She
+provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean
+again’ the Scriptur’, for that says, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’;
+‘but,’ I said, ‘if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do
+yourself, Dinah, it’s little enough you’d do for him. You’d be thinking
+he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.’ Eh, I wonder where
+she is this blessed Sunday! Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as
+she’d set her heart on going to all of a sudden.”
+
+“Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when she
+might ha’ stayed wi’ us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she
+wanted, and it ’ud niver ha’ been missed. She made no odds in th’ house
+at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and
+was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty gets
+married, theed’st like to ha’ Dinah wi’ thee constant.”
+
+“It’s no use thinking o’ that,” said Mrs. Poyser. “You might as well
+beckon to the flying swallow as ask Dinah to come an’ live here
+comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, _I_ should
+ha’ turned her, for I’ve talked to her for a hour on end, and scolded
+her too; for she’s my own sister’s child, and it behoves me to do what
+I can for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon as she’d said us ‘good-bye’
+an’ got into the cart, an’ looked back at me with her pale face, as is
+welly like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I begun to be
+frightened to think o’ the set-downs I’d given her; for it comes over
+you sometimes as if she’d a way o’ knowing the rights o’ things more
+nor other folks have. But I’ll niver give in as that’s ’cause she’s a
+Methodist, no more nor a white calf’s white ’cause it eats out o’ the
+same bucket wi’ a black un.”
+
+“Nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with as near an approach to a snarl as his
+good-nature would allow; “I’m no opinion o’ the Methodists. It’s on’y
+tradesfolks as turn Methodists; you nuver knew a farmer bitten wi’ them
+maggots. There’s maybe a workman now an’ then, as isn’t overclever at’s
+work, takes to preachin’ an’ that, like Seth Bede. But you see Adam, as
+has got one o’ the best head-pieces hereabout, knows better; he’s a
+good Churchman, else I’d never encourage him for a sweetheart for
+Hetty.”
+
+“Why, goodness me,” said Mrs. Poyser, who had looked back while her
+husband was speaking, “look where Molly is with them lads! They’re the
+field’s length behind us. How _could_ you let ’em do so, Hetty? Anybody
+might as well set a pictur’ to watch the children as you. Run back and
+tell ’em to come on.”
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Poyser were now at the end of the second field, so they
+set Totty on the top of one of the large stones forming the true
+Loamshire stile, and awaited the loiterers; Totty observing with
+complacency, “Dey naughty, naughty boys—me dood.”
+
+The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with
+great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on
+in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping
+than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite
+sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while
+he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which
+had run across the path and was described with much fervour by the
+junior Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged,
+fluttering along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it,
+till it managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hetty could not
+be got to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her
+ready sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told, and
+said “Lawks!” whenever she was expected to wonder.
+
+Molly hastened on with some alarm when Hetty had come back and called
+to them that her aunt was angry; but Marty ran on first, shouting,
+“We’ve found the speckled turkey’s nest, Mother!” with the instinctive
+confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault.
+
+“Ah,” said Mrs. Poyser, really forgetting all discipline in this
+pleasant surprise, “that’s a good lad; why, where is it?”
+
+“Down in ever such a hole, under the hedge. I saw it first, looking
+after the greenfinch, and she sat on th’ nest.”
+
+“You didn’t frighten her, I hope,” said the mother, “else she’ll
+forsake it.”
+
+“No, I went away as still as still, and whispered to Molly—didn’t I,
+Molly?”
+
+“Well, well, now come on,” said Mrs. Poyser, “and walk before Father
+and Mother, and take your little sister by the hand. We must go
+straight on now. Good boys don’t look after the birds of a Sunday.”
+
+“But, Mother,” said Marty, “you said you’d give half-a-crown to find
+the speckled turkey’s nest. Mayn’t I have the half-crown put into my
+money-box?”
+
+“We’ll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now, like a good boy.”
+
+The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at
+their eldest-born’s acuteness; but on Tommy’s round face there was a
+cloud.
+
+“Mother,” he said, half-crying, “Marty’s got ever so much more money in
+his box nor I’ve got in mine.”
+
+“Munny, _me_ want half-a-toun in _my_ bots,” said Totty.
+
+“Hush, hush, hush,” said Mrs. Poyser, “did ever anybody hear such
+naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money-boxes any more, if
+they don’t make haste and go on to church.”
+
+This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two
+remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any
+serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles,
+alias “bullheads,” which the lads looked at wistfully.
+
+The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh to-morrow was not
+a cheering sight to Mr. Poyser, who during hay and corn harvest had
+often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest; but no
+temptation would have induced him to carry on any field-work, however
+early in the morning, on a Sunday; for had not Michael Holdsworth had a
+pair of oxen “sweltered” while he was ploughing on Good Friday? That
+was a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing; and
+with wickedness of any sort Martin Poyser was quite clear that he would
+have nothing to do, since money got by such means would never prosper.
+
+“It a’most makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sun shines
+so,” he observed, as they passed through the “Big Meadow.” “But it’s
+poor foolishness to think o’ saving by going against your conscience.
+There’s that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call ‘Gentleman Wakefield,’
+used to do the same of a Sunday as o’ weekdays, and took no heed to
+right or wrong, as if there was nayther God nor devil. An’ what’s he
+come to? Why, I saw him myself last market-day a-carrying a basket wi’
+oranges in’t.”
+
+“Ah, to be sure,” said Mrs. Poyser, emphatically, “you make but a poor
+trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi’ wickedness. The money as
+is got so’s like to burn holes i’ your pocket. I’d niver wish us to
+leave our lads a sixpence but what was got i’ the rightful way. And as
+for the weather, there’s One above makes it, and we must put up wi’t:
+it’s nothing of a plague to what the wenches are.”
+
+Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit
+which Mrs. Poyser’s clock had of taking time by the forelock had
+secured their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to
+two, though almost every one who meant to go to church was already
+within the churchyard gates. Those who stayed at home were chiefly
+mothers, like Timothy’s Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her
+baby and feeling as women feel in that position—that nothing else can
+be expected of them.
+
+It was not entirely to see Thias Bede’s funeral that the people were
+standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was
+their common practice. The women, indeed, usually entered the church at
+once, and the farmers’ wives talked in an undertone to each other, over
+the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor’s
+stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as
+far preferable—about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to
+wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to
+year, and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you
+could see her—about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer,
+was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as
+to his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible
+woman, and they were all sorry for _her_, for she had very good kin.
+Meantime the men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the
+singers, who had a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through,
+entered the church until Mr. Irwine was in the desk. They saw no reason
+for that premature entrance—what could they do in church if they were
+there before service began?—and they did not conceive that any power in
+the universe could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a
+little about “bus’ness.”
+
+Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got
+his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry
+at him as a stranger. But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at
+once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with
+which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the
+farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold a
+candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself on
+weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was,
+after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had
+horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher
+sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn, where
+the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the
+farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off,
+as fellow-mourners with the mother and sons. Others held a midway
+position, sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes
+listening to the conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near
+the church door, and were now joined by Martin Poyser, while his family
+passed into the church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Casson,
+the landlord of the Donnithorne Arms, in his most striking
+attitude—that is to say, with the forefinger of his right hand thrust
+between the buttons of his waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches
+pocket, and his head very much on one side; looking, on the whole, like
+an actor who has only a mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels
+sure that the audience discern his fitness for the leading business;
+curiously in contrast with old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands
+behind him and leaned forward, coughing asthmatically, with an inward
+scorn of all knowingness that could not be turned into cash. The talk
+was in rather a lower tone than usual to-day, hushed a little by the
+sound of Mr. Irwine’s voice reading the final prayers of the
+burial-service. They had all had their word of pity for poor Thias, but
+now they had got upon the nearer subject of their own grievances
+against Satchell, the Squire’s bailiff, who played the part of steward
+so far as it was not performed by old Mr. Donnithorne himself, for that
+gentleman had the meanness to receive his own rents and make bargains
+about his own timber. This subject of conversation was an additional
+reason for not being loud, since Satchell himself might presently be
+walking up the paved road to the church door. And soon they became
+suddenly silent; for Mr. Irwine’s voice had ceased, and the group round
+the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the church.
+
+They all moved aside, and stood with their hats off, while Mr. Irwine
+passed. Adam and Seth were coming next, with their mother between them;
+for Joshua Rann officiated as head sexton as well as clerk, and was not
+yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause
+before the three mourners came on: Lisbeth had turned round to look
+again towards the grave! Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth
+under the white thorn. Yet she cried less to-day than she had done any
+day since her husband’s death. Along with all her grief there was mixed
+an unusual sense of her own importance in having a “burial,” and in Mr.
+Irwine’s reading a special service for her husband; and besides, she
+knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this
+counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with
+her sons towards the church door, and saw the friendly sympathetic nods
+of their fellow-parishioners.
+
+The mother and sons passed into the church, and one by one the
+loiterers followed, though some still lingered without; the sight of
+Mr. Donnithorne’s carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill,
+perhaps helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste.
+
+But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth;
+the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every
+one must now enter and take his place.
+
+I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for
+anything except for the grey age of its oaken pews—great square pews
+mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free, indeed,
+from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to
+themselves in the middle of the right-hand row, so that it was a short
+process for Joshua Rann to take his place among them as principal bass,
+and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk,
+grey and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into
+the chancel, which also had its grey square pews for Mr. Donnithorne’s
+family and servants. Yet I assure you these grey pews, with the
+buff-washed walls, gave a very pleasing tone to this shabby interior,
+and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoats.
+And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for the
+pulpit and Mr. Donnithorne’s own pew had handsome crimson cloth
+cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth,
+embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia’s own hand.
+
+But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and
+cheering when Mr. Irwine was in the desk, looking benignly round on
+that simple congregation—on the hardy old men, with bent knees and
+shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-clipping and
+thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronzed faces of
+the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers,
+with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly
+farm-labourers’ wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under
+their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow,
+folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held
+books—why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a few
+“good words” by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved
+silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension
+indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and
+bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing
+up—the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey
+pews, while good Bishop Ken’s evening hymn was being sung to one of
+those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of
+rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of
+Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Adam was not in
+his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother
+and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent
+too—all the more agreeable for Mr. Joshua Rann, who gave out his bass
+notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into
+the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Will Maskery.
+
+I beseech you to imagine Mr. Irwine looking round on this scene, in his
+ample white surplice that became him so well, with his powdered hair
+thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and
+upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen
+countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul
+beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through
+the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue,
+that threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall.
+
+I think, as Mr. Irwine looked round to-day, his eyes rested an instant
+longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Martin Poyser and his
+family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it
+impossible not to wander thither, and rest on that round pink-and-white
+figure. But Hetty was at that moment quite careless of any glances—she
+was absorbed in the thought that Arthur Donnithorne would soon be
+coming into church, for the carriage must surely be at the church-gate
+by this time. She had never seen him since she parted with him in the
+wood on Thursday evening, and oh, how long the time had seemed! Things
+had gone on just the same as ever since that evening; the wonders that
+had happened then had brought no changes after them; they were already
+like a dream. When she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat
+so, she dared not look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying; she
+curtsied herself. That must be old Mr. Donnithorne—he always came
+first, the wrinkled small old man, peering round with short-sighted
+glances at the bowing and curtsying congregation; then she knew Miss
+Lydia was passing, and though Hetty liked so much to look at her
+fashionable little coal-scuttle bonnet, with the wreath of small roses
+round it, she didn’t mind it to-day. But there were no more
+curtsies—no, he was not come; she felt sure there was nothing else
+passing the pew door but the house-keeper’s black bonnet and the lady’s
+maid’s beautiful straw hat that had once been Miss Lydia’s, and then
+the powdered heads of the butler and footman. No, he was not there; yet
+she would look now—she might be mistaken—for, after all, she had not
+looked. So she lifted up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the
+cushioned pew in the chancel—there was no one but old Mr. Donnithorne
+rubbing his spectacles with his white handkerchief, and Miss Lydia
+opening the large gilt-edged prayer-book. The chill disappointment was
+too hard to bear. She felt herself turning pale, her lips trembling;
+she was ready to cry. Oh, what _should_ she do? Everybody would know
+the reason; they would know she was crying because Arthur was not
+there. And Mr. Craig, with the wonderful hothouse plant in his
+button-hole, was staring at her, she knew. It was dreadfully long
+before the General Confession began, so that she could kneel down. Two
+great drops _would_ fall then, but no one saw them except good-natured
+Molly, for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs towards her.
+Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church except
+faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew out of
+her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after much
+labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck against Hetty’s
+nostrils. “It donna smell,” she whispered, thinking this was a great
+advantage which old salts had over fresh ones: they did you good
+without biting your nose. Hetty pushed it away peevishly; but this
+little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done—it roused
+her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might
+not to shed any more. Hetty had a certain strength in her vain little
+nature: she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or
+pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have
+pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should
+know a secret she did not want them to know.
+
+What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while
+Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn “Absolution” in her deaf ears,
+and through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very
+close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures
+her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur’s absence on the
+supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her
+again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because
+all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even
+with a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches
+to herself, saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain—she would
+like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in
+her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids
+with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Bede thought so,
+as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.
+
+But Adam’s thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they
+rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church
+service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness
+of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our
+moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the
+best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and
+resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with
+outbursts of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar
+rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of
+worship could have done; as, to those early Christians who had
+worshipped from their childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light
+and shadows must have seemed nearer the Divine presence than the
+heathenish daylight of the streets. The secret of our emotions never
+lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past:
+no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathizing observer, who might as
+well put on his spectacles to discern odours.
+
+But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the
+service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village
+nooks in the kingdom—a reason of which I am sure you have not the
+slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann.
+Where that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a
+mystery even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all,
+he got it chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into
+this honest conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other
+narrow souls before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice
+and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had
+sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the
+responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy
+cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint
+resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can
+compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and
+cadence of the wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange
+mode of speaking about the reading of a parish clerk—a man in rusty
+spectacles, with stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown.
+But that is Nature’s way: she will allow a gentleman of splendid
+physiognomy and poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and
+not give him the slightest hint of it; and takes care that some
+narrow-browed fellow, trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house,
+shall be as true to his intervals as a bird.
+
+Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and
+it was always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from
+the desk to the choir. Still more to-day: it was a special occasion,
+for an old man, familiar to all the parish, had died a sad death—not in
+his bed, a circumstance the most painful to the mind of the peasant—and
+now the funeral psalm was to be sung in memory of his sudden departure.
+Moreover, Bartle Massey was not at church, and Joshua’s importance in
+the choir suffered no eclipse. It was a solemn minor strain they sang.
+The old psalm-tunes have many a wail among them, and the words—
+
+“Thou sweep’st us off as with a flood;
+We vanish hence like dreams”—
+
+
+seemed to have a closer application than usual in the death of poor
+Thias. The mother and sons listened, each with peculiar feelings.
+Lisbeth had a vague belief that the psalm was doing her husband good;
+it was part of that decent burial which she would have thought it a
+greater wrong to withhold from him than to have caused him many unhappy
+days while he was living. The more there was said about her husband,
+the more there was done for him, surely the safer he would be. It was
+poor Lisbeth’s blind way of feeling that human love and pity are a
+ground of faith in some other love. Seth, who was easily touched, shed
+tears, and tried to recall, as he had done continually since his
+father’s death, all that he had heard of the possibility that a single
+moment of consciousness at the last might be a moment of pardon and
+reconcilement; for was it not written in the very psalm they were
+singing that the Divine dealings were not measured and circumscribed by
+time? Adam had never been unable to join in a psalm before. He had
+known plenty of trouble and vexation since he had been a lad, but this
+was the first sorrow that had hemmed in his voice, and strangely enough
+it was sorrow because the chief source of his past trouble and vexation
+was for ever gone out of his reach. He had not been able to press his
+father’s hand before their parting, and say, “Father, you know it was
+all right between us; I never forgot what I owed you when I was a lad;
+you forgive me if I have been too hot and hasty now and then!” Adam
+thought but little to-day of the hard work and the earnings he had
+spent on his father: his thoughts ran constantly on what the old man’s
+feelings had been in moments of humiliation, when he had held down his
+head before the rebukes of his son. When our indignation is borne in
+submissive silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as
+to our own generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of
+our anger has gone into everlasting silence, and we have seen his face
+for the last time in the meekness of death!
+
+“Ah! I was always too hard,” Adam said to himself. “It’s a sore fault
+in me as I’m so hot and out o’ patience with people when they do wrong,
+and my heart gets shut up against ’em, so as I can’t bring myself to
+forgive ’em. I see clear enough there’s more pride nor love in my soul,
+for I could sooner make a thousand strokes with th’ hammer for my
+father than bring myself to say a kind word to him. And there went
+plenty o’ pride and temper to the strokes, as the devil _will_ be
+having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sins.
+Mayhap the best thing I ever did in my life was only doing what was
+easiest for myself. It’s allays been easier for me to work nor to sit
+still, but the real tough job for me ’ud be to master my own will and
+temper and go right against my own pride. It seems to me now, if I was
+to find Father at home to-night, I should behave different; but there’s
+no knowing—perhaps nothing ’ud be a lesson to us if it didn’t come too
+late. It’s well we should feel as life’s a reckoning we can’t make
+twice over; there’s no real making amends in this world, any more nor
+you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.”
+
+This was the key-note to which Adam’s thoughts had perpetually returned
+since his father’s death, and the solemn wail of the funeral psalm was
+only an influence that brought back the old thoughts with stronger
+emphasis. So was the sermon, which Mr. Irwine had chosen with reference
+to Thias’s funeral. It spoke briefly and simply of the words, “In the
+midst of life we are in death”—how the present moment is all we can
+call our own for works of mercy, of righteous dealing, and of family
+tenderness. All very old truths—but what we thought the oldest truth
+becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the
+dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives. For when men
+want to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid
+light, do they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we
+may measure its intensity by remembering the former dimness?
+
+Then came the moment of the final blessing, when the forever sublime
+words, “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” seemed to
+blend with the calm afternoon sunshine that fell on the bowed heads of
+the congregation; and then the quiet rising, the mothers tying on the
+bonnets of the little maidens who had slept through the sermon, the
+fathers collecting the prayer-books, until all streamed out through the
+old archway into the green churchyard and began their neighbourly talk,
+their simple civilities, and their invitations to tea; for on a Sunday
+every one was ready to receive a guest—it was the day when all must be
+in their best clothes and their best humour.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Poyser paused a minute at the church gate: they were
+waiting for Adam to come up, not being contented to go away without
+saying a kind word to the widow and her sons.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Bede,” said Mrs. Poyser, as they walked on together, “you
+must keep up your heart; husbands and wives must be content when
+they’ve lived to rear their children and see one another’s hair grey.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Poyser; “they wonna have long to wait for one
+another then, anyhow. And ye’ve got two o’ the strapping’st sons i’ th’
+country; and well you may, for I remember poor Thias as fine a
+broad-shouldered fellow as need to be; and as for you, Mrs. Bede, why
+you’re straighter i’ the back nor half the young women now.”
+
+“Eh,” said Lisbeth, “it’s poor luck for the platter to wear well when
+it’s broke i’ two. The sooner I’m laid under the thorn the better. I’m
+no good to nobody now.”
+
+Adam never took notice of his mother’s little unjust plaints; but Seth
+said, “Nay, Mother, thee mustna say so. Thy sons ’ull never get another
+mother.”
+
+“That’s true, lad, that’s true,” said Mr. Poyser; “and it’s wrong on us
+to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede; for it’s like the children cryin’ when
+the fathers and mothers take things from ’em. There’s One above knows
+better nor us.”
+
+“Ah,” said Mrs. Poyser, “an’ it’s poor work allays settin’ the dead
+above the livin’. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon—it ’ud
+be better if folks ’ud make much on us beforehand, i’stid o’ beginnin’
+when we’re gone. It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last
+year’s crop.”
+
+“Well, Adam,” said Mr. Poyser, feeling that his wife’s words were, as
+usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to
+change the subject, “you’ll come and see us again now, I hope. I hanna
+had a talk with you this long while, and the missis here wants you to
+see what can be done with her best spinning-wheel, for it’s got broke,
+and it’ll be a nice job to mend it—there’ll want a bit o’ turning.
+You’ll come as soon as you can now, will you?”
+
+Mr. Poyser paused and looked round while he was speaking, as if to see
+where Hetty was; for the children were running on before. Hetty was not
+without a companion, and she had, besides, more pink and white about
+her than ever, for she held in her hand the wonderful pink-and-white
+hot-house plant, with a very long name—a Scotch name, she supposed,
+since people said Mr. Craig the gardener was Scotch. Adam took the
+opportunity of looking round too; and I am sure you will not require of
+him that he should feel any vexation in observing a pouting expression
+on Hetty’s face as she listened to the gardener’s small talk. Yet in
+her secret heart she was glad to have him by her side, for she would
+perhaps learn from him how it was Arthur had not come to church. Not
+that she cared to ask him the question, but she hoped the information
+would be given spontaneously; for Mr. Craig, like a superior man, was
+very fond of giving information.
+
+Mr. Craig was never aware that his conversation and advances were
+received coldly, for to shift one’s point of view beyond certain limits
+is impossible to the most liberal and expansive mind; we are none of us
+aware of the impression we produce on Brazilian monkeys of feeble
+understanding—it is possible they see hardly anything in us. Moreover,
+Mr. Craig was a man of sober passions, and was already in his tenth
+year of hesitation as to the relative advantages of matrimony and
+bachelorhood. It is true that, now and then, when he had been a little
+heated by an extra glass of grog, he had been heard to say of Hetty
+that the “lass was well enough,” and that “a man might do worse”; but
+on convivial occasions men are apt to express themselves strongly.
+
+Martin Poyser held Mr. Craig in honour, as a man who “knew his
+business” and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he
+was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said
+in confidence to her husband, “You’re mighty fond o’ Craig, but for my
+part, I think he’s welly like a cock as thinks the sun’s rose o’
+purpose to hear him crow.” For the rest, Mr. Craig was an estimable
+gardener, and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of
+himself. He had also high shoulders and high cheek-bones and hung his
+head forward a little, as he walked along with his hands in his
+breeches pockets. I think it was his pedigree only that had the
+advantage of being Scotch, and not his “bringing up”; for except that
+he had a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed little from
+that of the Loamshire people about him. But a gardener is Scotch, as a
+French teacher is Parisian.
+
+“Well, Mr. Poyser,” he said, before the good slow farmer had time to
+speak, “ye’ll not be carrying your hay to-morrow, I’m thinking. The
+glass sticks at ‘change,’ and ye may rely upo’ my word as we’ll ha’
+more downfall afore twenty-four hours is past. Ye see that darkish-blue
+cloud there upo’ the ’rizon—ye know what I mean by the ’rizon, where
+the land and sky seems to meet?”
+
+“Aye, aye, I see the cloud,” said Mr. Poyser, “’rizon or no ’rizon.
+It’s right o’er Mike Holdsworth’s fallow, and a foul fallow it is.”
+
+“Well, you mark my words, as that cloud ’ull spread o’er the sky pretty
+nigh as quick as you’d spread a tarpaulin over one o’ your hay-ricks.
+It’s a great thing to ha’ studied the look o’ the clouds. Lord bless
+you! Th’ met’orological almanecks can learn me nothing, but there’s a
+pretty sight o’ things I could let _them_ up to, if they’d just come to
+me. And how are _you_, Mrs. Poyser?—thinking o’ getherin’ the red
+currants soon, I reckon. You’d a deal better gether ’em afore they’re
+o’erripe, wi’ such weather as we’ve got to look forward to. How do ye
+do, Mistress Bede?” Mr. Craig continued, without a pause, nodding by
+the way to Adam and Seth. “I hope y’ enjoyed them spinach and
+gooseberries as I sent Chester with th’ other day. If ye want
+vegetables while ye’re in trouble, ye know where to come to. It’s well
+known I’m not giving other folks’ things away, for when I’ve supplied
+the house, the garden’s my own spekilation, and it isna every man th’
+old squire could get as ’ud be equil to the undertaking, let alone
+asking whether he’d be willing. I’ve got to run my calkilation fine, I
+can tell you, to make sure o’ getting back the money as I pay the
+squire. I should like to see some o’ them fellows as make the almanecks
+looking as far before their noses as I’ve got to do every year as
+comes.”
+
+“They look pretty fur, though,” said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on
+one side and speaking in rather a subdued reverential tone. “Why, what
+could come truer nor that pictur o’ the cock wi’ the big spurs, as has
+got its head knocked down wi’ th’ anchor, an’ th’ firin’, an’ the ships
+behind? Why, that pictur was made afore Christmas, and yit it’s come as
+true as th’ Bible. Why, th’ cock’s France, an’ th’ anchor’s Nelson—an’
+they told us that beforehand.”
+
+“Pee—ee-eh!” said Mr. Craig. “A man doesna want to see fur to know as
+th’ English ’ull beat the French. Why, I know upo’ good authority as
+it’s a big Frenchman as reaches five foot high, an’ they live upo’
+spoon-meat mostly. I knew a man as his father had a particular
+knowledge o’ the French. I should like to know what them grasshoppers
+are to do against such fine fellows as our young Captain Arthur. Why,
+it ’ud astonish a Frenchman only to look at him; his arm’s thicker nor
+a Frenchman’s body, I’ll be bound, for they pinch theirsells in wi’
+stays; and it’s easy enough, for they’ve got nothing i’ their insides.”
+
+“Where is the captain, as he wasna at church to-day?” said Adam. “I was
+talking to him o’ Friday, and he said nothing about his going away.”
+
+“Oh, he’s only gone to Eagledale for a bit o’ fishing; I reckon he’ll
+be back again afore many days are o’er, for he’s to be at all th’
+arranging and preparing o’ things for the comin’ o’ age o’ the 30th o’
+July. But he’s fond o’ getting away for a bit, now and then. Him and
+th’ old squire fit one another like frost and flowers.”
+
+Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this last observation,
+but the subject was not developed farther, for now they had reached the
+turning in the road where Adam and his companions must say “good-bye.”
+The gardener, too, would have had to turn off in the same direction if
+he had not accepted Mr. Poyser’s invitation to tea. Mrs. Poyser duly
+seconded the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace not
+to make her neighbours welcome to her house: personal likes and
+dislikes must not interfere with that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr.
+Craig had always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall
+Farm, and Mrs. Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she had “nothing
+to say again’ him, on’y it was a pity he couldna be hatched o’er again,
+an’ hatched different.”
+
+So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them, wound their way down
+to the valley and up again to the old house, where a saddened memory
+had taken the place of a long, long anxiety—where Adam would never have
+to ask again as he entered, “Where’s Father?”
+
+And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company, went back to
+the pleasant bright house-place at the Hall Farm—all with quiet minds,
+except Hetty, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was only the more
+puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared that his absence was quite
+voluntary; he need not have gone—he would not have gone if he had
+wanted to see her. She had a sickening sense that no lot could ever be
+pleasant to her again if her Thursday night’s vision was not to be
+fulfilled; and in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment and
+doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being with Arthur again,
+of meeting his loving glance, and hearing his soft words with that
+eager yearning which one may call the “growing pain” of passion.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+Adam on a Working Day
+
+
+Notwithstanding Mr. Craig’s prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed
+itself without having produced the threatened consequences. “The
+weather”—as he observed the next morning—“the weather, you see, ’s a
+ticklish thing, an’ a fool ’ull hit on’t sometimes when a wise man
+misses; that’s why the almanecks get so much credit. It’s one o’ them
+chancy things as fools thrive on.”
+
+This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no
+one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the
+meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and
+daughters did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give
+their help in tossing the hay; and when Adam was marching along the
+lanes, with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound
+of jocose talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose
+talk of hay-makers is best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round
+the cows’ necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close, and
+may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it
+mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men’s
+muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though
+their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the
+merriment of birds.
+
+And perhaps there is no time in a summer’s day more cheering than when
+the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness
+of the morning—when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to
+keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason
+Adam was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for
+the rest of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which
+was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he
+had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors,
+and chimney-pieces, in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while
+Jonathan Burge himself had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await
+its arrival and direct the workmen.
+
+This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under the
+charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw
+Hetty in the sunshine—a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays that
+tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought,
+yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church,
+that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he
+had not seen before, and he took it as a sign that she had some
+sympathy with his family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy
+came from quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the
+one little woman’s face we love as we look at the face of our mother
+earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. It was
+impossible for Adam not to feel that what had happened in the last week
+had brought the prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had
+felt keenly the danger that some other man might step in and get
+possession of Hetty’s heart and hand, while he himself was still in a
+position that made him shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he
+had had a strong hope that she was fond of him—and his hope was far
+from being strong—he had been too heavily burdened with other claims to
+provide a home for himself and Hetty—a home such as he could expect her
+to be content with after the comfort and plenty of the Farm. Like all
+strong natures, Adam had confidence in his ability to achieve something
+in the future; he felt sure he should some day, if he lived, be able to
+maintain a family and make a good broad path for himself; but he had
+too cool a head not to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to
+be overcome. And the time would be so long! And there was Hetty, like a
+bright-cheeked apple hanging over the orchard wall, within sight of
+everybody, and everybody must long for her! To be sure, if she loved
+him very much, she would be content to wait for him: but _did_ she love
+him? His hopes had never risen so high that he had dared to ask her. He
+was clear-sighted enough to be aware that her uncle and aunt would have
+looked kindly on his suit, and indeed, without this encouragement he
+would never have persevered in going to the Farm; but it was impossible
+to come to any but fluctuating conclusions about Hetty’s feelings. She
+was like a kitten, and had the same distractingly pretty looks, that
+meant nothing, for everybody that came near her.
+
+But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of
+his burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year
+his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to
+think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother,
+he knew: she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had
+set her mind especially against Hetty—perhaps for no other reason than
+that she suspected Hetty to be the woman he _had_ chosen. It would
+never do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him
+when he was married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked
+her to leave him! Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone
+through with his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her
+feel that his will was strong—it would be better for her in the end.
+For himself, he would have liked that they should all live together
+till Seth was married, and they might have built a bit themselves to
+the old house, and made more room. He did not like “to part wi’ th’
+lad”: they had hardly ever been separated for more than a day since
+they were born.
+
+But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this
+way—making arrangements for an uncertain future—than he checked
+himself. “A pretty building I’m making, without either bricks or
+timber. I’m up i’ the garret a’ready, and haven’t so much as dug the
+foundation.” Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition,
+it took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be
+acted on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps
+here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had
+too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of
+foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get
+enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions
+in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a
+strong determined soul can learn it—by getting his heart-strings bound
+round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward
+consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long
+and hard lesson, and Adam had at present only learned the alphabet of
+it in his father’s sudden death, which, by annihilating in an instant
+all that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of
+thought and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness.
+
+But it was Adam’s strength, not its correlative hardness, that
+influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind
+that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming
+young girl, so long as he had no other prospect than that of growing
+poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly
+drawn upon (besides the terrible sweep of paying for Seth’s substitute
+in the militia) that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even
+a small cottage, and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He
+had good hope that he should be “firmer on his legs” by and by; but he
+could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain; he
+must have definite plans, and set about them at once. The partnership
+with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present—there were
+things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept; but Adam
+thought that he and Seth might carry on a little business for
+themselves in addition to their journeyman’s work, by buying a small
+stock of superior wood and making articles of household furniture, for
+which Adam had no end of contrivances. Seth might gain more by working
+at separate jobs under Adam’s direction than by his journeyman’s work,
+and Adam, in his overhours, could do all the “nice” work that required
+peculiar skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he
+received as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the
+world, so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this
+little plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with
+exact calculations about the wood to be bought and the particular
+article of furniture that should be undertaken first—a kitchen cupboard
+of his own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of
+sliding-doors and bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household
+provender, and such a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good
+housewife would be in raptures with it, and fall through all the
+gradations of melancholy longing till her husband promised to buy it
+for her. Adam pictured to himself Mrs. Poyser examining it with her
+keen eye and trying in vain to find out a deficiency; and, of course,
+close to Mrs. Poyser stood Hetty, and Adam was again beguiled from
+calculations and contrivances into dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go
+and see her this evening—it was so long since he had been at the Hall
+Farm. He would have liked to go to the night-school, to see why Bartle
+Massey had not been at church yesterday, for he feared his old friend
+was ill; but, unless he could manage both visits, this last must be put
+off till to-morrow—the desire to be near Hetty and to speak to her
+again was too strong.
+
+As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of
+his walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of
+the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his
+work is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who
+has to bear his part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their
+accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or
+ambition, begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength
+when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the
+labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still,
+creative activity of our thought. Look at Adam through the rest of the
+day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his
+hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a
+floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of
+the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of
+timber, saying, “Let alone, lad! Thee’st got too much gristle i’ thy
+bones yet”; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a
+workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances
+are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular
+arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden
+meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong
+barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn
+psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet
+presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which
+jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in the
+secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories, what warm
+affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in this
+athletic body with the broken finger-nails—in this rough man, who knew
+no better lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an
+occasional hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane
+history; and for whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of
+the sun, and the changes of the seasons lay in the region of mystery
+just made visible by fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Adam a great
+deal of trouble and work in overhours to know what he knew over and
+above the secrets of his handicraft, and that acquaintance with
+mechanics and figures, and the nature of the materials he worked with,
+which was made easy to him by inborn inherited faculty—to get the
+mastery of his pen, and write a plain hand, to spell without any other
+mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable
+character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller,
+and, moreover, to learn his musical notes and part-singing. Besides all
+this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal books; Poor
+Richard’s Almanac, Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim’s
+Progress, with Bunyan’s Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey’s
+Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History of Babylon,
+which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many more books
+from Bartle Massey, but he had no time for reading “the commin print,”
+as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in all the leisure
+moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry.
+
+Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly
+speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary
+character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion
+that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools
+over his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience
+and the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of
+our friend Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are
+reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans—with
+an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common
+need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in
+skilful courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as
+geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and
+conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have
+no discernible echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you
+are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building,
+some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming
+practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are
+associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were
+the richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the
+work of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went
+about in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with
+coal-dust or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white
+hairs are seen in a place of honour at church and at market, and they
+tell their well-dressed sons and daughters, seated round the bright
+hearth on winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned
+their twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and never put off
+the workman’s coat on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting
+rich, but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is
+all out of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a
+machine; the master who employed them says, “Where shall I find their
+like?”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+Adam Visits the Hall Farm
+
+
+Adam came back from his work in the empty waggon—that was why he had
+changed his clothes—and was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it
+still wanted a quarter to seven.
+
+“What’s thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?” said Lisbeth complainingly,
+as he came downstairs. “Thee artna goin’ to th’ school i’ thy best
+coat?”
+
+“No, Mother,” said Adam, quietly. “I’m going to the Hall Farm, but
+mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I’m a bit
+late. Seth ’ull be at home in half an hour—he’s only gone to the
+village; so thee wutna mind.”
+
+“Eh, an’ what’s thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th’ Hall Farm?
+The Poyser folks see’d thee in ’em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean
+by turnin’ worki’day into Sunday a-that’n? It’s poor keepin’ company
+wi’ folks as donna like to see thee i’ thy workin’ jacket.”
+
+“Good-bye, mother, I can’t stay,” said Adam, putting on his hat and
+going out.
+
+But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Lisbeth
+became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course, the
+secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they
+were put on for Hetty’s sake; but deeper than all her peevishness lay
+the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him, and laid
+hold of his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook, and said,
+“Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi’ thy mother, an’ her got
+nought to do but to sit by hersen an’ think on thee?”
+
+“Nay, nay, Mother,” said Adam, gravely, and standing still while he put
+his arm on her shoulder, “I’m not angered. But I wish, for thy own
+sake, thee’dst be more contented to let me do what I’ve made up my mind
+to do. I’ll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we
+live. But a man has other feelings besides what he owes to’s father and
+mother, and thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And
+thee must make up thy mind as I’ll not give way to thee where I’ve a
+right to do what I like. So let us have no more words about it.”
+
+“Eh,” said Lisbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing
+of Adam’s words, “and’ who likes to see thee i’ thy best cloose better
+nor thy mother? An’ when thee’st got thy face washed as clean as the
+smooth white pibble, an’ thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes
+a-sparklin’—what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at
+half so well? An’ thee sha’t put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik’st
+for me—I’ll ne’er plague thee no moor about’n.”
+
+“Well, well; good-bye, mother,” said Adam, kissing her and hurrying
+away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the
+dialogue. Lisbeth stood still on the spot, shading her eyes and looking
+after him till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the
+meaning that had lain in Adam’s words, and, as she lost sight of him
+and turned back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself—for it
+was her way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her
+husband and sons were at their work—“Eh, he’ll be tellin’ me as he’s
+goin’ to bring her home one o’ these days; an’ she’ll be missis o’er
+me, and I mun look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters,
+and breaks ’em, mayhap, though there’s ne’er been one broke sin’ my old
+man an’ me bought ’em at the fair twenty ’ear come next Whissuntide.
+Eh!” she went on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the
+table, “but she’ll ne’er knit the lad’s stockin’s, nor foot ’em
+nayther, while I live; an’ when I’m gone, he’ll bethink him as nobody
+’ull ne’er fit’s leg an’ foot as his old mother did. She’ll know
+nothin’ o’ narrowin’ an’ heelin’, I warrand, an’ she’ll make a long toe
+as he canna get’s boot on. That’s what comes o’ marr’in’ young wenches.
+I war gone thirty, an’ th’ feyther too, afore we war married; an’ young
+enough too. She’ll be a poor dratchell by then _she’s_ thirty,
+a-marr’in’ a-that’n, afore her teeth’s all come.”
+
+Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Martin
+Poyser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every
+one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier—no one kept
+watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Adam reached the
+house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the
+bright clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Poyser and some one
+else would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said
+in his strong voice, “Mrs. Poyser within?”
+
+“Come in, Mr. Bede, come in,” Mrs. Poyser called out from the dairy.
+She always gave Adam this title when she received him in her own house.
+“You may come into the dairy if you will, for I canna justly leave the
+cheese.”
+
+Adam walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Poyser and Nancy were crushing
+the first evening cheese.
+
+“Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house,” said Mrs. Poyser,
+as he stood in the open doorway; “they’re all i’ the meadow; but
+Martin’s sure to be in afore long, for they’re leaving the hay cocked
+to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I’ve been forced t’
+have Nancy in, upo’ ’count as Hetty must gether the red currants
+to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand’s
+wanted. An’ there’s no trustin’ the children to gether it, for they put
+more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set
+the wasps to gether the fruit.”
+
+Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poyser came in,
+but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, “I could be looking
+at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps
+it stands in the house, where I can find it?”
+
+“No, I’ve put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till I
+can fetch it and show it you. I’d be glad now if you’d go into the
+garden and tell Hetty to send Totty in. The child ’ull run in if she’s
+told, an’ I know Hetty’s lettin’ her eat too many currants. I’ll be
+much obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you’ll go and send her in; an’
+there’s the York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now—you’ll
+like to see ’em. But you’d like a drink o’ whey first, p’r’aps; I know
+you’re fond o’ whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it
+out.”
+
+“Thank you, Mrs. Poyser,” said Adam; “a drink o’ whey’s allays a treat
+to me. I’d rather have it than beer any day.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Mrs. Poyser, reaching a small white basin that stood
+on the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, “the smell o’ bread’s
+sweet t’ everybody but the baker. The Miss Irwines allays say, ‘Oh,
+Mrs. Poyser, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and
+what a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!’ An’ I say, ‘Yes; a
+farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an’ don’t know the
+liftin’, an’ the stannin’, an’ the worritin’ o’ th’ inside as belongs
+to’t.’”
+
+“Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn’t like to live anywhere else but in a
+farm-house, so well as you manage it,” said Adam, taking the basin;
+“and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow,
+standing up to’ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the
+pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the
+poultry. Here’s to your health, and may you allays have strength to
+look after your own dairy, and set a pattern t’ all the farmers’ wives
+in the country.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a
+compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a
+stealing sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey
+eyes, as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that
+whey now—with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it
+from an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one’s
+imagination with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the
+dropping whey is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird
+outside the wire network window—the window overlooking the garden, and
+shaded by tall Guelder roses.
+
+“Have a little more, Mr. Bede?” said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the
+basin.
+
+“No, thank you; I’ll go into the garden now, and send in the little
+lass.”
+
+“Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy.”
+
+Adam walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to the
+little wooden gate leading into the garden—once the well-tended
+kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall
+with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse
+garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen
+vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In
+that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden was
+like playing at “hide-and-seek.” There were the tall hollyhocks
+beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and
+yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and
+disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet
+beans and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one
+direction, and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle
+under its low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or
+two? The garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad
+beans—it took nine or ten of Adam’s strides to get to the end of the
+uncut grass walk that ran by the side of them; and as for other
+vegetables, there was so much more room than was necessary for them
+that in the rotation of crops a large flourishing bed of groundsel was
+of yearly occurrence on one spot or other. The very rose-trees at which
+Adam stopped to pluck one looked as if they grew wild; they were all
+huddled together in bushy masses, now flaunting with wide-open petals,
+almost all of them of the streaked pink-and-white kind, which doubtless
+dated from the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise
+enough to choose a compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered
+by its flaunting scentless neighbours, and held it in his hand—he
+thought he should be more at ease holding something in his hand—as he
+walked on to the far end of the garden, where he remembered there was
+the largest row of currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree
+arbour.
+
+But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the
+shaking of a bough, and a boy’s voice saying, “Now, then, Totty, hold
+out your pinny—there’s a duck.”
+
+The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had no
+difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a
+commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Totty was
+below, behind the screen of peas. Yes—with her bonnet hanging down her
+back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up
+towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a
+mouth and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I
+am sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and
+yellow instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless
+regrets, and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said,
+“There now, Totty, you’ve got your cherries. Run into the house with
+’em to Mother—she wants you—she’s in the dairy. Run in this
+minute—there’s a good little girl.”
+
+He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke, a
+ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to
+cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently
+towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along.
+
+“Tommy, my lad, take care you’re not shot for a little thieving bird,”
+said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.
+
+He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Hetty
+would not be far off, and Adam already felt as if she were looking at
+him. Yet when he turned the corner she was standing with her back
+towards him, and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit. Strange that
+she had not heard him coming! Perhaps it was because she was making the
+leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that some one was
+near—started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants
+in it, and then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep
+red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Hetty had
+never blushed at seeing him before.
+
+“I frightened you,” he said, with a delicious sense that it didn’t
+signify what he said, since Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did;
+“let _me_ pick the currants up.”
+
+That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the
+grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked
+straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the
+first moments of hopeful love.
+
+Hetty did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met
+his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Adam because it was so
+unlike anything he had seen in her before.
+
+“There’s not many more currants to get,” she said; “I shall soon ha’
+done now.”
+
+“I’ll help you,” said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was
+nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.
+
+Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Adam’s heart
+was too full to speak, and he thought Hetty knew all that was in it.
+She was not indifferent to his presence after all; she had blushed when
+she saw him, and then there was that touch of sadness about her which
+must surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner,
+which had often impressed him as indifference. And he could glance at
+her continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening
+sunbeams stole through the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her
+round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to
+Adam the time that a man can least forget in after-life, the time when
+he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight
+something—a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an
+eyelid—that she is at least beginning to love him in return. The sign
+is so slight, it is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye—he could
+describe it to no one—it is a mere feather-touch, yet it seems to have
+changed his whole being, to have merged an uneasy yearning into a
+delicious unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much
+of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never
+recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother’s bosom or
+rode on our father’s back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought
+up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up
+in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our
+imagination, and we can only _believe_ in the joy of childhood. But the
+first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to
+the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as
+the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of
+happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to
+tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last
+keenness to the agony of despair.
+
+Hetty bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen
+of apple-tree boughs, the length of bushy garden beyond, his own
+emotion as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him,
+and that there was no need for them to talk—Adam remembered it all to
+the last moment of his life.
+
+And Hetty? You know quite well that Adam was mistaken about her. Like
+many other men, he thought the signs of love for another were signs of
+love towards himself. When Adam was approaching unseen by her, she was
+absorbed as usual in thinking and wondering about Arthur’s possible
+return. The sound of any man’s footstep would have affected her just in
+the same way—she would have _felt_ it might be Arthur before she had
+time to see, and the blood that forsook her cheek in the agitation of
+that momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any
+one else just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in
+thinking that a change had come over Hetty: the anxieties and fears of
+a first passion, with which she was trembling, had become stronger than
+vanity, had given her for the first time that sense of helpless
+dependence on another’s feeling which awakens the clinging deprecating
+womanhood even in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it, and
+creates in her a sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard
+before. For the first time Hetty felt that there was something soothing
+to her in Adam’s timid yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated
+lovingly—oh, it was very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence,
+apparent indifference, after those moments of glowing love! She was not
+afraid that Adam would tease her with love-making and flattering
+speeches like her other admirers; he had always been so reserved to
+her; she could enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong brave
+man loved her and was near her. It never entered into her mind that
+Adam was pitiable too—that Adam too must suffer one day.
+
+Hetty, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently to
+the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love
+another. It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he
+drank in the sweet delusion.
+
+“That’ll do,” said Hetty, after a little while. “Aunt wants me to leave
+some on the trees. I’ll take ’em in now.”
+
+“It’s very well I came to carry the basket,” said Adam “for it ’ud ha’
+been too heavy for your little arms.”
+
+“No; I could ha’ carried it with both hands.”
+
+“Oh, I daresay,” said Adam, smiling, “and been as long getting into the
+house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those
+tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?”
+
+“No,” said Hetty, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of
+ant life.
+
+“Oh, I used to watch ’em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I
+can carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and
+give you th’ other arm to lean on. Won’t you? Such big arms as mine
+were made for little arms like yours to lean on.”
+
+Hetty smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at
+her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards another corner of the
+garden.
+
+“Have you ever been to Eagledale?” she said, as they walked slowly
+along.
+
+“Yes,” said Adam, pleased to have her ask a question about himself.
+“Ten years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father to see about some
+work there. It’s a wonderful sight—rocks and caves such as you never
+saw in your life. I never had a right notion o’ rocks till I went
+there.”
+
+“How long did it take to get there?”
+
+“Why, it took us the best part o’ two days’ walking. But it’s nothing
+of a day’s journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain
+’ud get there in nine or ten hours, I’ll be bound, he’s such a rider.
+And I shouldn’t wonder if he’s back again to-morrow; he’s too active to
+rest long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there’s nothing but
+a bit of a inn i’ that part where he’s gone to fish. I wish he’d got
+th’ estate in his hands; that ’ud be the right thing for him, for it
+’ud give him plenty to do, and he’d do’t well too, for all he’s so
+young; he’s got better notions o’ things than many a man twice his age.
+He spoke very handsome to me th’ other day about lending me money to
+set up i’ business; and if things came round that way, I’d rather be
+beholding to him nor to any man i’ the world.”
+
+Poor Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hetty
+would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend
+him; the fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to
+seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Hetty listened with an
+interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon
+her lips.
+
+“How pretty the roses are now!” Adam continued, pausing to look at
+them. “See! I stole the prettiest, but I didna mean to keep it myself.
+I think these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o’ green
+leaves, are prettier than the striped uns, don’t you?”
+
+He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole.
+
+“It smells very sweet,” he said; “those striped uns have no smell.
+Stick it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It ’ud
+be a pity to let it fade.”
+
+Hetty took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that
+Arthur could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope
+and happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did
+what she had very often done before—stuck the rose in her hair a little
+above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam’s face was slightly
+shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hetty’s love of finery was just the
+thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it as
+much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to
+her.
+
+“Ah,” he said, “that’s like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase;
+they’ve mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i’ their hair,
+but somehow I don’t like to see ’em; they allays put me i’ mind o’ the
+painted women outside the shows at Treddles’on Fair. What can a woman
+have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like
+yours? If a woman’s young and pretty, I think you can see her good
+looks all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris
+looks very nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems
+to me as a woman’s face doesna want flowers; it’s almost like a flower
+itself. I’m sure yours is.”
+
+“Oh, very well,” said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the
+rose out of her hair. “I’ll put one o’ Dinah’s caps on when we go in,
+and you’ll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can
+take the pattern.”
+
+“Nay, nay, I don’t want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah’s. I
+daresay it’s a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here
+as it was nonsense for her to dress different t’ other people; but I
+never rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and
+then I thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th ‘acorn-cup
+fits th’ acorn, and I shouldn’t like to see her so well without it. But
+you’ve got another sort o’ face; I’d have you just as you are now,
+without anything t’ interfere with your own looks. It’s like when a
+man’s singing a good tune—you don’t want t’ hear bells tinkling and
+interfering wi’ the sound.”
+
+He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her
+fondly. He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining,
+as we are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had
+only half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud
+should come over this evening’s happiness. For the world he would not
+have spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness
+towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his
+imagination he saw long years of his future life stretching before him,
+blest with the right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with
+very little at present. So he took up the basket of currants once more,
+and they went on towards the house.
+
+The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Adam had been in the
+garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming
+geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at
+him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it,
+after dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering,
+amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many “whups” from Tim the
+ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek,
+intelligent heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were
+likely to rush wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was
+come back from the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the
+house-place, Mr. Poyser was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the
+grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant
+expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs.
+Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with
+a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown
+hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached
+“shop-rag” that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun
+that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces,
+and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had
+dined at half-past twelve o’clock. On the large deal table against the
+wall there were bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for
+Alick and his companions; for the master and servants ate their supper
+not far off each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a
+remark about to-morrow morning’s work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was
+at hand to hear it.
+
+“Well, Adam, I’m glad to see ye,” said Mr. Poyser. “What! ye’ve been
+helping Hetty to gether the curran’s, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye
+down. Why, it’s pretty near a three-week since y’ had your supper with
+us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I’m glad
+ye’re come.”
+
+“Hetty,” said Mrs. Poyser, as she looked into the basket of currants to
+see if the fruit was fine, “run upstairs and send Molly down. She’s
+putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th’ ale, for Nancy’s busy
+yet i’ the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let
+her run away from you along wi’ Tommy for, and stuff herself wi’ fruit
+as she can’t eat a bit o’ good victual?”
+
+This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking
+to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser was strict in adherence to her own rules of
+propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated
+sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That
+would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her
+chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women
+not to spoil—just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must
+not try to balk another of a customer.
+
+Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to
+her aunt’s question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and
+Tommy and bring them in to supper.
+
+Soon they were all seated—the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the
+pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle.
+Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold
+broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding a
+flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest
+pineapple.
+
+“What a time that gell is drawing th’ ale, to be sure!” said Mrs.
+Poyser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. “I think
+she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there’s nothing
+you can’t believe o’ them wenches: they’ll set the empty kettle o’ the
+fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils.”
+
+“She’s drawin’ for the men too,” said Mr. Poyser. “Thee shouldst ha’
+told her to bring our jug up first.”
+
+“Told her?” said Mrs. Poyser. “Yes, I might spend all the wind i’ my
+body, an’ take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything
+as their own sharpness wonna tell ’em. Mr. Bede, will you take some
+vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you’re i’ the right not. It spoils the
+flavour o’ the chine, to my thinking. It’s poor eating where the
+flavour o’ the meat lies i’ the cruets. There’s folks as make bad
+butter and trusten to the salt t’ hide it.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser’s attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly,
+carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full
+of ale or small beer—an interesting example of the prehensile power
+possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly’s mouth was rather wider open
+than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double
+cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in
+her mistress’s eye.
+
+“Molly, I niver knew your equils—to think o’ your poor mother as is a
+widow, an’ I took you wi’ as good as no character, an’ the times an’
+times I’ve told you....”
+
+Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the
+more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that
+she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step a
+little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her
+cans—caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell
+with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering
+explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious “Ello!” from Mr. Poyser,
+who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.
+
+“There you go!” resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and
+went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the
+fragments of pottery. “It’s what I told you ’ud come, over and over
+again; and there’s your month’s wage gone, and more, to pay for that
+jug as I’ve had i’ the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened
+to’t before; but the crockery you’ve broke sin’ here in th’ house
+you’ve been ’ud make a parson swear—God forgi’ me for saying so—an’ if
+it had been boiling wort out o’ the copper, it ’ud ha’ been the same,
+and you’d ha’ been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there’s no
+knowing but what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody ’ud
+think you’d got the St. Vitus’s Dance, to see the things you’ve throwed
+down. It’s a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see,
+though it’s neither seeing nor hearing as ’ull make much odds to
+you—anybody ’ud think you war case-hardened.”
+
+Poor Molly’s tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her
+desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick’s
+legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser,
+opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.
+
+“Ah,” she went on, “you’ll do no good wi’ crying an’ making more wet to
+wipe up. It’s all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there’s
+nobody no call to break anything if they’ll only go the right way to
+work. But wooden folks had need ha’ wooden things t’ handle. And here
+must I take the brown-and-white jug, as it’s niver been used three
+times this year, and go down i’ the cellar myself, and belike catch my
+death, and be laid up wi’ inflammation....”
+
+Mrs. Poyser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white
+jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end of
+the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and
+nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps
+jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However it
+was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious
+brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout
+and handle.
+
+“Did ever anybody see the like?” she said, with a suddenly lowered
+tone, after a moment’s bewildered glance round the room. “The jugs are
+bewitched, _I_ think. It’s them nasty glazed handles—they slip o’er the
+finger like a snail.”
+
+“Why, thee’st let thy own whip fly i’ thy face,” said her husband, who
+had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.
+
+“It’s all very fine to look on and grin,” rejoined Mrs. Poyser; “but
+there’s times when the crockery seems alive an’ flies out o’ your hand
+like a bird. It’s like the glass, sometimes, ’ull crack as it stands.
+What is to be broke _will_ be broke, for I never dropped a thing i’ my
+life for want o’ holding it, else I should never ha’ kept the crockery
+all these ’ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
+Whativer do you mean by coming down i’ that way, and making one think
+as there’s a ghost a-walking i’ th’ house?”
+
+A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused,
+less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than
+by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt. The
+little minx had found a black gown of her aunt’s, and pinned it close
+round her neck to look like Dinah’s, had made her hair as flat as she
+could, and had tied on one of Dinah’s high-crowned borderless net caps.
+The thought of Dinah’s pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the
+sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise
+enough to see them replaced by Hetty’s round rosy cheeks and coquettish
+dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping
+their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up
+from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser went into the
+back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter
+measure, which had some chance of being free from bewitchment.
+
+“Why, Hetty, lass, are ye turned Methodist?” said Mr. Poyser, with that
+comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout
+people. “You must pull your face a deal longer before you’ll do for
+one; mustna she, Adam? How come you put them things on, eh?”
+
+“Adam said he liked Dinah’s cap and gown better nor my clothes,” said
+Hetty, sitting down demurely. “He says folks looks better in ugly
+clothes.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Adam, looking at her admiringly; “I only said they
+seemed to suit Dinah. But if I’d said you’d look pretty in ’em, I
+should ha’ said nothing but what was true.”
+
+“Why, thee thought’st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?” said Mr. Poyser to
+his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. “Thee look’dst as
+scared as scared.”
+
+“It little sinnifies how I looked,” said Mrs. Poyser; “looks ’ull mend
+no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I’m sorry you’ve to
+wait so long for your ale, but it’s coming in a minute. Make yourself
+at home wi’ th’ cold potatoes: I know you like ’em. Tommy, I’ll send
+you to bed this minute, if you don’t give over laughing. What is there
+to laugh at, I should like to know? I’d sooner cry nor laugh at the
+sight o’ that poor thing’s cap; and there’s them as ’ud be better if
+they could make theirselves like her i’ more ways nor putting on her
+cap. It little becomes anybody i’ this house to make fun o’ my sister’s
+child, an’ her just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part
+wi’ her. An’ I know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an’ I was to
+be laid up i’ my bed, an’ the children was to die—as there’s no knowing
+but what they will—an’ the murrain was to come among the cattle again,
+an’ everything went to rack an’ ruin, I say we might be glad to get
+sight o’ Dinah’s cap again, wi’ her own face under it, border or no
+border. For she’s one o’ them things as looks the brightest on a rainy
+day, and loves you the best when you’re most i’ need on’t.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, was aware that nothing would be so likely to
+expel the comic as the terrible. Tommy, who was of a susceptible
+disposition, and very fond of his mother, and who had, besides, eaten
+so many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual,
+was so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible
+future that he began to cry; and the good-natured father, indulgent to
+all weaknesses but those of negligent farmers, said to Hetty, “You’d
+better take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see
+’em.”
+
+Hetty went upstairs again, and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable
+diversion; for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap, which could
+not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser; and then followed a
+discussion on the secrets of good brewing, the folly of stinginess in
+“hopping,” and the doubtful economy of a farmer’s making his own malt.
+Mrs. Poyser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with weight
+on these subjects that by the time supper was ended, the ale-jug
+refilled, and Mr. Poyser’s pipe alight she was once more in high good
+humour, and ready, at Adam’s request, to fetch the broken
+spinning-wheel for his inspection.
+
+“Ah,” said Adam, looking at it carefully, “here’s a nice bit o’ turning
+wanted. It’s a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in
+the village and do it there, for I’ve no convenence for turning at
+home. If you’ll send it to Mr. Burge’s shop i’ the morning, I’ll get it
+done for you by Wednesday. I’ve been turning it over in my mind,” he
+continued, looking at Mr. Poyser, “to make a bit more convenence at
+home for nice jobs o’ cabinet-making. I’ve always done a deal at such
+little things in odd hours, and they’re profitable, for there’s more
+workmanship nor material in ’em. I look for me and Seth to get a little
+business for ourselves i’ that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as
+’ull take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get
+orders for round about.”
+
+Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step
+towards Adam’s becoming a “master-man,” and Mrs. Poyser gave her
+approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to
+be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in
+the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own
+dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm
+evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could
+see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up
+to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for
+at this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being
+sleepy at five o’clock in the morning.
+
+“I shall take a step farther,” said Adam, “and go on to see Mester
+Massey, for he wasn’t at church yesterday, and I’ve not seen him for a
+week past. I’ve never hardly known him to miss church before.”
+
+“Aye,” said Mr. Poyser, “we’ve heared nothing about him, for it’s the
+boys’ hollodays now, so we can give you no account.”
+
+“But you’ll niver think o’ going there at this hour o’ the night?” said
+Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting.
+
+“Oh, Mester Massey sits up late,” said Adam. “An’ the night-school’s
+not over yet. Some o’ the men don’t come till late—they’ve got so far
+to walk. And Bartle himself’s never in bed till it’s gone eleven.”
+
+“I wouldna have him to live wi’ me, then,” said Mrs. Poyser,
+“a-dropping candle-grease about, as you’re like to tumble down o’ the
+floor the first thing i’ the morning.”
+
+“Aye, eleven o’clock’s late—it’s late,” said old Martin. “I ne’er sot
+up so i’ _my_ life, not to say as it warna a marr’in’, or a
+christenin’, or a wake, or th’ harvest supper. Eleven o’clock’s late.”
+
+“Why, I sit up till after twelve often,” said Adam, laughing, “but it
+isn’t t’ eat and drink extry, it’s to work extry. Good-night, Mrs.
+Poyser; good-night, Hetty.”
+
+Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp
+with currant-juice; but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large
+palm that was held out to them, and said, “Come again, come again!”
+
+“Aye, think o’ that now,” said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the
+causeway. “Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye’ll not find
+many men o’ six-an’ twenty as ’ull do to put i’ the shafts wi’ him. If
+you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you’ll ride i’ your own
+spring-cart some day, I’ll be your warrant.”
+
+Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, so her uncle did
+not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him. To
+ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+The Night-School and the Schoolmaster
+
+
+Bartle Massey’s was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a
+common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it
+in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had
+his hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless
+window, that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks,
+lighted by thin dips.
+
+When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey
+merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had
+not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full
+of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in
+Hetty’s presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was
+over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It
+was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he
+knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle
+Massey’s handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster’s head, by way of
+keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs
+of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above
+the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out
+of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had
+long ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think
+how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native
+element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the
+old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had
+turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a
+well-seasoned meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as
+familiar as the scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent
+to it, and even in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a
+momentary stirring of the old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough
+men painfully holding pen or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly
+labouring through their reading lesson.
+
+The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster’s
+desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known
+it only by seeing Bartle Massey’s face as he looked over his
+spectacles, which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not
+requiring them for present purposes. The face wore its mildest
+expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute
+angle of compassionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed
+with a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a
+helpful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression was the
+more interesting because the schoolmaster’s nose, an irregular aquiline
+twisted a little on one side, had rather a formidable character; and
+his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension which always impresses
+one as a sign of a keen impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out
+like cords under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating
+brow was softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly
+hair, cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close
+ranks as ever.
+
+“Nay, Bill, nay,” Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to
+Adam, “begin that again, and then perhaps, it’ll come to you what d-r-y
+spells. It’s the same lesson you read last week, you know.”
+
+“Bill” was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent
+stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of
+his years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a
+harder matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to
+saw. The letters, he complained, were so “uncommon alike, there was no
+tellin’ ’em one from another,” the sawyer’s business not being
+concerned with minute differences such as exist between a letter with
+its tail turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had
+a firm determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on
+two reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything
+“right off,” whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a
+letter from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world
+and had got an overlooker’s place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who
+sawed with him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what
+could be done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered,
+could be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay
+if circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger
+towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he
+might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be
+discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey
+must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill’s imagination
+recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the
+schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular
+return of daylight and the changes in the weather.
+
+The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a
+Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in
+perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately “got religion,” and
+along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning
+was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as
+usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this
+hard task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul—that he
+might have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish
+evil memories and the temptations of old habit—or, in brief language,
+the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was
+suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the
+man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that
+might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to,
+which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist
+preacher at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the
+brickmaker; and though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his
+old sobriquet of “Brimstone,” there was nothing he held in so much
+horror as any further transactions with that evil-smelling element. He
+was a broad-chested fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him
+better in imbibing religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring
+the mere human knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a
+little shaken in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him
+that the letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a
+fear that Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.
+
+The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but
+thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face
+and hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of
+dipping homespun wool and old women’s petticoats had got fired with the
+ambition to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of
+colour. He had already a high reputation in the district for his dyes,
+and he was bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the
+expense of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given
+him a notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and
+expense if he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his
+spare hours to the night-school, resolving that his “little chap”
+should lose no time in coming to Mr. Massey’s day-school as soon as he
+was old enough.
+
+It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their
+hard labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and
+painfully making out, “The grass is green,” “The sticks are dry,” “The
+corn is ripe”—a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single
+words all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three
+rough animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become
+human. And it touched the tenderest fibre in Bartle Massey’s nature,
+for such full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he
+had no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with
+an imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that
+patience could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he
+glances over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning
+his head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the
+letters d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light.
+
+After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came
+up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out
+on their slates and were now required to calculate “off-hand”—a test
+which they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose
+eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some
+minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing
+between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which
+rested between his legs.
+
+“Now, you see, you don’t do this thing a bit better than you did a
+fortnight ago, and I’ll tell you what’s the reason. You want to learn
+accounts—that’s well and good. But you think all you need do to learn
+accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three
+times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of
+doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You
+go whistling about, and take no more care what you’re thinking of than
+if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that
+happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in ’em, it’s
+pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got
+cheap—you’ll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he’ll make
+you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge
+isn’t to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you’re to
+know figures, you must turn ’em over in your heads and keep your
+thoughts fixed on ’em. There’s nothing you can’t turn into a sum, for
+there’s nothing but what’s got number in it—even a fool. You may say to
+yourselves, ‘I’m one fool, and Jack’s another; if my fool’s head
+weighed four pound, and Jack’s three pound three ounces and three
+quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack’s?’
+A man that had got his heart in learning figures would make sums for
+himself and work ’em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he’d
+count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say
+half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour;
+and then ask himself how much money he’d get in a day at that rate; and
+then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a
+hundred years at that rate—and all the while his needle would be going
+just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in.
+But the long and the short of it is—I’ll have nobody in my night-school
+that doesn’t strive to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he
+was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I’ll send
+no man away because he’s stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to
+learn anything, I’d not refuse to teach him. But I’ll not throw away
+good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn’orth,
+and carry it away with ’em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never
+come to me again, if you can’t show that you’ve been working with your
+own heads, instead of thinking that you can pay for mine to work for
+you. That’s the last word I’ve got to say to you.”
+
+With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap than ever
+with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a
+sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to
+show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and
+mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Bartle
+than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob
+Storey’s Z’s, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their
+tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not
+right “somehow.” But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you
+never wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there “to finish
+off th’ alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha’ done as well, for
+what he could see.”
+
+At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their
+“Good-nights,” and Adam, knowing his old master’s habits, rose and
+said, “Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Massey?”
+
+“Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I’ll carry into the house; and
+just lock the outer door, now you’re near it,” said Bartle, getting his
+stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool. He
+was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick was
+necessary—the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the
+school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly
+thought of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along
+the schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would
+perhaps have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his
+pace might be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might
+overtake them even in their swiftest run.
+
+The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his hand,
+a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a
+brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short
+legs and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits,
+came creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at
+every other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between
+the hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not
+leave without a greeting.
+
+“Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?” said the schoolmaster,
+making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over the
+low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads
+towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even
+see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into
+the hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true
+feminine folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a
+large old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.
+
+“Why, you’ve got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?” said Adam, smiling, as
+he came into the kitchen. “How’s that? I thought it was against the law
+here.”
+
+“Law? What’s the use o’ law when a man’s once such a fool as to let a
+woman into his house?” said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
+some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have
+lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. “If I’d
+known Vixen was a woman, I’d never have held the boys from drowning
+her; but when I’d got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her.
+And now you see what she’s brought me to—the sly, hypocritical
+wench”—Bartle spoke these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and
+looked at Vixen, who poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards
+him with a keen sense of opprobrium—“and contrived to be brought to bed
+on a Sunday at church-time. I’ve wished again and again I’d been a
+bloody minded man, that I could have strangled the mother and the brats
+with one cord.”
+
+“I’m glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church,” said Adam. “I
+was afraid you must be ill for the first time i’ your life. And I was
+particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday.”
+
+“Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why,” said Bartle kindly, going up to
+Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
+with his own head. “You’ve had a rough bit o’ road to get over since I
+saw you—a rough bit o’ road. But I’m in hopes there are better times
+coming for you. I’ve got some news to tell you. But I must get my
+supper first, for I’m hungry, I’m hungry. Sit down, sit down.”
+
+Bartle went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
+home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times to
+eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
+observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
+too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
+quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the round
+deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
+chimney-corner, with Vixen’s hamper on one side of it and a
+window-shelf with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table
+was as clean as if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered
+apron; so was the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table,
+and chairs, which in these days would be bought at a high price in
+aristocratic houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid
+cupids, Bartle had got them for an old song, were as free from dust as
+things could be at the end of a summer’s day.
+
+“Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We’ll not talk about business
+till we’ve had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
+But,” said Bartle, rising from his chair again, “I must give Vixen her
+supper too, confound her! Though she’ll do nothing with it but nourish
+those unnecessary babbies. That’s the way with these women—they’ve got
+no head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or
+to brats.”
+
+He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once
+fixed her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the
+utmost dispatch.
+
+“I’ve had my supper, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, “so I’ll look on while you
+eat yours. I’ve been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their
+supper betimes, you know: they don’t keep your late hours.”
+
+“I know little about their hours,” said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread
+and not shrinking from the crust. “It’s a house I seldom go into,
+though I’m fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser’s a good fellow. There’s
+too many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women’s voices;
+they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak—always either a-buzz or
+a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o’ the talk like a fife; and as
+for the young lasses, I’d as soon look at water-grubs. I know what
+they’ll turn to—stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my
+boy: it’s been drawn for you—it’s been drawn for you.”
+
+“Nay, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, who took his old friend’s whim more
+seriously than usual to-night, “don’t be so hard on the creaturs God
+has made to be companions for us. A working-man ’ud be badly off
+without a wife to see to th’ house and the victual, and make things
+clean and comfortable.”
+
+“Nonsense! It’s the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed,
+to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It’s a story got up because
+the women are there and something must be found for ’em to do. I tell
+you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but
+what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children,
+and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha’ been left
+to the men—it had better ha’ been left to the men. I tell you, a woman
+’ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that
+the hotter th’ oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman ’ull make
+your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring
+the proportion between the meal and the milk—a little more or less,
+she’ll think, doesn’t signify. The porridge _will_ be awk’ard now and
+then: if it’s wrong, it’s summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the
+milk, or it’s summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and
+there’s no difference between one batch and another from year’s end to
+year’s end; but if I’d got any other woman besides Vixen in the house,
+I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread
+turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any
+other house on the Common, though the half of ’em swarm with women.
+Will Baker’s lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much
+cleaning done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman ’ud get done in
+three, and all the while be sending buckets o’ water after your ankles,
+and let the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o’ the floor
+half the day for you to break your shins against ’em. Don’t tell me
+about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don’t
+say but He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise—there
+was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with
+and make mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as
+she’d an opportunity. But it’s an impious, unscriptural opinion to say
+a woman’s a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and
+wasps, and foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they’re only the
+evils that belong to this state o’ probation, which it’s lawful for a
+man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of
+’em for ever in another—hoping to get quit of ’em for ever in another.”
+
+Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective
+that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the
+purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the
+raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that
+Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark
+vaguely.
+
+“Quiet, Vixen!” snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. “You’re like
+the rest o’ the women—always putting in _your_ word before you know
+why.”
+
+Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master
+continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to
+interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had
+had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in
+this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle’s past life as to
+know whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On
+that point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived
+previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and
+artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their
+only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this
+subject, Bartle always replied, “Oh, I’ve seen many places—I’ve been a
+deal in the south,” and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of
+asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in “the south.”
+
+“Now then, my boy,” said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his
+second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, “now then, we’ll have a little
+talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?”
+
+“No,” said Adam, “not as I remember.”
+
+“Ah, they’ll keep it close, they’ll keep it close, I daresay. But I
+found it out by chance; and it’s news that may concern you, Adam, else
+I’m a man that don’t know a superficial square foot from a solid.”
+
+Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly
+the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion
+of keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always
+letting it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At
+last he said, “Satchell’s got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from
+the lad they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o’clock
+this morning. He’s a good way beyond sixty, you know; it’s much if he
+gets over it.”
+
+“Well,” said Adam, “I daresay there’d be more rejoicing than sorrow in
+the parish at his being laid up. He’s been a selfish, tale-bearing,
+mischievous fellow; but, after all, there’s nobody he’s done so much
+harm to as to th’ old squire. Though it’s the squire himself as is to
+blame—making a stupid fellow like that a sort o’ man-of-all-work, just
+to save th’ expense of having a proper steward to look after th’
+estate. And he’s lost more by ill management o’ the woods, I’ll be
+bound, than ’ud pay for two stewards. If he’s laid on the shelf, it’s
+to be hoped he’ll make way for a better man, but I don’t see how it’s
+like to make any difference to me.”
+
+“But I see it, but I see it,” said Bartle, “and others besides me. The
+captain’s coming of age now—you know that as well as I do—and it’s to
+be expected he’ll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and
+you know too, what ’ud be the captain’s wish about the woods, if there
+was a fair opportunity for making a change. He’s said in plenty of
+people’s hearing that he’d make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if
+he’d the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine’s butler, heard him say so to
+the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking
+our pipes o’ Saturday night at Casson’s, and he told us about it; and
+whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson’s ready to back
+it, that I’ll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell
+you, at Casson’s, and one and another had their fling at you; for if
+donkeys set to work to sing, you’re pretty sure what the tune’ll be.”
+
+“Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?” said Adam; “or wasn’t he
+there o’ Saturday?”
+
+“Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson—he’s always for
+setting other folks right, you know—would have it Burge was the man to
+have the management of the woods. ‘A substantial man,’ says he, ‘with
+pretty near sixty years’ experience o’ timber: it ’ud be all very well
+for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn’t to be supposed the squire
+’ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there’s his elders and
+betters at hand!’ But I said, ‘That’s a pretty notion o’ yours, Casson.
+Why, Burge is the man to _buy_ timber; would you put the woods into his
+hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don’t leave your
+customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that’s
+worth depends on the quality o’ the liquor. It’s pretty well known
+who’s the backbone of Jonathan Burge’s business.’”
+
+“I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey,” said Adam. “But, for all
+that, Casson was partly i’ the right for once. There’s not much
+likelihood that th’ old squire ’ud ever consent t’ employ me. I
+offended him about two years ago, and he’s never forgiven me.”
+
+“Why, how was that? You never told me about it,” said Bartle.
+
+“Oh, it was a bit o’ nonsense. I’d made a frame for a screen for Miss
+Lyddy—she’s allays making something with her worsted-work, you know—and
+she’d given me particular orders about this screen, and there was as
+much talking and measuring as if we’d been planning a house. However,
+it was a nice bit o’ work, and I liked doing it for her. But, you know,
+those little friggling things take a deal o’ time. I only worked at it
+in overhours—often late at night—and I had to go to Treddleston over
+an’ over again about little bits o’ brass nails and such gear; and I
+turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th’ open work, after a
+pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon pleased with it when
+it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy sent for me to bring
+it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me directions about
+fastening on the work—very fine needlework, Jacob and Rachel a-kissing
+one another among the sheep, like a picture—and th’ old squire was
+sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was mighty
+pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she was
+to give me. I didn’t speak at random—you know it’s not my way; I’d
+calculated pretty close, though I hadn’t made out a bill, and I said,
+‘One pound thirteen.’ That was paying for the mater’als and paying me,
+but none too much, for my work. Th’ old squire looked up at this, and
+peered in his way at the screen, and said, ‘One pound thirteen for a
+gimcrack like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these
+things, why don’t you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double
+price for clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter
+like Adam. Give him a guinea, and no more.’ Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon,
+believed what he told her, and she’s not overfond o’ parting with the
+money herself—she’s not a bad woman at bottom, but she’s been brought
+up under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned
+as red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, ‘No, thank you,
+madam; I’ll make you a present o’ the screen, if you please. I’ve
+charged the regular price for my work, and I know it’s done well; and I
+know, begging His Honour’s pardon, that you couldn’t get such a screen
+at Rosseter under two guineas. I’m willing to give you my work—it’s
+been done in my own time, and nobody’s got anything to do with it but
+me; but if I’m paid, I can’t take a smaller price than I asked, because
+that ’ud be like saying I’d asked more than was just. With your leave,
+madam, I’ll bid you good-morning.’ I made my bow and went out before
+she’d time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand,
+looking almost foolish. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke
+as polite as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make
+it out as I’m trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman
+brought me the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I’ve
+seen pretty clear as th’ old squire can’t abide me.”
+
+“That’s likely enough, that’s likely enough,” said Bartle meditatively.
+“The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his
+own interest, and that the captain may do—that the captain may do.”
+
+“Nay, I don’t know,” said Adam; “the squire’s ’cute enough but it takes
+something else besides ’cuteness to make folks see what’ll be their
+interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right
+and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You’d hardly ever bring round th’
+old squire to believe he’d gain as much in a straightfor’ard way as by
+tricks and turns. And, besides, I’ve not much mind to work under him: I
+don’t want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old
+gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn’t agree long. If the
+captain was master o’ th’ estate, it ’ud be different: he’s got a
+conscience and a will to do right, and I’d sooner work for him nor for
+any man living.”
+
+“Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don’t you put
+your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business,
+that’s all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well
+as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you
+pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling
+before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest—you’re overhasty and
+proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don’t square to
+your notions. It’s no harm for me to be a bit fiery and
+stiff-backed—I’m an old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to
+a higher perch. But where’s the use of all the time I’ve spent in
+teaching you writing and mapping and mensuration, if you’re not to get
+for’ard in the world and show folks there’s some advantage in having a
+head on your shoulders, instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on
+turning up your nose at every opportunity because it’s got a bit of a
+smell about it that nobody finds out but yourself? It’s as foolish as
+that notion o’ yours that a wife is to make a working-man comfortable.
+Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and nonsense! Leave that to fools that never
+got beyond a sum in simple addition. Simple addition enough! Add one
+fool to another fool, and in six years’ time six fools more—they’re all
+of the same denomination, big and little’s nothing to do with the sum!”
+
+During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the
+pipe had gone out, and Bartle gave the climax to his speech by striking
+a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing
+his eye still on Adam, who was trying not to laugh.
+
+“There’s a good deal o’ sense in what you say, Mr. Massey,” Adam began,
+as soon as he felt quite serious, “as there always is. But you’ll give
+in that it’s no business o’ mine to be building on chances that may
+never happen. What I’ve got to do is to work as well as I can with the
+tools and mater’als I’ve got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me,
+I’ll think o’ what you’ve been saying; but till then, I’ve got nothing
+to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I’m turning
+over a little plan for Seth and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit
+by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it’s
+getting late now—it’ll be pretty near eleven before I’m at home, and
+Mother may happen to lie awake; she’s more fidgety nor usual now. So
+I’ll bid you good-night.”
+
+“Well, well, we’ll go to the gate with you—it’s a fine night,” said
+Bartle, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without
+further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of
+Bartle’s potato-beds, to the little gate.
+
+“Come to the music o’ Friday night, if you can, my boy,” said the old
+man, as he closed the gate after Adam and leaned against it.
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Adam, striding along towards the streak of pale road.
+He was the only object moving on the wide common. The two grey donkeys,
+just visible in front of the gorse bushes, stood as still as limestone
+images—as still as the grey-thatched roof of the mud cottage a little
+farther on. Bartle kept his eye on the moving figure till it passed
+into the darkness, while Vixen, in a state of divided affection, had
+twice run back to the house to bestow a parenthetic lick on her
+puppies.
+
+“Aye, aye,” muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, “there you
+go, stalking along—stalking along; but you wouldn’t have been what you
+are if you hadn’t had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The
+strongest calf must have something to suck at. There’s plenty of these
+big, lumbering fellows ’ud never have known their A B C if it hadn’t
+been for Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is
+it, what is it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I’m never to have a
+will o’ my own any more. And those pups—what do you think I’m to do
+with ’em, when they’re twice as big as you? For I’m pretty sure the
+father was that hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker’s—wasn’t he now, eh,
+you sly hussy?”(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran
+forward into the house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a
+well-bred female will ignore.)
+
+“But where’s the use of talking to a woman with babbies?” continued
+Bartle. “She’s got no conscience—no conscience; it’s all run to milk.”
+
+
+
+
+Book Third
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+Going to the Birthday Feast
+
+
+The thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm
+days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No
+rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was
+perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on
+the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the
+roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll
+on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple,
+high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor
+July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in.
+Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers
+are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and
+yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at
+the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment of
+its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the
+waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their
+sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are
+often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour of
+red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their
+innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and
+cows. But it is a time of leisure on the farm—that pause between
+hay-and corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and
+Broxton thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when
+they could give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask
+of ale which had been brewed the autumn after “the heir” was born, and
+was to be tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry
+with the ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one
+had made haste to get through the needful work before twelve, when it
+would be time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase.
+
+The midday sun was streaming into Hetty’s bedchamber, and there was no
+blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked
+at herself in the old specked glass. Still, that was the only glass she
+had in which she could see her neck and arms, for the small hanging
+glass she had fetched out of the next room—the room that had been
+Dinah’s—would show her nothing below her little chin; and that
+beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into
+another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls. And to-day she
+thought more than usual about her neck and arms; for at the dance this
+evening she was not to wear any neckerchief, and she had been busy
+yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock, that she might make
+the sleeves either long or short at will. She was dressed now just as
+she was to be in the evening, with a tucker made of “real” lace, which
+her aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion, but with no
+ornaments besides; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings
+which she wore every day. But there was something more to be done,
+apparently, before she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which
+she was to wear in the day-time, for now she unlocked the drawer that
+held her private treasures. It is more than a month since we saw her
+unlock that drawer before, and now it holds new treasures, so much more
+precious than the old ones that these are thrust into the corner. Hetty
+would not care to put the large coloured glass ear-rings into her ears
+now; for see! she has got a beautiful pair of gold and pearls and
+garnet, lying snugly in a pretty little box lined with white satin. Oh,
+the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the ear-rings!
+Do not reason about it, my philosphical reader, and say that Hetty,
+being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify whether she
+had on any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at ear-rings
+which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a
+satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the
+impressions produced on others; you will never understand women’s
+natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest
+yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were
+studying the psychology of a canary bird, and only watch the movements
+of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an
+unconscious smile at the ear-rings nestled in the little box. Ah, you
+think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and
+her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into
+her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have ear-rings rather
+than anything else? And I know that she had longed for ear-rings from
+among all the ornaments she could imagine.
+
+“Little, little ears!” Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them one
+evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat. “I wish
+I had some pretty ear-rings!” she said in a moment, almost before she
+knew what she was saying—the wish lay so close to her lips, it _would_
+flutter past them at the slightest breath. And the next day—it was only
+last week—Arthur had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them.
+That little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of
+childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had
+wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty
+unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed
+back their new delight into his.
+
+No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the
+ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them
+to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears—only for one moment, to see
+how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against the
+wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a
+listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings
+as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be
+made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the
+tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps
+water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little
+round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty
+must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman,
+with a woman’s destiny before her—a woman spinning in young ignorance a
+light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and
+press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once her
+fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human
+anguish.
+
+But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle
+and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them
+up. Some day she will be able to wear any ear-rings she likes, and
+already she lives in an invisible world of brilliant costumes,
+shimmering gauze, soft satin, and velvet, such as the lady’s maid at
+the Chase has shown her in Miss Lydia’s wardrobe. She feels the
+bracelets on her arms, and treads on a soft carpet in front of a tall
+mirror. But she has one thing in the drawer which she can venture to
+wear to-day, because she can hang it on the chain of dark-brown berries
+which she has been used to wear on grand days, with a tiny flat
+scent-bottle at the end of it tucked inside her frock; and she _must_
+put on her brown berries—her neck would look so unfinished without it.
+Hetty was not quite as fond of the locket as of the ear-rings, though
+it was a handsome large locket, with enamelled flowers at the back and
+a beautiful gold border round the glass, which showed a light-brown
+slightly waving lock, forming a background for two little dark rings.
+She must keep it under her clothes, and no one would see it. But Hetty
+had another passion, only a little less strong than her love of finery,
+and that other passion made her like to wear the locket even hidden in
+her bosom. She would always have worn it, if she had dared to encounter
+her aunt’s questions about a ribbon round her neck. So now she slipped
+it on along her chain of dark-brown berries, and snapped the chain
+round her neck. It was not a very long chain, only allowing the locket
+to hang a little way below the edge of her frock. And now she had
+nothing to do but to put on her long sleeves, her new white gauze
+neckerchief, and her straw hat trimmed with white to-day instead of the
+pink, which had become rather faded under the July sun. That hat made
+the drop of bitterness in Hetty’s cup to-day, for it was not quite
+new—everybody would see that it was a little tanned against the white
+ribbon—and Mary Burge, she felt sure, would have a new hat or bonnet
+on. She looked for consolation at her fine white cotton stockings: they
+really were very nice indeed, and she had given almost all her spare
+money for them. Hetty’s dream of the future could not make her
+insensible to triumph in the present. To be sure, Captain Donnithorne
+loved her so that he would never care about looking at other people,
+but then those other people didn’t know how he loved her, and she was
+not satisfied to appear shabby and insignificant in their eyes even for
+a short space.
+
+The whole party was assembled in the house-place when Hetty went down,
+all of course in their Sunday clothes; and the bells had been ringing
+so this morning in honour of the captain’s twenty-first birthday, and
+the work had all been got done so early, that Marty and Tommy were not
+quite easy in their minds until their mother had assured them that
+going to church was not part of the day’s festivities. Mr. Poyser had
+once suggested that the house should be shut up and left to take care
+of itself; “for,” said he, “there’s no danger of anybody’s breaking
+in—everybody’ll be at the Chase, thieves an’ all. If we lock th’ house
+up, all the men can go: it’s a day they wonna see twice i’ their
+lives.” But Mrs. Poyser answered with great decision: “I never left the
+house to take care of itself since I was a missis, and I never will.
+There’s been ill-looking tramps enoo’ about the place this last week,
+to carry off every ham an’ every spoon we’n got; and they all collogue
+together, them tramps, as it’s a mercy they hanna come and poisoned the
+dogs and murdered us all in our beds afore we knowed, some Friday night
+when we’n got the money in th’ house to pay the men. And it’s like
+enough the tramps know where we’re going as well as we do oursens; for
+if Old Harry wants any work done, you may be sure he’ll find the
+means.”
+
+“Nonsense about murdering us in our beds,” said Mr. Poyser; “I’ve got a
+gun i’ our room, hanna I? and thee’st got ears as ’ud find it out if a
+mouse was gnawing the bacon. Howiver, if thee wouldstna be easy, Alick
+can stay at home i’ the forepart o’ the day, and Tim can come back
+tow’rds five o’clock, and let Alick have his turn. They may let Growler
+loose if anybody offers to do mischief, and there’s Alick’s dog too,
+ready enough to set his tooth in a tramp if Alick gives him a wink.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser accepted this compromise, but thought it advisable to bar
+and bolt to the utmost; and now, at the last moment before starting,
+Nancy, the dairy-maid, was closing the shutters of the house-place,
+although the window, lying under the immediate observation of Alick and
+the dogs, might have been supposed the least likely to be selected for
+a burglarious attempt.
+
+The covered cart, without springs, was standing ready to carry the
+whole family except the men-servants. Mr. Poyser and the grandfather
+sat on the seat in front, and within there was room for all the women
+and children; the fuller the cart the better, because then the jolting
+would not hurt so much, and Nancy’s broad person and thick arms were an
+excellent cushion to be pitched on. But Mr. Poyser drove at no more
+than a walking pace, that there might be as little risk of jolting as
+possible on this warm day, and there was time to exchange greetings and
+remarks with the foot-passengers who were going the same way, specking
+the paths between the green meadows and the golden cornfields with bits
+of movable bright colour—a scarlet waistcoat to match the poppies that
+nodded a little too thickly among the corn, or a dark-blue neckerchief
+with ends flaunting across a brand-new white smock-frock. All Broxton
+and all Hayslope were to be at the Chase, and make merry there in
+honour of “th’ heir”; and the old men and women, who had never been so
+far down this side of the hill for the last twenty years, were being
+brought from Broxton and Hayslope in one of the farmer’s waggons, at
+Mr. Irwine’s suggestion. The church-bells had struck up again now—a
+last tune, before the ringers came down the hill to have their share in
+the festival; and before the bells had finished, other music was heard
+approaching, so that even Old Brown, the sober horse that was drawing
+Mr. Poyser’s cart, began to prick up his ears. It was the band of the
+Benefit Club, which had mustered in all its glory—that is to say, in
+bright-blue scarfs and blue favours, and carrying its banner with the
+motto, “Let brotherly love continue,” encircling a picture of a
+stone-pit.
+
+The carts, of course, were not to enter the Chase. Every one must get
+down at the lodges, and the vehicles must be sent back.
+
+“Why, the Chase is like a fair a’ready,” said Mrs. Poyser, as she got
+down from the cart, and saw the groups scattered under the great oaks,
+and the boys running about in the hot sunshine to survey the tall poles
+surmounted by the fluttering garments that were to be the prize of the
+successful climbers. “I should ha’ thought there wasna so many people
+i’ the two parishes. Mercy on us! How hot it is out o’ the shade! Come
+here, Totty, else your little face ’ull be burnt to a scratchin’! They
+might ha’ cooked the dinners i’ that open space an’ saved the fires. I
+shall go to Mrs. Best’s room an’ sit down.”
+
+“Stop a bit, stop a bit,” said Mr. Poyser. “There’s th’ waggin coming
+wi’ th’ old folks in’t; it’ll be such a sight as wonna come o’er again,
+to see ’em get down an’ walk along all together. You remember some on
+’em i’ their prime, eh, Father?”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said old Martin, walking slowly under the shade of the
+lodge porch, from which he could see the aged party descend. “I
+remember Jacob Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when
+they turned back from Stoniton.”
+
+He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he
+saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon
+and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two
+sticks.
+
+“Well, Mester Taft,” shouted old Martin, at the utmost stretch of his
+voice—for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit
+the propriety of a greeting—“you’re hearty yet. You can enjoy yoursen
+to-day, for-all you’re ninety an’ better.”
+
+“Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant,” said Feyther Taft in a treble
+tone, perceiving that he was in company.
+
+The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and
+grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the
+house, where a special table was prepared for them; while the Poyser
+party wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great
+trees, but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn
+and flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the
+lawn, standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of
+the open green space where the games were to be played. The house would
+have been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne’s time, but
+for the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in
+much the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high
+and prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old
+remnant stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches,
+but the sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds
+were all down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made
+Hetty quite sad to look at it: Arthur must be somewhere in the back
+rooms, with the grand company, where he could not possibly know that
+she was come, and she should not see him for a long, long while—not
+till after dinner, when they said he was to come up and make a speech.
+
+But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was
+come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early, and
+Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the
+rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long
+tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants. A
+very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a
+bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode—his arm no longer in a sling.
+So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets,
+and secrets leave no lines in young faces.
+
+“Upon my word,” he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, “I think
+the cottagers have the best of it: these cloisters make a delightful
+dining-room on a hot day. That was capital advice of yours, Irwine,
+about the dinners—to let them be as orderly and comfortable as
+possible, and only for the tenants: especially as I had only a limited
+sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a _carte blanche_,
+he couldn’t make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point.”
+
+“Never mind, you’ll give more pleasure in this quiet way,” said Mr.
+Irwine. “In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding
+liberality with riot and disorder. It sounds very grand to say that so
+many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked to
+come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an
+enjoyable meal. If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity
+of ale in the middle of the day, they’ll be able to enjoy the games as
+the day cools. You can’t hinder some of them from getting too much
+towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than
+drunkenness and daylight.”
+
+“Well, I hope there won’t be much of it. I’ve kept the Treddleston
+people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I’ve got Casson
+and Adam Bede and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of
+ale in the booths, and to take care things don’t go too far. Come, let
+us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants.”
+
+They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery
+above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old
+pictures had been banished for the last three generations—mouldy
+portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye
+knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius
+Cæsar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his
+Commentaries in his hand.
+
+“What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old
+abbey!” said Arthur. “If I’m ever master here, I shall do up the
+gallery in first-rate style. We’ve got no room in the house a third as
+large as this. That second table is for the farmers’ wives and
+children: Mrs. Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers
+and children to be by themselves. I was determined to have the
+children, and make a regular family thing of it. I shall be ‘the old
+squire’ to those little lads and lasses some day, and they’ll tell
+their children what a much finer young fellow I was than my own son.
+There’s a table for the women and children below as well. But you will
+see them all—you will come up with me after dinner, I hope?”
+
+“Yes, to be sure,” said Mr. Irwine. “I wouldn’t miss your maiden speech
+to the tenantry.”
+
+“And there will be something else you’ll like to hear,” said Arthur.
+“Let us go into the library and I’ll tell you all about it while my
+grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies. Something that will
+surprise you,” he continued, as they sat down. “My grandfather has come
+round after all.”
+
+“What, about Adam?”
+
+“Yes; I should have ridden over to tell you about it, only I was so
+busy. You know I told you I had quite given up arguing the matter with
+him—I thought it was hopeless—but yesterday morning he asked me to come
+in here to him before I went out, and astonished me by saying that he
+had decided on all the new arrangements he should make in consequence
+of old Satchell being obliged to lay by work, and that he intended to
+employ Adam in superintending the woods at a salary of a guinea a-week,
+and the use of a pony to be kept here. I believe the secret of it is,
+he saw from the first it would be a profitable plan, but he had some
+particular dislike of Adam to get over—and besides, the fact that I
+propose a thing is generally a reason with him for rejecting it.
+There’s the most curious contradiction in my grandfather: I know he
+means to leave me all the money he has saved, and he is likely enough
+to have cut off poor Aunt Lydia, who has been a slave to him all her
+life, with only five hundred a-year, for the sake of giving me all the
+more; and yet I sometimes think he positively hates me because I’m his
+heir. I believe if I were to break my neck, he would feel it the
+greatest misfortune that could befall him, and yet it seems a pleasure
+to him to make my life a series of petty annoyances.”
+
+“Ah, my boy, it is not only woman’s love that is ἀπέρωτος ἒρως as old
+Æschylus calls it. There’s plenty of ‘unloving love’ in the world of a
+masculine kind. But tell me about Adam. Has he accepted the post? I
+don’t see that it can be much more profitable than his present work,
+though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time on his own
+hands.”
+
+“Well, I felt some doubt about it when I spoke to him and he seemed to
+hesitate at first. His objection was that he thought he should not be
+able to satisfy my grandfather. But I begged him as a personal favour
+to me not to let any reason prevent him from accepting the place, if he
+really liked the employment and would not be giving up anything that
+was more profitable to him. And he assured me he should like it of all
+things—it would be a great step forward for him in business, and it
+would enable him to do what he had long wished to do, to give up
+working for Burge. He says he shall have plenty of time to superintend
+a little business of his own, which he and Seth will carry on, and will
+perhaps be able to enlarge by degrees. So he has agreed at last, and I
+have arranged that he shall dine with the large tenants to-day; and I
+mean to announce the appointment to them, and ask them to drink Adam’s
+health. It’s a little drama I’ve got up in honour of my friend Adam.
+He’s a fine fellow, and I like the opportunity of letting people know
+that I think so.”
+
+“A drama in which friend Arthur piques himself on having a pretty part
+to play,” said Mr. Irwine, smiling. But when he saw Arthur colour, he
+went on relentingly, “My part, you know, is always that of the old fogy
+who sees nothing to admire in the young folks. I don’t like to admit
+that I’m proud of my pupil when he does graceful things. But I must
+play the amiable old gentleman for once, and second your toast in
+honour of Adam. Has your grandfather yielded on the other point too,
+and agreed to have a respectable man as steward?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Arthur, rising from his chair with an air of impatience
+and walking along the room with his hands in his pockets. “He’s got
+some project or other about letting the Chase Farm and bargaining for a
+supply of milk and butter for the house. But I ask no questions about
+it—it makes me too angry. I believe he means to do all the business
+himself, and have nothing in the shape of a steward. It’s amazing what
+energy he has, though.”
+
+“Well, we’ll go to the ladies now,” said Mr. Irwine, rising too. “I
+want to tell my mother what a splendid throne you’ve prepared for her
+under the marquee.”
+
+“Yes, and we must be going to luncheon too,” said Arthur. “It must be
+two o’clock, for there is the gong beginning to sound for the tenants’
+dinners.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+Dinner-Time
+
+
+When Adam heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he
+felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way
+above his mother and Seth, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But
+Mr. Mills, the butler, assured him that Captain Donnithorne had given
+particular orders about it, and would be very angry if Adam was not
+there.
+
+Adam nodded and went up to Seth, who was standing a few yards off.
+“Seth, lad,” he said, “the captain has sent to say I’m to dine
+upstairs—he wishes it particular, Mr. Mills says, so I suppose it ’ud
+be behaving ill for me not to go. But I don’t like sitting up above
+thee and mother, as if I was better than my own flesh and blood. Thee’t
+not take it unkind, I hope?”
+
+“Nay, nay, lad,” said Seth, “thy honour’s our honour; and if thee
+get’st respect, thee’st won it by thy own deserts. The further I see
+thee above me, the better, so long as thee feel’st like a brother to
+me. It’s because o’ thy being appointed over the woods, and it’s
+nothing but what’s right. That’s a place o’ trust, and thee’t above a
+common workman now.”
+
+“Aye,” said Adam, “but nobody knows a word about it yet. I haven’t
+given notice to Mr. Burge about leaving him, and I don’t like to tell
+anybody else about it before he knows, for he’ll be a good bit hurt, I
+doubt. People ’ull be wondering to see me there, and they’ll like
+enough be guessing the reason and asking questions, for there’s been so
+much talk up and down about my having the place, this last three
+weeks.”
+
+“Well, thee canst say thee wast ordered to come without being told the
+reason. That’s the truth. And mother ’ull be fine and joyful about it.
+Let’s go and tell her.”
+
+Adam was not the only guest invited to come upstairs on other grounds
+than the amount he contributed to the rent-roll. There were other
+people in the two parishes who derived dignity from their functions
+rather than from their pocket, and of these Bartle Massey was one. His
+lame walk was rather slower than usual on this warm day, so Adam
+lingered behind when the bell rang for dinner, that he might walk up
+with his old friend; for he was a little too shy to join the Poyser
+party on this public occasion. Opportunities of getting to Hetty’s side
+would be sure to turn up in the course of the day, and Adam contented
+himself with that for he disliked any risk of being “joked” about
+Hetty—the big, outspoken, fearless man was very shy and diffident as to
+his love-making.
+
+“Well, Mester Massey,” said Adam, as Bartle came up “I’m going to dine
+upstairs with you to-day: the captain’s sent me orders.”
+
+“Ah!” said Bartle, pausing, with one hand on his back. “Then there’s
+something in the wind—there’s something in the wind. Have you heard
+anything about what the old squire means to do?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Adam; “I’ll tell you what I know, because I believe
+you can keep a still tongue in your head if you like, and I hope you’ll
+not let drop a word till it’s common talk, for I’ve particular reasons
+against its being known.”
+
+“Trust to me, my boy, trust to me. I’ve got no wife to worm it out of
+me and then run out and cackle it in everybody’s hearing. If you trust
+a man, let him be a bachelor—let him be a bachelor.”
+
+“Well, then, it was so far settled yesterday that I’m to take the
+management o’ the woods. The captain sent for me t’ offer it me, when I
+was seeing to the poles and things here and I’ve agreed to’t. But if
+anybody asks any questions upstairs, just you take no notice, and turn
+the talk to something else, and I’ll be obliged to you. Now, let us go
+on, for we’re pretty nigh the last, I think.”
+
+“I know what to do, never fear,” said Bartle, moving on. “The news will
+be good sauce to my dinner. Aye, aye, my boy, you’ll get on. I’ll back
+you for an eye at measuring and a head-piece for figures, against any
+man in this county and you’ve had good teaching—you’ve had good
+teaching.”
+
+When they got upstairs, the question which Arthur had left unsettled,
+as to who was to be president, and who vice, was still under
+discussion, so that Adam’s entrance passed without remark.
+
+“It stands to sense,” Mr. Casson was saying, “as old Mr. Poyser, as is
+th’ oldest man i’ the room, should sit at top o’ the table. I wasn’t
+butler fifteen year without learning the rights and the wrongs about
+dinner.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said old Martin, “I’n gi’en up to my son; I’m no tenant
+now: let my son take my place. Th’ ould foulks ha’ had their turn: they
+mun make way for the young uns.”
+
+“I should ha’ thought the biggest tenant had the best right, more nor
+th’ oldest,” said Luke Britton, who was not fond of the critical Mr.
+Poyser; “there’s Mester Holdsworth has more land nor anybody else on
+th’ estate.”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Poyser, “suppose we say the man wi’ the foulest land
+shall sit at top; then whoever gets th’ honour, there’ll be no envying
+on him.”
+
+“Eh, here’s Mester Massey,” said Mr. Craig, who, being a neutral in the
+dispute, had no interest but in conciliation; “the schoolmaster ought
+to be able to tell you what’s right. Who’s to sit at top o’ the table,
+Mr. Massey?”
+
+“Why, the broadest man,” said Bartle; “and then he won’t take up other
+folks’ room; and the next broadest must sit at bottom.”
+
+This happy mode of settling the dispute produced much laughter—a
+smaller joke would have sufficed for that. Mr. Casson, however, did not
+feel it compatible with his dignity and superior knowledge to join in
+the laugh, until it turned out that he was fixed on as the second
+broadest man. Martin Poyser the younger, as the broadest, was to be
+president, and Mr. Casson, as next broadest, was to be vice.
+
+Owing to this arrangement, Adam, being, of course, at the bottom of the
+table, fell under the immediate observation of Mr. Casson, who, too
+much occupied with the question of precedence, had not hitherto noticed
+his entrance. Mr. Casson, we have seen, considered Adam “rather lifted
+up and peppery-like”: he thought the gentry made more fuss about this
+young carpenter than was necessary; they made no fuss about Mr. Casson,
+although he had been an excellent butler for fifteen years.
+
+“Well, Mr. Bede, you’re one o’ them as mounts hup’ards apace,” he said,
+when Adam sat down. “You’ve niver dined here before, as I remember.”
+
+“No, Mr. Casson,” said Adam, in his strong voice, that could be heard
+along the table; “I’ve never dined here before, but I come by Captain
+Donnithorne’s wish, and I hope it’s not disagreeable to anybody here.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said several voices at once, “we’re glad ye’re come. Who’s
+got anything to say again’ it?”
+
+“And ye’ll sing us ‘Over the hills and far away,’ after dinner, wonna
+ye?” said Mr. Chowne. “That’s a song I’m uncommon fond on.”
+
+“Peeh!” said Mr. Craig; “it’s not to be named by side o’ the Scotch
+tunes. I’ve never cared about singing myself; I’ve had something better
+to do. A man that’s got the names and the natur o’ plants in’s head
+isna likely to keep a hollow place t’ hold tunes in. But a second
+cousin o’ mine, a drovier, was a rare hand at remembering the Scotch
+tunes. He’d got nothing else to think on.”
+
+“The Scotch tunes!” said Bartle Massey, contemptuously; “I’ve heard
+enough o’ the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They’re fit for
+nothing but to frighten the birds with—that’s to say, the English
+birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the
+lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I’ll answer for it the corn ’ll
+be safe.”
+
+“Yes, there’s folks as find a pleasure in undervallying what they know
+but little about,” said Mr. Craig.
+
+“Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman,” Bartle
+went on, without deigning to notice Mr. Craig’s remark. “They go on
+with the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable
+end. Anybody ’ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a
+question of somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer
+yet.”
+
+Adam minded the less about sitting by Mr. Casson, because this position
+enabled him to see Hetty, who was not far off him at the next table.
+Hetty, however, had not even noticed his presence yet, for she was
+giving angry attention to Totty, who insisted on drawing up her feet on
+to the bench in antique fashion, and thereby threatened to make dusty
+marks on Hetty’s pink-and-white frock. No sooner were the little fat
+legs pushed down than up they came again, for Totty’s eyes were too
+busy in staring at the large dishes to see where the plum pudding was
+for her to retain any consciousness of her legs. Hetty got quite out of
+patience, and at last, with a frown and pout, and gathering tears, she
+said, “Oh dear, Aunt, I wish you’d speak to Totty; she keeps putting
+her legs up so, and messing my frock.”
+
+“What’s the matter wi’ the child? She can niver please you,” said the
+mother. “Let her come by the side o’ me, then. _I_ can put up wi’ her.”
+
+Adam was looking at Hetty, and saw the frown, and pout, and the dark
+eyes seeming to grow larger with pettish half-gathered tears. Quiet
+Mary Burge, who sat near enough to see that Hetty was cross and that
+Adam’s eyes were fixed on her, thought that so sensible a man as Adam
+must be reflecting on the small value of beauty in a woman whose temper
+was bad. Mary was a good girl, not given to indulge in evil feelings,
+but she said to herself, that, since Hetty had a bad temper, it was
+better Adam should know it. And it was quite true that if Hetty had
+been plain, she would have looked very ugly and unamiable at that
+moment, and no one’s moral judgment upon her would have been in the
+least beguiled. But really there was something quite charming in her
+pettishness: it looked so much more like innocent distress than ill
+humour; and the severe Adam felt no movement of disapprobation; he only
+felt a sort of amused pity, as if he had seen a kitten setting up its
+back, or a little bird with its feathers ruffled. He could not gather
+what was vexing her, but it was impossible to him to feel otherwise
+than that she was the prettiest thing in the world, and that if he
+could have his way, nothing should ever vex her any more. And
+presently, when Totty was gone, she caught his eye, and her face broke
+into one of its brightest smiles, as she nodded to him. It was a bit of
+flirtation—she knew Mary Burge was looking at them. But the smile was
+like wine to Adam.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+The Health-Drinking
+
+
+When the dinner was over, and the first draughts from the great cask of
+birthday ale were brought up, room was made for the broad Mr. Poyser at
+the side of the table, and two chairs were placed at the head. It had
+been settled very definitely what Mr. Poyser was to do when the young
+squire should appear, and for the last five minutes he had been in a
+state of abstraction, with his eyes fixed on the dark picture opposite,
+and his hands busy with the loose cash and other articles in his
+breeches pockets.
+
+When the young squire entered, with Mr. Irwine by his side, every one
+stood up, and this moment of homage was very agreeable to Arthur. He
+liked to feel his own importance, and besides that, he cared a great
+deal for the good-will of these people: he was fond of thinking that
+they had a hearty, special regard for him. The pleasure he felt was in
+his face as he said, “My grandfather and I hope all our friends here
+have enjoyed their dinner, and find my birthday ale good. Mr. Irwine
+and I are come to taste it with you, and I am sure we shall all like
+anything the better that the rector shares with us.”
+
+All eyes were now turned on Mr. Poyser, who, with his hands still busy
+in his pockets, began with the deliberateness of a slow-striking clock.
+“Captain, my neighbours have put it upo’ me to speak for ’em to-day,
+for where folks think pretty much alike, one spokesman’s as good as a
+score. And though we’ve mayhappen got contrairy ways o’ thinking about
+a many things—one man lays down his land one way an’ another
+another—an’ I’ll not take it upon me to speak to no man’s farming, but
+my own—this I’ll say, as we’re all o’ one mind about our young squire.
+We’ve pretty nigh all on us known you when you war a little un, an’
+we’ve niver known anything on you but what was good an’ honorable. You
+speak fair an’ y’ act fair, an’ we’re joyful when we look forrard to
+your being our landlord, for we ’lieve you mean to do right by
+everybody, an’ ’ull make no man’s bread bitter to him if you can help
+it. That’s what I mean, an’ that’s what we all mean; and when a man’s
+said what he means, he’d better stop, for th’ ale ’ull be none the
+better for stannin’. An’ I’ll not say how we like th’ ale yet, for we
+couldna well taste it till we’d drunk your health in it; but the dinner
+was good, an’ if there’s anybody hasna enjoyed it, it must be the fault
+of his own inside. An’ as for the rector’s company, it’s well known as
+that’s welcome t’ all the parish wherever he may be; an’ I hope, an’ we
+all hope, as he’ll live to see us old folks, an’ our children grown to
+men an’ women an’ Your Honour a family man. I’ve no more to say as
+concerns the present time, an’ so we’ll drink our young squire’s
+health—three times three.”
+
+Hereupon a glorious shouting, a rapping, a jingling, a clattering, and
+a shouting, with plentiful _da capo_, pleasanter than a strain of
+sublimest music in the ears that receive such a tribute for the first
+time. Arthur had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Poyser’s
+speech, but it was too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being
+praised. Did he not deserve what was said of him on the whole? If there
+was something in his conduct that Poyser wouldn’t have liked if he had
+known it, why, no man’s conduct will bear too close an inspection; and
+Poyser was not likely to know it; and, after all, what had he done?
+Gone a little too far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his
+place would have acted much worse; and no harm would come—no harm
+_should_ come, for the next time he was alone with Hetty, he would
+explain to her that she must not think seriously of him or of what had
+passed. It was necessary to Arthur, you perceive, to be satisfied with
+himself. Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions
+for the future, which can be formed so rapidly that he had time to be
+uncomfortable and to become easy again before Mr. Poyser’s slow speech
+was finished, and when it was time for him to speak he was quite
+light-hearted.
+
+“I thank you all, my good friends and neighbours,” Arthur said, “for
+the good opinion of me, and the kind feelings towards me which Mr.
+Poyser has been expressing on your behalf and on his own, and it will
+always be my heartiest wish to deserve them. In the course of things we
+may expect that, if I live, I shall one day or other be your landlord;
+indeed, it is on the ground of that expectation that my grandfather has
+wished me to celebrate this day and to come among you now; and I look
+forward to this position, not merely as one of power and pleasure for
+myself, but as a means of benefiting my neighbours. It hardly becomes
+so young a man as I am to talk much about farming to you, who are most
+of you so much older, and are men of experience; still, I have
+interested myself a good deal in such matters, and learned as much
+about them as my opportunities have allowed; and when the course of
+events shall place the estate in my hands, it will be my first desire
+to afford my tenants all the encouragement a landlord can give them, in
+improving their land and trying to bring about a better practice of
+husbandry. It will be my wish to be looked on by all my deserving
+tenants as their best friend, and nothing would make me so happy as to
+be able to respect every man on the estate, and to be respected by him
+in return. It is not my place at present to enter into particulars; I
+only meet your good hopes concerning me by telling you that my own
+hopes correspond to them—that what you expect from me I desire to
+fulfil; and I am quite of Mr. Poyser’s opinion, that when a man has
+said what he means, he had better stop. But the pleasure I feel in
+having my own health drunk by you would not be perfect if we did not
+drink the health of my grandfather, who has filled the place of both
+parents to me. I will say no more, until you have joined me in drinking
+his health on a day when he has wished me to appear among you as the
+future representative of his name and family.”
+
+Perhaps there was no one present except Mr. Irwine who thoroughly
+understood and approved Arthur’s graceful mode of proposing his
+grandfather’s health. The farmers thought the young squire knew well
+enough that they hated the old squire, and Mrs. Poyser said, “he’d
+better not ha’ stirred a kettle o’ sour broth.” The bucolic mind does
+not readily apprehend the refinements of good taste. But the toast
+could not be rejected and when it had been drunk, Arthur said, “I thank
+you, both for my grandfather and myself; and now there is one more
+thing I wish to tell you, that you may share my pleasure about it, as I
+hope and believe you will. I think there can be no man here who has not
+a respect, and some of you, I am sure, have a very high regard, for my
+friend Adam Bede. It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood
+that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that
+whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the
+interests of those who employ him as for his own. I’m proud to say that
+I was very fond of Adam when I was a little boy, and I have never lost
+my old feeling for him—I think that shows that I know a good fellow
+when I find him. It has long been my wish that he should have the
+management of the woods on the estate, which happen to be very
+valuable, not only because I think so highly of his character, but
+because he has the knowledge and the skill which fit him for the place.
+And I am happy to tell you that it is my grandfather’s wish too, and it
+is now settled that Adam shall manage the woods—a change which I am
+sure will be very much for the advantage of the estate; and I hope you
+will by and by join me in drinking his health, and in wishing him all
+the prosperity in life that he deserves. But there is a still older
+friend of mine than Adam Bede present, and I need not tell you that it
+is Mr. Irwine. I’m sure you will agree with me that we must drink no
+other person’s health until we have drunk his. I know you have all
+reason to love him, but no one of his parishioners has so much reason
+as I. Come, charge your glasses, and let us drink to our excellent
+rector—three times three!”
+
+This toast was drunk with all the enthusiasm that was wanting to the
+last, and it certainly was the most picturesque moment in the scene
+when Mr. Irwine got up to speak, and all the faces in the room were
+turned towards him. The superior refinement of his face was much more
+striking than that of Arthur’s when seen in comparison with the people
+round them. Arthur’s was a much commoner British face, and the
+splendour of his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young
+farmer’s taste in costume than Mr. Irwine’s powder and the well-brushed
+but well-worn black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great
+occasions; for he had the mysterious secret of never wearing a
+new-looking coat.
+
+“This is not the first time, by a great many,” he said, “that I have
+had to thank my parishioners for giving me tokens of their goodwill,
+but neighbourly kindness is among those things that are the more
+precious the older they get. Indeed, our pleasant meeting to-day is a
+proof that when what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there
+is reason for rejoicing, and the relation between us as clergyman and
+parishioners came of age two years ago, for it is three-and-twenty
+years since I first came among you, and I see some tall fine-looking
+young men here, as well as some blooming young women, that were far
+from looking as pleasantly at me when I christened them as I am happy
+to see them looking now. But I’m sure you will not wonder when I say
+that among all those young men, the one in whom I have the strongest
+interest is my friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne, for whom you have just
+expressed your regard. I had the pleasure of being his tutor for
+several years, and have naturally had opportunities of knowing him
+intimately which cannot have occurred to any one else who is present;
+and I have some pride as well as pleasure in assuring you that I share
+your high hopes concerning him, and your confidence in his possession
+of those qualities which will make him an excellent landlord when the
+time shall come for him to take that important position among you. We
+feel alike on most matters on which a man who is getting towards fifty
+can feel in common with a young man of one-and-twenty, and he has just
+been expressing a feeling which I share very heartily, and I would not
+willingly omit the opportunity of saying so. That feeling is his value
+and respect for Adam Bede. People in a high station are of course more
+thought of and talked about and have their virtues more praised, than
+those whose lives are passed in humble everyday work; but every
+sensible man knows how necessary that humble everyday work is, and how
+important it is to us that it should be done well. And I agree with my
+friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne in feeling that when a man whose duty
+lies in that sort of work shows a character which would make him an
+example in any station, his merit should be acknowledged. He is one of
+those to whom honour is due, and his friends should delight to honour
+him. I know Adam Bede well—I know what he is as a workman, and what he
+has been as a son and brother—and I am saying the simplest truth when I
+say that I respect him as much as I respect any man living. But I am
+not speaking to you about a stranger; some of you are his intimate
+friends, and I believe there is not one here who does not know enough
+of him to join heartily in drinking his health.”
+
+As Mr. Irwine paused, Arthur jumped up and, filling his glass, said, “A
+bumper to Adam Bede, and may he live to have sons as faithful and
+clever as himself!”
+
+No hearer, not even Bartle Massey, was so delighted with this toast as
+Mr. Poyser. “Tough work” as his first speech had been, he would have
+started up to make another if he had not known the extreme irregularity
+of such a course. As it was, he found an outlet for his feeling in
+drinking his ale unusually fast, and setting down his glass with a
+swing of his arm and a determined rap. If Jonathan Burge and a few
+others felt less comfortable on the occasion, they tried their best to
+look contented, and so the toast was drunk with a goodwill apparently
+unanimous.
+
+Adam was rather paler than usual when he got up to thank his friends.
+He was a good deal moved by this public tribute—very naturally, for he
+was in the presence of all his little world, and it was uniting to do
+him honour. But he felt no shyness about speaking, not being troubled
+with small vanity or lack of words; he looked neither awkward nor
+embarrassed, but stood in his usual firm upright attitude, with his
+head thrown a little backward and his hands perfectly still, in that
+rough dignity which is peculiar to intelligent, honest, well-built
+workmen, who are never wondering what is their business in the world.
+
+“I’m quite taken by surprise,” he said. “I didn’t expect anything o’
+this sort, for it’s a good deal more than my wages. But I’ve the more
+reason to be grateful to you, Captain, and to you, Mr. Irwine, and to
+all my friends here, who’ve drunk my health and wished me well. It ’ud
+be nonsense for me to be saying, I don’t at all deserve th’ opinion you
+have of me; that ’ud be poor thanks to you, to say that you’ve known me
+all these years and yet haven’t sense enough to find out a great deal
+o’ the truth about me. You think, if I undertake to do a bit o’ work,
+I’ll do it well, be my pay big or little—and that’s true. I’d be
+ashamed to stand before you here if it wasna true. But it seems to me
+that’s a man’s plain duty, and nothing to be conceited about, and it’s
+pretty clear to me as I’ve never done more than my duty; for let us do
+what we will, it’s only making use o’ the sperrit and the powers that
+ha’ been given to us. And so this kindness o’ yours, I’m sure, is no
+debt you owe me, but a free gift, and as such I accept it and am
+thankful. And as to this new employment I’ve taken in hand, I’ll only
+say that I took it at Captain Donnithorne’s desire, and that I’ll try
+to fulfil his expectations. I’d wish for no better lot than to work
+under him, and to know that while I was getting my own bread I was
+taking care of his int’rests. For I believe he’s one o’ those gentlemen
+as wishes to do the right thing, and to leave the world a bit better
+than he found it, which it’s my belief every man may do, whether he’s
+gentle or simple, whether he sets a good bit o’ work going and finds
+the money, or whether he does the work with his own hands. There’s no
+occasion for me to say any more about what I feel towards him: I hope
+to show it through the rest o’ my life in my actions.”
+
+There were various opinions about Adam’s speech: some of the women
+whispered that he didn’t show himself thankful enough, and seemed to
+speak as proud as could be; but most of the men were of opinion that
+nobody could speak more straightfor’ard, and that Adam was as fine a
+chap as need to be. While such observations were being buzzed about,
+mingled with wonderings as to what the old squire meant to do for a
+bailiff, and whether he was going to have a steward, the two gentlemen
+had risen, and were walking round to the table where the wives and
+children sat. There was none of the strong ale here, of course, but
+wine and dessert—sparkling gooseberry for the young ones, and some good
+sherry for the mothers. Mrs. Poyser was at the head of this table, and
+Totty was now seated in her lap, bending her small nose deep down into
+a wine-glass in search of the nuts floating there.
+
+“How do you do, Mrs. Poyser?” said Arthur. “Weren’t you pleased to hear
+your husband make such a good speech to-day?”
+
+“Oh, sir, the men are mostly so tongue-tied—you’re forced partly to
+guess what they mean, as you do wi’ the dumb creaturs.”
+
+“What! you think you could have made it better for him?” said Mr.
+Irwine, laughing.
+
+“Well, sir, when I want to say anything, I can mostly find words to say
+it in, thank God. Not as I’m a-finding faut wi’ my husband, for if he’s
+a man o’ few words, what he says he’ll stand to.”
+
+“I’m sure I never saw a prettier party than this,” Arthur said, looking
+round at the apple-cheeked children. “My aunt and the Miss Irwines will
+come up and see you presently. They were afraid of the noise of the
+toasts, but it would be a shame for them not to see you at table.”
+
+He walked on, speaking to the mothers and patting the children, while
+Mr. Irwine satisfied himself with standing still and nodding at a
+distance, that no one’s attention might be disturbed from the young
+squire, the hero of the day. Arthur did not venture to stop near Hetty,
+but merely bowed to her as he passed along the opposite side. The
+foolish child felt her heart swelling with discontent; for what woman
+was ever satisfied with apparent neglect, even when she knows it to be
+the mask of love? Hetty thought this was going to be the most miserable
+day she had had for a long while, a moment of chill daylight and
+reality came across her dream: Arthur, who had seemed so near to her
+only a few hours before, was separated from her, as the hero of a great
+procession is separated from a small outsider in the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+The Games
+
+
+The great dance was not to begin until eight o’clock, but for any lads
+and lasses who liked to dance on the shady grass before then, there was
+music always at hand—for was not the band of the Benefit Club capable
+of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this,
+there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful
+wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful
+show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann’s
+fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided
+himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to
+prefer dancing to a solo on that instrument.
+
+Meantime, when the sun had moved off the great open space in front of
+the house, the games began. There were, of course, well-soaped poles to
+be climbed by the boys and youths, races to be run by the old women,
+races to be run in sacks, heavy weights to be lifted by the strong men,
+and a long list of challenges to such ambitious attempts as that of
+walking as many yards possible on one leg—feats in which it was
+generally remarked that Wiry Ben, being “the lissom’st, springest
+fellow i’ the country,” was sure to be pre-eminent. To crown all, there
+was to be a donkey-race—that sublimest of all races, conducted on the
+grand socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else’s
+donkey, and the sorriest donkey winning.
+
+And soon after four o’clock, splendid old Mrs. Irwine, in her damask
+satin and jewels and black lace, was led out by Arthur, followed by the
+whole family party, to her raised seat under the striped marquee, where
+she was to give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia
+had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and
+Arthur was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother’s
+taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean,
+finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of
+punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking
+neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came
+last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides
+Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for the
+neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were
+required for the entertainment of the tenants.
+
+There was a sunk fence in front of the marquee, dividing the lawn from
+the park, but a temporary bridge had been made for the passage of the
+victors, and the groups of people standing, or seated here and there on
+benches, stretched on each side of the open space from the white
+marquees up to the sunk fence.
+
+“Upon my word it’s a pretty sight,” said the old lady, in her deep
+voice, when she was seated, and looked round on the bright scene with
+its dark-green background; “and it’s the last fête-day I’m likely to
+see, unless you make haste and get married, Arthur. But take care you
+get a charming bride, else I would rather die without seeing her.”
+
+“You’re so terribly fastidious, Godmother,” said Arthur, “I’m afraid I
+should never satisfy you with my choice.”
+
+“Well, I won’t forgive you if she’s not handsome. I can’t be put off
+with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the
+existence of plain people. And she must not be silly; that will never
+do, because you’ll want managing, and a silly woman can’t manage you.
+Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face? There,
+standing without his hat, and taking such care of that tall old woman
+by the side of him—his mother, of course. I like to see that.”
+
+“What, don’t you know him, Mother?” said Mr. Irwine. “That is Seth
+Bede, Adam’s brother—a Methodist, but a very good fellow. Poor Seth has
+looked rather down-hearted of late; I thought it was because of his
+father’s dying in that sad way, but Joshua Rann tells me he wanted to
+marry that sweet little Methodist preacher who was here about a month
+ago, and I suppose she refused him.”
+
+“Ah, I remember hearing about her. But there are no end of people here
+that I don’t know, for they’re grown up and altered so since I used to
+go about.”
+
+“What excellent sight you have!” said old Mr. Donnithorne, who was
+holding a double glass up to his eyes, “to see the expression of that
+young man’s face so far off. His face is nothing but a pale blurred
+spot to me. But I fancy I have the advantage of you when we come to
+look close. I can read small print without spectacles.”
+
+“Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those
+near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles
+to read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things
+at a distance. I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should
+be blind to everything that wasn’t out of other people’s sight, like a
+man who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars.”
+
+“See,” said Arthur, “the old women are ready to set out on their race
+now. Which do you bet on, Gawaine?”
+
+“The long-legged one, unless they’re going to have several heats, and
+then the little wiry one may win.”
+
+“There are the Poysers, Mother, not far off on the right hand,” said
+Miss Irwine. “Mrs. Poyser is looking at you. Do take notice of her.”
+
+“To be sure I will,” said the old lady, giving a gracious bow to Mrs.
+Poyser. “A woman who sends me such excellent cream-cheese is not to be
+neglected. Bless me! What a fat child that is she is holding on her
+knee! But who is that pretty girl with dark eyes?”
+
+“That is Hetty Sorrel,” said Miss Lydia Donnithorne, “Martin Poyser’s
+niece—a very likely young person, and well-looking too. My maid has
+taught her fine needlework, and she has mended some lace of mine very
+respectably indeed—very respectably.”
+
+“Why, she has lived with the Poysers six or seven years, Mother; you
+must have seen her,” said Miss Irwine.
+
+“No, I’ve never seen her, child—at least not as she is now,” said Mrs.
+Irwine, continuing to look at Hetty. “Well-looking, indeed! She’s a
+perfect beauty! I’ve never seen anything so pretty since my young days.
+What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the
+farmers, when it’s wanted so terribly among the good families without
+fortune! I daresay, now, she’ll marry a man who would have thought her
+just as pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair.”
+
+Arthur dared not turn his eyes towards Hetty while Mrs. Irwine was
+speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with
+something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without
+looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty
+praised—for other men’s opinion, you know, was like a native climate to
+Arthur’s feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and
+grew strong. Yes! She _was_ enough to turn any man’s head: any man in
+his place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after
+all, as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always
+look back upon with pride.
+
+“No, Mother,” and Mr. Irwine, replying to her last words; “I can’t
+agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you
+imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is
+conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a
+coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man
+may be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more
+refined beauty has on him, but he feels it.”
+
+“Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?”
+
+“Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than
+married men, because they have time for more general contemplation.
+Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling
+one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty
+Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached
+to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the
+utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is—though she doesn’t
+know it—that there’s so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about
+her. Such a woman as that brings with her ‘airs from heaven’ that the
+coarsest fellow is not insensible to.”
+
+“Here’s a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a
+prize, I suppose,” said Mr. Gawaine. “She must be one of the racers in
+the sacks, who had set off before we came.”
+
+The “bit of womanhood” was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage,
+otherwise Chad’s Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had
+undergone an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a
+heavenly body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say,
+had taken to her ear-rings again since Dinah’s departure, and was
+otherwise decked out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one
+who could have looked into poor Bessy’s heart would have seen a
+striking resemblance between her little hopes and anxieties and
+Hetty’s. The advantage, perhaps, would have been on Bessy’s side in the
+matter of feeling. But then, you see, they were so very different
+outside! You would have been inclined to box Bessy’s ears, and you
+would have longed to kiss Hetty.
+
+Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere
+hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there
+were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached
+the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation
+sparkling in her round eyes.
+
+“Here is the prize for the first sack-race,” said Miss Lydia, taking a
+large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to
+Mrs. Irwine before Bessy came up, “an excellent grogram gown and a
+piece of flannel.”
+
+“You didn’t think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?” said
+Arthur. “Couldn’t you find something else for this girl, and save that
+grim-looking gown for one of the older women?”
+
+“I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial,” said Miss
+Lydia, adjusting her own lace; “I should not think of encouraging a
+love of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak,
+but that is for the old woman who wins.”
+
+This speech of Miss Lydia’s produced rather a mocking expression in
+Mrs. Irwine’s face as she looked at Arthur, while Bessy came up and
+dropped a series of curtsies.
+
+“This is Bessy Cranage, mother,” said Mr. Irwine, kindly, “Chad
+Cranage’s daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?”
+
+“Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs. Irwine. “Well, Bessy, here is your
+prize—excellent warm things for winter. I’m sure you have had hard work
+to win them this warm day.”
+
+Bessy’s lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown—which felt so hot and
+disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to
+carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a
+growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned
+away.
+
+“Poor girl,” said Arthur; “I think she’s disappointed. I wish it had
+been something more to her taste.”
+
+“She’s a bold-looking young person,” observed Miss Lydia. “Not at all
+one I should like to encourage.”
+
+Arthur silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money
+before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind;
+but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of
+the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing
+down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry—very much tittered at
+the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her
+discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just
+given the baby into her husband’s charge.
+
+“What’s the matter wi’ ye?” said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle
+and examining it. “Ye’n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that
+fool’s race. An’ here, they’n gi’en you lots o’ good grogram and
+flannel, as should ha’ been gi’en by good rights to them as had the
+sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o’ this
+grogram to make clothes for the lad—ye war ne’er ill-natured, Bess; I
+ne’er said that on ye.”
+
+“Ye may take it all, for what I care,” said Bess the maiden, with a
+pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself.
+
+“Well, I could do wi’t, if so be ye want to get rid on’t,” said the
+disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad’s
+Bess should change her mind.
+
+But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits
+that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand
+climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost
+in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey
+by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the
+strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the
+arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental
+force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the
+first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill
+just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd,
+radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate
+rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the
+midst of its triumph.
+
+Arthur himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made
+happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets
+enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned
+from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be
+understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the
+gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous
+performance—namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless
+borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and
+complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality.
+Wiry Ben’s pride in his dancing—an accomplishment productive of great
+effect at the yearly Wake—had needed only slightly elevating by an
+extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be
+very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been
+decidedly encouraged in this idea by Joshua Rann, who observed that it
+was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in
+return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised at
+this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Ben had
+requested Mr. Rann to accompany him on the fiddle, and Joshua felt
+quite sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the
+music would make up for it. Adam Bede, who was present in one of the
+large marquees, where the plan was being discussed, told Ben he had
+better not make a fool of himself—a remark which at once fixed Ben’s
+determination: he was not going to let anything alone because Adam Bede
+turned up his nose at it.
+
+“What’s this, what’s this?” said old Mr. Donnithorne. “Is it something
+you’ve arranged, Arthur? Here’s the clerk coming with his fiddle, and a
+smart fellow with a nosegay in his button-hole.”
+
+“No,” said Arthur; “I know nothing about it. By Jove, he’s going to
+dance! It’s one of the carpenters—I forget his name at this moment.”
+
+“It’s Ben Cranage—Wiry Ben, they call him,” said Mr. Irwine; “rather a
+loose fish, I think. Anne, my dear, I see that fiddle-scraping is too
+much for you: you’re getting tired. Let me take you in now, that you
+may rest till dinner.”
+
+Miss Anne rose assentingly, and the good brother took her away, while
+Joshua’s preliminary scrapings burst into the “White Cockade,” from
+which he intended to pass to a variety of tunes, by a series of
+transitions which his good ear really taught him to execute with some
+skill. It would have been an exasperating fact to him, if he had known
+it, that the general attention was too thoroughly absorbed by Ben’s
+dancing for any one to give much heed to the music.
+
+Have you ever seen a real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps
+you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in
+crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements
+of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the “Bird Waltz” is
+like the song of birds. Wiry Ben never smiled: he looked as serious as
+a dancing monkey—as serious as if he had been an experimental
+philosopher ascertaining in his own person the amount of shaking and
+the varieties of angularity that could be given to the human limbs.
+
+To make amends for the abundant laughter in the striped marquee, Arthur
+clapped his hands continually and cried “Bravo!” But Ben had one
+admirer whose eyes followed his movements with a fervid gravity that
+equalled his own. It was Martin Poyser, who was seated on a bench, with
+Tommy between his legs.
+
+“What dost think o’ that?” he said to his wife. “He goes as pat to the
+music as if he was made o’ clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at
+dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha’ hit it just to
+th’ hair like that.”
+
+“It’s little matter what his limbs are, to my thinking,” re-turned Mrs.
+Poyser. “He’s empty enough i’ the upper story, or he’d niver come
+jigging an’ stamping i’ that way, like a mad grasshopper, for the
+gentry to look at him. They’re fit to die wi’ laughing, I can see.”
+
+“Well, well, so much the better, it amuses ’em,” said Mr. Poyser, who
+did not easily take an irritable view of things. “But they’re going
+away now, t’ have their dinner, I reckon. We’ll move about a bit, shall
+we, and see what Adam Bede’s doing. He’s got to look after the drinking
+and things: I doubt he hasna had much fun.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+The Dance
+
+
+Arthur had chosen the entrance-hall for the ballroom: very wisely, for
+no other room could have been so airy, or would have had the advantage
+of the wide doors opening into the garden, as well as a ready entrance
+into the other rooms. To be sure, a stone floor was not the pleasantest
+to dance on, but then, most of the dancers had known what it was to
+enjoy a Christmas dance on kitchen quarries. It was one of those
+entrance-halls which make the surrounding rooms look like closets—with
+stucco angels, trumpets, and flower-wreaths on the lofty ceiling, and
+great medallions of miscellaneous heroes on the walls, alternating with
+statues in niches. Just the sort of place to be ornamented well with
+green boughs, and Mr. Craig had been proud to show his taste and his
+hothouse plants on the occasion. The broad steps of the stone staircase
+were covered with cushions to serve as seats for the children, who were
+to stay till half-past nine with the servant-maids to see the dancing,
+and as this dance was confined to the chief tenants, there was abundant
+room for every one. The lights were charmingly disposed in
+coloured-paper lamps, high up among green boughs, and the farmers’
+wives and daughters, as they peeped in, believed no scene could be more
+splendid; they knew now quite well in what sort of rooms the king and
+queen lived, and their thoughts glanced with some pity towards cousins
+and acquaintances who had not this fine opportunity of knowing how
+things went on in the great world. The lamps were already lit, though
+the sun had not long set, and there was that calm light out of doors in
+which we seem to see all objects more distinctly than in the broad day.
+
+It was a pretty scene outside the house: the farmers and their families
+were moving about the lawn, among the flowers and shrubs, or along the
+broad straight road leading from the east front, where a carpet of
+mossy grass spread on each side, studded here and there with a dark
+flat-boughed cedar, or a grand pyramidal fir sweeping the ground with
+its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of
+cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being
+attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the
+windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their
+dancing-room, and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go
+home quietly. One of these was Lisbeth Bede, and Seth went with her—not
+from filial attention only, for his conscience would not let him join
+in dancing. It had been rather a melancholy day to Seth: Dinah had
+never been more constantly present with him than in this scene, where
+everything was so unlike her. He saw her all the more vividly after
+looking at the thoughtless faces and gay-coloured dresses of the young
+women—just as one feels the beauty and the greatness of a pictured
+Madonna the more when it has been for a moment screened from us by a
+vulgar head in a bonnet. But this presence of Dinah in his mind only
+helped him to bear the better with his mother’s mood, which had been
+becoming more and more querulous for the last hour. Poor Lisbeth was
+suffering from a strange conflict of feelings. Her joy and pride in the
+honour paid to her darling son Adam was beginning to be worsted in the
+conflict with the jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Adam
+came to tell her that Captain Donnithorne desired him to join the
+dancers in the hall. Adam was getting more and more out of her reach;
+she wished all the old troubles back again, for then it mattered more
+to Adam what his mother said and did.
+
+“Eh, it’s fine talkin’ o’ dancin’,” she said, “an’ thy father not a
+five week in’s grave. An’ I wish I war there too, i’stid o’ bein’ left
+to take up merrier folks’s room above ground.”
+
+“Nay, don’t look at it i’ that way, Mother,” said Adam, who was
+determined to be gentle to her to-day. “I don’t mean to dance—I shall
+only look on. And since the captain wishes me to be there, it ’ud look
+as if I thought I knew better than him to say as I’d rather not stay.
+And thee know’st how he’s behaved to me to-day.”
+
+“Eh, thee’t do as thee lik’st, for thy old mother’s got no right t’
+hinder thee. She’s nought but th’ old husk, and thee’st slipped away
+from her, like the ripe nut.”
+
+“Well, Mother,” said Adam, “I’ll go and tell the captain as it hurts
+thy feelings for me to stay, and I’d rather go home upo’ that account:
+he won’t take it ill then, I daresay, and I’m willing.” He said this
+with some effort, for he really longed to be near Hetty this evening.
+
+“Nay, nay, I wonna ha’ thee do that—the young squire ’ull be angered.
+Go an’ do what thee’t ordered to do, an’ me and Seth ’ull go whome. I
+know it’s a grit honour for thee to be so looked on—an’ who’s to be
+prouder on it nor thy mother? Hadna she the cumber o’ rearin’ thee an’
+doin’ for thee all these ’ears?”
+
+“Well, good-bye, then, Mother—good-bye, lad—remember Gyp when you get
+home,” said Adam, turning away towards the gate of the
+pleasure-grounds, where he hoped he might be able to join the Poysers,
+for he had been so occupied throughout the afternoon that he had had no
+time to speak to Hetty. His eye soon detected a distant group, which he
+knew to be the right one, returning to the house along the broad gravel
+road, and he hastened on to meet them.
+
+“Why, Adam, I’m glad to get sight on y’ again,” said Mr. Poyser, who
+was carrying Totty on his arm. “You’re going t’ have a bit o’ fun, I
+hope, now your work’s all done. And here’s Hetty has promised no end o’
+partners, an’ I’ve just been askin’ her if she’d agreed to dance wi’
+you, an’ she says no.”
+
+“Well, I didn’t think o’ dancing to-night,” said Adam, already tempted
+to change his mind, as he looked at Hetty.
+
+“Nonsense!” said Mr. Poyser. “Why, everybody’s goin’ to dance to-night,
+all but th’ old squire and Mrs. Irwine. Mrs. Best’s been tellin’ us as
+Miss Lyddy and Miss Irwine ’ull dance, an’ the young squire ’ull pick
+my wife for his first partner, t’ open the ball: so she’ll be forced to
+dance, though she’s laid by ever sin’ the Christmas afore the little un
+was born. You canna for shame stand still, Adam, an’ you a fine young
+fellow and can dance as well as anybody.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mrs. Poyser, “it ’ud be unbecomin’. I know the
+dancin’s nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it’s
+nonsense, you wonna go far i’ this life. When your broth’s ready-made
+for you, you mun swallow the thickenin’, or else let the broth alone.”
+
+“Then if Hetty ’ull dance with me,” said Adam, yielding either to Mrs.
+Poyser’s argument or to something else, “I’ll dance whichever dance
+she’s free.”
+
+“I’ve got no partner for the fourth dance,” said Hetty; “I’ll dance
+that with you, if you like.”
+
+“Ah,” said Mr. Poyser, “but you mun dance the first dance, Adam, else
+it’ll look partic’ler. There’s plenty o’ nice partners to pick an’
+choose from, an’ it’s hard for the gells when the men stan’ by and
+don’t ask ’em.”
+
+Adam felt the justice of Mr. Poyser’s observation: it would not do for
+him to dance with no one besides Hetty; and remembering that Jonathan
+Burge had some reason to feel hurt to-day, he resolved to ask Miss Mary
+to dance with him the first dance, if she had no other partner.
+
+“There’s the big clock strikin’ eight,” said Mr. Poyser; “we must make
+haste in now, else the squire and the ladies ’ull be in afore us, an’
+that wouldna look well.”
+
+When they had entered the hall, and the three children under Molly’s
+charge had been seated on the stairs, the folding-doors of the
+drawing-room were thrown open, and Arthur entered in his regimentals,
+leading Mrs. Irwine to a carpet-covered dais ornamented with hot-house
+plants, where she and Miss Anne were to be seated with old Mr.
+Donnithorne, that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings and
+queens in the plays. Arthur had put on his uniform to please the
+tenants, he said, who thought as much of his militia dignity as if it
+had been an elevation to the premiership. He had not the least
+objection to gratify them in that way: his uniform was very
+advantageous to his figure.
+
+The old squire, before sitting down, walked round the hall to greet the
+tenants and make polite speeches to the wives: he was always polite;
+but the farmers had found out, after long puzzling, that this polish
+was one of the signs of hardness. It was observed that he gave his most
+elaborate civility to Mrs. Poyser to-night, inquiring particularly
+about her health, recommending her to strengthen herself with cold
+water as he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Poyser curtsied and thanked
+him with great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered
+to her husband, “I’ll lay my life he’s brewin’ some nasty turn against
+us. Old Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin’.” Mr. Poyser had no
+time to answer, for now Arthur came up and said, “Mrs. Poyser, I’m come
+to request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr.
+Poyser, you must let me take you to my aunt, for she claims you as her
+partner.”
+
+The wife’s pale cheek flushed with a nervous sense of unwonted honour
+as Arthur led her to the top of the room; but Mr. Poyser, to whom an
+extra glass had restored his youthful confidence in his good looks and
+good dancing, walked along with them quite proudly, secretly flattering
+himself that Miss Lydia had never had a partner in _her_ life who could
+lift her off the ground as he would. In order to balance the honours
+given to the two parishes, Miss Irwine danced with Luke Britton, the
+largest Broxton farmer, and Mr. Gawaine led out Mrs. Britton. Mr.
+Irwine, after seating his sister Anne, had gone to the abbey gallery,
+as he had agreed with Arthur beforehand, to see how the merriment of
+the cottagers was prospering. Meanwhile, all the less distinguished
+couples had taken their places: Hetty was led out by the inevitable Mr.
+Craig, and Mary Burge by Adam; and now the music struck up, and the
+glorious country-dance, best of all dances, began.
+
+Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the
+thick shoes would have been better than any drums. That merry stamping,
+that gracious nodding of the head, that waving bestowal of the
+hand—where can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered
+matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy,
+remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young
+maidens by their side—that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands
+paying little compliments to their wives, as if their courting days
+were come again—those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward
+with their partners, having nothing to say—it would be a pleasant
+variety to see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large
+skirts, and scanning glances exploring costumes, and languid men in
+lacquered boots smiling with double meaning.
+
+There was but one thing to mar Martin Poyser’s pleasure in this dance:
+it was that he was always in close contact with Luke Britton, that
+slovenly farmer. He thought of throwing a little glazed coldness into
+his eye in the crossing of hands; but then, as Miss Irwine was opposite
+to him instead of the offensive Luke, he might freeze the wrong person.
+So he gave his face up to hilarity, unchilled by moral judgments.
+
+How Hetty’s heart beat as Arthur approached her! He had hardly looked
+at her to-day: now he _must_ take her hand. Would he press it? Would he
+look at her? She thought she would cry if he gave her no sign of
+feeling. Now he was there—he had taken her hand—yes, he was pressing
+it. Hetty turned pale as she looked up at him for an instant and met
+his eyes, before the dance carried him away. That pale look came upon
+Arthur like the beginning of a dull pain, which clung to him, though he
+must dance and smile and joke all the same. Hetty would look so, when
+he told her what he had to tell her; and he should never be able to
+bear it—he should be a fool and give way again. Hetty’s look did not
+really mean so much as he thought: it was only the sign of a struggle
+between the desire for him to notice her and the dread lest she should
+betray the desire to others. But Hetty’s face had a language that
+transcended her feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a
+meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters
+beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone
+generations—eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is
+somewhere, but not paired with these eyes—perhaps paired with pale eyes
+that can say nothing; just as a national language may be instinct with
+poetry unfelt by the lips that use it. That look of Hetty’s oppressed
+Arthur with a dread which yet had something of a terrible unconfessed
+delight in it, that she loved him too well. There was a hard task
+before him, for at that moment he felt he would have given up three
+years of his youth for the happiness of abandoning himself without
+remorse to his passion for Hetty.
+
+These were the incongruous thoughts in his mind as he led Mrs. Poyser,
+who was panting with fatigue, and secretly resolving that neither judge
+nor jury should force her to dance another dance, to take a quiet rest
+in the dining-room, where supper was laid out for the guests to come
+and take it as they chose.
+
+“I’ve desired Hetty to remember as she’s got to dance wi’ you, sir,”
+said the good innocent woman; “for she’s so thoughtless, she’d be like
+enough to go an’ engage herself for ivery dance. So I told her not to
+promise too many.”
+
+“Thank you, Mrs. Poyser,” said Arthur, not without a twinge. “Now, sit
+down in this comfortable chair, and here is Mills ready to give you
+what you would like best.”
+
+He hurried away to seek another matronly partner, for due honour must
+be paid to the married women before he asked any of the young ones; and
+the country-dances, and the stamping, and the gracious nodding, and the
+waving of the hands, went on joyously.
+
+At last the time had come for the fourth dance—longed for by the
+strong, grave Adam, as if he had been a delicate-handed youth of
+eighteen; for we are all very much alike when we are in our first love;
+and Adam had hardly ever touched Hetty’s hand for more than a transient
+greeting—had never danced with her but once before. His eyes had
+followed her eagerly to-night in spite of himself, and had taken in
+deeper draughts of love. He thought she behaved so prettily, so
+quietly; she did not seem to be flirting at all, she smiled less than
+usual; there was almost a sweet sadness about her. “God bless her!” he
+said inwardly; “I’d make her life a happy ’un, if a strong arm to work
+for her, and a heart to love her, could do it.”
+
+And then there stole over him delicious thoughts of coming home from
+work, and drawing Hetty to his side, and feeling her cheek softly
+pressed against his, till he forgot where he was, and the music and the
+tread of feet might have been the falling of rain and the roaring of
+the wind, for what he knew.
+
+But now the third dance was ended, and he might go up to her and claim
+her hand. She was at the far end of the hall near the staircase,
+whispering with Molly, who had just given the sleeping Totty into her
+arms before running to fetch shawls and bonnets from the landing. Mrs.
+Poyser had taken the two boys away into the dining-room to give them
+some cake before they went home in the cart with Grandfather and Molly
+was to follow as fast as possible.
+
+“Let me hold her,” said Adam, as Molly turned upstairs; “the children
+are so heavy when they’re asleep.”
+
+Hetty was glad of the relief, for to hold Totty in her arms, standing,
+was not at all a pleasant variety to her. But this second transfer had
+the unfortunate effect of rousing Totty, who was not behind any child
+of her age in peevishness at an unseasonable awaking. While Hetty was
+in the act of placing her in Adam’s arms, and had not yet withdrawn her
+own, Totty opened her eyes, and forthwith fought out with her left fist
+at Adam’s arm, and with her right caught at the string of brown beads
+round Hetty’s neck. The locket leaped out from her frock, and the next
+moment the string was broken, and Hetty, helpless, saw beads and locket
+scattered wide on the floor.
+
+“My locket, my locket!” she said, in a loud frightened whisper to Adam;
+“never mind the beads.”
+
+Adam had already seen where the locket fell, for it had attracted his
+glance as it leaped out of her frock. It had fallen on the raised
+wooden dais where the band sat, not on the stone floor; and as Adam
+picked it up, he saw the glass with the dark and light locks of hair
+under it. It had fallen that side upwards, so the glass was not broken.
+He turned it over on his hand, and saw the enamelled gold back.
+
+“It isn’t hurt,” he said, as he held it towards Hetty, who was unable
+to take it because both her hands were occupied with Totty.
+
+“Oh, it doesn’t matter, I don’t mind about it,” said Hetty, who had
+been pale and was now red.
+
+“Not matter?” said Adam, gravely. “You seemed very frightened about it.
+I’ll hold it till you’re ready to take it,” he added, quietly closing
+his hand over it, that she might not think he wanted to look at it
+again.
+
+By this time Molly had come with bonnet and shawl, and as soon as she
+had taken Totty, Adam placed the locket in Hetty’s hand. She took it
+with an air of indifference and put it in her pocket, in her heart
+vexed and angry with Adam because he had seen it, but determined now
+that she would show no more signs of agitation.
+
+“See,” she said, “they’re taking their places to dance; let us go.”
+
+Adam assented silently. A puzzled alarm had taken possession of him.
+Had Hetty a lover he didn’t know of? For none of her relations, he was
+sure, would give her a locket like that; and none of her admirers, with
+whom he was acquainted, was in the position of an accepted lover, as
+the giver of that locket must be. Adam was lost in the utter
+impossibility of finding any person for his fears to alight on. He
+could only feel with a terrible pang that there was something in
+Hetty’s life unknown to him; that while he had been rocking himself in
+the hope that she would come to love him, she was already loving
+another. The pleasure of the dance with Hetty was gone; his eyes, when
+they rested on her, had an uneasy questioning expression in them; he
+could think of nothing to say to her; and she too was out of temper and
+disinclined to speak. They were both glad when the dance was ended.
+
+Adam was determined to stay no longer; no one wanted him, and no one
+would notice if he slipped away. As soon as he got out of doors, he
+began to walk at his habitual rapid pace, hurrying along without
+knowing why, busy with the painful thought that the memory of this day,
+so full of honour and promise to him, was poisoned for ever. Suddenly,
+when he was far on through the Chase, he stopped, startled by a flash
+of reviving hope. After all, he might be a fool, making a great misery
+out of a trifle. Hetty, fond of finery as she was, might have bought
+the thing herself. It looked too expensive for that—it looked like the
+things on white satin in the great jeweller’s shop at Rosseter. But
+Adam had very imperfect notions of the value of such things, and he
+thought it could certainly not cost more than a guinea. Perhaps Hetty
+had had as much as that in Christmas boxes, and there was no knowing
+but she might have been childish enough to spend it in that way; she
+was such a young thing, and she couldn’t help loving finery! But then,
+why had she been so frightened about it at first, and changed colour
+so, and afterwards pretended not to care? Oh, that was because she was
+ashamed of his seeing that she had such a smart thing—she was conscious
+that it was wrong for her to spend her money on it, and she knew that
+Adam disapproved of finery. It was a proof she cared about what he
+liked and disliked. She must have thought from his silence and gravity
+afterwards that he was very much displeased with her, that he was
+inclined to be harsh and severe towards her foibles. And as he walked
+on more quietly, chewing the cud of this new hope, his only uneasiness
+was that he had behaved in a way which might chill Hetty’s feeling
+towards him. For this last view of the matter _must_ be the true one.
+How could Hetty have an accepted lover, quite unknown to him? She was
+never away from her uncle’s house for more than a day; she could have
+no acquaintances that did not come there, and no intimacies unknown to
+her uncle and aunt. It would be folly to believe that the locket was
+given to her by a lover. The little ring of dark hair he felt sure was
+her own; he could form no guess about the light hair under it, for he
+had not seen it very distinctly. It might be a bit of her father’s or
+mother’s, who had died when she was a child, and she would naturally
+put a bit of her own along with it.
+
+And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an
+ingenious web of probabilities—the surest screen a wise man can place
+between himself and the truth. His last waking thoughts melted into a
+dream that he was with Hetty again at the Hall Farm, and that he was
+asking her to forgive him for being so cold and silent.
+
+And while he was dreaming this, Arthur was leading Hetty to the dance
+and saying to her in low hurried tones, “I shall be in the wood the day
+after to-morrow at seven; come as early as you can.” And Hetty’s
+foolish joys and hopes, which had flown away for a little space, scared
+by a mere nothing, now all came fluttering back, unconscious of the
+real peril. She was happy for the first time this long day, and wished
+that dance would last for hours. Arthur wished it too; it was the last
+weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more
+delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has
+persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
+
+But Mrs. Poyser’s wishes were quite the reverse of this, for her mind
+was filled with dreary forebodings as to the retardation of to-morrow
+morning’s cheese in consequence of these late hours. Now that Hetty had
+done her duty and danced one dance with the young squire, Mr. Poyser
+must go out and see if the cart was come back to fetch them, for it was
+half-past ten o’clock, and notwithstanding a mild suggestion on his
+part that it would be bad manners for them to be the first to go, Mrs.
+Poyser was resolute on the point, “manners or no manners.”
+
+“What! Going already, Mrs. Poyser?” said old Mr. Donnithorne, as she
+came to curtsy and take leave; “I thought we should not part with any
+of our guests till eleven. Mrs. Irwine and I, who are elderly people,
+think of sitting out the dance till then.”
+
+“Oh, Your Honour, it’s all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up
+by candlelight—they’ve got no cheese on their minds. We’re late enough
+as it is, an’ there’s no lettin’ the cows know as they mustn’t want to
+be milked so early to-morrow mornin’. So, if you’ll please t’ excuse
+us, we’ll take our leave.”
+
+“Eh!” she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, “I’d sooner
+ha’ brewin’ day and washin’ day together than one o’ these pleasurin’
+days. There’s no work so tirin’ as danglin’ about an’ starin’ an’ not
+rightly knowin’ what you’re goin’ to do next; and keepin’ your face i’
+smilin’ order like a grocer o’ market-day for fear people shouldna
+think you civil enough. An’ you’ve nothing to show for’t when it’s
+done, if it isn’t a yallow face wi’ eatin’ things as disagree.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, who was in his merriest mood, and felt
+that he had had a great day, “a bit o’ pleasuring’s good for thee
+sometimes. An’ thee danc’st as well as any of ’em, for I’ll back thee
+against all the wives i’ the parish for a light foot an’ ankle. An’ it
+was a great honour for the young squire to ask thee first—I reckon it
+was because I sat at th’ head o’ the table an’ made the speech. An’
+Hetty too—_she_ never had such a partner before—a fine young gentleman
+in reg’mentals. It’ll serve you to talk on, Hetty, when you’re an old
+woman—how you danced wi’ th’ young squire the day he come o’ age.”
+
+
+
+
+Book Fourth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+A crisis
+
+
+It was beyond the middle of August—nearly three weeks after the
+birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland
+county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded by
+the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage
+throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope
+farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered valleys,
+had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such
+exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own,
+you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid
+rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in
+their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying
+winds flattered this hope.
+
+The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked
+brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of
+cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind
+the Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden
+for a moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the
+leaves, still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind;
+around the farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples
+fell in the orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the
+lanes and on the common had their manes blown about their faces. And
+yet the wind seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun
+was shining. A merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see
+if they could top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people
+too were in good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when
+the wind had fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown
+out of the husk and scattered as untimely seed!
+
+And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if
+it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a
+presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she
+seems unmindful, unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has
+not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does
+not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius
+and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what
+wonder that Nature’s mood is often in harsh contrast with the great
+crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn,
+as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much
+of—to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other
+the more.
+
+It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work,
+for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some
+satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan
+was slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work
+cheerfully, for his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time
+she had seen him since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort
+to behave all the more kindly to him, that she might make him
+understand she had forgiven his silence and coldness during the dance.
+He had never mentioned the locket to her again; too happy that she
+smiled at him—still happier because he observed in her a more subdued
+air, something that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness
+and seriousness. “Ah!” he thought, again and again, “she’s only
+seventeen; she’ll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt
+allays says how clever she is at the work. She’ll make a wife as
+Mother’ll have no occasion to grumble at, after all.” To be sure, he
+had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday,
+when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had
+joined the party of upper servants from the Chase and had gone home
+with them—almost as if she were inclined to encourage Mr. Craig. “She’s
+takin’ too much likin’ to them folks i’ the housekeeper’s room,” Mrs.
+Poyser remarked. “For my part, I was never overfond o’ gentlefolks’s
+servants—they’re mostly like the fine ladies’ fat dogs, nayther good
+for barking nor butcher’s meat, but on’y for show.” And another evening
+she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things; though, to his great
+surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at a distance getting
+over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But, when he hastened
+to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again when he had
+taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther into the
+fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn’t want to go in,
+she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always made
+such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. “Oh, do come in with me!”
+she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and he
+could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented
+with only a slight remark on Hetty’s being later than was expected;
+while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and
+talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude.
+
+That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure
+for going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going
+to the Chase to sew with the lady’s maid, so he would get as much work
+done as possible this evening, that the next might be clear.
+
+One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs
+at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as
+bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to
+let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it one
+day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the
+squire’s undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr.
+Casson’s agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take
+the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it.
+However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all
+dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order
+with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere, he
+had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the
+afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had
+calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to
+be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and
+Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as
+to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel
+for implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So,
+when the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and
+busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the
+expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him
+on persuading the squire to consent. To “make a good job” of anything,
+however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block,
+with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and
+then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of
+gratification—of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he
+loved also to think, “I did it!” And I believe the only people who are
+free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own.
+It was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again;
+and on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been
+working here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. “Why, th’
+lad’s forgot his tools,” thought Adam, “and he’s got to work up at the
+shop to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he’d
+leave his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it’s lucky I’ve
+seen ’em; I’ll carry ’em home.”
+
+The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase, at
+about ten minutes’ walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come
+thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his
+nag on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had
+come to look at the captain’s new horse, on which he was to ride away
+the day after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the
+servants were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young
+squire luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the
+Chase, and was striding along with the basket of tools over his
+shoulder, the sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level
+crimson rays among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every
+bare patch of ground with a transient glory that made it look like a
+jewel dropt upon the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only
+enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been
+sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam
+had been quite enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home,
+and he bethought himself that he might do so by striking across the
+Chase and going through the Grove, where he had never been for years.
+He hurried on across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between
+the fern, with Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent
+changes of the light—hardly once thinking of it—yet feeling its
+presence in a certain calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy
+working-day thoughts. How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt
+it, and were more timid.
+
+Presently Adam’s thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about
+Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes that
+might take place before he came back; then they travelled back
+affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt
+on Arthur’s good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have
+in the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam’s,
+with a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of
+its happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had
+no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the
+past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving
+admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant
+thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his
+keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the
+old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a
+kind word to him.
+
+After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path
+through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of
+all things; as the fisherman’s sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam’s
+perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He
+kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and
+knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had
+often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he
+stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get
+on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which he
+had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince
+himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For
+the rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly
+examining the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home
+where his youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no
+more. The beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an
+archway of boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped
+away from the tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures
+about twenty yards before him.
+
+He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The
+two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands
+about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been
+running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave a
+sharp bark. They separated with a start—one hurried through the gate
+out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with a
+sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale,
+clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over
+his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which
+amazement was fast turning to fierceness.
+
+Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make
+unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than
+usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering
+influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with
+Adam than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best
+person who could have happened to see him and Hetty together—he was a
+sensible fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur
+felt confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away.
+And so he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness—his flushed
+face, his evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands
+half-thrust into his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange
+evening light which the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith,
+and were now shedding down between the topmost branches above him.
+
+Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood
+it all now—the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to
+him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that
+changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must
+inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting
+emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he
+would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing.
+He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own
+strong will.
+
+“Well, Adam,” said Arthur, “you’ve been looking at the fine old
+beeches, eh? They’re not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this
+is a sacred grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was
+coming to my den—the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this
+way so late. So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss
+for my pains. But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly
+damp. Good-night, Adam. I shall see you to-morrow—to say good-bye, you
+know.”
+
+Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to
+be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam’s face. He did not look
+directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then
+lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no
+more—he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam’s eyes—and as he
+spoke the last words, he walked on.
+
+“Stop a bit, sir,” said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without
+turning round. “I’ve got a word to say to you.”
+
+Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by a
+change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the
+susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still
+more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his
+back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was
+going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper
+rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in
+the confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling
+that a man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a
+position to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who
+feels himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he
+cares for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation
+as anger in his voice when he said, “What do you mean, Adam?”
+
+“I mean, sir”—answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without
+turning round—“I mean, sir, that you don’t deceive me by your light
+words. This is not the first time you’ve met Hetty Sorrel in this
+grove, and this is not the first time you’ve kissed her.”
+
+Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from
+knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty, which
+prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his
+irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, “Well, sir, what then?”
+
+“Why, then, instead of acting like th’ upright, honourable man we’ve
+all believed you to be, you’ve been acting the part of a selfish
+light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it’s to lead to
+when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like
+Hetty, and gives her presents as she’s frightened for other folks to
+see. And I say it again, you’re acting the part of a selfish
+light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th’ heart to say so, and
+I’d rather ha’ lost my right hand.”
+
+“Let me tell you, Adam,” said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and
+trying to recur to his careless tone, “you’re not only devilishly
+impertinent, but you’re talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such
+a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and
+pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every
+man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to
+be flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm
+there is, for then she’s not likely to deceive herself.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by flirting,” said Adam, “but if you mean
+behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all the
+while, I say that’s not th’ action of an honest man, and what isn’t
+honest does come t’ harm. I’m not a fool, and you’re not a fool, and
+you know better than what you’re saying. You know it couldn’t be made
+public as you’ve behaved to Hetty as y’ have done without her losing
+her character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations.
+What if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other
+folks won’t believe as you’ve meant nothing; and don’t tell me about
+her not deceiving herself. I tell you as you’ve filled her mind so with
+the thought of you as it’ll mayhap poison her life, and she’ll never
+love another man as ’ud make her a good husband.”
+
+Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived
+that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no
+irrevocable damage done by this evening’s unfortunate rencontre. Adam
+could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a
+position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed
+his anger a little.
+
+“Well, Adam,” he said, in a tone of friendly concession, “you’re
+perhaps right. Perhaps I’ve gone a little too far in taking notice of
+the pretty little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You’re such a
+grave, steady fellow, you don’t understand the temptation to such
+trifling. I’m sure I wouldn’t bring any trouble or annoyance on her and
+the good Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you
+look a little too seriously at it. You know I’m going away immediately,
+so I shan’t make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say
+good-night”—Arthur here turned round to walk on—“and talk no more about
+the matter. The whole thing will soon be forgotten.”
+
+“No, by God!” Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no
+longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he
+was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal
+injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up
+and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp
+agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of
+inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion
+against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak
+our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had been
+robbed of Hetty—robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had
+trusted—and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring
+at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he
+had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just
+indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake
+him as he spoke.
+
+“No, it’ll not be soon forgot, as you’ve come in between her and me,
+when she might ha’ loved me—it’ll not soon be forgot as you’ve robbed
+me o’ my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a
+noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you’ve been kissing
+her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i’ my
+life—but I’d ha’ worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And
+you make light of it. You think little o’ doing what may damage other
+folks, so as you get your bit o’ trifling, as means nothing. I throw
+back your favours, for you’re not the man I took you for. I’ll never
+count you my friend any more. I’d rather you’d act as my enemy, and
+fight me where I stand—it’s all th’ amends you can make me.”
+
+Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to
+throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the
+change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur’s
+lips were now as pale as Adam’s; his heart was beating violently. The
+discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the
+moment see himself in the light of Adam’s indignation, and regard
+Adam’s suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his
+error. The words of hatred and contempt—the first he had ever heard in
+his life—seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable
+scars on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away
+while others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face
+to face with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He
+was only twenty-one, and three months ago—nay, much later—he had
+thought proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly.
+His first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have
+been to utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off
+his coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and
+motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets.
+
+“What!” he said, “won’t you fight me like a man? You know I won’t
+strike you while you stand so.”
+
+“Go away, Adam,” said Arthur, “I don’t want to fight you.”
+
+“No,” said Adam, bitterly; “you don’t want to fight me—you think I’m a
+common man, as you can injure without answering for it.”
+
+“I never meant to injure you,” said Arthur, with returning anger. “I
+didn’t know you loved her.”
+
+“But you’ve made her love _you_,” said Adam. “You’re a double-faced
+man—I’ll never believe a word you say again.”
+
+“Go away, I tell you,” said Arthur, angrily, “or we shall both repent.”
+
+“No,” said Adam, with a convulsed voice, “I swear I won’t go away
+without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you’re
+a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you.”
+
+The colour had all rushed back to Arthur’s face; in a moment his right
+hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam
+staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam’s now, and
+the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought with
+the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight
+darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for
+the workman in everything but strength, and Arthur’s skill enabled him
+to protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men
+the battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and
+Arthur must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam’s as a steel rod is
+broken by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head
+lying concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his
+darkly clad body.
+
+He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise.
+
+The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all
+the force of nerve and muscle—and what was the good of it? What had he
+done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own
+vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past—there it was,
+just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage.
+
+But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time
+seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam
+shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of
+this dread he knelt down by Arthur’s side and lifted his head from
+among the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set.
+The horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced
+upon him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in
+Arthur’s face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single
+movement, but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of
+death.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+A Dilemma
+
+
+It was only a few minutes measured by the clock—though Adam always
+thought it had been a long while—before he perceived a gleam of
+consciousness in Arthur’s face and a slight shiver through his frame.
+The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old
+affection with it.
+
+“Do you feel any pain, sir?” he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur’s
+cravat.
+
+Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a
+slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But
+he only shivered again and said nothing.
+
+“Do you feel any hurt, sir?” Adam said again, with a trembling in his
+voice.
+
+Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had
+unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. “Lay my head down,” he said,
+faintly, “and get me some water if you can.”
+
+Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the
+tools out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of
+the Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank.
+
+When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur
+looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness.
+
+“Can you drink a drop out o’ your hand, sir?” said Adam, kneeling down
+again to lift up Arthur’s head.
+
+“No,” said Arthur, “dip my cravat in and souse it on my head.”
+
+The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a
+little higher, resting on Adam’s arm.
+
+“Do you feel any hurt inside sir?” Adam asked again
+
+“No—no hurt,” said Arthur, still faintly, “but rather done up.”
+
+After a while he said, “I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me
+down.”
+
+“Yes, sir, thank God,” said Adam. “I thought it was worse.”
+
+“What! You thought you’d done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs.”
+
+“I feel terribly shaky and dizzy,” Arthur said, as he stood leaning on
+Adam’s arm; “that blow of yours must have come against me like a
+battering-ram. I don’t believe I can walk alone.”
+
+“Lean on me, sir; I’ll get you along,” said Adam. “Or, will you sit
+down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I’ll prop y’ up. You’ll perhaps
+be better in a minute or two.”
+
+“No,” said Arthur. “I’ll go to the Hermitage—I think I’ve got some
+brandy there. There’s a short road to it a little farther on, near the
+gate. If you’ll just help me on.”
+
+They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again.
+In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended
+the first moments of Arthur’s revival had now given way to a vivid
+recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow
+path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the
+Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the
+windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles,
+and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward
+consciousness, as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it
+in Adam’s hand, for him to open the door. Adam had not known before
+that Arthur had furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for
+himself, and it was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a
+snug room with all the signs of frequent habitation.
+
+Arthur loosed Adam’s arm and threw himself on the ottoman. “You’ll see
+my hunting-bottle somewhere,” he said. “A leather case with a bottle
+and glass in.”
+
+Adam was not long in finding the case. “There’s very little brandy in
+it, sir,” he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it
+before the window; “hardly this little glassful.”
+
+“Well, give me that,” said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical
+depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, “Hadn’t I better
+run to th’ house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and
+back pretty soon. It’ll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don’t have
+something to revive you.”
+
+“Yes—go. But don’t say I’m ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get
+it from Mills, and not to say I’m at the Hermitage. Get some water
+too.”
+
+Adam was relieved to have an active task—both of them were relieved to
+be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam’s swift pace could
+not still the eager pain of thinking—of living again with concentrated
+suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over
+all the new sad future.
+
+Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently he
+rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken
+moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that
+stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was
+more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was
+done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure
+himself of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a
+slight thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second
+thought, took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket.
+It was a woman’s little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on
+the table, and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with
+the effort.
+
+When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a
+doze.
+
+“That’s right,” Arthur said; “I’m tremendously in want of some
+brandy-vigour.”
+
+“I’m glad to see you’ve got a light, sir,” said Adam. “I’ve been
+thinking I’d better have asked for a lanthorn.”
+
+“No, no; the candle will last long enough—I shall soon be up to walking
+home now.”
+
+“I can’t go before I’ve seen you safe home, sir,” said Adam,
+hesitatingly.
+
+“No: it will be better for you to stay—sit down.”
+
+Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy
+silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly
+renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and
+looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was
+keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur’s
+condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which
+every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the
+physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to
+be done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what
+had been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to
+make this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as
+he saw the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again
+came to his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be
+better to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent
+they did not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that
+if they began to speak as though they remembered the past—if they
+looked at each other with full recognition—they must take fire again.
+So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the
+socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur
+had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm
+behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease,
+which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his
+mind.
+
+“You begin to feel more yourself again, sir,” he said, as the candle
+went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint
+moonlight.
+
+“Yes: I don’t feel good for much—very lazy, and not inclined to move;
+but I’ll go home when I’ve taken this dose.”
+
+There was a slight pause before Adam said, “My temper got the better of
+me, and I said things as wasn’t true. I’d no right to speak as if you’d
+known you was doing me an injury: you’d no grounds for knowing it; I’ve
+always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could.”
+
+He paused again before he went on.
+
+“And perhaps I judged you too harsh—I’m apt to be harsh—and you may
+have acted out o’ thoughtlessness more than I should ha’ believed was
+possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We’re not all put
+together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it’s all
+the joy I could have now, to think the best of you.”
+
+Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more—he was too painfully
+embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any
+further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam
+reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer.
+Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has
+committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native
+impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank
+confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of
+tactics. His deed was reacting upon him—was already governing him
+tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual
+feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive
+Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved.
+And when he heard the words of honest retractation—when he heard the
+sad appeal with which Adam ended—he was obliged to rejoice in the
+remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer
+immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.
+
+“Say no more about our anger, Adam,” he said, at last, very languidly,
+for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; “I forgive your
+momentary injustice—it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions
+you had in your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I
+hope, because we’ve fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it
+should be, for I believe I’ve been most in the wrong of the two. Come,
+let us shake hands.”
+
+Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still.
+
+“I don’t like to say ‘No’ to that, sir,” he said, “but I can’t shake
+hands till it’s clear what we mean by’t. I was wrong when I spoke as if
+you’d done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn’t wrong in what I said
+before, about your behaviour t’ Hetty, and I can’t shake hands with you
+as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you’ve cleared that up
+better.”
+
+Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand. He
+was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he
+could, “I don’t know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I’ve told you
+already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if you
+are right in supposing there is any danger in it—I’m going away on
+Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given
+you, I’m heartily sorry for it. I can say no more.”
+
+Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face
+towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the
+moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the
+conflict within him. It was of no use now—his resolution not to speak
+till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several
+minutes before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing
+and looking down on him as he lay.
+
+“It’ll be better for me to speak plain,” he said, with evident effort,
+“though it’s hard work. You see, sir, this isn’t a trifle to me,
+whatever it may be to you. I’m none o’ them men as can go making love
+first to one woman and then t’ another, and don’t think it much odds
+which of ’em I take. What I feel for Hetty’s a different sort o’ love,
+such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and
+God as has given it to ’em. She’s more nor everything else to me, all
+but my conscience and my good name. And if it’s true what you’ve been
+saying all along—and if it’s only been trifling and flirting as you
+call it, as ’ll be put an end to by your going away—why, then, I’d
+wait, and hope her heart ’ud turn to me after all. I’m loath to think
+you’d speak false to me, and I’ll believe your word, however things may
+look.”
+
+“You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it,” said
+Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away.
+But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly,
+“You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations
+upon her.”
+
+“Nay, sir,” Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were
+half-relieved—for he was too straightforward to make a distinction
+between a direct falsehood and an indirect one—“Nay, sir, things don’t
+lie level between Hetty and you. You’re acting with your eyes open,
+whatever you may do; but how do you know what’s been in her mind? She’s
+all but a child—as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound
+to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you’ve disturbed
+her mind. I know she’s been fixing her heart on you, for there’s a many
+things clear to me now as I didn’t understand before. But you seem to
+make light o’ what _she_ may feel—you don’t think o’ that.”
+
+“Good God, Adam, let me alone!” Arthur burst out impetuously; “I feel
+it enough without your worrying me.”
+
+He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him.
+
+“Well, then, if you feel it,” Adam rejoined, eagerly; “if you feel as
+you may ha’ put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as
+you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I’ve this demand
+to make of you—I’m not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t’
+undeceive her before you go away. Y’aren’t going away for ever, and if
+you leave her behind with a notion in her head o’ your feeling about
+her the same as she feels about you, she’ll be hankering after you, and
+the mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it’ll
+save her pain i’ th’ end. I ask you to write a letter—you may trust to
+my seeing as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to
+yourself for behaving as you’d no right to do to a young woman as isn’t
+your equal. I speak plain, sir, but I can’t speak any other way.
+There’s nobody can take care o’ Hetty in this thing but me.”
+
+“I can do what I think needful in the matter,” said Arthur, more and
+more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, “without giving
+promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper.”
+
+“No,” said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, “that won’t do. I must know
+what ground I’m treading on. I must be safe as you’ve put an end to
+what ought never to ha’ been begun. I don’t forget what’s owing to you
+as a gentleman, but in this thing we’re man and man, and I can’t give
+up.”
+
+There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, “I’ll see you
+to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I’m ill.” He rose as he spoke, and
+reached his cap, as if intending to go.
+
+“You won’t see her again!” Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring
+anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back
+against it. “Either tell me she can never be my wife—tell me you’ve
+been lying—or else promise me what I’ve said.”
+
+Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before
+Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint,
+shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them—that
+inward struggle of Arthur’s—before he said, feebly, “I promise; let me
+go.”
+
+Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached
+the step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post.
+
+“You’re not well enough to walk alone, sir,” said Adam. “Take my arm
+again.”
+
+Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But,
+after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, “I believe I
+must trouble you. It’s getting late now, and there may be an alarm set
+up about me at home.”
+
+Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till
+they came where the basket and the tools lay.
+
+“I must pick up the tools, sir,” Adam said. “They’re my brother’s. I
+doubt they’ll be rusted. If you’ll please to wait a minute.”
+
+Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between
+them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in
+without being seen by any one. He said then, “Thank you; I needn’t
+trouble you any further.”
+
+“What time will it be conven’ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?”
+said Adam.
+
+“You may send me word that you’re here at five o’clock,” said Arthur;
+“not before.”
+
+“Good-night, sir,” said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned
+into the house.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+The Next Morning
+
+
+Arthur did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For
+sleep comes to the perplexed—if the perplexed are only weary enough.
+But at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was
+going to get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.
+
+“And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my
+grandfather when he’s down that I’m better this morning and am gone for
+a ride.”
+
+He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
+yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be
+but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some
+resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against
+tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages
+of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and
+shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh
+lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur
+felt that he should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of
+Pym, waiting on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him
+after the scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur’s sensitiveness to
+opinion, the loss of Adam’s respect was a shock to his self-contentment
+which suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all
+eyes—as a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous
+woman afraid even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused
+with a sense of danger.
+
+Arthur’s, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as
+easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his
+weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He
+didn’t like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming
+on him as the giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day
+kicked down an old gardener’s pitcher of broth, from no motive but a
+kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man’s dinner; but
+on learning that sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a
+silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation.
+He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences
+forgotten in benefits. If there were any bitterness in his nature, it
+could only show itself against the man who refused to be conciliated by
+him. And perhaps the time was come for some of that bitterness to rise.
+At the first moment, Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at
+discovering that Adam’s happiness was involved in his relation to
+Hetty. If there had been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends—if
+deeds of gift, or any other deeds, could have restored Adam’s
+contentment and regard for him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only
+have executed them without hesitation, but would have felt bound all
+the more closely to Adam, and would never have been weary of making
+retribution. But Adam could receive no amends; his suffering could not
+be cancelled; his respect and affection could not be recovered by any
+prompt deeds of atonement. He stood like an immovable obstacle against
+which no pressure could avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank
+from believing in—the irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words
+of scorn, the refusal to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in
+their last conversation in the Hermitage—above all, the sense of having
+been knocked down, to which a man does not very well reconcile himself,
+even under the most heroic circumstances—pressed on him with a galling
+pain which was stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have
+persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him
+the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis
+can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences—out of the
+suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely
+metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns
+the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some
+rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part
+against us. And so it was with Arthur: Adam’s judgment of him, Adam’s
+grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments.
+
+Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam’s discovery. Struggles and
+resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He
+was distressed for Hetty’s sake, and distressed for his own, that he
+must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking
+resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily
+end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not
+to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty’s account he was filled with
+uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living—that she
+was to be a lady in silks and satins—and when he had first talked to
+her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go
+with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had
+given the most exasperating sting to Adam’s reproaches. He had said no
+word with the purpose of deceiving her—her vision was all spun by her
+own childish fancy—but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was
+spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this
+last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been
+obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw
+her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the
+sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker
+anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future.
+That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he
+could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been
+secret; the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except
+Adam, knew anything of what had passed—no one else was likely to know;
+for Arthur had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by
+word or look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and
+Adam, who knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it
+than betray it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there
+was no use in making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations
+and forebodings of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness
+for Hetty was the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes
+from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But—but
+Hetty might have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And
+perhaps hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make
+up to her for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the
+advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had
+incurred now. _So_ good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful
+arrangement of things!
+
+Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two
+months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which
+shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any
+more positive offence as possible for it?—who thought that his own
+self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same,
+I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us,
+as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or
+will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which
+constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think
+ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our
+deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then
+reconcile him to the change, for this reason—that the second wrong
+presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The
+action which before commission has been seen with that blended common
+sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the
+soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity,
+through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to
+be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a
+_fait accompli_, and so does an individual character—until the placid
+adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.
+
+No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own
+sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because
+of that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still
+at ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too
+painful to him—he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he
+had not been very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the
+necessity he was under of deceiving Adam—it was a course so opposed to
+the honesty of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to
+do.
+
+Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in
+consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that he
+had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross
+barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her.
+And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden
+impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry
+Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to....
+
+In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable
+prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the
+crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which
+would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up
+his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg’s back, in the
+fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the
+situation.
+
+The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the
+gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose,
+and patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than
+usual. He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets.
+But Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master’s mental state as
+many others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young
+gentlemen towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering
+expectation.
+
+Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the
+foot of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road.
+Then he threw the bridle on Meg’s neck and prepared to make up his
+mind.
+
+Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur
+went away—there was no possibility of their contriving another without
+exciting suspicion—and she was like a frightened child, unable to think
+of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put
+her face up to have the tears kissed away. He _could_ do nothing but
+comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a
+dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what
+Adam said—that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which
+might be worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of
+satisfying Adam, who _must_ be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If
+he could have seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a
+thorny hedge of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be
+fatal. And yet, if he _could_ see her again, what good would it do?
+Only cause him to suffer more from the sight of her distress and the
+remembrance of it. Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives
+to self-control.
+
+A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination—the dread
+lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that
+dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off
+with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the
+future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse.
+Arthur told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out
+badly. He had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience
+disapproved; he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of
+implicit confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at
+bottom, Providence would not treat him harshly.
+
+At all events, he couldn’t help what would come now: all he could do
+was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he
+persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between
+Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after
+a while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done,
+since it was still Adam’s ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure,
+Adam was deceived—deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as
+a deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection
+that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur’s cheeks even burned in
+mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in
+such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure
+Hetty: his first duty was to guard _her_. He would never have told or
+acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was
+to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had
+excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses
+but by actions!)
+
+Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a
+solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur’s eyes as he
+thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to
+write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this last
+thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never
+deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left
+himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving
+up Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.
+
+When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set
+off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first
+thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business:
+he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine
+were coming to dinner, and by twelve o’clock the next day he should
+have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this
+constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to
+rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would
+undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every
+slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift
+gallop.
+
+“I thought they said th’ young mester war took ill last night,” said
+sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants’ hall. “He’s
+been ridin’ fit to split the mare i’ two this forenoon.”
+
+“That’s happen one o’ the symptims, John,” said the facetious coachman.
+
+“Then I wish he war let blood for ’t, that’s all,” said John, grimly.
+
+Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been
+relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning
+that he was gone out for a ride. At five o’clock he was punctually
+there again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came
+down with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the
+captain was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to
+say. The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again
+before opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty.
+On the inside of the cover Adam read:
+
+“In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it
+to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty
+or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not
+taking a measure which may pain her more than mere silence.
+    “There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall
+    meet with better feelings some months hence.
+
+
+“A.D.”
+
+
+“Perhaps he’s i’ th’ right on ’t not to see me,” thought Adam. “It’s no
+use meeting to say more hard words, and it’s no use meeting to shake
+hands and say we’re friends again. We’re not friends, an’ it’s better
+not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man’s duty, but, to my
+thinking, that can only mean as you’re to give up all thoughts o’
+taking revenge: it can never mean as you’re t’ have your old feelings
+back again, for that’s not possible. He’s not the same man to me, and I
+can’t _feel_ the same towards him. God help me! I don’t know whether I
+feel the same towards anybody: I seem as if I’d been measuring my work
+from a false line, and had got it all to measure over again.”
+
+But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed
+Adam’s thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing
+the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to
+hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way—to ascertain
+as well as he could what was Hetty’s state of mind before he decided on
+delivering the letter.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+The Delivery of the Letter
+
+
+The next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church,
+hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in his
+pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty
+alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her
+seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was
+doubtful and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time
+she had met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with
+Arthur in the Grove.
+
+“Come, you’ll go on with us, Adam,” Mr. Poyser said when they reached
+the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to
+offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of
+lingering behind a little, and then Adam said:
+
+“Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this
+evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I’ve something partic’lar to talk to
+you about.”
+
+Hetty said, “Very well.” She was really as anxious as Adam was that she
+should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of
+her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had
+no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and
+Adam. Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with
+her, and perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered
+her mind that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It
+was a relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted
+to speak to _her_ alone; for she had trembled when she found he was
+going home with them lest he should mean “to tell.” But, now he wanted
+to talk to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he
+meant to do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him
+not to do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even
+make him believe that she didn’t care for Arthur; and as long as Adam
+thought there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she
+liked, she knew. Besides, she _must_ go on seeming to encourage Adam,
+lest her uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some
+secret lover.
+
+Hetty’s little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on
+Adam’s arm and said “yes” or “no” to some slight observations of his
+about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this next
+winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till
+morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue
+her thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a
+young man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he
+would nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business
+the while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most
+recent news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he
+claimed Adam’s conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots
+and imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked
+along by the hedgerows on honest Adam’s arm, quite as well as if she
+had been an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a
+country beauty in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is
+astonishing how closely her mental processes may resemble those of a
+lady in society and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the
+problem of committing indiscretions without compromising herself.
+Perhaps the resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very
+unhappy all the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to
+her—mingling with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim
+undefined fear that the future might shape itself in some way quite
+unlike her dream. She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had
+uttered in their last meeting—“I shall come again at Christmas, and
+then we will see what can be done.” She clung to the belief that he was
+so fond of her, he would never be happy without her; and she still
+hugged her secret—that a great gentleman loved her—with gratified
+pride, as a superiority over all the girls she knew. But the
+uncertainty of the future, the possibilities to which she could give no
+shape, began to press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she
+was alone on her little island of dreams, and all around her was the
+dark unknown water where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation
+of spirits now by looking forward, but only by looking backward to
+build confidence on past words and caresses. But occasionally, since
+Thursday evening, her dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the
+more definite fear that Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and
+aunt, and his sudden proposition to talk with her alone had set her
+thoughts to work in a new way. She was eager not to lose this evening’s
+opportunity; and after tea, when the boys were going into the garden
+and Totty begged to go with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that
+surprised Mrs. Poyser, “I’ll go with her, Aunt.”
+
+It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too, and
+soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the
+filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large
+unripe nuts to play at “cob-nut” with, and Totty was watching them with
+a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time—hardly two
+months—since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he
+stood by Hetty’s side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had
+often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through the
+apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty’s sweet blush. It came
+importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds,
+but he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say
+more than was needful for Hetty’s sake.
+
+“After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty,” he began, “you won’t think
+me making too free in what I’m going to say. If you was being courted
+by any man as ’ud make you his wife, and I’d known you was fond of him
+and meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you
+about it; but when I see you’re being made love to by a gentleman as
+can never marry you, and doesna think o’ marrying you, I feel bound t’
+interfere for you. I can’t speak about it to them as are i’ the place
+o’ your parents, for that might bring worse trouble than’s needful.”
+
+Adam’s words relieved one of Hetty’s fears, but they also carried a
+meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale
+and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she
+had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent.
+
+“You’re so young, you know, Hetty,” he went on, almost tenderly, “and
+y’ haven’t seen much o’ what goes on in the world. It’s right for me to
+do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o’ your
+knowing where you’re being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I
+know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him,
+they’d speak light on you, and you’d lose your character. And besides
+that, you’ll have to suffer in your feelings, wi’ giving your love to a
+man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your
+life.”
+
+Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the
+filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and
+preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson,
+under the terrible agitation produced by Adam’s words. There was a
+cruel force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and
+crush her flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them—she
+wanted to throw them off with angry contradiction—but the determination
+to conceal what she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a
+blind prompting now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her
+words.
+
+“You’ve no right to say as I love him,” she said, faintly, but
+impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was
+very beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish
+eyes dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam’s heart yearned
+over her as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and
+soothe her, and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of
+strength that would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he
+would have rescued her body in the face of all danger!
+
+“I doubt it must be so, Hetty,” he said, tenderly; “for I canna believe
+you’d let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with
+his hair, and go a-walking i’ the Grove to meet him, if you didna love
+him. I’m not blaming you, for I know it ’ud begin by little and little,
+till at last you’d not be able to throw it off. It’s him I blame for
+stealing your love i’ that way, when he knew he could never make you
+the right amends. He’s been trifling with you, and making a plaything
+of you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care.”
+
+“Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you,” Hetty burst out.
+Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam’s
+words.
+
+“Nay, Hetty,” said Adam, “if he’d cared for you rightly, he’d never ha’
+behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and
+presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of ’em
+too. But I know better nor that. I can’t help thinking as you’ve been
+trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he’s a
+gentleman. And that’s why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for fear
+you should be deceiving yourself. It’s never entered his head the
+thought o’ marrying you.”
+
+“How do you know? How durst you say so?” said Hetty, pausing in her
+walk and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam’s tone shook her with
+fear. She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur
+would have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and
+look were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter.
+
+“Perhaps you can’t believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of
+him—because you think he loves you better than he does. But I’ve got a
+letter i’ my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I’ve not
+read the letter, but he says he’s told you the truth in it. But before
+I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don’t let it take too much
+hold on you. It wouldna ha’ been good for you if he’d wanted to do such
+a mad thing as marry you: it ’ud ha’ led to no happiness i’ th’ end.”
+
+Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a
+letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite
+different in it from what he thought.
+
+Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he
+said, in a tone of tender entreaty, “Don’t you bear me ill will, Hetty,
+because I’m the means o’ bringing you this pain. God knows I’d ha’
+borne a good deal worse for the sake o’ sparing it you. And
+think—there’s nobody but me knows about this, and I’ll take care of you
+as if I was your brother. You’re the same as ever to me, for I don’t
+believe you’ve done any wrong knowingly.”
+
+Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till
+he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said—she had not
+listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket,
+without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she
+wanted to go in.
+
+“You’re in the right not to read it just yet,” said Adam. “Read it when
+you’re by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call
+the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of
+it.”
+
+Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying
+her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the
+shock of Adam’s words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was
+sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find
+Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who
+was making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an
+unripe apple that she had set her small teeth in.
+
+“Hegh, Totty,” said Adam, “come and ride on my shoulder—ever so
+high—you’ll touch the tops o’ the trees.”
+
+What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense
+of being seized strongly and swung upward? I don’t believe Ganymede
+cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on
+Jove’s shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her
+secure height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother’s eyes, as she
+stood at the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden.
+
+“Bless your sweet face, my pet,” she said, the mother’s strong love
+filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put
+out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said,
+without looking at her, “You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are
+both at the cheese.”
+
+After the ale had been drawn and her uncle’s pipe lighted, there was
+Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown
+because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper
+to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help.
+Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her
+and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of
+leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her
+safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much
+self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the
+letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the
+letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for
+him to leave her—hard to think that he should not know for days how she
+was bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do
+was to press her hand gently as he said “Good-bye,” and hope she would
+take that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it
+was there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked
+home, in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her
+weakness to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with
+less and less inclination to admit that _his_ conduct might be
+extenuated too! His exasperation at Hetty’s suffering—and also at the
+sense that she was possibly thrust for ever out of his own
+reach—deafened him to any plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought
+this misery. Adam was a clear-sighted, fair-minded man—a fine fellow,
+indeed, morally as well as physically. But if Aristides the Just was
+ever in love and jealous, he was at that moment not perfectly
+magnanimous. And I cannot pretend that Adam, in these painful days,
+felt nothing but righteous indignation and loving pity. He was bitterly
+jealous, and in proportion as his love made him indulgent in his
+judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent in his feeling towards
+Arthur.
+
+“Her head was allays likely to be turned,” he thought, “when a
+gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white
+hands, and that way o’ talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making
+up to her in a bold way, as a man couldn’t do that was only her equal;
+and it’s much if she’ll ever like a common man now.” He could not help
+drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them—at the hard
+palms and the broken finger-nails. “I’m a roughish fellow, altogether;
+I don’t know, now I come to think on’t, what there is much for a woman
+to like about me; and yet I might ha’ got another wife easy enough, if
+I hadn’t set my heart on her. But it’s little matter what other women
+think about me, if she can’t love me. She might ha’ loved me, perhaps,
+as likely as any other man—there’s nobody hereabouts as I’m afraid of,
+if _he_ hadn’t come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to
+her because I’m so different to him. And yet there’s no telling—she may
+turn round the other way, when she finds he’s made light of her all the
+while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as ’ud be thankful to be
+bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it
+is—I’ve only to be thankful it’s been no worse. I am not th’ only man
+that’s got to do without much happiness i’ this life. There’s many a
+good bit o’ work done with a bad heart. It’s God’s will, and that’s
+enough for us: we shouldn’t know better how things ought to be than He
+does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i’ puzzling. But it ’ud
+ha’ gone near to spoil my work for me, if I’d seen her brought to
+sorrow and shame, and through the man as I’ve always been proud to
+think on. Since I’ve been spared that, I’ve no right to grumble. When a
+man’s got his limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two.”
+
+As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he
+perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was
+Seth, returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake
+him.
+
+“I thought thee’dst be at home before me,” he said, as Seth turned
+round to wait for him, “for I’m later than usual to-night.”
+
+“Well, I’m later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John
+Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection, and
+I’d a question to ask him about his experience. It’s one o’ them
+subjects that lead you further than y’ expect—they don’t lie along the
+straight road.”
+
+They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was
+not inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but
+he was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and
+confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the
+brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters,
+or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was by
+nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain
+timidity towards his more practical brother.
+
+“Seth, lad,” Adam said, putting his arm on his brother’s shoulder,
+“hast heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?”
+
+“Yes,” said Seth. “She told me I might write her word after a while,
+how we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to
+her a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment,
+and how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at
+the post at Treddles’on, I found a letter from her. I think thee’dst
+perhaps like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because
+thee’st seemed so full of other things. It’s quite easy t’ read—she
+writes wonderful for a woman.”
+
+Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who
+said, as he took it, “Aye, lad, I’ve got a tough load to carry just
+now—thee mustna take it ill if I’m a bit silenter and crustier nor
+usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall
+stick together to the last.”
+
+“I take nought ill o’ thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if
+thee’t a bit short wi’ me now and then.”
+
+“There’s Mother opening the door to look out for us,” said Adam, as
+they mounted the slope. “She’s been sitting i’ the dark as usual. Well,
+Gyp, well, art glad to see me?”
+
+Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard
+the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp’s joyful
+bark.
+
+“Eh, my lads! Th’ hours war ne’er so long sin’ I war born as they’n
+been this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha’ been doin’ till
+this time?”
+
+“Thee shouldstna sit i’ the dark, Mother,” said Adam; “that makes the
+time seem longer.”
+
+“Eh, what am I to do wi’ burnin’ candle of a Sunday, when there’s on’y
+me an’ it’s sin to do a bit o’ knittin’? The daylight’s long enough for
+me to stare i’ the booke as I canna read. It ’ud be a fine way o’
+shortenin’ the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on
+you’s for ha’in’ supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should
+think, seein’ what time o’ night it is.”
+
+“I’m hungry, Mother,” said Seth, seating himself at the little table,
+which had been spread ever since it was light.
+
+“I’ve had my supper,” said Adam. “Here, Gyp,” he added, taking some
+cold potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked
+up towards him.
+
+“Thee needstna be gi’in’ th’ dog,” said Lisbeth; “I’n fed him well
+a’ready. I’m not like to forget him, I reckon, when he’s all o’ thee I
+can get sight on.”
+
+“Come, then, Gyp,” said Adam, “we’ll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I’m
+very tired.”
+
+“What ails him, dost know?” Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone
+upstairs. “He’s like as if he was struck for death this day or two—he’s
+so cast down. I found him i’ the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast
+gone, a-sittin’ an’ doin’ nothin’—not so much as a booke afore him.”
+
+“He’s a deal o’ work upon him just now, Mother,” said Seth, “and I
+think he’s a bit troubled in his mind. Don’t you take notice of it,
+because it hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother,
+and don’t say anything to vex him.”
+
+“Eh, what dost talk o’ my vexin’ him? An’ what am I like to be but
+kind? I’ll ma’ him a kettle-cake for breakfast i’ the mornin’.”
+
+Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah’s letter by the light of his dip
+candle.
+
+DEAR BROTHER SETH—Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it at
+the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this
+being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have
+fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay by
+money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in
+present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying up
+of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me
+slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the
+worldly good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love
+you bear him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts,
+and he uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted
+to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his
+parent and his younger brother.
+
+“My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be
+near her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I
+often bear her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the
+dim light as I did with her, and we held one another’s hands, and I
+spoke the words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed
+time, isn’t it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is
+a little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light
+shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the
+Divine strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes,
+and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for
+evermore. For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the
+blindness, and the sin I have beheld and been ready to weep over—yea,
+all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round
+like sudden darkness—I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was
+sharing the Redeemer’s cross. For I feel it, I feel it—infinite love is
+suffering too—yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns,
+it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed
+from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth.
+Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there
+is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love
+does not seek to throw it off. It is not the spirit only that tells me
+this—I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel. Is there not
+pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified
+body wherewith he ascended? And is He not one with the Infinite Love
+itself—as our love is one with our sorrow?
+
+“These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen
+with new clearness the meaning of those words, ‘If any man love me, let
+him take up my cross.’ I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the
+troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus.
+But surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was
+the sin and sorrow of this world—_that_ was what lay heavy on his
+heart—and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we
+must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love
+which is one with his sorrow.
+
+“In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound.
+I have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands
+have been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened,
+so that I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What
+you say about staying in your own country with your mother and brother
+shows me that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by
+a clear showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like
+laying a false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven
+to kindle it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I
+sometimes think I cling too much to my life among the people here, and
+should be rebellious if I was called away.
+
+“I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall
+Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt’s desire, after I
+came back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My
+aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is
+sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to
+her and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh—yea, and
+to all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my
+sleep, and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought
+of them is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which
+yet is dark to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be
+taught. You say they are all well.
+
+“We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be,
+not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are
+desirous to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door
+opened me again to leave Snowfield.
+
+“Farewell, dear brother—and yet not farewell. For those children of God
+whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to hold
+communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can
+never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their
+souls are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one
+another about in their thoughts continually as it were a new
+strength.—Your faithful Sister and fellow-worker in Christ,
+
+“DINAH MORRIS.”
+
+
+“I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen
+moves slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my
+mind. Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her
+twice when we parted.”
+
+Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his
+head resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came
+upstairs.
+
+“Hast read the letter?” said Seth.
+
+“Yes,” said Adam. “I don’t know what I should ha’ thought of her and
+her letter if I’d never seen her: I daresay I should ha’ thought a
+preaching woman hateful. But she’s one as makes everything seem right
+she says and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I
+read the letter. It’s wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice.
+She’d make thee rare and happy, Seth; she’s just the woman for thee.”
+
+“It’s no use thinking o’ that,” said Seth, despondingly. “She spoke so
+firm, and she’s not the woman to say one thing and mean another.”
+
+“Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by
+degrees—the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I’d have thee go and
+see her by and by: I’d make it convenient for thee to be away three or
+four days, and it ’ud be no walk for thee—only between twenty and
+thirty mile.”
+
+“I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be
+displeased with me for going,” said Seth.
+
+“She’ll be none displeased,” said Adam emphatically, getting up and
+throwing off his coat. “It might be a great happiness to us all if
+she’d have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so
+contented to be with her.”
+
+“Aye,” said Seth, rather timidly, “and Dinah’s fond o’ Hetty too; she
+thinks a deal about her.”
+
+Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but “good-night” passed
+between them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+In Hetty’s Bed-Chamber
+
+
+It was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in
+Mrs. Poyser’s early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she
+went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the
+door behind her.
+
+_Now_ she would read her letter. It must—it must have comfort in it.
+How was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what
+he did say.
+
+She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent
+of roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put
+it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two
+swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her
+hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not
+easy for her to read a gentleman’s handwriting, though Arthur had taken
+pains to write plainly.
+
+“DEAREST HETTY—I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you,
+and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long
+as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say
+anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of
+love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do
+for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to
+think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss
+them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with
+her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part
+from her—harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind,
+though they spring from the truest kindness.
+
+“Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would
+be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been
+better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is
+my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The
+fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the
+longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection
+for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I
+should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now,
+since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil
+that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for
+you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of
+no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I
+ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future
+which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you
+one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself
+would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know
+you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station;
+and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I
+have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of
+life. You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always
+live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so
+little in which we should be alike.
+
+“And since I cannot marry you, we must part—we must try not to feel
+like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else
+can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not
+believe that I shall not always care for you—always be grateful to
+you—always remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do
+not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.
+
+“I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to
+write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not
+write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear
+Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive
+me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as
+long as I live, your affectionate friend,
+
+“ARTHUR DONNITHORNE.”
+
+
+Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there
+was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass—a white
+marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than
+a child’s pain in it. Hetty did not see the face—she saw nothing—she
+only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook
+and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible
+sensation—this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that
+produced it, and Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her
+clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of
+nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a
+firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this
+time—great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She
+felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel—cruel to write so, cruel not to
+marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her
+mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from
+the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had
+not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery.
+
+As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the
+glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a
+companion that she might complain to—that would pity her. She leaned
+forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and
+at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker,
+and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.
+
+The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her
+new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an
+overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and
+suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and
+then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed
+without undressing and went to sleep.
+
+There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after
+four o’clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke
+upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the
+dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to
+conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that
+was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the
+table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay
+the ear-rings and the locket—the signs of all her short happiness—the
+signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the
+little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the
+earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments
+when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such
+strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a
+bewildering delicious surprise—they were so much sweeter than she had
+thought anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and
+looked at her in this way, who was present with her now—whose arm she
+felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her—was
+the cruel, cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which
+she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it
+once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of
+the last night’s violent crying made it necessary to her to look again
+and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true—if the letter was
+really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could
+not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse—it was more
+cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that
+letter—hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all
+her love—all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.
+
+She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night,
+and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the
+first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.
+Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she
+would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.
+For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first
+moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it
+is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have
+recovered hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she
+had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair,
+she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She
+should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the
+old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to
+church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no
+happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled
+for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her
+life—the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr.
+Britton’s at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say “No” to for a
+long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last
+when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once.
+These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a
+weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and
+longing.
+
+She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against
+the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung
+down in delicate rings—and they were just as beautiful as they were
+that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber
+glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms
+now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered
+sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards
+the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of
+her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah’s affectionate
+entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had
+been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could have
+given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
+everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
+she could never stay here and go on with the old life—she could better
+bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
+She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
+old faces again. But Hetty’s was not a nature to face difficulties—to
+dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
+condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature—not a passionate
+one—and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
+to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
+thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she
+soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life:
+she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady’s maid. Miss Lydia’s
+maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her
+uncle’s leave.
+
+When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
+wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
+as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty’s blooming
+health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
+leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in
+her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an
+indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
+roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
+eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took
+up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it
+out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the
+great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes.
+She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody
+should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was
+disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt
+and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often
+accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery
+towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the
+sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would
+think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little
+Hetty’s conscience.
+
+So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.
+
+In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his
+good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the
+opportunity of her aunt’s absence to say, “Uncle, I wish you’d let me
+go for a lady’s maid.”
+
+Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild
+surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work
+industriously.
+
+“Why, what’s put that into your head, my wench?” he said at last, after
+he had given one conservative puff.
+
+“I should like it—I should like it better than farm-work.”
+
+“Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It
+wouldn’t be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i’ life.
+I’d like you to stay wi’ us till you’ve got a good husband: you’re my
+own niece, and I wouldn’t have you go to service, though it was a
+gentleman’s house, as long as I’ve got a home for you.”
+
+Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.
+
+“I like the needlework,” said Hetty, “and I should get good wages.”
+
+“Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi’ you?” said Mr. Poyser, not noticing
+Hetty’s further argument. “You mustna mind that, my wench—she does it
+for your good. She wishes you well; an’ there isn’t many aunts as are
+no kin to you ’ud ha’ done by you as she has.”
+
+“No, it isn’t my aunt,” said Hetty, “but I should like the work
+better.”
+
+“It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit—an’ I gev my
+consent to that fast enough, sin’ Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach
+you. For if anything was t’ happen, it’s well to know how to turn your
+hand to different sorts o’ things. But I niver meant you to go to
+service, my wench; my family’s ate their own bread and cheese as fur
+back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your
+grand-child to take wage?”
+
+“Na-a-y,” said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to
+make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked
+down on the floor. “But the wench takes arter her mother. I’d hard work
+t’ hould _her_ in, an’ she married i’ spite o’ me—a feller wi’ on’y two
+head o’ stock when there should ha’ been ten on’s farm—she might well
+die o’ th’ inflammation afore she war thirty.”
+
+It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son’s question
+had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long
+unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more
+indifferent to Hetty than to his son’s children. Her mother’s fortune
+had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel’s
+blood in her veins.
+
+“Poor thing, poor thing!” said Martin the younger, who was sorry to
+have provoked this retrospective harshness. “She’d but bad luck. But
+Hetty’s got as good a chance o’ getting a solid, sober husband as any
+gell i’ this country.”
+
+After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe
+and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign
+of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty,
+in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the
+denial, half out of the day’s repressed sadness.
+
+“Hegh, hegh!” said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, “don’t
+let’s have any crying. Crying’s for them as ha’ got no home, not for
+them as want to get rid o’ one. What dost think?” he continued to his
+wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce
+rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the
+twittering of a crab’s antennæ.
+
+“Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much
+older, wi’ that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o’ nights. What’s
+the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?”
+
+“Why, she’s been wanting to go for a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Poyser. “I
+tell her we can do better for her nor that.”
+
+“I thought she’d got some maggot in her head, she’s gone about wi’ her
+mouth buttoned up so all day. It’s all wi’ going so among them servants
+at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it ’ud be a
+finer life than being wi’ them as are akin to her and ha’ brought her
+up sin’ she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there’s nothing belongs
+to being a lady’s maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to,
+I’ll be bound. It’s what rag she can get to stick on her as she’s
+thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn’t
+like to be the mawkin i’ the field, for then she’d be made o’ rags
+inside and out. I’ll never gi’ my consent to her going for a lady’s
+maid, while she’s got good friends to take care on her till she’s
+married to somebody better nor one o’ them valets, as is neither a
+common man nor a gentleman, an’ must live on the fat o’ the land, an’s
+like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife
+to work for him.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Poyser, “we must have a better husband for her nor
+that, and there’s better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and
+get to bed. I’ll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady’s
+maid. Let’s hear no more on’t.”
+
+When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, “I canna make it out as she
+should want to go away, for I thought she’d got a mind t’ Adam Bede.
+She’s looked like it o’ late.”
+
+“Eh, there’s no knowing what she’s got a liking to, for things take no
+more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell,
+Molly—as is aggravatin’ enough, for the matter o’ that—but I believe
+she’d care more about leaving us and the children, for all she’s been
+here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she’s got this
+notion o’ being a lady’s maid wi’ going among them servants—we might
+ha’ known what it ’ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine
+work. But I’ll put a stop to it pretty quick.”
+
+“Thee’dst be sorry to part wi’ her, if it wasn’t for her good,” said
+Mr. Poyser. “She’s useful to thee i’ the work.”
+
+“Sorry? Yes, I’m fonder on her nor she deserves—a little hard-hearted
+hussy, wanting to leave us i’ that way. I can’t ha’ had her about me
+these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything
+wi’out caring about her. An’ here I’m having linen spun, an’ thinking
+all the while it’ll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she’s
+married, an’ she’ll live i’ the parish wi’ us, and never go out of our
+sights—like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no
+better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside it.”
+
+“Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle,” said Mr. Poyser,
+soothingly. “She’s fond on us, I’ll be bound; but she’s young, an’ gets
+things in her head as she can’t rightly give account on. Them young
+fillies ’ull run away often wi’out knowing why.”
+
+Her uncle’s answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides
+that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom
+he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid
+husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her
+marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where
+no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of
+right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet
+endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague
+clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor
+Hetty’s vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic
+calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut
+out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready
+for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men
+and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.
+
+Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that
+it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still
+want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam’s happiness in
+the matter had never yet visited her.
+
+“Strange!” perhaps you will say, “this rush of impulse towards a course
+that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind,
+and in only the second night of her sadness!”
+
+Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty’s, struggling
+amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, _are_ strange. So
+are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a
+stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the
+sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!
+
+“Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings.”
+
+But that will not save the vessel—the pretty thing that might have been
+a lasting joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+Mrs. Poyser “Has Her Say Out”
+
+
+The next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the
+Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very
+day—no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said
+by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to
+be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness
+to the stranger’s visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better
+than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had
+thought of denying Mr. Casson’s testimony to the fact that he had seen
+the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating
+circumstances.
+
+“I see him myself,” he said; “I see him coming along by the Crab-tree
+Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I’d just been t’ hev a pint—it was half
+after ten i’ the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg’lar as the
+clock—and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, ‘You’ll get a
+bit o’ barley to-day, Knowles,’ I says, ‘if you look about you’; and
+then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles’on road,
+and just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i’ top-boots
+coming along on a bald-faced hoss—I wish I may never stir if I didn’t.
+And I stood still till he come up, and I says, ‘Good morning, sir,’ I
+says, for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know
+whether he was a this-country man; so I says, ‘Good morning, sir: it
+’ll ’old hup for the barley this morning, I think. There’ll be a bit
+got hin, if we’ve good luck.’ And he says, ‘Eh, ye may be raight,
+there’s noo tallin’,’ he says, and I knowed by that”—here Mr. Casson
+gave a wink—“as he didn’t come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he’d
+think me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as
+talks the right language.”
+
+“The right language!” said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. “You’re about
+as near the right language as a pig’s squeaking is like a tune played
+on a key-bugle.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know,” answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. “I
+should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely
+to know what’s the right language pretty nigh as well as a
+schoolmaster.”
+
+“Ay, ay, man,” said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation, “you
+talk the right language for _you_. When Mike Holdsworth’s goat says
+ba-a-a, it’s all right—it ’ud be unnatural for it to make any other
+noise.”
+
+The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh
+strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question,
+which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in the
+churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest
+conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and that
+fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, “never went
+boozin’ with that set at Casson’s, a-sittin’ soakin’ in drink, and
+looking as wise as a lot o’ cod-fish wi’ red faces.”
+
+It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband
+on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that Mrs.
+Poyser’s thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two
+afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting, in
+that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was
+done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony, followed
+by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of
+prevision, which really had something more in it than her own
+remarkable penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she
+said to herself, “I shouldna wonder if he’s come about that man as is
+a-going to take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him
+without pay. But Poyser’s a fool if he does.”
+
+Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire’s
+visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the
+last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more
+than met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the
+next time he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches
+had always remained imaginary.
+
+“Good-day, Mrs. Poyser,” said the old squire, peering at her with his
+short-sighted eyes—a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser
+observed, “allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he
+was going to dab his finger-nail on you.”
+
+However, she said, “Your servant, sir,” and curtsied with an air of
+perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to
+misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism,
+without severe provocation.
+
+“Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?”
+
+“Yes, sir; he’s only i’ the rick-yard. I’ll send for him in a minute,
+if you’ll please to get down and step in.”
+
+“Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter;
+but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have
+your opinion too.”
+
+“Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in,” said Mrs. Poyser, as they
+entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty’s
+curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry
+jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round
+furtively.
+
+“What a fine old kitchen this is!” said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round
+admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled,
+polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. “And you keep it
+so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know,
+beyond any on the estate.”
+
+“Well, sir, since you’re fond of ’em, I should be glad if you’d let a
+bit o’ repairs be done to ’em, for the boarding’s i’ that state as
+we’re like to be eaten up wi’ rats and mice; and the cellar, you may
+stan’ up to your knees i’ water in’t, if you like to go down; but
+perhaps you’d rather believe my words. Won’t you please to sit down,
+sir?”
+
+“Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I
+hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter,” said the squire,
+looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which
+he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. “I think I see the door
+open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your
+cream and butter. I don’t expect that Mrs. Satchell’s cream and butter
+will bear comparison with yours.”
+
+“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure. It’s seldom I see other folks’s butter,
+though there’s some on it as one’s no need to see—the smell’s enough.”
+
+“Ah, now this I like,” said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp
+temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. “I’m sure I should
+like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this
+dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my
+slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I’ll sit down in
+your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of
+business, I see, as usual. I’ve been looking at your wife’s beautiful
+dairy—the best manager in the parish, is she not?”
+
+Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a
+face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of “pitching.” As he
+stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old
+gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.
+
+“Will you please to take this chair, sir?” he said, lifting his
+father’s arm-chair forward a little: “you’ll find it easy.”
+
+“No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs,” said the old gentleman,
+seating himself on a small chair near the door. “Do you know, Mrs.
+Poyser—sit down, pray, both of you—I’ve been far from contented, for
+some time, with Mrs. Satchell’s dairy management. I think she has not a
+good method, as you have.”
+
+“Indeed, sir, I can’t speak to that,” said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice,
+rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window,
+as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if
+he liked, she thought; _she_ wasn’t going to sit down, as if she’d give
+in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt
+the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.
+
+“And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the
+Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I’m tired of having a farm on my
+own hands—nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A
+satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser,
+and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in
+consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage.”
+
+“Oh,” said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as
+to the nature of the arrangement.
+
+“If I’m called upon to speak, sir,” said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at
+her husband with pity at his softness, “you know better than me; but I
+don’t see what the Chase Farm is t’ us—we’ve cumber enough wi’ our own
+farm. Not but what I’m glad to hear o’ anybody respectable coming into
+the parish; there’s some as ha’ been brought in as hasn’t been looked
+on i’ that character.”
+
+“You’re likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure
+you—such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little
+plan I’m going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as
+much to your own advantage as his.”
+
+“Indeed, sir, if it’s anything t’ our advantage, it’ll be the first
+offer o’ the sort I’ve heared on. It’s them as take advantage that get
+advantage i’ this world, _I_ think: folks have to wait long enough
+afore it’s brought to ’em.”
+
+“The fact is, Poyser,” said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser’s theory
+of worldly prosperity, “there is too much dairy land, and too little
+plough land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle’s purpose—indeed, he will
+only take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it
+appears, is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I’m
+thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the
+Hollow Pastures, you might increase your dairy, which must be so
+profitable under your wife’s management; and I should request you, Mrs.
+Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market
+prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower
+and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good
+riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn
+land.”
+
+Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head
+on one side, and his mouth screwed up—apparently absorbed in making the
+tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the
+ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the
+whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife’s view
+of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it
+was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a
+quarrel, any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to
+him. So, after a few moments’ silence, he looked up at her and said
+mildly, “What dost say?”
+
+Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity
+during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss,
+looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her
+knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her
+clasped hands.
+
+“Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o’ your
+corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won’t be for a year come
+next Michaelmas, but I’ll not consent to take more dairy work into my
+hands, either for love or money; and there’s nayther love nor money
+here, as I can see, on’y other folks’s love o’ theirselves, and the
+money as is to go into other folks’s pockets. I know there’s them as is
+born t’ own the land, and them as is born to sweat on’t”—here Mrs.
+Poyser paused to gasp a little—“and I know it’s christened folks’s duty
+to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood ’ull bear it; but
+I’ll not make a martyr o’ myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and
+worret myself as if I was a churn wi’ butter a-coming in’t, for no
+landlord in England, not if he was King George himself.”
+
+“No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not,” said the squire, still
+confident in his own powers of persuasion, “you must not overwork
+yourself; but don’t you think your work will rather be lessened than
+increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey that
+you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the
+addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most
+profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?”
+
+“Aye, that’s true,” said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a
+question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this
+case a purely abstract question.
+
+“I daresay,” said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way
+towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair—“I daresay it’s
+true for men as sit i’ th’ chimney-corner and make believe as
+everything’s cut wi’ ins an’ outs to fit int’ everything else. If you
+could make a pudding wi’ thinking o’ the batter, it ’ud be easy getting
+dinner. How do I know whether the milk ’ull be wanted constant? What’s
+to make me sure as the house won’t be put o’ board wage afore we’re
+many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o’ nights wi’
+twenty gallons o’ milk on my mind—and Dingall ’ull take no more butter,
+let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we’re obliged to beg
+the butcher on our knees to buy ’em, and lose half of ’em wi’ the
+measles. And there’s the fetching and carrying, as ’ud be welly half a
+day’s work for a man an’ hoss—_that’s_ to be took out o’ the profits, I
+reckon? But there’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to
+carry away the water.”
+
+“That difficulty—about the fetching and carrying—you will not have,
+Mrs. Poyser,” said the squire, who thought that this entrance into
+particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs.
+Poyser’s part. “Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony.”
+
+“Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I’ve never been used t’ having
+gentlefolks’s servants coming about my back places, a-making love to
+both the gells at once and keeping ’em with their hands on their hips
+listening to all manner o’ gossip when they should be down on their
+knees a-scouring. If we’re to go to ruin, it shanna be wi’ having our
+back kitchen turned into a public.”
+
+“Well, Poyser,” said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if
+he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and
+left the room, “you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can
+easily make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall
+not forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a
+neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three
+years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who
+is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they
+could be worked so well together. But I don’t want to part with an old
+tenant like you.”
+
+To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough
+to complete Mrs. Poyser’s exasperation, even without the final threat.
+Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old
+place where he had been bred and born—for he believed the old squire
+had small spite enough for anything—was beginning a mild remonstrance
+explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and
+sell more stock, with, “Well, sir, I think as it’s rether hard...” when
+Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say
+out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only
+shelter were the work-house.
+
+“Then, sir, if I may speak—as, for all I’m a woman, and there’s folks
+as thinks a woman’s fool enough to stan’ by an’ look on while the men
+sign her soul away, I’ve a right to speak, for I make one quarter o’
+the rent, and save another quarter—I say, if Mr. Thurle’s so ready to
+take farms under you, it’s a pity but what he should take this, and see
+if he likes to live in a house wi’ all the plagues o’ Egypt in’t—wi’
+the cellar full o’ water, and frogs and toads hoppin’ up the steps by
+dozens—and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit
+o’ cheese, and runnin’ over our heads as we lie i’ bed till we expect
+’em to eat us up alive—as it’s a mercy they hanna eat the children long
+ago. I should like to see if there’s another tenant besides Poyser as
+’ud put up wi’ never having a bit o’ repairs done till a place tumbles
+down—and not then, on’y wi’ begging and praying and having to pay
+half—and being strung up wi’ the rent as it’s much if he gets enough
+out o’ the land to pay, for all he’s put his own money into the ground
+beforehand. See if you’ll get a stranger to lead such a life here as
+that: a maggot must be born i’ the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon.
+You may run away from my words, sir,” continued Mrs. Poyser, following
+the old squire beyond the door—for after the first moments of stunned
+surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile,
+had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get
+away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard,
+and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.
+
+“You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin’ underhand
+ways o’ doing us a mischief, for you’ve got Old Harry to your friend,
+though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we’re not dumb
+creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha’ got the lash i’
+their hands, for want o’ knowing how t’ undo the tackle. An’ if I’m th’
+only one as speaks my mind, there’s plenty o’ the same way o’ thinking
+i’ this parish and the next to ’t, for your name’s no better than a
+brimstone match in everybody’s nose—if it isna two-three old folks as
+you think o’ saving your soul by giving ’em a bit o’ flannel and a drop
+o’ porridge. An’ you may be right i’ thinking it’ll take but little to
+save your soul, for it’ll be the smallest savin’ y’ iver made, wi’ all
+your scrapin’.”
+
+There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a
+formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony,
+even the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware
+that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he
+suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him—which was also the
+fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick’s
+sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony’s
+heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser’s solo in an impressive
+quartet.
+
+Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she
+turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them
+into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again
+with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house.
+
+“Thee’st done it now,” said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy,
+but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife’s outbreak.
+
+“Yes, I know I’ve done it,” said Mrs. Poyser; “but I’ve had my say out,
+and I shall be th’ easier for’t all my life. There’s no pleasure i’
+living if you’re to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind
+out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan’t repent saying what I
+think, if I live to be as old as th’ old squire; and there’s little
+likelihood—for it seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only
+folks as aren’t wanted i’ th’ other world.”
+
+“But thee wutna like moving from th’ old place, this Michaelmas
+twelvemonth,” said Mr. Poyser, “and going into a strange parish, where
+thee know’st nobody. It’ll be hard upon us both, and upo’ Father too.”
+
+“Eh, it’s no use worreting; there’s plenty o’ things may happen between
+this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore then,
+for what we know,” said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually
+hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her
+own merit and not by other people’s fault.
+
+“_I’m_ none for worreting,” said Mr. Poyser, rising from his
+three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; “but I should
+be loath to leave th’ old place, and the parish where I was bred and
+born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I
+doubt, and niver thrive again.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+More Links
+
+
+The barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by
+without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and nuts
+were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the
+farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods
+behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn
+splendour under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with
+its fragrant basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple
+daisies, and its lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding
+along between the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms.
+But though Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did
+not come to the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been
+obliged to put in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two
+parishes that the squire’s plan had been frustrated because the Poysers
+had refused to be “put upon,” and Mrs. Poyser’s outbreak was discussed
+in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by
+frequent repetition. The news that “Bony” was come back from Egypt was
+comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was
+nothing to Mrs. Poyser’s repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had
+heard a version of it in every parishioner’s house, with the one
+exception of the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill,
+avoided any quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself
+the pleasure of laughing at the old gentleman’s discomfiture with any
+one besides his mother, who declared that if she were rich she should
+like to allow Mrs. Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her
+to the parsonage that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs.
+Poyser’s own lips.
+
+“No, no, Mother,” said Mr. Irwine; “it was a little bit of irregular
+justice on Mrs. Poyser’s part, but a magistrate like me must not
+countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I
+have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good
+influence I have over the old man.”
+
+“Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses,” said Mrs.
+Irwine. “She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers.
+And she says such sharp things too.”
+
+“Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She’s quite original
+in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a
+country with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say
+about Craig—that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to
+hear him crow. Now that’s an Æsop’s fable in a sentence.”
+
+“But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of
+the farm next Michaelmas, eh?” said Mrs. Irwine.
+
+“Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that
+Donnithorne is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than
+turn them out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur
+and I must move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners
+as they are must not go.”
+
+“Ah, there’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day,” said Mrs.
+Irwine. “It struck me on Arthur’s birthday that the old man was a
+little shaken: he’s eighty-three, you know. It’s really an
+unconscionable age. It’s only women who have a right to live as long as
+that.”
+
+“When they’ve got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,”
+said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother’s hand.
+
+Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband’s occasional forebodings of a notice
+to quit with “There’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day”—one
+of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
+convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really
+too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
+imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It
+is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good
+subjects under that hard condition.
+
+Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser
+household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in
+Hetty. To be sure, the girl got “closer tempered, and sometimes she
+seemed as if there’d be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,”
+but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work
+quite eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never
+wanted to go out now—indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she
+bore her aunt’s putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the
+Chase without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all,
+that she had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of
+wanting to be a lady’s maid must have been caused by some little pique
+or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever
+Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to
+talk more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr.
+Craig or any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.
+
+Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave
+way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur’s
+letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again—not without dread
+lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the
+house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
+for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might
+presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step
+that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, “Come, Hetty, where have you
+been?” Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the
+changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw
+her smiling as if she were pleased to see him—looking the same as ever
+at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never
+seen her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at
+her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a
+change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she
+had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes,
+in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam
+thought—something harder, older, less child-like. “Poor thing!” he said
+to himself, “that’s allays likely. It’s because she’s had her first
+heartache. But she’s got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for
+that.”
+
+As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see
+him—turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to
+understand that she was glad for him to come—and going about her work
+in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe
+that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he
+had imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been
+able to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and
+would marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it
+perhaps was, as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it
+would be—her heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards
+the man she knew to have a serious love for her.
+
+Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his
+interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a
+sensible man to behave as he did—falling in love with a girl who really
+had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing
+imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after
+she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as
+a patient trembling dog waits for his master’s eye to be turned upon
+him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is
+hard to find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a
+rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their
+acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty,
+never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on
+all proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every
+respect—indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden
+ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will
+occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was
+one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less—nay, I think
+the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed
+Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of
+the very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent
+weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite
+music? To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings
+of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can
+penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in
+one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the
+tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome
+years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation
+all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your
+present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with all your past
+joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the
+exquisite curves of a woman’s cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid
+depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips.
+For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more?
+Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that
+it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the
+thought that prompted them. It is more than a woman’s love that moves
+us in a woman’s eyes—it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come
+near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the
+dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness—by their
+close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The
+noblest nature sees the most of this _impersonal_ expression in beauty
+(it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and
+undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest
+nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman’s
+soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life
+is likely to continue for a long time to come, in spite of mental
+philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all
+mistakes of the kind.
+
+Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for
+Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of
+knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him.
+He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply,
+touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage
+within him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in
+her? He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was
+large, unselfish, tender.
+
+The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards
+Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;
+they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur’s position
+ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of
+playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger
+and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty’s heart. As
+the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and
+jealousy began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost
+believed that she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his
+mind that the friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might
+revive in the days to come, and he would not have to say “good-bye” to
+the grand old woods, but would like them better because they were
+Arthur’s. For this new promise of happiness following so quickly on the
+shock of pain had an intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all
+his life been used to much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really
+going to have an easy lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning
+of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had
+at last made up his mind to offer him a share in the business, without
+further condition than that he should continue to give his energies to
+it and renounce all thought of having a separate business of his own.
+Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be
+parted with, and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than
+his skill in handicraft that his having the management of the woods
+made little difference in the value of his services; and as to the
+bargains about the squire’s timber, it would be easy to call in a third
+person. Adam saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous
+work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was
+a lad: he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory,
+for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge’s building
+business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree.
+So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his
+mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be
+shocked when I say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over
+plans for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to
+the cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a
+favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a
+peculiar form of iron girder. What then? Adam’s enthusiasm lay in these
+things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is
+inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence.
+
+Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his
+mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very
+soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps
+be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he
+would not be hasty—he would not try Hetty’s feeling for him until it
+had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church,
+he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he
+knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if
+Hetty’s eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he
+had to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over
+him of late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he
+got home and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while
+she sat by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much
+as usual because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her
+gently for the coming change by talking of the old house being too
+small for them all to go on living in it always.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+The Betrothal
+
+
+It was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November.
+There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so
+still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow
+elms must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did
+not go to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected;
+only two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and
+since his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the
+whole it would be as well for him to stay away too and “keep her
+company.” He could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons
+that determined this conclusion, but it is well known to all
+experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on
+subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
+However it was, no one from the Poyser family went to church that
+afternoon except Hetty and the boys; yet Adam was bold enough to join
+them after church, and say that he would walk home with them, though
+all the way through the village he appeared to be chiefly occupied with
+Marty and Tommy, telling them about the squirrels in Binton Coppice,
+and promising to take them there some day. But when they came to the
+fields he said to the boys, “Now, then, which is the stoutest walker?
+Him as gets to th’ home-gate first shall be the first to go with me to
+Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy must have the start up to the
+next stile, because he’s the smallest.”
+
+Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon
+as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, “Won’t
+you hang on my arm, Hetty?” in a pleading tone, as if he had already
+asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put
+her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting
+her arm through Adam’s, but she knew he cared a great deal about having
+her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no
+faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed
+field with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam
+scarcely felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he
+was pressing her arm a little—a very little. Words rushed to his lips
+that he dared not utter—that he had made up his mind not to utter
+yet—and so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm
+patience with which he had once waited for Hetty’s love, content only
+with her presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since
+that terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy
+had given a new restlessness to his passion—had made fear and
+uncertainty too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to
+Hetty of his love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if
+she would be pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk,
+he said, “I’m going to tell your uncle some news that’ll surprise him,
+Hetty; and I think he’ll be glad to hear it too.”
+
+“What’s that?” Hetty said indifferently.
+
+“Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I’m going
+to take it.”
+
+There was a change in Hetty’s face, certainly not produced by any
+agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary
+annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle
+that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day, if
+he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought
+immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of what
+had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that
+thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could
+not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The
+one thing—the one person—her mind had rested on in its dull weariness,
+had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with
+tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the
+tears, and before he had finished saying, “Hetty, dear Hetty, what are
+you crying for?” his eager rapid thought had flown through all the
+causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true
+one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge—she didn’t like him
+to marry—perhaps she didn’t like him to marry any one but herself? All
+caution was swept away—all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel
+nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as
+he said:
+
+“I could afford to be married now, Hetty—I could make a wife
+comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won’t have
+me.”
+
+Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to
+Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not
+coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she
+felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful
+as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant
+womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the
+happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed
+her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her.
+
+“Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and
+take care of as long as I live?”
+
+Hetty did not speak, but Adam’s face was very close to hers, and she
+put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be
+caressed—she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again.
+
+Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the
+rest of the walk. He only said, “I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn’t
+I, Hetty?” and she said, “Yes.”
+
+The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces
+that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the
+opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he
+saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to
+have him.
+
+“I hope you have no objections against me for her husband,” said Adam;
+“I’m a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for.”
+
+“Objections?” said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and
+brought out his long “Nay, nay.” “What objections can we ha’ to you,
+lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there’s money in your
+head-piece as there’s money i’ the sown field, but it must ha’ time.
+You’n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow’rt the bit o’
+furniture you’ll want. Thee’st got feathers and linen to spare—plenty,
+eh?”
+
+This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped
+up in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility.
+At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to
+resist the temptation to be more explicit.
+
+“It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen,” she said,
+hoarsely, “when I never sell a fowl but what’s plucked, and the wheel’s
+a-going every day o’ the week.”
+
+“Come, my wench,” said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, “come and kiss
+us, and let us wish you luck.”
+
+Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man.
+
+“There!” he said, patting her on the back, “go and kiss your aunt and
+your grandfather. I’m as wishful t’ have you settled well as if you was
+my own daughter; and so’s your aunt, I’ll be bound, for she’s done by
+you this seven ’ear, Hetty, as if you’d been her own. Come, come, now,”
+he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and
+the old man, “Adam wants a kiss too, I’ll warrant, and he’s a right to
+one now.”
+
+Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair.
+
+“Come, Adam, then, take one,” persisted Mr. Poyser, “else y’ arena half
+a man.”
+
+Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden—great strong fellow as he
+was—and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her
+lips.
+
+It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no
+candles—why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was
+reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to
+work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment in
+the midst of all this love. Adam’s attachment to her, Adam’s caress,
+stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity,
+but they were the best her life offered her now—they promised her some
+change.
+
+There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the
+possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.
+No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery’s in the
+village, and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that
+the best plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam
+in the old home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was
+plenty of space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to
+turning his mother out.
+
+“Well, well,” said Mr. Poyser at last, “we needna fix everything
+to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o’ getting
+married afore Easter. I’m not for long courtships, but there must be a
+bit o’ time to make things comfortable.”
+
+“Aye, to be sure,” said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; “Christian
+folks can’t be married like cuckoos, I reckon.”
+
+“I’m a bit daunted, though,” said Mr. Poyser, “when I think as we may
+have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile
+off.”
+
+“Eh,” said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up
+and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, “it’s a
+poor tale if I mun leave th’ ould spot an be buried in a strange
+parish. An’ you’ll happen ha’ double rates to pay,” he added, looking
+up at his son.
+
+“Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father,” said Martin the younger.
+“Happen the captain ’ull come home and make our peace wi’ th’ old
+squire. I build upo’ that, for I know the captain ’ll see folks righted
+if he can.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+The Hidden Dread
+
+
+It was a busy time for Adam—the time between the beginning of November
+and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except
+on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him
+nearer and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the
+little preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress
+towards the longed-for day. Two new rooms had been “run up” to the old
+house, for his mother and Seth were to live with them after all.
+Lisbeth had cried so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he
+had gone to Hetty and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put
+up with his mother’s ways and consent to live with her. To his great
+delight, Hetty said, “Yes; I’d as soon she lived with us as not.”
+Hetty’s mind was oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than
+poor Lisbeth’s ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was
+consoled for the disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back
+from his visit to Snowfield and said “it was no use—Dinah’s heart wasna
+turned towards marrying.” For when he told his mother that Hetty was
+willing they should all live together and there was no more need of
+them to think of parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he
+had heard her speak in since it had been settled that he was to be
+married, “Eh, my lad, I’ll be as still as th’ ould tabby, an’ ne’er
+want to do aught but th’ offal work, as _she_ wonna like t’ do. An’
+then we needna part the platters an’ things, as ha’ stood on the shelf
+together sin’ afore thee wast born.”
+
+There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam’s sunshine:
+Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender
+questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented
+and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more
+lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work
+and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another
+cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined
+her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything
+downstairs, and half-supply Molly’s place too, while that good damsel
+waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely
+into her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new
+in her, that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him
+what a good housekeeper he would have; but he “doubted the lass was
+o’erdoing it—she must have a bit o’ rest when her aunt could come
+downstairs.”
+
+This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser’s coming downstairs happened in the
+early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of
+snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt
+came down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things
+which were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for
+neglecting, observing that she supposed “it was because they were not
+for th’ outside, else she’d ha’ bought ’em fast enough.”
+
+It was about ten o’clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost
+that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as
+the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger
+charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to
+pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the
+patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that
+the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the
+same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on
+the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And
+the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches
+is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or
+rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so
+when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to
+me like our English Loamshire—the rich land tilled with just as much
+care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows—I
+have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am
+not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony—the agony of the Cross. It
+has stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad
+sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear
+brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this
+world who knew nothing of the story of man’s life upon it, this image
+of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this
+joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms,
+or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood,
+there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish—perhaps a
+young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from
+swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than
+a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on
+the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life’s bitterness.
+
+Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the
+blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came
+close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear
+with a despairing human sob. No wonder man’s religion has much sorrow
+in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.
+
+Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand,
+is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not
+that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think
+with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is
+shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for
+something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to
+be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her
+face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate
+she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her
+great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who
+is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave
+tender man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept
+away in the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile
+the pathway branches off: there are two roads before her—one along by
+the hedgerow, which will by and by lead her into the road again, the
+other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the
+way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see
+nobody. She chooses this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she
+had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to
+hasten. Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes
+gradually downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the
+slope. Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she
+is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a
+dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs
+of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the
+grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over
+the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the
+month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She
+clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks
+earnestly at it, as if trying to guess what sort of bed it would make
+for her young round limbs.
+
+No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she
+had, they might find her—they might find out why she had drowned
+herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where
+they can’t find her.
+
+After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her
+betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope
+that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she
+could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated
+on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible
+dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her
+miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had
+occurred to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that
+would shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and
+neighbours who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had
+vanished. Her imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he
+could do nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something
+else would happen—something _must_ happen—to set her free from this
+dread. In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this
+blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to
+believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to
+believe that they will die.
+
+But now necessity was pressing hard upon her—now the time of her
+marriage was close at hand—she could no longer rest in this blind
+trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes
+could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world,
+of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a
+thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now,
+so unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of
+throwing herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her
+pride. As she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the
+hope that he would receive her tenderly—that he would care for her and
+think for her—was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the
+moment indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of
+nothing but the scheme by which she should get away.
+
+She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the
+coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had
+read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, “I wish Dinah ’ud
+come again now, for she’d be a comfort to your aunt when you’re gone.
+What do you think, my wench, o’ going to see her as soon as you can be
+spared and persuading her to come back wi’ you? You might happen
+persuade her wi’ telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes
+o’ not being able to come.” Hetty had not liked the thought of going to
+Snowfield, and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, “It’s so
+far off, Uncle.” But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as
+a pretext for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home
+again that she should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week
+or ten days. And then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her,
+she would ask for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor.
+Arthur was at Windsor, and she would go to him.
+
+As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the
+grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to
+Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for,
+though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any
+suspicion that she was going to run away.
+
+Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and
+see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The
+sooner she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and
+Adam, when he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off
+to-morrow, he would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her
+safe into the Stoniton coach.
+
+“I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty,” he said, the
+next morning, leaning in at the coach door; “but you won’t stay much
+beyond a week—the time ’ull seem long.”
+
+He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its
+grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence—she was used to
+it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love
+than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last
+look.
+
+“God bless her for loving me,” said Adam, as he went on his way to work
+again, with Gyp at his heels.
+
+But Hetty’s tears were not for Adam—not for the anguish that would come
+upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for
+the misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender
+man who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor
+helpless suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she
+was obliged to cling to him.
+
+At three o’clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take
+her, they said, to Leicester—part of the long, long way to Windsor—she
+felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards
+the beginning of new misery.
+
+Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he
+did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to
+her.
+
+
+
+
+Book Fifth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+The Journey of Hope
+
+
+A long, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
+familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
+rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
+by duty, not urged by dread.
+
+What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
+melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of definite
+fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
+memories—shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images of
+what was to come—seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
+history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
+pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
+always to go in the coaches—and she felt sure she could not, for the
+journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected—it was
+plain that she must trust to carriers’ carts or slow waggons; and what
+a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
+burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
+among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
+him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
+dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
+stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
+cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
+he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, “He’s pretty
+nigh six foot, I’ll be bound, isna he, now?”
+
+“Who?” said Hetty, rather startled.
+
+“Why, the sweetheart as you’ve left behind, or else him as you’re goin’
+arter—which is it?”
+
+Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
+coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
+tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
+believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
+everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
+that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
+She was too frightened to speak.
+
+“Hegh, hegh!” said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
+gratifying as he had expected, “you munna take it too ser’ous; if he’s
+behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a
+sweetheart any day.”
+
+Hetty’s fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
+made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
+effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
+road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
+Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
+hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she had
+formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
+difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
+this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
+with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her—not resting on
+any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant of
+traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store of
+money—her three guineas—in her pocket, she thought herself amply
+provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
+Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
+the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
+passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
+grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
+where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
+the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
+Windsor.
+
+“Well, I can’t rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for
+it’s where the king lives,” was the answer. “Anyhow, you’d best go t’
+Ashby next—that’s south’ard. But there’s as many places from here to
+London as there’s houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I’ve
+never been no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like
+you to be thinking o’ taking such a journey as that?”
+
+“I’m going to my brother—he’s a soldier at Windsor,” said Hetty,
+frightened at the landlord’s questioning look. “I can’t afford to go by
+the coach; do you think there’s a cart goes toward Ashby in the
+morning?”
+
+“Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
+you might run over the town before you found out. You’d best set off
+and walk, and trust to summat overtaking you.”
+
+Every word sank like lead on Hetty’s spirits; she saw the journey
+stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
+thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
+to the rest of the journey. But it must be done—she must get to Arthur.
+Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
+She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
+familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
+farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
+whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
+because all the business of her life was managed for her—this
+kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
+grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded at
+by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
+loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
+tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
+she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
+had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
+her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with
+her little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide
+from any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and
+find that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short
+nightmare. She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret
+for her own sake. Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in
+it for other people’s sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur
+had been so tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for
+her, though it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain
+bearable. For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in
+future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have
+had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew
+no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
+source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
+understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
+the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
+any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
+take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He
+would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could
+think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing
+and ambition.
+
+The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
+for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
+leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a
+departing hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of
+heart at the length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all
+afraid of spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would
+have to ask people’s charity; for Hetty had the pride not only of a
+proud nature but of a proud class—the class that pays the most
+poor-rates, and most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate.
+It had not yet occurred to her that she might get money for her locket
+and earrings which she carried with her, and she applied all her small
+arithmetic and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and
+how many rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd
+shillings, which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes
+of the other bright-flaming coin.
+
+For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
+fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
+visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
+had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first
+she had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and
+read that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage
+sank. She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost
+hungry again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed
+to much movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks
+which produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
+activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
+falling on her face—it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
+which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
+down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
+a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is
+like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable;
+yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another
+bite and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst
+of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
+must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
+Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
+wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
+with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
+for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
+she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
+driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
+big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
+she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
+suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
+strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
+sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
+incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
+these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know, but
+at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
+fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
+was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward—a
+large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
+mantle.
+
+“Could you take me up in your waggon, if you’re going towards Ashby?”
+said Hetty. “I’ll pay you for it.”
+
+“Aw,” said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
+to heavy faces, “I can take y’ up fawst enough wi’out bein’ paid for’t
+if you dooant mind lyin’ a bit closish a-top o’ the wool-packs. Where
+do you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?”
+
+“I come from Stoniton. I’m going a long way—to Windsor.”
+
+“What! Arter some service, or what?”
+
+“Going to my brother—he’s a soldier there.”
+
+“Well, I’m going no furder nor Leicester—and fur enough too—but I’ll
+take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th’ hosses
+wooant feel _your_ weight no more nor they feel the little doog there,
+as I puck up on the road a fortni’t agoo. He war lost, I b’lieve, an’s
+been all of a tremble iver sin’. Come, gi’ us your basket an’ come
+behind and let me put y’ in.”
+
+To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of
+the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she
+half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted
+to get down and have “some victual”; he himself was going to eat his
+dinner at this “public.” Late at night they reached Leicester, and so
+this second day of Hetty’s journey was past. She had spent no money
+except what she had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow
+journeying would be intolerable for her another day, and in the morning
+she found her way to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor,
+and see if it would cost her too much to go part of the distance by
+coach again. Yes! The distance was too great—the coaches were too
+dear—she must give them up; but the elderly clerk at the office,
+touched by her pretty anxious face, wrote down for her the names of the
+chief places she must pass through. This was the only comfort she got
+in Leicester, for the men stared at her as she went along the street,
+and for the first time in her life Hetty wished no one would look at
+her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she
+was soon overtaken by a carrier’s cart which carried her to Hinckley,
+and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion—who
+frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting
+hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle—she
+was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a
+hundred miles from Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it
+was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it! She went by
+mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of
+places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right
+road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford.
+That seems but a slight journey as you look at the map, or remember
+your own pleasant travels to and from the meadowy banks of the Avon.
+But how wearily long it was to Hetty! It seemed to her as if this
+country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and dotted houses, and villages,
+and market-towns—all so much alike to her indifferent eyes—must have no
+end, and she must go on wandering among them for ever, waiting tired at
+toll-gates for some cart to come, and then finding the cart went only a
+little way—a very little way—to the miller’s a mile off perhaps; and
+she hated going into the public houses, where she must go to get food
+and ask questions, because there were always men lounging there, who
+stared at her and joked her rudely. Her body was very weary too with
+these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they had made her look more pale
+and worn than all the time of hidden dread she had gone through at
+home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford, her impatience and
+weariness had become too strong for her economical caution; she
+determined to take the coach for the rest of the way, though it should
+cost her all her remaining money. She would need nothing at Windsor but
+to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for the last coach, she had
+only a shilling; and as she got down at the sign of the Green Man in
+Windsor at twelve o’clock in the middle of the seventh day, hungry and
+faint, the coachman came up, and begged her to “remember him.” She put
+her hand in her pocket and took out the shilling, but the tears came
+with the sense of exhaustion and the thought that she was giving away
+her last means of getting food, which she really required before she
+could go in search of Arthur. As she held out the shilling, she lifted
+up her dark tear-filled eyes to the coachman’s face and said, “Can you
+give me back sixpence?”
+
+“No, no,” he said, gruffly, “never mind—put the shilling up again.”
+
+The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
+scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his good
+nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
+tearful face of Hetty’s would have found out the sensitive fibre in
+most men.
+
+“Come, young woman, come in,” he said, “and have a drop o’ something;
+you’re pretty well knocked up, I can see that.”
+
+He took her into the bar and said to his wife, “Here, missis, take this
+young woman into the parlour; she’s a little overcome”—for Hetty’s
+tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
+she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
+and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.
+
+She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
+the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
+else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
+from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and
+looked at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet,
+and her curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in
+its youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman’s
+eyes presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on
+her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger’s
+eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.
+
+“Why, you’re not very fit for travelling,” she said, glancing while she
+spoke at Hetty’s ringless hand. “Have you come far?”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
+and feeling the better for the food she had taken. “I’ve come a good
+long way, and it’s very tiring. But I’m better now. Could you tell me
+which way to go to this place?” Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
+of paper: it was the end of Arthur’s letter on which he had written his
+address.
+
+While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
+at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
+which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.
+
+“Why, what do you want at this house?” he said. It is in the nature of
+innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to
+ask as many questions as possible before giving any information.
+
+“I want to see a gentleman as is there,” said Hetty.
+
+“But there’s no gentleman there,” returned the landlord. “It’s shut
+up—been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
+I can let you know where to find him.”
+
+“It’s Captain Donnithorne,” said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
+to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
+find Arthur at once.
+
+“Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit,” said the landlord, slowly. “Was he
+in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
+reddish whiskers—and had a servant by the name o’ Pym?”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Hetty; “you know him—where is he?”
+
+“A fine sight o’ miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia’s gone to
+Ireland; it’s been gone this fortnight.”
+
+“Look there! She’s fainting,” said the landlady, hastening to support
+Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
+beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.
+
+“Here’s a bad business, I suspect,” said the landlord, as he brought in
+some water.
+
+“Ah, it’s plain enough what sort of business it is,” said the wife.
+“She’s not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
+a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
+by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
+from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
+house—they’re all honest folks in the north.”
+
+“I never saw a prettier young woman in my life,” said the husband.
+“She’s like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one’s ’eart to look
+at her.”
+
+“It ’ud have been a good deal better for her if she’d been uglier and
+had more conduct,” said the landlady, who on any charitable
+construction must have been supposed to have more “conduct” than
+beauty. “But she’s coming to again. Fetch a drop more water.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+The Journey in Despair
+
+
+Hetty was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be
+addressed to her—too ill even to think with any distinctness of the
+evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed,
+and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the
+borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The
+sensations of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the
+tendance of the good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her;
+such a respite as there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man
+to throw himself on the sand instead of toiling onward under the
+scorching sun.
+
+But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the
+keenness of mental suffering—when she lay the next morning looking at
+the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge
+from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour—she began to think what
+course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to look
+at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new
+clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But
+which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any
+service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate
+beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
+against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold
+and hunger—a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken
+to the parish. “The parish!” You can perhaps hardly understand the
+effect of that word on a mind like Hetty’s, brought up among people who
+were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived
+among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel
+inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a
+mark of idleness and vice—and it was idleness and vice that brought
+burdens on the parish. To Hetty the “parish” was next to the prison in
+obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers—to beg—lay in the same
+far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
+thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance
+of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from
+church, being carried into Joshua Rann’s, came back upon her with the
+new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide _her_ from
+the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread
+of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet
+animal.
+
+How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared
+for as she had always been! Her aunt’s scolding about trifles would
+have been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it
+in a time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same
+Hetty that used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder
+roses peeping in at the window—she, a runaway whom her friends would
+not open their doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the
+knowledge that she had no money to pay for what she received, and must
+offer those strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then
+she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie
+near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her.
+There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes,
+and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had
+bought her, the words “Remember me” making the ornament of the border;
+a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather
+case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, with
+their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her ears with
+such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July! She had no
+longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its dark rings of
+hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the sadness that rested
+about her brow and eyes was something too hard for regretful memory.
+Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was because there were some
+thin gold rings in them, which were also worth a little money. Yes, she
+could surely get some money for her ornaments: those Arthur had given
+her must have cost a great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had
+been good to her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for
+these things.
+
+But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was
+gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary
+drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask
+them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea
+again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never
+endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the
+servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who
+knew her. They should never know what had happened to her. What _could_
+she do? She would go away from Windsor—travel again as she had done the
+last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges
+round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps,
+when there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to
+drown herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would
+get away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn’t like these people
+at the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for
+Captain Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she
+had asked for him.
+
+With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket,
+meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had
+her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there
+might be something in this case which she had forgotten—something worth
+selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she
+craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire
+eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless
+places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried
+tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her
+little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name,
+which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty’s mind
+like a newly discovered message. The name was—_Dinah Morris,
+Snowfield_. There was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by
+Dinah’s own hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were
+sitting together and Hetty happened to have the red case lying open
+before her. Hetty did not read the text now: she was only arrested by
+the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without indifference
+the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah
+in the bed-chamber—that Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble.
+Suppose she were to go to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not
+think about things as other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but
+Hetty knew she was always kind. She couldn’t imagine Dinah’s face
+turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah’s voice willingly
+speaking ill of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah
+did not seem to belong to that world of Hetty’s, whose glance she
+dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from
+beseeching and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, “I
+will go to Dinah”: she only thought of that as a possible alternative,
+if she had not courage for death.
+
+The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon
+after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed.
+Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very
+tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask
+about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a
+soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very kind
+to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked
+doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of
+self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
+prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a
+remark that might seem like prying into other people’s affairs. She
+only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course
+of it Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the
+landlord if he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she
+said, had cost her much more than she expected, and now she had no
+money to get back to her friends, which she wanted to do at once.
+
+It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she
+had examined the contents of Hetty’s pocket yesterday, and she and her
+husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful
+things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been
+miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
+
+“Well,” said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles
+before him, “we might take ’em to the jeweller’s shop, for there’s one
+not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn’t give you a quarter o’
+what the things are worth. And you wouldn’t like to part with ’em?” he
+added, looking at her inquiringly.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Hetty, hastily, “so as I can get money to go
+back.”
+
+“And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell
+’em,” he went on, “for it isn’t usual for a young woman like you to
+have fine jew’llery like that.”
+
+The blood rushed to Hetty’s face with anger. “I belong to respectable
+folks,” she said; “I’m not a thief.”
+
+“No, that you aren’t, I’ll be bound,” said the landlady; “and you’d no
+call to say that,” looking indignantly at her husband. “The things were
+gev to her: that’s plain enough to be seen.”
+
+“I didn’t mean as I thought so,” said the husband, apologetically, “but
+I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn’t be
+offering much money for ’em.”
+
+“Well,” said the wife, “suppose you were to advance some money on the
+things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem ’em when she got home,
+she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might
+do as we liked with ’em.”
+
+I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had
+no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the
+ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect
+they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer’s wife had
+presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination.
+The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a
+meditative manner. He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many
+of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you?
+Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you
+highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but
+at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a
+percentage as possible.
+
+“How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?” said the
+well-wisher, at length.
+
+“Three guineas,” answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with,
+for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.
+
+“Well, I’ve no objections to advance you three guineas,” said the
+landlord; “and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery
+again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn’t going to run away.”
+
+“Oh yes, I’ll be very glad if you’ll give me that,” said Hetty,
+relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller’s
+and be stared at and questioned.
+
+“But if you want the things again, you’ll write before long,” said the
+landlady, “because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds
+as you don’t want ’em.”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty indifferently.
+
+The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The
+husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a
+good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife
+thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And
+they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing—a pretty, respectable-looking
+young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything
+for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o’clock
+Hetty said “Good-bye” to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had
+worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty
+miles back along the way she had come.
+
+There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last
+hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
+contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the
+sense of dependence.
+
+Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
+life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
+her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah.
+She would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would
+never be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
+
+When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
+rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
+purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
+come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
+Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy
+Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a
+hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than
+she came, often getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the
+hedgerows, looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying
+herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the
+Scantlands; wondering if it were very painful to be drowned, and if
+there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in
+life. Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Hetty’s mind. She was
+one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers,
+learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every
+Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust
+in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian
+feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched
+days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious
+fears or religious hopes.
+
+She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before
+by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way
+towards it—fields among which she thought she might find just the sort
+of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she
+carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so
+strong in her. She craved food and rest—she hastened towards them at
+the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she
+would leap towards death. It was already five days since she had left
+Windsor, for she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or
+questioning looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence
+whenever she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at
+night, and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on
+her way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she
+had a happy life to cherish.
+
+And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly
+different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked
+glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard
+and even fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as
+long as ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was
+never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting,
+childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from
+it—the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the
+passionate, passionless lips.
+
+At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long
+narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in
+that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was
+not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits,
+leaving mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She
+roamed up and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow
+before she came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to
+rest. The afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening,
+as if the sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty
+started up again, feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she
+must put off finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some
+shelter for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and
+might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew. She
+walked through field after field, and no village, no house was in
+sight; but _there_, at the corner of this pasture, there was a break in
+the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned
+towards each other across the opening. Hetty’s heart gave a great beat
+as she thought there must be a pool there. She walked towards it
+heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips and a sense of trembling.
+It was as if the thing were come in spite of herself, instead of being
+the object of her search.
+
+There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near.
+She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass,
+trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got
+shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer, no
+one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her
+basket—she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water—make it
+heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look about
+for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside
+her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry—there
+was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the
+basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her
+basket—three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where
+she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and
+then sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that
+came over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed
+dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank
+down on her knees. She was fast asleep.
+
+When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was
+frightened at this darkness—frightened at the long night before her. If
+she _could_ but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to
+walk about that she might get warm again, as if she would have more
+resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright
+hearth and the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and
+lying down, the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and
+holidays with their simple joys of dress and feasting—all the sweets of
+her young life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching
+her arms towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she
+thought of Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing
+would do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life
+of shame that he dared not end by death.
+
+The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude—out of all human
+reach—became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were
+dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to
+life again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful
+leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation:
+wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she
+was still in life—that she might yet know light and warmth again. She
+walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern
+something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to
+the night—the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
+creature—perhaps a field-mouse—rushing across the grass. She no longer
+felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back
+across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next
+field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a
+sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She
+could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope in
+lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new
+hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was
+some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The
+exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to
+her, however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude.
+There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set
+down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement
+comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right—this
+_was_ the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field
+where the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it.
+She reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the
+rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the
+gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped
+her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
+It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on
+the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears
+came—she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor—tears and
+sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she was
+still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
+consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
+sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
+warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
+continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
+again—fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
+with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
+sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the
+gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
+terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it—the relief of
+unconsciousness.
+
+Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
+Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream—that
+she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
+in her hand. She trembled under her aunt’s glance, and opened her eyes.
+There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel—the light of
+early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
+on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
+smock-frock.
+
+“Why, what do you do here, young woman?” the man said roughly.
+
+Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
+done in her momentary dream under her aunt’s glance. She felt that she
+was like a beggar already—found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
+her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
+here, that she found words at once.
+
+“I lost my way,” she said. “I’m travelling—north’ard, and I got away
+from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
+tell me the way to the nearest village?”
+
+She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
+adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
+
+The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
+answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
+door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood
+still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, “Aw, I
+can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin’
+out o’ the highroad?” he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. “Y’ull be
+gettin’ into mischief, if you dooant mind.”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty, “I won’t do it again. I’ll keep in the road, if
+you’ll be so good as show me how to get to it.”
+
+“Why dooant you keep where there’s a finger-poasses an’ folks to ax the
+way on?” the man said, still more gruffly. “Anybody ’ud think you was a
+wild woman, an’ look at yer.”
+
+Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last
+suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out
+of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her
+the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to
+point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the
+six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying
+good-morning, she held it out to him and said, “Thank you; will you
+please to take something for your trouble?”
+
+He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, “I want none o’ your
+money. You’d better take care on’t, else you’ll get it stool from yer,
+if you go trapesin’ about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway.”
+
+The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way.
+Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think
+of drowning herself—she could not do it, at least while she had money
+left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her
+waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money
+would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then,
+and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had
+said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after
+escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone
+now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man’s
+hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death—it was worse;
+it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and
+shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge
+from it.
+
+She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still
+two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it
+would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Dinah.
+The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the
+experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from
+the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah—if nobody besides Dinah
+would ever know—Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The
+soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the
+other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than
+she could rush on death.
+
+She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to
+give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting
+less and less able to bear the day’s weariness. And yet—such is the
+strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the
+very ends we dread—Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the
+straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that
+day.
+
+Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
+unloving, despairing soul looking out of it—with the narrow heart and
+narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and
+tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds
+for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a
+cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never
+thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her
+desire that a village may be near.
+
+What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from
+all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to
+life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
+
+God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+The Quest
+
+
+The first ten days after Hetty’s departure passed as quietly as any
+other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily
+work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least,
+perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there
+might then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a
+fortnight had passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty
+did not return; she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with
+Dinah than any one could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting
+very impatient to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear
+the next day (Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch
+her. There was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was
+light, and perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive
+pretty early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day—Dinah too,
+if she were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would
+afford to lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.
+
+His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on
+Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back
+without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the
+things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was
+surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah,
+Mrs. Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could
+make her believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the
+folks at Snowfield. “Though,” said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion,
+“you might tell her she’s got but one aunt left, and _she’s_ wasted
+pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p’rhaps all be gone twenty mile
+farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o’ broken hearts among
+strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man
+perfectly heart-whole, “it isna so bad as that. Thee’t looking rarely
+now, and getting flesh every day. But I’d be glad for Dinah t’ come,
+for she’d help thee wi’ the little uns: they took t’ her wonderful.”
+
+So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first
+mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that
+Dinah might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the
+cold morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a
+sense of Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low
+grey sky, and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and
+on the black hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet
+hurrying down the hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds.
+For they walked in silence, though with a pleased sense of
+companionship.
+
+“Good-bye, lad,” said Adam, laying his hand on Seth’s shoulder and
+looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. “I wish thee
+wast going all the way wi’ me, and as happy as I am.”
+
+“I’m content, Addy, I’m content,” said Seth cheerfully. “I’ll be an old
+bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi’ thy children.”
+
+They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward,
+mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns—he was very fond of
+hymns:
+
+“Dark and cheerless is the morn
+    Unaccompanied by thee:
+Joyless is the day’s return
+    Till thy mercy’s beams I see:
+Till thou inward light impart,
+Glad my eyes and warm my heart.
+
+Visit, then, this soul of mine,
+    Pierce the gloom of sin and grief—
+Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
+    Scatter all my unbelief.
+More and more thyself display,
+Shining to the perfect day.”
+
+
+Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road at
+sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall
+broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm
+as any soldier’s, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills
+as they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam’s life had
+his face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning;
+and this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical
+minds like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round
+him and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his
+own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love—the
+knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty,
+who was so soon to be his—was to his thoughts what the sweet morning
+air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being
+that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of
+more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than
+Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that all
+this happiness was given to him—that this life of ours had such
+sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps
+rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close to
+his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the
+other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this
+way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this
+morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved
+that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all
+the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country
+gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in
+his own district.
+
+It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty
+town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After this,
+the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more
+wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows,
+but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal
+wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been
+and were no longer. “A hungry land,” said Adam to himself. “I’d rather
+go south’ard, where they say it’s as flat as a table, than come to live
+here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the
+most comfort to folks, she’s i’ the right to live o’ this side; for she
+must look as if she’d come straight from heaven, like th’ angels in the
+desert, to strengthen them as ha’ got nothing t’ eat.” And when at last
+he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that
+was “fellow to the country,” though the stream through the valley where
+the great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The
+town lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill,
+and Adam did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him
+where to find Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a
+little way from the mill—an old cottage, standing sideways towards the
+road, with a little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged
+with an elderly couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam
+could learn where they were gone, or when they would be at home again.
+Dinah might be out on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have
+left Hetty at home. Adam could not help hoping this, and as he
+recognized the cottage by the roadside before him, there shone out in
+his face that involuntary smile which belongs to the expectation of a
+near joy.
+
+He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door.
+It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of
+the head.
+
+“Is Dinah Morris at home?” said Adam.
+
+“Eh?... no,” said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with
+a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. “Will you please to
+come in?” she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting
+herself. “Why, ye’re brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?”
+
+“Yes,” said Adam, entering. “That was Seth Bede. I’m his brother Adam.
+He told me to give his respects to you and your good master.”
+
+“Aye, the same t’ him. He was a gracious young man. An’ ye feature him,
+on’y ye’re darker. Sit ye down i’ th’ arm-chair. My man isna come home
+from meeting.”
+
+Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with
+questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in
+one corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his
+voice and would come down them.
+
+“So you’re come to see Dinah Morris?” said the old woman, standing
+opposite to him. “An’ you didn’ know she was away from home, then?”
+
+“No,” said Adam, “but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as
+it’s Sunday. But the other young woman—is she at home, or gone along
+with Dinah?”
+
+The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air.
+
+“Gone along wi’ her?” she said. “Eh, Dinah’s gone to Leeds, a big town
+ye may ha’ heared on, where there’s a many o’ the Lord’s people. She’s
+been gone sin’ Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her
+journey. You may see her room here,” she went on, opening a door and
+not noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her,
+and darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed,
+the portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the
+large Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there.
+He could not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was
+empty; an undefined fear had seized him—something had happened to Hetty
+on the journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and
+apprehension, that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all.
+
+“It’s a pity ye didna know,” she said. “Have ye come from your own
+country o’ purpose to see her?”
+
+“But Hetty—Hetty Sorrel,” said Adam, abruptly; “Where is _she?_”
+
+“I know nobody by that name,” said the old woman, wonderingly. “Is it
+anybody ye’ve heared on at Snowfield?”
+
+“Did there come no young woman here—very young and pretty—Friday was a
+fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?”
+
+“Nay; I’n seen no young woman.”
+
+“Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes
+and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You
+couldn’t forget her if you saw her.”
+
+“Nay; Friday was a fortnight—it was the day as Dinah went away—there
+come nobody. There’s ne’er been nobody asking for her till you come,
+for the folks about know as she’s gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there
+summat the matter?”
+
+The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam’s face. But he
+was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could
+inquire about Hetty.
+
+“Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a
+fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I’m afraid something has happened
+to her. I can’t stop. Good-bye.”
+
+He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the
+gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards
+the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne
+coach stopped.
+
+No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident
+happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to
+take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn’t
+stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam
+was in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the
+eagerness of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in
+his pockets looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to
+take him back to Oakbourne in his own “taxed cart” this very evening.
+It was not five o’clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a
+meal and yet to get to Oakbourne before ten o’clock. The innkeeper
+declared that he really wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go
+to-night; he should have all Monday before him then. Adam, after making
+an ineffectual attempt to eat, put the food in his pocket, and,
+drinking a draught of ale, declared himself ready to set off. As they
+approached the cottage, it occurred to him that he would do well to
+learn from the old woman where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there
+was trouble at the Hall Farm—he only half-admitted the foreboding that
+there would be—the Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had
+not left any address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was
+infirm, could not recall the name of the “blessed woman” who was
+Dinah’s chief friend in the Society at Leeds.
+
+During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for
+all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the
+very first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield,
+the thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he
+tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with
+modes of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that
+intolerable thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some
+strange chance, got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been
+taken ill, and did not want to frighten them by letting them know. But
+this frail fence of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a
+rush of distinct agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in
+thinking that she could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur
+all the while; and now, in her desperation at the nearness of their
+marriage, she had run away. And she was gone to _him_. The old
+indignation and jealousy rose again, and prompted the suspicion that
+Arthur had been dealing falsely—had written to Hetty—had tempted her to
+come to him—being unwilling, after all, that she should belong to
+another man besides himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived
+by him, and he had given her directions how to follow him to
+Ireland—for Adam knew that Arthur had been gone thither three weeks
+ago, having recently learnt it at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty’s,
+since she had been engaged to Adam, returned upon him now with all the
+exaggeration of painful retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and
+confident. The poor thing hadn’t perhaps known her own mind for a long
+while; had thought that she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily
+drawn towards the man who offered her a protecting, faithful love. He
+couldn’t bear to blame her: she never meant to cause him this dreadful
+pain. The blame lay with that man who had selfishly played with her
+heart—had perhaps even deliberately lured her away.
+
+At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman
+as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a
+fortnight ago—wasn’t likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in a
+hurry—was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went
+through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with
+the horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight
+to the house from which the Stoniton coach started: Stoniton was the
+most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be her
+destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief
+coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have
+sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for
+another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three
+or four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at
+the inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must
+of necessity wait and try to rest till morning—nay, till eleven
+o’clock, when the coach started.
+
+At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven
+Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he
+remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her,
+quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that
+he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not
+laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at
+the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of
+the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town
+from which a coach started—(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not
+start from Stoniton by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)—and then
+in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of road,
+in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No, she
+was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam was
+to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to what
+he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions
+amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him
+while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur
+Donnithorne’s behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for
+it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure
+might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been
+home and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further
+absence, he would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty
+on the road, he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make
+himself certain how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several
+times the thought occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but
+that would be useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the
+secret about Arthur. It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant
+occupation of his mind about Hetty, should never have alighted on the
+probability that she had gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no
+longer there. Perhaps the reason was that he could not conceive Hetty’s
+throwing herself on Arthur uncalled; he imagined no cause that could
+have driven her to such a step, after that letter written in August.
+There were but two alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written
+to her again and enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her
+approaching marriage with himself because she found, after all, she
+could not love him well enough, and yet was afraid of her friends’
+anger if she retracted.
+
+With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur,
+the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to
+be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not
+tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his
+intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he
+had traced her as far as possible.
+
+It was after twelve o’clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached
+Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also to
+encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without
+undressing on a bed at the “Waggon Overthrown,” and slept hard from
+pure weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five
+o’clock he set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He
+always kept a key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could
+let himself in; and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for
+he was anxious to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing
+Seth first, and asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He
+walked gently along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door;
+but, as he expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark.
+It subsided when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose
+silence, and in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with
+rubbing his body against his master’s legs.
+
+Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp’s fondling. He threw
+himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work
+around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them
+again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his
+master, laid his rough grey head on Adam’s knee and wrinkled his brows
+to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been
+constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no
+associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the
+light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded
+by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the
+reality—the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him
+with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers,
+which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty’s use, when his
+home should be hers.
+
+Seth had not heard Adam’s entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp’s
+bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing
+himself. Seth’s first thoughts were about his brother: he would come
+home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by
+to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday
+than he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was
+the greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he
+had no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him;
+but he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah’s friend
+and brother than any other woman’s husband. If he could but be always
+near her, instead of living so far off!
+
+He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen
+into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in the
+doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated
+listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost
+like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the
+marks meant—not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at
+him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself
+trembling so that speech did not come readily.
+
+“God have mercy on us, Addy,” he said, in a low voice, sitting down on
+the bench beside Adam, “what is it?”
+
+Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the
+signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child’s at this first
+approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth’s neck and sobbed.
+
+Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of
+their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before.
+
+“Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?” he asked, in a low tone, when Adam
+raised his head and was recovering himself.
+
+“No, lad; but she’s gone—gone away from us. She’s never been to
+Snowfield. Dinah’s been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a
+fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can’t find out where she went
+after she got to Stoniton.”
+
+Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could
+suggest to him a reason for Hetty’s going away.
+
+“Hast any notion what she’s done it for?” he said, at last.
+
+“She can’t ha’ loved me. She didn’t like our marriage when it came
+nigh—that must be it,” said Adam. He had determined to mention no
+further reason.
+
+“I hear Mother stirring,” said Seth. “Must we tell her?”
+
+“No, not yet,” said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair
+from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. “I can’t have her told
+yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I’ve been to
+the village and th’ Hall Farm. I can’t tell thee where I’m going, and
+thee must say to her I’m gone on business as nobody is to know anything
+about. I’ll go and wash myself now.” Adam moved towards the door of the
+workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth’s
+eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, “I must take all the money out o’
+the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest ’ll be
+thine, to take care o’ Mother with.”
+
+Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret
+under all this. “Brother,” he said, faintly—he never called Adam
+“Brother” except in solemn moments—“I don’t believe you’ll do anything
+as you can’t ask God’s blessing on.”
+
+“Nay, lad,” said Adam, “don’t be afraid. I’m for doing nought but
+what’s a man’s duty.”
+
+The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would
+only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of
+irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she
+had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and
+self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home—he told her when she
+came down—had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a
+bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his
+paleness and heavy eyes.
+
+He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his
+business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to
+go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for
+he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the
+children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be
+exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty.
+He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at
+the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was
+an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr.
+Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of
+going to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning,
+with a sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the
+master’s eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a
+useful companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught
+sight of Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil.
+
+“Why, Adam, lad, is’t you? Have ye been all this time away and not
+brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?”
+
+“No, I’ve not brought ’em,” said Adam, turning round, to indicate that
+he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser.
+
+“Why,” said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, “ye look
+bad. Is there anything happened?”
+
+“Yes,” said Adam, heavily. “A sad thing’s happened. I didna find Hetty
+at Snowfield.”
+
+Mr. Poyser’s good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment.
+“Not find her? What’s happened to her?” he said, his thoughts flying at
+once to bodily accident.
+
+“That I can’t tell, whether anything’s happened to her. She never went
+to Snowfield—she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can’t learn nothing
+of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach.”
+
+“Why, you donna mean she’s run away?” said Martin, standing still, so
+puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a
+trouble by him.
+
+“She must ha’ done,” said Adam. “She didn’t like our marriage when it
+came to the point—that must be it. She’d mistook her feelings.”
+
+Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and
+rooting up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing.
+His usual slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was
+painful. At last he looked up, right in Adam’s face, saying, “Then she
+didna deserve t’ ha’ ye, my lad. An’ I feel i’ fault myself, for she
+was my niece, and I was allays hot for her marr’ing ye. There’s no
+amends I can make ye, lad—the more’s the pity: it’s a sad cut-up for
+ye, I doubt.”
+
+Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a
+little while, went on, “I’ll be bound she’s gone after trying to get a
+lady’s maid’s place, for she’d got that in her head half a year ago,
+and wanted me to gi’ my consent. But I’d thought better on her”—he
+added, shaking his head slowly and sadly—“I’d thought better on her,
+nor to look for this, after she’d gi’en y’ her word, an’ everything
+been got ready.”
+
+Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr.
+Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He
+had no warrant for the _certainty_ that she was gone to Arthur.
+
+“It was better it should be so,” he said, as quietly as he could, “if
+she felt she couldn’t like me for a husband. Better run away before
+than repent after. I hope you won’t look harshly on her if she comes
+back, as she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home.”
+
+“I canna look on her as I’ve done before,” said Martin decisively.
+“She’s acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I’ll not turn my back on
+her: she’s but a young un, and it’s the first harm I’ve knowed on her.
+It’ll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back
+wi’ ye? She’d ha’ helped to pacify her aunt a bit.”
+
+“Dinah wasn’t at Snowfield. She’s been gone to Leeds this fortnight,
+and I couldn’t learn from th’ old woman any direction where she is at
+Leeds, else I should ha’ brought it you.”
+
+“She’d a deal better be staying wi’ her own kin,” said Mr. Poyser,
+indignantly, “than going preaching among strange folks a-that’n.”
+
+“I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser,” said Adam, “for I’ve a deal to see
+to.”
+
+“Aye, you’d best be after your business, and I must tell the missis
+when I go home. It’s a hard job.”
+
+“But,” said Adam, “I beg particular, you’ll keep what’s happened quiet
+for a week or two. I’ve not told my mother yet, and there’s no knowing
+how things may turn out.”
+
+“Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We’n no need to say why the
+match is broke off, an’ we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi’
+me, lad: I wish I could make thee amends.”
+
+There was something in Martin Poyser’s throat at that moment which
+caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion.
+Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men
+grasped each other’s hard hands in mutual understanding.
+
+There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth
+to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam
+Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey—and to say as
+much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the
+Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer
+that he was gone in search of Hetty.
+
+He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the
+impulse which had frequently visited him before—to go to Mr. Irwine,
+and make a confidant of him—recurred with the new force which belongs
+to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey—a
+difficult one—by sea—and no soul would know where he was gone. If
+anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any
+matter concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling
+which made Adam shrink from telling anything which was _her_ secret
+must give way before the need there was that she should have some one
+else besides himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst
+extremity. Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new
+guilt, Adam felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty’s
+interest called on him to speak.
+
+“I must do it,” said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread
+themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in
+an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; “it’s the right
+thing. I can’t stand alone in this way any longer.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+The Tidings
+
+
+Adam turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
+stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be
+gone out—hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state
+of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it
+he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.
+
+But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and
+though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr.
+Irwine’s: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong
+to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but
+Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he
+wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and
+uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked
+at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and
+stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had
+somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open—the
+stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would
+let the master know at once.
+
+Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the
+last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam
+watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some
+reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost
+always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything
+but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came
+to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us
+in our sleep.
+
+Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He was
+to go into the study immediately. “I can’t think what that strange
+person’s come about,” the butler added, from mere incontinence of
+remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, “he’s gone i’ the dining-room.
+And master looks unaccountable—as if he was frightened.” Adam took no
+notice of the words: he could not care about other people’s business.
+But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine’s face, he felt
+in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely
+different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before.
+A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine’s hand was on it, but
+the changed glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to
+preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking
+eagerly towards the door, as if Adam’s entrance were a matter of
+poignant anxiety to him.
+
+“You want to speak to me, Adam,” he said, in that low constrainedly
+quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress
+agitation. “Sit down here.” He pointed to a chair just opposite to him,
+at no more than a yard’s distance from his own, and Adam sat down with
+a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine’s gave an additional
+unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his
+mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but
+imperative reasons.
+
+“I come to you, sir,” he said, “as the gentleman I look up to most of
+anybody. I’ve something very painful to tell you—something as it’ll
+pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o’ the wrong
+other people have done, you’ll see I didn’t speak till I’d good
+reason.”
+
+Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, “You was
+t’ ha’ married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o’ the fifteenth o’
+this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th’ happiest man i’ the
+parish. But a dreadful blow’s come upon me.”
+
+Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then,
+determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.
+
+“She’s gone away, sir, and we don’t know where. She said she was going
+to Snowfield o’ Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch
+her back; but she’d never been there, and she took the coach to
+Stoniton, and beyond that I can’t trace her. But now I’m going a long
+journey to look for her, and I can’t trust t’ anybody but you where I’m
+going.”
+
+Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
+
+“Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?” he said.
+
+“It’s plain enough she didn’t want to marry me, sir,” said Adam. “She
+didn’t like it when it came so near. But that isn’t all, I doubt.
+There’s something else I must tell you, sir. There’s somebody else
+concerned besides me.”
+
+A gleam of something—it was almost like relief or joy—came across the
+eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine’s face at that moment. Adam was looking on
+the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But
+when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr.
+Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.
+
+“You know who’s the man I’ve reckoned my greatest friend,” he said,
+“and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i’ working for
+him, and had felt so ever since we were lads....”
+
+Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam’s
+arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in
+pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, “No, Adam, no—don’t
+say it, for God’s sake!”
+
+Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine’s feeling, repented of
+the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The
+grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back
+in his chair, saying, “Go on—I must know it.”
+
+“That man played with Hetty’s feelings, and behaved to her as he’d no
+right to do to a girl in her station o’ life—made her presents and used
+to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before
+he went away—found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.
+There’d been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I’d loved
+her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his
+wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said
+solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more
+than a bit o’ flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty
+he’d meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I
+hadn’t understood at the time, as he’d got hold of her heart, and I
+thought she’d belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
+another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she
+seemed to bear it all after a while better than I’d expected... and she
+behaved kinder and kinder to me... I daresay she didn’t know her own
+feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too
+late... I don’t want to blame her... I can’t think as she meant to
+deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and—you know
+the rest, sir. But it’s on my mind as he’s been false to me, and ’ticed
+her away, and she’s gone to him—and I’m going now to see, for I can
+never go to work again till I know what’s become of her.”
+
+During Adam’s narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
+self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It
+was a bitter remembrance to him now—that morning when Arthur
+breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a
+confession. It was plain enough _now_ what he had wanted to confess.
+And if their words had taken another turn... if he himself had been
+less fastidious about intruding on another man’s secrets... it was
+cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt
+and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination
+which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as
+it rushed upon him was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful
+pity, for the man who sat before him—already so bruised, going forth
+with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was
+close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever
+to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that
+comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he
+must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand
+on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said
+solemnly:
+
+“Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You
+can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both
+tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than
+any you have yet known. But you are not guilty—you have not the worst
+of all sorrows. God help him who has!”
+
+The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam’s there was trembling
+suspense, in Mr. Irwine’s hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.
+
+“I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to _him_. She
+is in Stonyshire—at Stoniton.”
+
+Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped
+to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said,
+persuasively, “Wait, Adam, wait.” So he sat down.
+
+“She is in a very unhappy position—one which will make it worse for you
+to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever.”
+
+Adam’s lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and
+he whispered, “Tell me.”
+
+“She has been arrested... she is in prison.”
+
+It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of
+resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly
+and sharply, “For what?”
+
+“For a great crime—the murder of her child.”
+
+“It _can’t be!_” Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and
+making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting
+his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. “It
+isn’t possible. She never had a child. She can’t be guilty. _Who_ says
+it?”
+
+“God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is.”
+
+“But who says she is guilty?” said Adam violently. “Tell me
+everything.”
+
+“Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and
+the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not
+confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can
+be no doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds,
+only that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small
+red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it—one
+at the beginning, ‘Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,’ and the other near the end,
+‘Dinah Morris, Snowfield.’ She will not say which is her own name—she
+denies everything, and will answer no questions, and application has
+been made to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for
+identifying her, for it was thought probable that the name which stands
+first is her own name.”
+
+“But what proof have they got against her, if it _is_ Hetty?” said
+Adam, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole
+frame. “I’ll not believe it. It couldn’t ha’ been, and none of us know
+it.”
+
+“Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime;
+but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and
+read that letter, Adam.”
+
+Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his
+eyes steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders.
+When he came back, Adam’s eyes were still on the first page—he couldn’t
+read—he could not put the words together and make out what they meant.
+He threw it down at last and clenched his fist.
+
+“It’s _his_ doing,” he said; “if there’s been any crime, it’s at his
+door, not at hers. _He_ taught her to deceive—_he_ deceived me first.
+Let ’em put _him_ on his trial—let him stand in court beside her, and
+I’ll tell ’em how he got hold of her heart, and ’ticed her t’ evil, and
+then lied to me. Is _he_ to go free, while they lay all the punishment
+on her... so weak and young?”
+
+The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor
+Adam’s maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the
+room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone
+of appealing anguish,
+
+“I _can’t_ bear it... O God, it’s too hard to lay upon me—it’s too hard
+to think she’s wicked.”
+
+Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter
+soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him,
+with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in
+moments of terrible emotion—the hard bloodless look of the skin, the
+deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow—the sight
+of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow,
+moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless,
+with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that
+short space he was living through all his love again.
+
+“She can’t ha’ done it,” he said, still without moving his eyes, as if
+he were only talking to himself: “it was fear made her hide it... I
+forgive her for deceiving me... I forgive thee, Hetty... thee wast
+deceived too... it’s gone hard wi’ thee, my poor Hetty... but they’ll
+never make me believe it.”
+
+He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce
+abruptness, “I’ll go to him—I’ll bring him back—I’ll make him go and
+look at her in her misery—he shall look at her till he can’t forget
+it—it shall follow him night and day—as long as he lives it shall
+follow him—he shan’t escape wi’ lies this time—I’ll fetch him, I’ll
+drag him myself.”
+
+In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and
+looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was
+present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the
+arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone,
+
+“No, Adam, no; I’m sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be
+done for _her_, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance. The
+punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is no longer
+in Ireland. He must be on his way home—or would be, long before you
+arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for him to come at least
+ten days ago. I want you now to go with me to Stoniton. I have ordered
+a horse for you to ride with us, as soon as you can compose yourself.”
+
+While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the
+actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened.
+
+“Remember,” Mr. Irwine went on, “there are others to think of, and act
+for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty’s friends, the good
+Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to
+think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam—from your sense of
+duty to God and man—that you will try to act as long as action can be
+of any use.”
+
+In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam’s own
+sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of
+counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours.
+
+“You _will_ go with me to Stoniton, Adam?” he said again, after a
+moment’s pause. “We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you
+know.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Adam, “I’ll do what you think right. But the folks at
+th’ Hall Farm?”
+
+“I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall
+have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I
+shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+The Bitter Waters Spread
+
+
+Mr. Irwine returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the
+first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that
+Squire Donnithorne was dead—found dead in his bed at ten o’clock that
+morning—and that Mrs. Irwine desired him to say she should be awake
+when Mr. Irwine came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without
+seeing her.
+
+“Well, Dauphin,” Mrs. Irwine said, as her son entered her room, “you’re
+come at last. So the old gentleman’s fidgetiness and low spirits, which
+made him send for Arthur in that sudden way, really meant something. I
+suppose Carroll has told you that Donnithorne was found dead in his bed
+this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though
+I daresay I shan’t live to prognosticate anything but my own death.”
+
+“What have they done about Arthur?” said Mr. Irwine. “Sent a messenger
+to await him at Liverpool?”
+
+“Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Arthur, I
+shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on
+the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He’ll be as happy
+as a king now.”
+
+Mr. Irwine could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with
+anxiety and exertion, and his mother’s light words were almost
+intolerable.
+
+“What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are
+you thinking of the danger for Arthur in crossing that frightful Irish
+Channel at this time of year?”
+
+“No, Mother, I’m not thinking of that; but I’m not prepared to rejoice
+just now.”
+
+“You’ve been worried by this law business that you’ve been to Stoniton
+about. What in the world is it, that you can’t tell me?”
+
+“You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell
+you at present. Good-night: you’ll sleep now you have no longer
+anything to listen for.”
+
+Mr. Irwine gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Arthur,
+since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather’s
+death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go to
+bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the
+morning’s heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm
+and to Adam’s home.
+
+Adam himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from
+seeing Hetty, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again.
+
+“It’s no use, sir,” he said to the rector, “it’s no use for me to go
+back. I can’t go to work again while she’s here, and I couldn’t bear
+the sight o’ the things and folks round home. I’ll take a bit of a room
+here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in
+time, to bear seeing _her_.”
+
+Adam had not been shaken in his belief that Hetty was innocent of the
+crime she was charged with, for Mr. Irwine, feeling that the belief in
+her guilt would be a crushing addition to Adam’s load, had kept from
+him the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any
+reason for thrusting the whole burden on Adam at once, and Mr. Irwine,
+at parting, only said, “If the evidence should tell too strongly
+against her, Adam, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other
+circumstances will be a plea for her.”
+
+“Ah, and it’s right people should know how she was tempted into the
+wrong way,” said Adam, with bitter earnestness. “It’s right they should
+know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi’
+notions. You’ll remember, sir, you’ve promised to tell my mother, and
+Seth, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else
+they’ll think harder of her than she deserves. You’ll be doing her a
+hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her
+ha’ done what she may. If you spare him, I’ll expose him!”
+
+“I think your demand is just, Adam,” said Mr. Irwine, “but when you are
+calmer, you will judge Arthur more mercifully. I say nothing now, only
+that his punishment is in other hands than ours.”
+
+Mr. Irwine felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of
+Arthur’s sad part in the story of sin and sorrow—he who cared for
+Arthur with fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly
+pride. But he saw clearly that the secret must be known before long,
+even apart from Adam’s determination, since it was scarcely to be
+supposed that Hetty would persist to the end in her obstinate silence.
+He made up his mind to withhold nothing from the Poysers, but to tell
+them the worst at once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of
+their suddenness. Hetty’s trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and
+they were to be held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be
+hoped that Martin Poyser could escape the pain of being called as a
+witness, and it was better he should know everything as long beforehand
+as possible.
+
+Before ten o’clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was a
+house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The
+sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Martin
+Poyser the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Hetty. He
+and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished
+character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head
+and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register;
+and Hetty had brought disgrace on them all—disgrace that could never be
+wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of
+father and son—the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all
+other sensibility—and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe
+that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband. We are often
+startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the
+reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of
+traditional impressions.
+
+“I’m willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her
+off,” said Martin the younger when Mr. Irwine was gone, while the old
+grandfather was crying in the opposite chair, “but I’ll not go nigh
+her, nor ever see her again, by my own will. She’s made our bread
+bitter to us for all our lives to come, an’ we shall ne’er hold up our
+heads i’ this parish nor i’ any other. The parson talks o’ folks
+pitying us: it’s poor amends pity ’ull make us.”
+
+“Pity?” said the grandfather, sharply. “I ne’er wanted folks’s pity i’
+_my_ life afore... an’ I mun begin to be looked down on now, an’ me
+turned seventy-two last St. Thomas’s, an’ all th’ underbearers and
+pall-bearers as I’n picked for my funeral are i’ this parish and the
+next to ’t.... It’s o’ no use now... I mun be ta’en to the grave by
+strangers.”
+
+“Don’t fret so, father,” said Mrs. Poyser, who had spoken very little,
+being almost overawed by her husband’s unusual hardness and decision.
+“You’ll have your children wi’ you; an’ there’s the lads and the little
+un ’ull grow up in a new parish as well as i’ th’ old un.”
+
+“Ah, there’s no staying i’ this country for us now,” said Mr. Poyser,
+and the hard tears trickled slowly down his round cheeks. “We thought
+it ’ud be bad luck if the old squire gave us notice this Lady day, but
+I must gi’ notice myself now, an’ see if there can anybody be got to
+come an’ take to the crops as I’n put i’ the ground; for I wonna stay
+upo’ that man’s land a day longer nor I’m forced to’t. An’ me, as
+thought him such a good upright young man, as I should be glad when he
+come to be our landlord. I’ll ne’er lift my hat to him again, nor sit
+i’ the same church wi’ him... a man as has brought shame on respectable
+folks... an’ pretended to be such a friend t’ everybody.... Poor Adam
+there... a fine friend he’s been t’ Adam, making speeches an’ talking
+so fine, an’ all the while poisoning the lad’s life, as it’s much if he
+can stay i’ this country any more nor we can.”
+
+“An’ you t’ ha’ to go into court, and own you’re akin t’ her,” said the
+old man. “Why, they’ll cast it up to the little un, as isn’t four ’ear
+old, some day—they’ll cast it up t’ her as she’d a cousin tried at the
+’sizes for murder.”
+
+“It’ll be their own wickedness, then,” said Mrs. Poyser, with a sob in
+her voice. “But there’s One above ’ull take care o’ the innicent child,
+else it’s but little truth they tell us at church. It’ll be harder nor
+ever to die an’ leave the little uns, an’ nobody to be a mother to
+’em.”
+
+“We’d better ha’ sent for Dinah, if we’d known where she is,” said Mr.
+Poyser; “but Adam said she’d left no direction where she’d be at
+Leeds.”
+
+“Why, she’d be wi’ that woman as was a friend t’ her Aunt Judith,” said
+Mrs. Poyser, comforted a little by this suggestion of her husband.
+“I’ve often heard Dinah talk of her, but I can’t remember what name she
+called her by. But there’s Seth Bede; he’s like enough to know, for
+she’s a preaching woman as the Methodists think a deal on.”
+
+“I’ll send to Seth,” said Mr. Poyser. “I’ll send Alick to tell him to
+come, or else to send up word o’ the woman’s name, an’ thee canst write
+a letter ready to send off to Treddles’on as soon as we can make out a
+direction.”
+
+“It’s poor work writing letters when you want folks to come to you i’
+trouble,” said Mrs. Poyser. “Happen it’ll be ever so long on the road,
+an’ never reach her at last.”
+
+Before Alick arrived with the message, Lisbeth’s thoughts too had
+already flown to Dinah, and she had said to Seth, “Eh, there’s no
+comfort for us i’ this world any more, wi’out thee couldst get Dinah
+Morris to come to us, as she did when my old man died. I’d like her to
+come in an’ take me by th’ hand again, an’ talk to me. She’d tell me
+the rights on’t, belike—she’d happen know some good i’ all this trouble
+an’ heart-break comin’ upo’ that poor lad, as ne’er done a bit o’ wrong
+in’s life, but war better nor anybody else’s son, pick the country
+round. Eh, my lad... Adam, my poor lad!”
+
+“Thee wouldstna like me to leave thee, to go and fetch Dinah?” said
+Seth, as his mother sobbed and rocked herself to and fro.
+
+“Fetch her?” said Lisbeth, looking up and pausing from her grief, like
+a crying child who hears some promise of consolation. “Why, what place
+is’t she’s at, do they say?”
+
+“It’s a good way off, mother—Leeds, a big town. But I could be back in
+three days, if thee couldst spare me.”
+
+“Nay, nay, I canna spare thee. Thee must go an’ see thy brother, an’
+bring me word what he’s a-doin’. Mester Irwine said he’d come an’ tell
+me, but I canna make out so well what it means when he tells me. Thee
+must go thysen, sin’ Adam wonna let me go to him. Write a letter to
+Dinah canstna? Thee’t fond enough o’ writin’ when nobody wants thee.”
+
+“I’m not sure where she’d be i’ that big town,” said Seth. “If I’d gone
+myself, I could ha’ found out by asking the members o’ the Society. But
+perhaps if I put Sarah Williamson, Methodist preacher, Leeds, o’ th’
+outside, it might get to her; for most like she’d be wi’ Sarah
+Williamson.”
+
+Alick came now with the message, and Seth, finding that Mrs. Poyser was
+writing to Dinah, gave up the intention of writing himself; but he went
+to the Hall Farm to tell them all he could suggest about the address of
+the letter, and warn them that there might be some delay in the
+delivery, from his not knowing an exact direction.
+
+On leaving Lisbeth, Mr. Irwine had gone to Jonathan Burge, who had also
+a claim to be acquainted with what was likely to keep Adam away from
+business for some time; and before six o’clock that evening there were
+few people in Broxton and Hayslope who had not heard the sad news. Mr.
+Irwine had not mentioned Arthur’s name to Burge, and yet the story of
+his conduct towards Hetty, with all the dark shadows cast upon it by
+its terrible consequences, was presently as well known as that his
+grandfather was dead, and that he was come into the estate. For Martin
+Poyser felt no motive to keep silence towards the one or two neighbours
+who ventured to come and shake him sorrowfully by the hand on the first
+day of his trouble; and Carroll, who kept his ears open to all that
+passed at the rectory, had framed an inferential version of the story,
+and found early opportunities of communicating it.
+
+One of those neighbours who came to Martin Poyser and shook him by the
+hand without speaking for some minutes was Bartle Massey. He had shut
+up his school, and was on his way to the rectory, where he arrived
+about half-past seven in the evening, and, sending his duty to Mr.
+Irwine, begged pardon for troubling him at that hour, but had something
+particular on his mind. He was shown into the study, where Mr. Irwine
+soon joined him.
+
+“Well, Bartle?” said Mr. Irwine, putting out his hand. That was not his
+usual way of saluting the schoolmaster, but trouble makes us treat all
+who feel with us very much alike. “Sit down.”
+
+“You know what I’m come about as well as I do, sir, I daresay,” said
+Bartle.
+
+“You wish to know the truth about the sad news that has reached you...
+about Hetty Sorrel?”
+
+“Nay, sir, what I wish to know is about Adam Bede. I understand you
+left him at Stoniton, and I beg the favour of you to tell me what’s the
+state of the poor lad’s mind, and what he means to do. For as for that
+bit o’ pink-and-white they’ve taken the trouble to put in jail, I don’t
+value her a rotten nut—not a rotten nut—only for the harm or good that
+may come out of her to an honest man—a lad I’ve set such store
+by—trusted to, that he’d make my bit o’ knowledge go a good way in the
+world.... Why, sir, he’s the only scholar I’ve had in this stupid
+country that ever had the will or the head-piece for mathematics. If he
+hadn’t had so much hard work to do, poor fellow, he might have gone
+into the higher branches, and then this might never have happened—might
+never have happened.”
+
+Bartle was heated by the exertion of walking fast in an agitated frame
+of mind, and was not able to check himself on this first occasion of
+venting his feelings. But he paused now to rub his moist forehead, and
+probably his moist eyes also.
+
+“You’ll excuse me, sir,” he said, when this pause had given him time to
+reflect, “for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that
+foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there’s nobody wants to
+listen to me. I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself—if you’ll
+take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad’s doing.”
+
+“Don’t put yourself under any restraint, Bartle,” said Mr. Irwine. “The
+fact is, I’m very much in the same condition as you just now; I’ve a
+great deal that’s painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be
+quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others. I share
+your concern for Adam, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I
+care for in this affair. He intends to remain at Stoniton till after
+the trial: it will come on probably a week to-morrow. He has taken a
+room there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he
+should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still
+believes Hetty is innocent—he wants to summon up courage to see her if
+he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is.”
+
+“Do you think the creatur’s guilty, then?” said Bartle. “Do you think
+they’ll hang her?”
+
+“I’m afraid it will go hard with her. The evidence is very strong. And
+one bad symptom is that she denies everything—denies that she has had a
+child in the face of the most positive evidence. I saw her myself, and
+she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened
+animal when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the
+change in her. But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a
+pardon for the sake of the innocent who are involved.”
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” said Bartle, forgetting in his irritation to whom
+he was speaking. “I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it’s stuff and
+nonsense for the innocent to care about her being hanged. For my own
+part, I think the sooner such women are put out o’ the world the
+better; and the men that help ’em to do mischief had better go along
+with ’em for that matter. What good will you do by keeping such vermin
+alive, eating the victual that ’ud feed rational beings? But if Adam’s
+fool enough to care about it, I don’t want him to suffer more than’s
+needful.... Is he very much cut up, poor fellow?” Bartle added, taking
+out his spectacles and putting them on, as if they would assist his
+imagination.
+
+“Yes, I’m afraid the grief cuts very deep,” said Mr. Irwine. “He looks
+terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then
+yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him. But I
+shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in
+the strength of Adam’s principle to trust that he will be able to
+endure the worst without being driven to anything rash.”
+
+Mr. Irwine, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather than
+addressing Bartle Massey in the last sentence, had in his mind the
+possibility that the spirit of vengeance towards Arthur, which was the
+form Adam’s anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an
+encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the
+Grove. This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked
+forward to Arthur’s arrival. But Bartle thought Mr. Irwine was
+referring to suicide, and his face wore a new alarm.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I have in my head, sir,” he said, “and I hope
+you’ll approve of it. I’m going to shut up my school—if the scholars
+come, they must go back again, that’s all—and I shall go to Stoniton
+and look after Adam till this business is over. I’ll pretend I’m come
+to look on at the assizes; he can’t object to that. What do you think
+about it, sir?”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Irwine, rather hesitatingly, “there would be some real
+advantages in that... and I honour you for your friendship towards him,
+Bartle. But... you must be careful what you say to him, you know. I’m
+afraid you have too little fellow-feeling in what you consider his
+weakness about Hetty.”
+
+“Trust to me, sir—trust to me. I know what you mean. I’ve been a fool
+myself in my time, but that’s between you and me. I shan’t thrust
+myself on him only keep my eye on him, and see that he gets some good
+food, and put in a word here and there.”
+
+“Then,” said Mr. Irwine, reassured a little as to Bartle’s discretion,
+“I think you’ll be doing a good deed; and it will be well for you to
+let Adam’s mother and brother know that you’re going.”
+
+“Yes, sir, yes,” said Bartle, rising, and taking off his spectacles,
+“I’ll do that, I’ll do that; though the mother’s a whimpering thing—I
+don’t like to come within earshot of her; however, she’s a
+straight-backed, clean woman, none of your slatterns. I wish you
+good-bye, sir, and thank you for the time you’ve spared me. You’re
+everybody’s friend in this business—everybody’s friend. It’s a heavy
+weight you’ve got on your shoulders.”
+
+“Good-bye, Bartle, till we meet at Stoniton, as I daresay we shall.”
+
+Bartle hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll’s conversational
+advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs
+pattered beside him on the gravel, “Now, I shall be obliged to take you
+with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You’d go fretting yourself to
+death if I left you—you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by
+some tramp. And you’ll be running into bad company, I expect, putting
+your nose in every hole and corner where you’ve no business! But if you
+do anything disgraceful, I’ll disown you—mind that, madam, mind that!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI
+The Eve of the Trial
+
+
+An upper room in a dull Stoniton street, with two beds in it—one laid
+on the floor. It is ten o’clock on Thursday night, and the dark wall
+opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled
+with the light of the one dip candle by which Bartle Massey is
+pretending to read, while he is really looking over his spectacles at
+Adam Bede, seated near the dark window.
+
+You would hardly have known it was Adam without being told. His face
+has got thinner this last week: he has the sunken eyes, the neglected
+beard of a man just risen from a sick-bed. His heavy black hair hangs
+over his forehead, and there is no active impulse in him which inclines
+him to push it off, that he may be more awake to what is around him. He
+has one arm over the back of the chair, and he seems to be looking down
+at his clasped hands. He is roused by a knock at the door.
+
+“There he is,” said Bartle Massey, rising hastily and unfastening the
+door. It was Mr. Irwine.
+
+Adam rose from his chair with instinctive respect, as Mr. Irwine
+approached him and took his hand.
+
+“I’m late, Adam,” he said, sitting down on the chair which Bartle
+placed for him, “but I was later in setting off from Broxton than I
+intended to be, and I have been incessantly occupied since I arrived. I
+have done everything now, however—everything that can be done to-night,
+at least. Let us all sit down.”
+
+Adam took his chair again mechanically, and Bartle, for whom there was
+no chair remaining, sat on the bed in the background.
+
+“Have you seen her, sir?” said Adam tremulously.
+
+“Yes, Adam; I and the chaplain have both been with her this evening.”
+
+“Did you ask her, sir... did you say anything about me?”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Irwine, with some hesitation, “I spoke of you. I said
+you wished to see her before the trial, if she consented.”
+
+As Mr. Irwine paused, Adam looked at him with eager, questioning eyes.
+
+“You know she shrinks from seeing any one, Adam. It is not only
+you—some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her
+fellow-creatures. She has scarcely said anything more than ‘No’ either
+to me or the chaplain. Three or four days ago, before you were
+mentioned to her, when I asked her if there was any one of her family
+whom she would like to see—to whom she could open her mind—she said,
+with a violent shudder, ‘Tell them not to come near me—I won’t see any
+of them.’”
+
+Adam’s head was hanging down again, and he did not speak. There was
+silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Irwine said, “I don’t like to
+advise you against your own feelings, Adam, if they now urge you
+strongly to go and see her to-morrow morning, even without her consent.
+It is just possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that
+the interview might affect her favourably. But I grieve to say I have
+scarcely any hope of that. She didn’t seem agitated when I mentioned
+your name; she only said ‘No,’ in the same cold, obstinate way as
+usual. And if the meeting had no good effect on her, it would be pure,
+useless suffering to you—severe suffering, I fear. She is very much
+changed...”
+
+Adam started up from his chair and seized his hat, which lay on the
+table. But he stood still then, and looked at Mr. Irwine, as if he had
+a question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter. Bartle Massey
+rose quietly, turned the key in the door, and put it in his pocket.
+
+“Is he come back?” said Adam at last.
+
+“No, he is not,” said Mr. Irwine, quietly. “Lay down your hat, Adam,
+unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air. I fear you
+have not been out again to-day.”
+
+“You needn’t deceive me, sir,” said Adam, looking hard at Mr. Irwine
+and speaking in a tone of angry suspicion. “You needn’t be afraid of
+me. I only want justice. I want him to feel what she feels. It’s his
+work... she was a child as it ’ud ha’ gone t’ anybody’s heart to look
+at... I don’t care what she’s done... it was him brought her to it. And
+he shall know it... he shall feel it... if there’s a just God, he shall
+feel what it is t’ ha’ brought a child like her to sin and misery.”
+
+“I’m not deceiving you, Adam,” said Mr. Irwine. “Arthur Donnithorne is
+not come back—was not come back when I left. I have left a letter for
+him: he will know all as soon as he arrives.”
+
+“But you don’t mind about it,” said Adam indignantly. “You think it
+doesn’t matter as she lies there in shame and misery, and he knows
+nothing about it—he suffers nothing.”
+
+“Adam, he _will_ know—he _will_ suffer, long and bitterly. He has a
+heart and a conscience: I can’t be entirely deceived in his character.
+I am convinced—I am sure he didn’t fall under temptation without a
+struggle. He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I
+am persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the
+effects all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount
+of torture that you could inflict on _him_ could benefit _her_.”
+
+“No—O God, no,” Adam groaned out, sinking on his chair again; “but
+then, that’s the deepest curse of all... that’s what makes the
+blackness of it... _it can never be undone_. My poor Hetty... she can
+never be my sweet Hetty again... the prettiest thing God had
+made—smiling up at me... I thought she loved me... and was good...”
+
+Adam’s voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone, as if
+he were only talking to himself; but now he said abruptly, looking at
+Mr. Irwine, “But she isn’t as guilty as they say? You don’t think she
+is, sir? She can’t ha’ done it.”
+
+“That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Adam,” Mr. Irwine
+answered gently. “In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what
+seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small
+fact, our judgment is wrong. But suppose the worst: you have no right
+to say that the guilt of her crime lies with him, and that he ought to
+bear the punishment. It is not for us men to apportion the shares of
+moral guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes
+even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the
+problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen
+consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to
+look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act
+of selfish indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to
+awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You
+have a mind that can understand this fully, Adam, when you are calm.
+Don’t suppose I can’t enter into the anguish that drives you into this
+state of revengeful hatred. But think of this: if you were to obey your
+passion—for it _is_ passion, and you deceive yourself in calling it
+justice—it might be with you precisely as it has been with Arthur; nay,
+worse; your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime.”
+
+“No—not worse,” said Adam, bitterly; “I don’t believe it’s worse—I’d
+sooner do it—I’d sooner do a wickedness as I could suffer for by myself
+than ha’ brought _her_ to do wickedness and then stand by and see ’em
+punish her while they let me alone; and all for a bit o’ pleasure, as,
+if he’d had a man’s heart in him, he’d ha’ cut his hand off sooner than
+he’d ha’ taken it. What if he didn’t foresee what’s happened? He
+foresaw enough; he’d no right to expect anything but harm and shame to
+her. And then he wanted to smooth it off wi’ lies. No—there’s plenty o’
+things folks are hanged for not half so hateful as that. Let a man do
+what he will, if he knows he’s to bear the punishment himself, he isn’t
+half so bad as a mean selfish coward as makes things easy t’ himself
+and knows all the while the punishment ’ll fall on somebody else.”
+
+“There again you partly deceive yourself, Adam. There is no sort of
+wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can’t
+isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not
+spread. Men’s lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the
+air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I
+feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur’s has caused
+to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides
+those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur
+would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you
+could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows
+on every one who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind
+fury that would leave all the present evils just as they were and add
+worse evils to them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of
+vengeance, but the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such
+actions, and as long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that
+to fix your mind on Arthur’s punishment is revenge, and not justice,
+you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great
+wrong. Remember what you told me about your feelings after you had
+given that blow to Arthur in the Grove.”
+
+Adam was silent: the last words had called up a vivid image of the
+past, and Mr. Irwine left him to his thoughts, while he spoke to Bartle
+Massey about old Mr. Donnithorne’s funeral and other matters of an
+indifferent kind. But at length Adam turned round and said, in a more
+subdued tone, “I’ve not asked about ’em at th’ Hall Farm, sir. Is Mr.
+Poyser coming?”
+
+“He is come; he is in Stoniton to-night. But I could not advise him to
+see you, Adam. His own mind is in a very perturbed state, and it is
+best he should not see you till you are calmer.”
+
+“Is Dinah Morris come to ’em, sir? Seth said they’d sent for her.”
+
+“No. Mr. Poyser tells me she was not come when he left. They’re afraid
+the letter has not reached her. It seems they had no exact address.”
+
+Adam sat ruminating a little while, and then said, “I wonder if Dinah
+’ud ha’ gone to see her. But perhaps the Poysers would ha’ been sorely
+against it, since they won’t come nigh her themselves. But I think she
+would, for the Methodists are great folks for going into the prisons;
+and Seth said he thought she would. She’d a very tender way with her,
+Dinah had; I wonder if she could ha’ done any good. You never saw her,
+sir, did you?”
+
+“Yes, I did. I had a conversation with her—she pleased me a good deal.
+And now you mention it, I wish she would come, for it is possible that
+a gentle mild woman like her might move Hetty to open her heart. The
+jail chaplain is rather harsh in his manner.”
+
+“But it’s o’ no use if she doesn’t come,” said Adam sadly.
+
+“If I’d thought of it earlier, I would have taken some measures for
+finding her out,” said Mr. Irwine, “but it’s too late now, I fear...
+Well, Adam, I must go now. Try to get some rest to-night. God bless
+you. I’ll see you early to-morrow morning.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII
+The Morning of the Trial
+
+
+At one o’clock the next day, Adam was alone in his dull upper room; his
+watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the long
+minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by the
+witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars
+connected with Hetty’s arrest and accusation. This brave active man,
+who would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Hetty from
+an apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to
+contemplate irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which
+would have been an impelling force where there was any possibility of
+action became helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or
+else sought an active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on
+Arthur. Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often
+rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is
+the overmastering sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an
+ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from laceration. Adam had
+brought himself to think of seeing Hetty, if she would consent to see
+him, because he thought the meeting might possibly be a good to
+her—might help to melt away this terrible hardness they told him of. If
+she saw he bore her no ill will for what she had done to him, she might
+open her heart to him. But this resolution had been an immense
+effort—he trembled at the thought of seeing her changed face, as a
+timid woman trembles at the thought of the surgeon’s knife, and he
+chose now to bear the long hours of suspense rather than encounter what
+seemed to him the more intolerable agony of witnessing her trial.
+
+Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a
+regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories,
+the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the
+Invisible Right—all the intense emotions which had filled the days and
+nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an
+eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back
+on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence,
+and he had only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as
+if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should
+suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before
+was only a moment’s stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a
+great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that
+baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.
+
+“O God,” Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at
+the face of the watch, “and men have suffered like this before... and
+poor helpless young things have suffered like her.... Such a little
+while ago looking so happy and so pretty... kissing ’em all, her
+grandfather and all of ’em, and they wishing her luck.... O my poor,
+poor Hetty... dost think on it now?”
+
+Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to
+whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the
+stairs. It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over?
+
+Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and
+said, “I’m just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out
+of court for a bit.”
+
+Adam’s heart beat so violently he was unable to speak—he could only
+return the pressure of his friend’s hand—and Bartle, drawing up the
+other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his
+spectacles.
+
+“That’s a thing never happened to me before,” he observed, “to go out
+o’ the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take ’em off.”
+
+The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond
+at all to Adam’s agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that
+there was nothing decisive to communicate at present.
+
+“And now,” he said, rising again, “I must see to your having a bit of
+the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning. He’ll be
+angry with me if you don’t have it. Come, now,” he went on, bringing
+forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, “I
+must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad—drink
+with me.”
+
+Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, “Tell me about
+it, Mr. Massey—tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?”
+
+“Yes, my boy, yes—it’s taken all the time since I first went; but
+they’re slow, they’re slow; and there’s the counsel they’ve got for her
+puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with
+cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers.
+That’s all he can do for the money they give him; and it’s a big
+sum—it’s a big sum. But he’s a ’cute fellow, with an eye that ’ud pick
+the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it
+’ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court;
+but a tender heart makes one stupid. I’d have given up figures for ever
+only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad.”
+
+“But does it seem to be going against her?” said Adam. “Tell me what
+they’ve said. I must know it now—I must know what they have to bring
+against her.”
+
+“Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Martin
+Poyser—poor Martin. Everybody in court felt for him—it was like one
+sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when
+they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work,
+poor fellow—it was hard work. Adam, my boy, the blow falls heavily on
+him as well as you; you must help poor Martin; you must show courage.
+Drink some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man.”
+
+Bartle had made the right sort of appeal. Adam, with an air of quiet
+obedience, took up the cup and drank a little.
+
+“Tell me how _she_ looked,” he said presently.
+
+“Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was
+the first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there’s a
+lot o’ foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms
+and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they’ve dressed
+themselves out in that way, one ’ud think, to be scarecrows and
+warnings against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up
+their glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like
+a white image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear
+nor see anything. And she’s as white as a sheet. She didn’t speak when
+they asked her if she’d plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty,’ and they
+pleaded ‘not guilty’ for her. But when she heard her uncle’s name,
+there seemed to go a shiver right through her; and when they told him
+to look at her, she hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face
+in her hands. He’d much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so.
+And the counsellors—who look as hard as nails mostly—I saw, spared him
+as much as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with
+him out o’ court. Ah, it’s a great thing in a man’s life to be able to
+stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that.”
+
+“God bless him, and you too, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, in a low voice,
+laying his hand on Bartle’s arm.
+
+“Aye, aye, he’s good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him,
+our parson does. A man o’ sense—says no more than’s needful. He’s not
+one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if
+folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was
+than those who have to bear it. I’ve had to do with such folks in my
+time—in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a
+witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her
+character and bringing up.”
+
+“But the other evidence... does it go hard against her!” said Adam.
+“What do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth.”
+
+“Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at
+last. The doctors’ evidence is heavy on her—is heavy. But she’s gone on
+denying she’s had a child from first to last. These poor silly
+women-things—they’ve not the sense to know it’s no use denying what’s
+proved. It’ll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so
+obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the
+verdict’s against her. But Mr. Irwine ’ull leave no stone unturned with
+the judge—you may rely upon that, Adam.”
+
+“Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the
+court?” said Adam.
+
+“There’s the chaplain o’ the jail sits near her, but he’s a sharp
+ferrety-faced man—another sort o’ flesh and blood to Mr. Irwine. They
+say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o’ the clergy.”
+
+“There’s one man as ought to be there,” said Adam bitterly. Presently
+he drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently
+turning over some new idea in his mind.
+
+“Mr. Massey,” he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, “I’ll
+go back with you. I’ll go into court. It’s cowardly of me to keep away.
+I’ll stand by her—I’ll own her—for all she’s been deceitful. They
+oughtn’t to cast her off—her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to
+God’s mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I’ll
+never be hard again. I’ll go, Mr. Massey—I’ll go with you.”
+
+There was a decision in Adam’s manner which would have prevented Bartle
+from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, “Take
+a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must
+stop and eat a morsel. Now, you take some.”
+
+Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread and drank
+some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but
+he stood upright again, and looked more like the Adam Bede of former
+days.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII
+The Verdict
+
+
+The place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old
+hall, now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close
+pavement of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed
+windows, variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim
+dusty armour hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at
+the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window
+opposite was spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim
+melancholy figures, like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was
+a place that through the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy
+memories of old kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but
+to-day all those shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt
+the presence of any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm
+hearts.
+
+But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now
+when Adam Bede’s tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the
+side of the prisoner’s dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall,
+among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in
+his face were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in
+the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who
+were present, and who told Hetty Sorrel’s story by their firesides in
+their old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Adam Bede,
+poor fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came
+into court and took his place by her side.
+
+But Hetty did not see him. She was standing in the same position Bartle
+Massey had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes
+fixed on them. Adam had not dared to look at her in the first moments,
+but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the
+proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to
+shrink.
+
+Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the
+_likeness_ we see—it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more
+keenly because something else _was_ and _is not_. There they were—the
+sweet face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark
+lashes, the rounded cheek and the pouting lips—pale and thin, yes, but
+like Hetty, and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon
+had cast a blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman’s soul in
+her, and left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother’s
+yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the
+essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child
+even in the debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking
+culprit was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the
+apple-tree boughs—she was that Hetty’s corpse, which he had trembled to
+look at the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes
+from.
+
+But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made
+the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a
+middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, “My
+name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to
+sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at
+the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with a
+basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday
+evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public,
+because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn’t
+take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired
+to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her
+prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her
+clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I
+couldn’t find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit
+down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and
+where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends:
+they were farming folks a good way off, and she’d had a long journey
+that had cost her more money than she expected, so as she’d hardly any
+money left in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost
+her much. She had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her
+basket, but she’d thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason
+why I shouldn’t take the young woman in for the night. I had only one
+room, but there were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with
+me. I thought she’d been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she
+was going to her friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of
+further harm.”
+
+The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she
+identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had
+herself dressed the child.
+
+“Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me
+ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for
+the child and the mother. I couldn’t help taking to the little thing
+and being anxious about it. I didn’t send for a doctor, for there
+seemed no need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the
+name of her friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them.
+She said, by and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would
+have no nay, but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of
+everything I could say. She said she felt quite strong enough; and it
+was wonderful what spirit she showed. But I wasn’t quite easy what I
+should do about her, and towards evening I made up my mind I’d go,
+after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the
+house about half-past eight o’clock. I didn’t go out at the shop door,
+but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I’ve only got
+the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look
+into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the
+kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn’t cried or seemed low at
+all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with
+her eyes, and she got a bit flushed towards evening. I was afraid of
+the fever, and I thought I’d call and ask an acquaintance of mine, an
+experienced woman, to come back with me when I went out. It was a very
+dark night. I didn’t fasten the door behind me; there was no lock; it
+was a latch with a bolt inside, and when there was nobody in the house
+I always went out at the shop door. But I thought there was no danger
+in leaving it unfastened that little while. I was longer than I meant
+to be, for I had to wait for the woman that came back with me. It was
+an hour and a half before we got back, and when we went in, the candle
+was standing burning just as I left it, but the prisoner and the baby
+were both gone. She’d taken her cloak and bonnet, but she’d left the
+basket and the things in it.... I was dreadful frightened, and angry
+with her for going. I didn’t go to give information, because I’d no
+thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew she had money in her
+pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn’t like to set the constable
+after her, for she’d a right to go from me if she liked.”
+
+The effect of this evidence on Adam was electrical; it gave him new
+force. Hetty could not be guilty of the crime—her heart must have clung
+to her baby—else why should she have taken it with her? She might have
+left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she
+had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death—and there might be the
+strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so
+occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he
+could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty’s counsel, who
+tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown
+some movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time
+this witness was being examined, Hetty had stood as motionless as
+before: no word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next
+witness’s voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a
+start and a frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away
+her head and looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a
+man, a rough peasant. He said:
+
+“My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd’s Hole, two
+miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o’clock in the
+afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a
+mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under
+a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me,
+and seemed as if she’d be walking on the other way. It was a regular
+road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman
+there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I
+should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes.
+I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I
+stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in
+sight. I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some
+stakes. There’s a road right through it, and bits of openings here and
+there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of ’em not carried
+away. I didn’t go straight along the road, but turned off towards the
+middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I
+hadn’t got far out of the road into one of the open places before I
+heard a strange cry. I thought it didn’t come from any animal I knew,
+but I wasn’t for stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and
+seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn’t help stopping to
+look. I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new
+thing. But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a
+good while I kept looking up at the boughs. And then I thought it came
+from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about,
+and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two. And I looked about among
+them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped. So I was for
+giving it up, and I went on about my business. But when I came back the
+same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn’t help laying down my
+stakes to have another look. And just as I was stooping and laying down
+the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the
+ground under a nut-bush by the side of me. And I stooped down on hands
+and knees to pick it up. And I saw it was a little baby’s hand.”
+
+At these words a thrill ran through the court. Hetty was visibly
+trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what
+a witness said.
+
+“There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground
+went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among
+them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it
+and see the child’s head; and I made haste and did away the turf and
+the choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes
+on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste
+back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it
+was dead, and I’d better take it to the parish and tell the constable.
+And I said, ‘I’ll lay my life it’s that young woman’s child as I met
+going to the coppice.’ But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight.
+And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we
+went on to Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young
+woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton,
+as they might stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to
+me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got
+there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found
+the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to
+move. She’d got a big piece of bread on her lap.”
+
+Adam had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was
+speaking. He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the
+boarding in front of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering:
+Hetty was guilty; and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard
+no more of the evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the
+prosecution had closed—unconscious that Mr. Irwine was in the
+witness-box, telling of Hetty’s unblemished character in her own parish
+and of the virtuous habits in which she had been brought up. This
+testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as
+part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he
+had been allowed to speak for her—a favour not granted to criminals in
+those stern times.
+
+At last Adam lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round
+him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The
+decisive moment was not far off. Adam felt a shuddering horror that
+would not let him look at Hetty, but she had long relapsed into her
+blank hard indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she
+stood like a statue of dull despair.
+
+There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout
+the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and
+every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Adam
+sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that
+were right in front of his eyes—the counsel and attorneys talking with
+an air of cool business, and Mr. Irwine in low earnest conversation
+with the judge—did not see Mr. Irwine sit down again in agitation and
+shake his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward
+action was too intense for Adam to take in outward objects until some
+strong sensation roused him.
+
+It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the
+knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a
+signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime—that sudden pause of a
+great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and
+deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while
+the jurymen’s names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold
+up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict.
+
+“Guilty.”
+
+It was the verdict every one expected, but there was a sigh of
+disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no
+recommendation to mercy. Still the sympathy of the court was not with
+the prisoner. The unnaturalness of her crime stood out the more harshly
+by the side of her hard immovability and obstinate silence. Even the
+verdict, to distant eyes, had not appeared to move her, but those who
+were near saw her trembling.
+
+The stillness was less intense until the judge put on his black cap,
+and the chaplain in his canonicals was observed behind him. Then it
+deepened again, before the crier had had time to command silence. If
+any sound were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts.
+The judge spoke, “Hester Sorrel....”
+
+The blood rushed to Hetty’s face, and then fled back again as she
+looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if
+fascinated by fear. Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a
+deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words “and
+then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead,” a piercing shriek rang
+through the hall. It was Hetty’s shriek. Adam started to his feet and
+stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her:
+she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV
+Arthur’s Return
+
+
+When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from
+his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father’s death, his first
+feeling was, “Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be
+with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the
+last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death.”
+
+It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity and
+softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy
+thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along
+towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually
+recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard
+for his grandfather’s wishes, without counteracting his own cherished
+aims for the good of the tenants and the estate. But it is not in human
+nature—only in human pretence—for a young man like Arthur, with a fine
+constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that
+others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give
+them more and more reason for that good opinion—it is not possible for
+such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the death
+of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very
+different from exultant joy. _Now_ his real life was beginning; now he
+would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them. He
+would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he
+would not exchange that career for any other under the sun. He felt
+himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after
+favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre
+mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well
+of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches
+at election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture;
+the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent
+landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like—happy
+faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring
+families on the best terms with him. The Irwines should dine with him
+every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very
+delicate way that Arthur would devise, the lay-impropriator of the
+Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to the
+vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on
+living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways—at
+least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct
+background, for Arthur had not yet seen the woman who would play the
+lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman.
+
+These were Arthur’s chief thoughts, so far as a man’s thoughts through
+hours of travelling can be compressed into a few sentences, which are
+only like the list of names telling you what are the scenes in a long
+long panorama full of colour, of detail, and of life. The happy faces
+Arthur saw greeting him were not pale abstractions, but real ruddy
+faces, long familiar to him: Martin Poyser was there—the whole Poyser
+family.
+
+What—Hetty?
+
+Yes; for Arthur was at ease about Hetty—not quite at ease about the
+past, for a certain burning of the ears would come whenever he thought
+of the scenes with Adam last August, but at ease about her present lot.
+Mr. Irwine, who had been a regular correspondent, telling him all the
+news about the old places and people, had sent him word nearly three
+months ago that Adam Bede was not to marry Mary Burge, as he had
+thought, but pretty Hetty Sorrel. Martin Poyser and Adam himself had
+both told Mr. Irwine all about it—that Adam had been deeply in love
+with Hetty these two years, and that now it was agreed they were to be
+married in March. That stalwart rogue Adam was more susceptible than
+the rector had thought; it was really quite an idyllic love affair; and
+if it had not been too long to tell in a letter, he would have liked to
+describe to Arthur the blushing looks and the simple strong words with
+which the fine honest fellow told his secret. He knew Arthur would like
+to hear that Adam had this sort of happiness in prospect.
+
+Yes, indeed! Arthur felt there was not air enough in the room to
+satisfy his renovated life, when he had read that passage in the
+letter. He threw up the windows, he rushed out of doors into the
+December air, and greeted every one who spoke to him with an eager
+gaiety, as if there had been news of a fresh Nelson victory. For the
+first time that day since he had come to Windsor, he was in true boyish
+spirits. The load that had been pressing upon him was gone, the
+haunting fear had vanished. He thought he could conquer his bitterness
+towards Adam now—could offer him his hand, and ask to be his friend
+again, in spite of that painful memory which would still make his ears
+burn. He had been knocked down, and he had been forced to tell a lie:
+such things make a scar, do what we will. But if Adam were the same
+again as in the old days, Arthur wished to be the same too, and to have
+Adam mixed up with his business and his future, as he had always
+desired before the accursed meeting in August. Nay, he would do a great
+deal more for Adam than he should otherwise have done, when he came
+into the estate; Hetty’s husband had a special claim on him—Hetty
+herself should feel that any pain she had suffered through Arthur in
+the past was compensated to her a hundredfold. For really she could not
+have felt much, since she had so soon made up her mind to marry Adam.
+
+You perceive clearly what sort of picture Adam and Hetty made in the
+panorama of Arthur’s thoughts on his journey homeward. It was March
+now; they were soon to be married: perhaps they were already married.
+And _now_ it was actually in his power to do a great deal for them.
+Sweet—sweet little Hetty! The little puss hadn’t cared for him half as
+much as he cared for her; for he was a great fool about her still—was
+almost afraid of seeing her—indeed, had not cared much to look at any
+other woman since he parted from her. That little figure coming towards
+him in the Grove, those dark-fringed childish eyes, the lovely lips put
+up to kiss him—that picture had got no fainter with the lapse of
+months. And she would look just the same. It was impossible to think
+how he could meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long
+this sort of influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with
+Hetty now. He had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should
+marry Adam, and there was nothing that contributed more to his
+happiness in these moments than the thought of their marriage. It was
+the exaggerating effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a
+little more quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing
+again as she really was, as Adam’s wife, at work quite prosaically in
+her new home, he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past
+feelings. Thank heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty
+of affairs and interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of
+playing the fool again.
+
+Pleasant the crack of the post-boy’s whip! Pleasant the sense of being
+hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round
+his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town—very
+much like Treddleston—where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the
+manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and
+hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable
+suggestion of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look,
+the woods were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion
+looked down from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its
+parapet and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and
+elms—masses reddened now with early buds. And close at hand came the
+village: the small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even
+among the faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with
+nettles round them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening
+round eyes at the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the
+gaping curs of mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village
+Hayslope was! And it should not be neglected like this place: vigorous
+repairs should go on everywhere among farm-buildings and cottages, and
+travellers in post-chaises, coming along the Rosseter road, should do
+nothing but admire as they went. And Adam Bede should superintend all
+the repairs, for he had a share in Burge’s business now, and, if he
+liked, Arthur would put some money into the concern and buy the old man
+out in another year or two. That was an ugly fault in Arthur’s life,
+that affair last summer, but the future should make amends. Many men
+would have retained a feeling of vindictiveness towards Adam, but _he_
+would not—he would resolutely overcome all littleness of that kind, for
+he had certainly been very much in the wrong; and though Adam had been
+harsh and violent, and had thrust on him a painful dilemma, the poor
+fellow was in love, and had real provocation. No, Arthur had not an
+evil feeling in his mind towards any human being: he was happy, and
+would make every one else happy that came within his reach.
+
+And here was dear old Hayslope at last, sleeping, on the hill, like a
+quiet old place as it was, in the late afternoon sunlight, and opposite
+to it the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, below them the purplish
+blackness of the hanging woods, and at last the pale front of the
+Abbey, looking out from among the oaks of the Chase, as if anxious for
+the heir’s return. “Poor Grandfather! And he lies dead there. _He_ was
+a young fellow once, coming into the estate and making his plans. So
+the world goes round! Aunt Lydia must feel very desolate, poor thing;
+but she shall be indulged as much as she indulges her fat Fido.”
+
+The wheels of Arthur’s chaise had been anxiously listened for at the
+Chase, for to-day was Friday, and the funeral had already been deferred
+two days. Before it drew up on the gravel of the courtyard, all the
+servants in the house were assembled to receive him with a grave,
+decent welcome, befitting a house of death. A month ago, perhaps, it
+would have been difficult for them to have maintained a suitable
+sadness in their faces, when Mr. Arthur was come to take possession;
+but the hearts of the head-servants were heavy that day for another
+cause than the death of the old squire, and more than one of them was
+longing to be twenty miles away, as Mr. Craig was, knowing what was to
+become of Hetty Sorrel—pretty Hetty Sorrel—whom they used to see every
+week. They had the partisanship of household servants who like their
+places, and were not inclined to go the full length of the severe
+indignation felt against him by the farming tenants, but rather to make
+excuses for him; nevertheless, the upper servants, who had been on
+terms of neighbourly intercourse with the Poysers for many years, could
+not help feeling that the longed-for event of the young squire’s coming
+into the estate had been robbed of all its pleasantness.
+
+To Arthur it was nothing surprising that the servants looked grave and
+sad: he himself was very much touched on seeing them all again, and
+feeling that he was in a new relation to them. It was that sort of
+pathetic emotion which has more pleasure than pain in it—which is
+perhaps one of the most delicious of all states to a good-natured man,
+conscious of the power to satisfy his good nature. His heart swelled
+agreeably as he said, “Well, Mills, how is my aunt?”
+
+But now Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since
+the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all
+questions, and Arthur walked with him towards the library, where his
+Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the
+house who knew nothing about Hetty. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter was
+unmixed with any other thoughts than those of anxiety about funeral
+arrangements and her own future lot; and, after the manner of women,
+she mourned for the father who had made her life important, all the
+more because she had a secret sense that there was little mourning for
+him in other hearts.
+
+But Arthur kissed her tearful face more tenderly than he had ever done
+in his life before.
+
+“Dear Aunt,” he said affectionately, as he held her hand, “_your_ loss
+is the greatest of all, but you must tell me how to try and make it up
+to you all the rest of your life.”
+
+“It was so sudden and so dreadful, Arthur,” poor Miss Lydia began,
+pouring out her little plaints, and Arthur sat down to listen with
+impatient patience. When a pause came, he said:
+
+“Now, Aunt, I’ll leave you for a quarter of an hour just to go to my
+own room, and then I shall come and give full attention to everything.”
+
+“My room is all ready for me, I suppose, Mills?” he said to the butler,
+who seemed to be lingering uneasily about the entrance-hall.
+
+“Yes, sir, and there are letters for you; they are all laid on the
+writing-table in your dressing-room.”
+
+On entering the small anteroom which was called a dressing-room, but
+which Arthur really used only to lounge and write in, he just cast his
+eyes on the writing-table, and saw that there were several letters and
+packets lying there; but he was in the uncomfortable dusty condition of
+a man who has had a long hurried journey, and he must really refresh
+himself by attending to his toilette a little, before he read his
+letters. Pym was there, making everything ready for him, and soon, with
+a delightful freshness about him, as if he were prepared to begin a new
+day, he went back into his dressing-room to open his letters. The level
+rays of the low afternoon sun entered directly at the window, and as
+Arthur seated himself in his velvet chair with their pleasant warmth
+upon him, he was conscious of that quiet well-being which perhaps you
+and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and
+health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of
+activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was
+no need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own.
+
+The top letter was placed with its address upwards: it was in Mr.
+Irwine’s handwriting, Arthur saw at once; and below the address was
+written, “To be delivered as soon as he arrives.” Nothing could have
+been less surprising to him than a letter from Mr. Irwine at that
+moment: of course, there was something he wished Arthur to know earlier
+than it was possible for them to see each other. At such a time as that
+it was quite natural that Irwine should have something pressing to say.
+Arthur broke the seal with an agreeable anticipation of soon seeing the
+writer.
+
+_“I send this letter to meet you on your arrival, Arthur, because I may
+then be at Stoniton, whither I am called by the most painful duty it
+has ever been given me to perform, and it is right that you should know
+what I have to tell you without delay.
+    “I will not attempt to add by one word of reproach to the
+    retribution that is now falling on you: any other words that I
+    could write at this moment must be weak and unmeaning by the side
+    of those in which I must tell you the simple fact.
+    “Hetty Sorrel is in prison, and will be tried on Friday for the
+    crime of child-murder.”..._
+
+
+Arthur read no more. He started up from his chair and stood for a
+single minute with a sense of violent convulsion in his whole frame, as
+if the life were going out of him with horrible throbs; but the next
+minute he had rushed out of the room, still clutching the letter—he was
+hurrying along the corridor, and down the stairs into the hall. Mills
+was still there, but Arthur did not see him, as he passed like a hunted
+man across the hall and out along the gravel. The butler hurried out
+after him as fast as his elderly limbs could run: he guessed, he knew,
+where the young squire was going.
+
+When Mills got to the stables, a horse was being saddled, and Arthur
+was forcing himself to read the remaining words of the letter. He
+thrust it into his pocket as the horse was led up to him, and at that
+moment caught sight of Mills’ anxious face in front of him.
+
+“Tell them I’m gone—gone to Stoniton,” he said in a muffled tone of
+agitation—sprang into the saddle, and set off at a gallop.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV
+In the Prison
+
+
+Near sunset that evening an elderly gentleman was standing with his
+back against the smaller entrance-door of Stoniton jail, saying a few
+last words to the departing chaplain. The chaplain walked away, but the
+elderly gentleman stood still, looking down on the pavement and
+stroking his chin with a ruminating air, when he was roused by a sweet
+clear woman’s voice, saying, “Can I get into the prison, if you
+please?”
+
+He turned his head and looked fixedly at the speaker for a few moments
+without answering.
+
+“I have seen you before,” he said at last. “Do you remember preaching
+on the village green at Hayslope in Loamshire?”
+
+“Yes, sir, surely. Are you the gentleman that stayed to listen on
+horseback?”
+
+“Yes. Why do you want to go into the prison?”
+
+“I want to go to Hetty Sorrel, the young woman who has been condemned
+to death—and to stay with her, if I may be permitted. Have you power in
+the prison, sir?”
+
+“Yes; I am a magistrate, and can get admittance for you. But did you
+know this criminal, Hetty Sorrel?”
+
+“Yes, we are kin. My own aunt married her uncle, Martin Poyser. But I
+was away at Leeds, and didn’t know of this great trouble in time to get
+here before to-day. I entreat you, sir, for the love of our heavenly
+Father, to let me go to her and stay with her.”
+
+“How did you know she was condemned to death, if you are only just come
+from Leeds?”
+
+“I have seen my uncle since the trial, sir. He is gone back to his home
+now, and the poor sinner is forsaken of all. I beseech you to get leave
+for me to be with her.”
+
+“What! Have you courage to stay all night in the prison? She is very
+sullen, and will scarcely make answer when she is spoken to.”
+
+“Oh, sir, it may please God to open her heart still. Don’t let us
+delay.”
+
+“Come, then,” said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining
+admission, “I know you have a key to unlock hearts.”
+
+Dinah mechanically took off her bonnet and shawl as soon as they were
+within the prison court, from the habit she had of throwing them off
+when she preached or prayed, or visited the sick; and when they entered
+the jailer’s room, she laid them down on a chair unthinkingly. There
+was no agitation visible in her, but a deep concentrated calmness, as
+if, even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an
+unseen support.
+
+After speaking to the jailer, the magistrate turned to her and said,
+“The turnkey will take you to the prisoner’s cell and leave you there
+for the night, if you desire it, but you can’t have a light during the
+night—it is contrary to rules. My name is Colonel Townley: if I can
+help you in anything, ask the jailer for my address and come to me. I
+take some interest in this Hetty Sorrel, for the sake of that fine
+fellow, Adam Bede. I happened to see him at Hayslope the same evening I
+heard you preach, and recognized him in court to-day, ill as he
+looked.”
+
+“Ah, sir, can you tell me anything about him? Can you tell me where he
+lodges? For my poor uncle was too much weighed down with trouble to
+remember.”
+
+“Close by here. I inquired all about him of Mr. Irwine. He lodges over
+a tinman’s shop, in the street on the right hand as you entered the
+prison. There is an old school-master with him. Now, good-bye: I wish
+you success.”
+
+“Farewell, sir. I am grateful to you.”
+
+As Dinah crossed the prison court with the turnkey, the solemn evening
+light seemed to make the walls higher than they were by day, and the
+sweet pale face in the cap was more than ever like a white flower on
+this background of gloom. The turnkey looked askance at her all the
+while, but never spoke. He somehow felt that the sound of his own rude
+voice would be grating just then. He struck a light as they entered the
+dark corridor leading to the condemned cell, and then said in his most
+civil tone, “It’ll be pretty nigh dark in the cell a’ready, but I can
+stop with my light a bit, if you like.”
+
+“Nay, friend, thank you,” said Dinah. “I wish to go in alone.”
+
+“As you like,” said the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and
+opening the door wide enough to admit Dinah. A jet of light from his
+lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Hetty was
+sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It
+seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would
+have been likely to waken her.
+
+The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of the
+evening sky, through the small high grating—enough to discern human
+faces by. Dinah stood still for a minute, hesitating to speak because
+Hetty might be asleep, and looking at the motionless heap with a
+yearning heart. Then she said, softly, “Hetty!”
+
+There was a slight movement perceptible in Hetty’s frame—a start such
+as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock—but she did
+not look up. Dinah spoke again, in a tone made stronger by
+irrepressible emotion, “Hetty... it’s Dinah.”
+
+Again there was a slight startled movement through Hetty’s frame, and
+without uncovering her face, she raised her head a little, as if
+listening.
+
+“Hetty... Dinah is come to you.”
+
+After a moment’s pause, Hetty lifted her head slowly and timidly from
+her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at each
+other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad
+yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them
+out.
+
+“Don’t you know me, Hetty? Don’t you remember Dinah? Did you think I
+wouldn’t come to you in trouble?”
+
+Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah’s face—at first like an animal that
+gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof.
+
+“I’m come to be with you, Hetty—not to leave you—to stay with you—to be
+your sister to the last.”
+
+Slowly, while Dinah was speaking, Hetty rose, took a step forward, and
+was clasped in Dinah’s arms.
+
+They stood so a long while, for neither of them felt the impulse to
+move apart again. Hetty, without any distinct thought of it, hung on
+this something that was come to clasp her now, while she was sinking
+helpless in a dark gulf; and Dinah felt a deep joy in the first sign
+that her love was welcomed by the wretched lost one. The light got
+fainter as they stood, and when at last they sat down on the straw
+pallet together, their faces had become indistinct.
+
+Not a word was spoken. Dinah waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from
+Hetty, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand
+that held hers and leaning her cheek against Dinah’s. It was the human
+contact she clung to, but she was not the less sinking into the dark
+gulf.
+
+Dinah began to doubt whether Hetty was conscious who it was that sat
+beside her. She thought suffering and fear might have driven the poor
+sinner out of her mind. But it was borne in upon her, as she afterwards
+said, that she must not hurry God’s work: we are overhasty to speak—as
+if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his
+love felt through ours. She did not know how long they sat in that way,
+but it got darker and darker, till there was only a pale patch of light
+on the opposite wall: all the rest was darkness. But she felt the
+Divine presence more and more—nay, as if she herself were a part of it,
+and it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart and was
+willing the rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to
+speak and find out how far Hetty was conscious of the present.
+
+“Hetty,” she said gently, “do you know who it is that sits by your
+side?”
+
+“Yes,” Hetty answered slowly, “it’s Dinah.”
+
+“And do you remember the time when we were at the Hall Farm together,
+and that night when I told you to be sure and think of me as a friend
+in trouble?”
+
+“Yes,” said Hetty. Then, after a pause, she added, “But you can do
+nothing for me. You can’t make ’em do anything. They’ll hang me o’
+Monday—it’s Friday now.”
+
+As Hetty said the last words, she clung closer to Dinah, shuddering.
+
+“No, Hetty, I can’t save you from that death. But isn’t the suffering
+less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you—that you
+can speak to, and say what’s in your heart?... Yes, Hetty: you lean on
+me: you are glad to have me with you.”
+
+“You won’t leave me, Dinah? You’ll keep close to me?”
+
+“No, Hetty, I won’t leave you. I’ll stay with you to the last.... But,
+Hetty, there is some one else in this cell besides me, some one close
+to you.”
+
+Hetty said, in a frightened whisper, “Who?”
+
+“Some one who has been with you through all your hours of sin and
+trouble—who has known every thought you have had—has seen where you
+went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have
+tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can’t follow you—when
+my arms can’t reach you—when death has parted us—He who is with us now,
+and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no difference—whether we
+live or die, we are in the presence of God.”
+
+“Oh, Dinah, won’t nobody do anything for me? _Will_ they hang me for
+certain?... I wouldn’t mind if they’d let me live.”
+
+“My poor Hetty, death is very dreadful to you. I know it’s dreadful.
+But if you had a friend to take care of you after death—in that other
+world—some one whose love is greater than mine—who can do
+everything?... If God our Father was your friend, and was willing to
+save you from sin and suffering, so as you should neither know wicked
+feelings nor pain again? If you could believe he loved you and would
+help you, as you believe I love you and will help you, it wouldn’t be
+so hard to die on Monday, would it?”
+
+“But I can’t know anything about it,” Hetty said, with sullen sadness.
+
+“Because, Hetty, you are shutting up your soul against him, by trying
+to hide the truth. God’s love and mercy can overcome all things—our
+ignorance, and weakness, and all the burden of our past wickedness—all
+things but our wilful sin, sin that we cling to, and will not give up.
+You believe in my love and pity for you, Hetty, but if you had not let
+me come near you, if you wouldn’t have looked at me or spoken to me,
+you’d have shut me out from helping you. I couldn’t have made you feel
+my love; I couldn’t have told you what I felt for you. Don’t shut God’s
+love out in that way, by clinging to sin.... He can’t bless you while
+you have one falsehood in your soul; his pardoning mercy can’t reach
+you until you open your heart to him, and say, ‘I have done this great
+wickedness; O God, save me, make me pure from sin.’ While you cling to
+one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery
+after death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my
+poor, poor Hetty. It is sin that brings dread, and darkness, and
+despair: there is light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it
+off. God enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength
+and peace. Cast it off now, Hetty—now: confess the wickedness you have
+done—the sin you have been guilty of against your Heavenly Father. Let
+us kneel down together, for we are in the presence of God.”
+
+Hetty obeyed Dinah’s movement, and sank on her knees. They still held
+each other’s hands, and there was long silence. Then Dinah said,
+“Hetty, we are before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth.”
+
+Still there was silence. At last Hetty spoke, in a tone of beseeching—
+
+“Dinah... help me... I can’t feel anything like you...my heart is
+hard.”
+
+Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice:
+
+“Jesus, thou present Saviour! Thou hast known the depths of all sorrow:
+thou hast entered that black darkness where God is not, and hast
+uttered the cry of the forsaken. Come Lord, and gather of the fruits of
+thy travail and thy pleading. Stretch forth thy hand, thou who art
+mighty to save to the uttermost, and rescue this lost one. She is
+clothed round with thick darkness. The fetters of her sin are upon her,
+and she cannot stir to come to thee. She can only feel her heart is
+hard, and she is helpless. She cries to me, thy weak creature....
+Saviour! It is a blind cry to thee. Hear it! Pierce the darkness! Look
+upon her with thy face of love and sorrow that thou didst turn on him
+who denied thee, and melt her hard heart.
+
+“See, Lord, I bring her, as they of old brought the sick and helpless,
+and thou didst heal them. I bear her on my arms and carry her before
+thee. Fear and trembling have taken hold on her, but she trembles only
+at the pain and death of the body. Breathe upon her thy life-giving
+Spirit, and put a new fear within her—the fear of her sin. Make her
+dread to keep the accursed thing within her soul. Make her feel the
+presence of the living God, who beholds all the past, to whom the
+darkness is as noonday; who is waiting now, at the eleventh hour, for
+her to turn to him, and confess her sin, and cry for mercy—now, before
+the night of death comes, and the moment of pardon is for ever fled,
+like yesterday that returneth not.
+
+“Saviour! It is yet time—time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting
+darkness. I believe—I believe in thy infinite love. What is _my_ love
+or _my_ pleading? It is quenched in thine. I can only clasp her in my
+weak arms and urge her with my weak pity. Thou—thou wilt breathe on the
+dead soul, and it shall arise from the unanswering sleep of death.
+
+“Yea, Lord, I see thee, coming through the darkness, coming, like the
+morning, with healing on thy wings. The marks of thy agony are upon
+thee—I see, I see thou art able and willing to save—thou wilt not let
+her perish for ever. Come, mighty Saviour! Let the dead hear thy voice.
+Let the eyes of the blind be opened. Let her see that God encompasses
+her. Let her tremble at nothing but at the sin that cuts her off from
+him. Melt the hard heart. Unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her
+whole soul, ‘Father, I have sinned.’...”
+
+“Dinah,” Hetty sobbed out, throwing her arms round Dinah’s neck, “I
+will speak... I will tell... I won’t hide it any more.”
+
+But the tears and sobs were too violent. Dinah raised her gently from
+her knees and seated her on the pallet again, sitting down by her side.
+It was a long time before the convulsed throat was quiet, and even then
+they sat some time in stillness and darkness, holding each other’s
+hands. At last Hetty whispered, “I did do it, Dinah... I buried it in
+the wood... the little baby... and it cried... I heard it cry... ever
+such a way off... all night... and I went back because it cried.”
+
+She paused, and then spoke hurriedly in a louder, pleading tone.
+
+“But I thought perhaps it wouldn’t die—there might somebody find it. I
+didn’t kill it—I didn’t kill it myself. I put it down there and covered
+it up, and when I came back it was gone.... It was because I was so
+very miserable, Dinah... I didn’t know where to go... and I tried to
+kill myself before, and I couldn’t. Oh, I tried so to drown myself in
+the pool, and I couldn’t. I went to Windsor—I ran away—did you know? I
+went to find him, as he might take care of me; and he was gone; and
+then I didn’t know what to do. I daredn’t go back home again—I couldn’t
+bear it. I couldn’t have bore to look at anybody, for they’d have
+scorned me. I thought o’ you sometimes, and thought I’d come to you,
+for I didn’t think you’d be cross with me, and cry shame on me. I
+thought I could tell you. But then the other folks ’ud come to know it
+at last, and I couldn’t bear that. It was partly thinking o’ you made
+me come toward Stoniton; and, besides, I was so frightened at going
+wandering about till I was a beggar-woman, and had nothing; and
+sometimes it seemed as if I must go back to the farm sooner than that.
+Oh, it was so dreadful, Dinah... I was so miserable... I wished I’d
+never been born into this world. I should never like to go into the
+green fields again—I hated ’em so in my misery.”
+
+Hetty paused again, as if the sense of the past were too strong upon
+her for words.
+
+“And then I got to Stoniton, and I began to feel frightened that night,
+because I was so near home. And then the little baby was born, when I
+didn’t expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get
+rid of it and go home again. The thought came all of a sudden, as I was
+lying in the bed, and it got stronger and stronger... I longed so to go
+back again... I couldn’t bear being so lonely and coming to beg for
+want. And it gave me strength and resolution to get up and dress
+myself. I felt I must do it... I didn’t know how... I thought I’d find
+a pool, if I could, like that other, in the corner of the field, in the
+dark. And when the woman went out, I felt as if I was strong enough to
+do anything... I thought I should get rid of all my misery, and go back
+home, and never let ’em know why I ran away. I put on my bonnet and
+shawl, and went out into the dark street, with the baby under my cloak;
+and I walked fast till I got into a street a good way off, and there
+was a public, and I got some warm stuff to drink and some bread. And I
+walked on and on, and I hardly felt the ground I trod on; and it got
+lighter, for there came the moon—oh, Dinah, it frightened me when it
+first looked at me out o’ the clouds—it never looked so before; and I
+turned out of the road into the fields, for I was afraid o’ meeting
+anybody with the moon shining on me. And I came to a haystack, where I
+thought I could lie down and keep myself warm all night. There was a
+place cut into it, where I could make me a bed, and I lay comfortable,
+and the baby was warm against me; and I must have gone to sleep for a
+good while, for when I woke it was morning, but not very light, and the
+baby was crying. And I saw a wood a little way off... I thought there’d
+perhaps be a ditch or a pond there... and it was so early I thought I
+could hide the child there, and get a long way off before folks was up.
+And then I thought I’d go home—I’d get rides in carts and go home and
+tell ’em I’d been to try and see for a place, and couldn’t get one. I
+longed so for it, Dinah, I longed so to be safe at home. I don’t know
+how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it—it was like a heavy
+weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me, and I
+daredn’t look at its little hands and face. But I went on to the wood,
+and I walked about, but there was no water....”
+
+Hetty shuddered. She was silent for some moments, and when she began
+again, it was in a whisper.
+
+“I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat
+down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a
+sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it
+darted into me like lightning—I’d lay the baby there and cover it with
+the grass and the chips. I couldn’t kill it any other way. And I’d done
+it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Dinah—I _couldn’t_ cover it quite
+up—I thought perhaps somebody ’ud come and take care of it, and then it
+wouldn’t die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it
+crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if
+I was held fast—I couldn’t go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I
+sat against the haystack to watch if anybody ’ud come. I was very
+hungry, and I’d only a bit of bread left, but I couldn’t go away. And
+after ever such a while—hours and hours—the man came—him in a
+smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste
+and went on. I thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find
+the baby. And I went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off
+from the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got
+something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to
+stay. I heard the baby crying, and thought the other folks heard it
+too—and I went on. But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark.
+And at last, by the roadside there was a barn—ever such a way off any
+house—like the barn in Abbot’s Close, and I thought I could go in there
+and hide myself among the hay and straw, and nobody ’ud be likely to
+come. I went in, and it was half full o’ trusses of straw, and there
+was some hay too. And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where
+nobody could find me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep....
+But oh, the baby’s crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as
+looked at me so was come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a
+long while at last, though I didn’t know, for when I got up and went
+out of the barn, I didn’t know whether it was night or morning. But it
+was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I’d
+come. I couldn’t help it, Dinah; it was the baby’s crying made me
+go—and yet I was frightened to death. I thought that man in the
+smock-frock ’ud see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on,
+for all that. I’d left off thinking about going home—it had gone out o’
+my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I’d buried the
+baby... I see it now. Oh Dinah! shall I allays see it?”
+
+Hetty clung round Dinah and shuddered again. The silence seemed long
+before she went on.
+
+“I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood.... I
+knew the way to the place... the place against the nut-tree; and I
+could hear it crying at every step.... I thought it was alive.... I
+don’t know whether I was frightened or glad... I don’t know what I
+felt. I only know I was in the wood and heard the cry. I don’t know
+what I felt till I saw the baby was gone. And when I’d put it there, I
+thought I should like somebody to find it and save it from dying; but
+when I saw it was gone, I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never
+thought o’ stirring, I felt so weak. I knew I couldn’t run away, and
+everybody as saw me ’ud know about the baby. My heart went like a
+stone. I couldn’t wish or try for anything; it seemed like as if I
+should stay there for ever, and nothing ’ud ever change. But they came
+and took me away.”
+
+Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still
+something behind; and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that
+tears must come before words. At last Hetty burst out, with a sob,
+“Dinah, do you think God will take away that crying and the place in
+the wood, now I’ve told everything?”
+
+“Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to
+the God of all mercy.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+The Hours of Suspense
+
+
+On Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for
+morning service, Bartle Massey re-entered Adam’s room, after a short
+absence, and said, “Adam, here’s a visitor wants to see you.”
+
+Adam was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and
+turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face
+was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was
+washed and shaven this Sunday morning.
+
+“Is it any news?” he said.
+
+“Keep yourself quiet, my lad,” said Bartle; “keep quiet. It’s not what
+you’re thinking of. It’s the young Methodist woman come from the
+prison. She’s at the bottom o’ the stairs, and wants to know if you
+think well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that
+poor castaway; but she wouldn’t come in without your leave, she said.
+She thought you’d perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These
+preaching women are not so back’ard commonly,” Bartle muttered to
+himself.
+
+“Ask her to come in,” said Adam.
+
+He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Dinah entered,
+lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great
+change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall
+man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put
+her hand into his and said, “Be comforted, Adam Bede, the Lord has not
+forsaken her.”
+
+“Bless you for coming to her,” Adam said. “Mr. Massey brought me word
+yesterday as you was come.”
+
+They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each
+other in silence; and Bartle Massey, too, who had put on his
+spectacles, seemed transfixed, examining Dinah’s face. But he recovered
+himself first, and said, “Sit down, young woman, sit down,” placing the
+chair for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed.
+
+“Thank you, friend; I won’t sit down,” said Dinah, “for I must hasten
+back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Adam
+Bede, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her
+farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you
+should see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time
+will be short.”
+
+Adam stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again.
+
+“It won’t be,” he said, “it’ll be put off—there’ll perhaps come a
+pardon. Mr. Irwine said there was hope. He said, I needn’t quite give
+it up.”
+
+“That’s a blessed thought to me,” said Dinah, her eyes filling with
+tears. “It’s a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast.”
+
+“But let what will be,” she added presently. “You will surely come, and
+let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul
+is very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is
+no longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride
+of her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to
+be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the
+brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner’s
+knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall
+Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were
+here, she said, ‘I should like to say good-bye to Adam and ask him to
+forgive me.’ You will come, Adam? Perhaps you will even now come back
+with me.”
+
+“I can’t,” Adam said. “I can’t say good-bye while there’s any hope. I’m
+listening, and listening—I can’t think o’ nothing but that. It can’t be
+as she’ll die that shameful death—I can’t bring my mind to it.”
+
+He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while
+Dinah stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned
+round and said,
+
+“I _will_ come, Dinah... to-morrow morning... if it must be. I may have
+more strength to bear it, if I know it _must_ be. Tell her, I forgive
+her; tell her I will come—at the very last.”
+
+“I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart,” said Dinah.
+“I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and
+was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any
+return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her
+heart. Farewell, Adam. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen
+you to bear all things.” Dinah put out her hand, and Adam pressed it in
+silence.
+
+Bartle Massey was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for
+her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, “Farewell,
+friend,” and was gone, with her light step down the stairs.
+
+“Well,” said Bartle, taking off his spectacles and putting them into
+his pocket, “if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it’s
+but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she’s
+one—she’s one. It’s a pity she’s a Methodist; but there’s no getting a
+woman without some foolishness or other.”
+
+Adam never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense,
+heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment,
+was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises
+that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too.
+
+“What does it matter to me, lad?” Bartle said: “a night’s sleep more or
+less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep
+thee company in trouble while I can.”
+
+It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Adam would
+sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space
+from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no
+sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or the
+falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully
+tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech,
+
+“If I could ha’ done anything to save her—if my bearing anything would
+ha’ done any good... but t’ have to sit still, and know it, and do
+nothing... it’s hard for a man to bear... and to think o’ what might
+ha’ been now, if it hadn’t been for _him_.... O God, it’s the very day
+we should ha’ been married.”
+
+“Aye, my lad,” said Bartle tenderly, “it’s heavy—it’s heavy. But you
+must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you’d a notion
+she’d got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn’t think she
+could have got hardened in that little while to do what she’s done.”
+
+“I know—I know that,” said Adam. “I thought she was loving and
+tender-hearted, and wouldn’t tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I
+think any other way? And if he’d never come near her, and I’d married
+her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha’
+done anything bad. What would it ha’ signified—my having a bit o’
+trouble with her? It ’ud ha’ been nothing to this.”
+
+“There’s no knowing, my lad—there’s no knowing what might have come.
+The smart’s bad for you to bear now: you must have time—you must have
+time. But I’ve that opinion of you, that you’ll rise above it all and
+be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don’t see.”
+
+“Good come out of it!” said Adam passionately. “That doesn’t alter th’
+evil: _her_ ruin can’t be undone. I hate that talk o’ people, as if
+there was a way o’ making amends for everything. They’d more need be
+brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man’s
+spoiled his fellow-creatur’s life, he’s no right to comfort himself
+with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else’s good doesn’t
+alter her shame and misery.”
+
+“Well, lad, well,” said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast
+with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, “it’s
+likely enough I talk foolishness. I’m an old fellow, and it’s a good
+many years since I was in trouble myself. It’s easy finding reasons why
+other folks should be patient.”
+
+“Mr. Massey,” said Adam penitently, “I’m very hot and hasty. I owe you
+something different; but you mustn’t take it ill of me.”
+
+“Not I, lad—not I.”
+
+So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing
+light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair.
+There would soon be no more suspense.
+
+“Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, when he saw the
+hand of his watch at six. “If there’s any news come, we shall hear
+about it.”
+
+The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction,
+through the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as
+they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the
+prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing
+those eager people.
+
+No; there was no news come—no pardon—no reprieve.
+
+Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself
+to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he
+could not shut out the words.
+
+“The cart is to set off at half-past seven.”
+
+It must be said—the last good-bye: there was no help.
+
+In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah
+had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave
+Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting.
+
+He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his
+senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment
+after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied.
+
+But he began to see through the dimness—to see the dark eyes lifted up
+to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they
+looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with
+his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a
+tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble
+now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the
+dimples were all gone—all but one, that never went; and the eyes—O, the
+worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty’s. They were Hetty’s
+eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to
+him from the dead to tell him of her misery.
+
+She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah’s. It
+seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and
+the pitying love that shone out from Dinah’s face looked like a visible
+pledge of the Invisible Mercy.
+
+When the sad eyes met—when Hetty and Adam looked at each other—she felt
+the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It
+was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect
+the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and
+the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him.
+
+“Speak to him, Hetty,” Dinah said; “tell him what is in your heart.”
+
+Hetty obeyed her, like a little child.
+
+“Adam... I’m very sorry... I behaved very wrong to you... will you
+forgive me... before I die?”
+
+Adam answered with a half-sob, “Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave
+thee long ago.”
+
+It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of
+meeting Hetty’s eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice
+uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less
+strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming
+unbearable, and the rare tears came—they had never come before, since
+he had hung on Seth’s neck in the beginning of his sorrow.
+
+Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that
+she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept
+hold of Dinah’s hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, “Will
+you kiss me again, Adam, for all I’ve been so wicked?”
+
+Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave
+each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting.
+
+“And tell him,” Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, “tell him...
+for there’s nobody else to tell him... as I went after him and couldn’t
+find him... and I hated him and cursed him once... but Dinah says I
+should forgive him... and I try... for else God won’t forgive me.”
+
+There was a noise at the door of the cell now—the key was being turned
+in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there
+were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more—even to see
+that Mr. Irwine’s face was one of them. He felt that the last
+preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was
+silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in
+loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII
+The Last Moment
+
+
+It was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own
+sorrows—the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with
+the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching
+multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a
+deliberately inflicted sudden death.
+
+All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who
+had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much
+eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty.
+
+But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Hetty had caught
+sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah
+convulsively.
+
+“Close your eyes, Hetty,” Dinah said, “and let us pray without ceasing
+to God.”
+
+And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of
+the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling
+intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to
+her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.
+
+Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort
+of awe—she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when
+the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to
+her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty’s shriek mingled with the
+sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror.
+
+But it was not a shout of execration—not a yell of exultant cruelty.
+
+It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman
+cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but
+answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were
+glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others.
+See, he has something in his hand—he is holding it up as if it were a
+signal.
+
+The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a
+hard-won release from death.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII
+Another Meeting in the Wood
+
+
+The next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points
+towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was
+the Grove by Donnithorne Chase: you know who the men were.
+
+The old squire’s funeral had taken place that morning, the will had
+been read, and now in the first breathing-space, Arthur Donnithorne had
+come out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new
+future before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought
+he could do that best in the Grove.
+
+Adam too had come from Stoniton on Monday evening, and to-day he had
+not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell
+them everything that Mr. Irwine had left untold. He had agreed with the
+Poysers that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever
+that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods,
+and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with
+Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Seth in a home within
+reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow.
+
+“Seth and me are sure to find work,” he said. “A man that’s got our
+trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new
+start. My mother won’t stand in the way, for she’s told me, since I
+came home, she’d made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if
+I wished it, and if I’d be more comfortable elsewhere. It’s wonderful
+how quiet she’s been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very
+greatness o’ the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be
+better in a new country, though there’s some I shall be loath to leave
+behind. But I won’t part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr.
+Poyser. Trouble’s made us kin.”
+
+“Aye, lad,” said Martin. “We’ll go out o’ hearing o’ that man’s name.
+But I doubt we shall ne’er go far enough for folks not to find out as
+we’ve got them belonging to us as are transported o’er the seas, and
+were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin’ up in our faces, and
+our children’s after us.”
+
+That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Adam’s
+energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old
+occupations till the morrow. “But to-morrow,” he said to himself, “I’ll
+go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and
+it’s right whether I like it or not.”
+
+This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow:
+suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was
+resolved not to see Arthur Donnithorne again, if it were possible to
+avoid him. He had no message to deliver from Hetty now, for Hetty had
+seen Arthur. And Adam distrusted himself—he had learned to dread the
+violence of his own feeling. That word of Mr. Irwine’s—that he must
+remember what he had felt after giving the last blow to Arthur in the
+Grove—had remained with him.
+
+These thoughts about Arthur, like all thoughts that are charged with
+strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up
+the image of the Grove—of that spot under the overarching boughs where
+he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed
+by sudden rage.
+
+“I’ll go and see it again to-night for the last time,” he said; “it’ll
+do me good; it’ll make me feel over again what I felt when I’d knocked
+him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I’d done it,
+_before_ I began to think he might be dead.”
+
+In this way it happened that Arthur and Adam were walking towards the
+same spot at the same time.
+
+Adam had on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the
+other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had
+the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with
+his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Adam Bede who entered the
+Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of
+tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly
+round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes
+rested chiefly on the ground. He had not long entered the Grove, and
+now he paused before a beech. He knew that tree well; it was the
+boundary mark of his youth—the sign, to him, of the time when some of
+his earliest, strongest feelings had left him. He felt sure they would
+never return. And yet, at this moment, there was a stirring of
+affection at the remembrance of that Arthur Donnithorne whom he had
+believed in before he had come up to this beech eight months ago. It
+was affection for the dead: _that_ Arthur existed no longer.
+
+He was disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps, but the beech
+stood at a turning in the road, and he could not see who was coming
+until the tall slim figure in deep mourning suddenly stood before him
+at only two yards’ distance. They both started, and looked at each
+other in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined
+himself as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that
+should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just
+share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself
+that such a meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he
+had always seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove,
+florid, careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched
+him with the signs of suffering. Adam knew what suffering was—he could
+not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he
+needed to resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Arthur was the
+first to speak.
+
+“Adam,” he said, quietly, “it may be a good thing that we have met
+here, for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you
+to-morrow.”
+
+He paused, but Adam said nothing.
+
+“I know it is painful to you to meet me,” Arthur went on, “but it is
+not likely to happen again for years to come.”
+
+“No, sir,” said Adam, coldly, “that was what I meant to write to you
+to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end
+between us, and somebody else put in my place.”
+
+Arthur felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he
+spoke again.
+
+“It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don’t want
+to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for my
+sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the evil
+consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don’t mean
+consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I
+know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be
+done, and you can help me. Will you listen to me patiently?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Adam, after some hesitation; “I’ll hear what it is. If
+I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger ’ull mend nothing, I know.
+We’ve had enough o’ that.”
+
+“I was going to the Hermitage,” said Arthur. “Will you go there with me
+and sit down? We can talk better there.”
+
+The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for
+Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the
+door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair
+in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the
+waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in
+an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have
+been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been
+less painful.
+
+They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Arthur said,
+“I’m going away, Adam; I’m going into the army.”
+
+Poor Arthur felt that Adam ought to be affected by this
+announcement—ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But
+Adam’s lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face
+unchanged.
+
+“What I want to say to you,” Arthur continued, “is this: one of my
+reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope—may leave
+their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice I
+would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through
+my—through what has happened.”
+
+Arthur’s words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had
+anticipated. Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of
+compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to
+make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his
+indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in
+the face as Arthur was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he
+had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a
+rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, “The time’s
+past for that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing
+a wrong; sacrifices won’t undo it when it’s done. When people’s
+feelings have got a deadly wound, they can’t be cured with favours.”
+
+“Favours!” said Arthur, passionately; “no; how can you suppose I meant
+that? But the Poysers—Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the
+place where they have lived so many years—for generations. Don’t you
+see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome
+the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in
+the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who
+know them?”
+
+“That’s true,” said Adam coldly. “But then, sir, folks’s feelings are
+not so easily overcome. It’ll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a
+strange place, among strange faces, when he’s been bred up on the Hall
+Farm, and his father before him; but then it ’ud be harder for a man
+with his feelings to stay. I don’t see how the thing’s to be made any
+other than hard. There’s a sort o’ damage, sir, that can’t be made up
+for.”
+
+Arthur was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in
+him this evening, his pride winced under Adam’s mode of treating him.
+Wasn’t he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his
+most cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago—Adam
+was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his
+own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the
+most irritating to Arthur’s eager ardent nature. But his anger was
+subdued by the same influence that had subdued Adam’s when they first
+confronted each other—by the marks of suffering in a long familiar
+face. The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a
+great deal from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so
+much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as
+he said, “But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct—by
+giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of
+thinking what will be the effect in the future.
+
+“If I were going to stay here and act as landlord,” he added presently,
+with still more eagerness—“if I were careless about what I’ve done—what
+I’ve been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for going
+away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then for
+trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I’m going away for
+years—when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan
+of happiness I’ve ever formed—it is impossible for a sensible man like
+you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers refusing
+to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace—Mr. Irwine has told me
+all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea
+that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they
+can’t remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts—if you
+would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods.”
+
+Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, “You know that’s a
+good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And
+you don’t know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you
+will like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the
+estate and take my name. He is a good fellow.”
+
+Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel
+that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had
+loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be
+thrust away. He was silent; yet Arthur saw an answer in his face that
+induced him to go on, with growing earnestness.
+
+“And then, if you would talk to the Poysers—if you would talk the
+matter over with Mr. Irwine—he means to see you to-morrow—and then if
+you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go.... I
+know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me—I mean
+nothing of that kind—but I’m sure they would suffer less in the end.
+Irwine thinks so too. And Mr. Irwine is to have the chief authority on
+the estate—he has consented to undertake that. They will really be
+under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same
+with you, Adam, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse
+pain that could incline you to go.”
+
+Arthur was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some
+agitation in his voice, “I wouldn’t act so towards you, I know. If you
+were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the
+best.”
+
+Adam made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground.
+Arthur went on, “Perhaps you’ve never done anything you’ve had bitterly
+to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more
+generous. You would know then that it’s worse for me than for you.”
+
+Arthur rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the
+windows, looking out and turning his back on Adam, as he continued,
+passionately,
+
+“Haven’t _I_ loved her too? Didn’t I see her yesterday? Shan’t I carry
+the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And don’t you
+think you would suffer more if you’d been in fault?”
+
+There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam’s mind
+was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little
+permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he
+overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards Arthur. Arthur
+heard the movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look
+with which Adam said,
+
+“It’s true what you say, sir. I’m hard—it’s in my nature. I was too
+hard with my father, for doing wrong. I’ve been a bit hard t’ everybody
+but _her_. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough—her suffering cut into
+me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her,
+I said I’d never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch
+about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I’ve known what it is in
+my life to repent and feel it’s too late. I felt I’d been too harsh to
+my father when he was gone from me—I feel it now, when I think of him.
+I’ve no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and repent.”
+
+Adam spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is
+resolved to leave nothing unsaid that he is bound to say; but he went
+on with more hesitation.
+
+“I wouldn’t shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me—but if
+you’re willing to do it now, for all I refused then...”
+
+Arthur’s white hand was in Adam’s large grasp in an instant, and with
+that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish
+affection.
+
+“Adam,” Arthur said, impelled to full confession now, “it would never
+have happened if I’d known you loved her. That would have helped to
+save me from it. And I _did_ struggle: I never meant to injure her. I
+deceived you afterwards—and that led on to worse; but I thought it was
+forced upon me, I thought it was the best thing I could do. And in that
+letter I told her to let me know if she were in any trouble: don’t
+think I would not have done everything I could. But I was all wrong
+from the very first, and horrible wrong has come of it. God knows, I’d
+give my life if I could undo it.”
+
+They sat down again opposite each other, and Adam said, tremulously,
+“How did she seem when you left her, sir?”
+
+“Don’t ask me, Adam,” Arthur said; “I feel sometimes as if I should go
+mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that
+I couldn’t get a full pardon—that I couldn’t save her from that
+wretched fate of being transported—that I can do nothing for her all
+those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any
+more.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” said Adam, for the first time feeling his own pain merged in
+sympathy for Arthur, “you and me’ll often be thinking o’ the same
+thing, when we’re a long way off one another. I’ll pray God to help
+you, as I pray him to help me.”
+
+“But there’s that sweet woman—that Dinah Morris,” Arthur said, pursuing
+his own thoughts and not knowing what had been the sense of Adam’s
+words, “she says she shall stay with her to the very last moment—till
+she goes; and the poor thing clings to her as if she found some comfort
+in her. I could worship that woman; I don’t know what I should do if
+she were not there. Adam, you will see her when she comes back. I could
+say nothing to her yesterday—nothing of what I felt towards her. Tell
+her,” Arthur went on hurriedly, as if he wanted to hide the emotion
+with which he spoke, while he took off his chain and watch, “tell her I
+asked you to give her this in remembrance of me—of the man to whom she
+is the one source of comfort, when he thinks of... I know she doesn’t
+care about such things—or anything else I can give her for its own
+sake. But she will use the watch—I shall like to think of her using
+it.”
+
+“I’ll give it to her, sir,” Adam said, “and tell her your words. She
+told me she should come back to the people at the Hall Farm.”
+
+“And you _will_ persuade the Poysers to stay, Adam?” said Arthur,
+reminded of the subject which both of them had forgotten in the first
+interchange of revived friendship. “You _will_ stay yourself, and help
+Mr. Irwine to carry out the repairs and improvements on the estate?”
+
+“There’s one thing, sir, that perhaps you don’t take account of,” said
+Adam, with hesitating gentleness, “and that was what made me hang back
+longer. You see, it’s the same with both me and the Poysers: if we
+stay, it’s for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we’d put up
+with anything for the sake o’ that. I know that’s what they’ll feel,
+and I can’t help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an
+honourable independent spirit, they don’t like to do anything that
+might make ’em seem base-minded.”
+
+“But no one who knows you will think that, Adam. That is not a reason
+strong enough against a course that is really more generous, more
+unselfish than the other. And it will be known—it shall be made known,
+that both you and the Poysers stayed at my entreaty. Adam, don’t try to
+make things worse for me; I’m punished enough without that.”
+
+“No, sir, no,” Adam said, looking at Arthur with mournful affection.
+“God forbid I should make things worse for you. I used to wish I could
+do it, in my passion—but that was when I thought you didn’t feel
+enough. I’ll stay, sir, I’ll do the best I can. It’s all I’ve got to
+think of now—to do my work well and make the world a bit better place
+for them as can enjoy it.”
+
+“Then we’ll part now, Adam. You will see Mr. Irwine to-morrow, and
+consult with him about everything.”
+
+“Are you going soon, sir?” said Adam.
+
+“As soon as possible—after I’ve made the necessary arrangements.
+Good-bye, Adam. I shall think of you going about the old place.”
+
+“Good-bye, sir. God bless you.”
+
+The hands were clasped once more, and Adam left the Hermitage, feeling
+that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone.
+
+As soon as the door was closed behind him, Arthur went to the
+waste-paper basket and took out the little pink silk handkerchief.
+
+
+
+
+Book Sixth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX
+At the Hall Farm
+
+
+The first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801—more than eighteen months
+after that parting of Adam and Arthur in the Hermitage—was on the yard
+at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited
+moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being
+driven into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient
+beasts ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of
+the bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid
+feminine creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have
+some relation to their own movements—with the tremendous crack of the
+waggoner’s whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the
+waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load.
+
+The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Poyser loved, and at this hour
+on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her
+knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a
+keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a
+pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive
+punishment of having her hinder-legs strapped.
+
+To-day, however, Mrs. Poyser gave but a divided attention to the
+arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Dinah, who
+was stitching Mr. Poyser’s shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to
+have her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a
+sudden insistence that she should look at “Baby,” that is, at a large
+wooden doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty,
+seated in her small chair at Dinah’s side, was caressing and pressing
+to her fat cheek with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two
+years’ growth than when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock
+under her pinafore. Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, which seems to
+heighten the family likeness between her and Dinah. In other respects
+there is little outward change now discernible in our old friends, or
+in the pleasant house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter.
+
+“I never saw the like to you, Dinah,” Mrs. Poyser was saying, “when
+you’ve once took anything into your head: there’s no more moving you
+than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don’t believe
+_that’s_ religion; for what’s the Sermon on the Mount about, as you’re
+so fond o’ reading to the boys, but doing what other folks ’ud have you
+do? But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like
+taking your cloak off and giving it to ’em, or letting ’em slap you i’
+the face, I daresay you’d be ready enough. It’s only when one ’ud have
+you do what’s plain common sense and good for yourself, as you’re
+obstinate th’ other way.”
+
+“Nay, dear Aunt,” said Dinah, smiling slightly as she went on with her
+work, “I’m sure your wish ’ud be a reason for me to do anything that I
+didn’t feel it was wrong to do.”
+
+“Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like
+to know, i’ staying along wi’ your own friends, as are th’ happier for
+having you with ’em an’ are willing to provide for you, even if your
+work didn’t more nor pay ’em for the bit o’ sparrow’s victual y’ eat
+and the bit o’ rag you put on? An’ who is it, I should like to know, as
+you’re bound t’ help and comfort i’ the world more nor your own flesh
+and blood—an’ me th’ only aunt you’ve got above-ground, an’ am brought
+to the brink o’ the grave welly every winter as comes, an’ there’s the
+child as sits beside you ’ull break her little heart when you go, an’
+the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an’ your uncle ’ull miss
+you so as never was—a-lighting his pipe an’ waiting on him, an’ now I
+can trust you wi’ the butter, an’ have had all the trouble o’ teaching
+you, and there’s all the sewing to be done, an’ I must have a strange
+gell out o’ Treddles’on to do it—an’ all because you must go back to
+that bare heap o’ stones as the very crows fly over an’ won’t stop at.”
+
+“Dear Aunt Rachel,” said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser’s face, “it’s
+your kindness makes you say I’m useful to you. You don’t really want me
+now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you’re in good
+health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful
+countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few—some
+of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not
+miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need,
+who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am
+called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn
+again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word
+of life to the sinful and desolate.”
+
+“You feel! Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance
+at the cows, “that’s allays the reason I’m to sit down wi’, when you’ve
+a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for
+more than you’re preaching now? Don’t you go off, the Lord knows where,
+every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An’ haven’t you got Methodists
+enow at Treddles’on to go and look at, if church-folks’s faces are too
+handsome to please you? An’ isn’t there them i’ this parish as you’ve
+got under hand, and they’re like enough to make friends wi’ Old Harry
+again as soon as your back’s turned? There’s that Bessy Cranage—she’ll
+be flaunting i’ new finery three weeks after you’re gone, I’ll be
+bound. She’ll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog ’ull
+stand on its hind-legs when there’s nobody looking. But I suppose it
+doesna matter so much about folks’s souls i’ this country, else you’d
+be for staying with your own aunt, for she’s none so good but what you
+might help her to be better.”
+
+There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser’s voice just then, which
+she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at
+the clock, and said: “See there! It’s tea-time; an’ if Martin’s i’ the
+rick-yard, he’ll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put
+your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if
+Father’s there, and tell him he mustn’t go away again without coming t’
+have a cup o’ tea; and tell your brothers to come in too.”
+
+Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the
+bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups.
+
+“You talk o’ them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i’ their work,”
+she began again; “it’s fine talking. They’re all the same, clever or
+stupid—one can’t trust ’em out o’ one’s sight a minute. They want
+somebody’s eye on ’em constant if they’re to be kept to their work. An’
+suppose I’m ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last?
+Who’s to look after ’em then, if you’re gone? An’ there’s that blessed
+child—something’s sure t’ happen to her—they’ll let her tumble into the
+fire, or get at the kettle wi’ the boiling lard in’t, or some mischief
+as ’ull lame her for life; an’ it’ll be all your fault, Dinah.”
+
+“Aunt,” said Dinah, “I promise to come back to you in the winter if
+you’re ill. Don’t think I will ever stay away from you if you’re in
+real want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I
+should go away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all
+things too richly to enjoy—at least that I should go away for a short
+space. No one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the
+besetments I am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a
+call of duty which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own
+desires; it is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the
+creature should become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly
+light.”
+
+“It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury,” said
+Mrs. Poyser, as she cut the bread and butter. “It’s true there’s good
+victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don’t provide
+enough and to spare, but if there’s ever a bit o’ odds an’ ends as
+nobody else ’ud eat, you’re sure to pick it out... but look there!
+There’s Adam Bede a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he’s
+come so early.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her
+darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her
+tongue.
+
+“Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o’ five year old should be ashamed
+to be carried. Why, Adam, she’ll break your arm, such a big gell as
+that; set her down—for shame!”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Adam, “I can lift her with my hand—I’ve no need to
+take my arm to it.”
+
+Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy,
+was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof
+with a shower of kisses.
+
+“You’re surprised to see me at this hour o’ the day,” said Adam.
+
+“Yes, but come in,” said Mrs. Poyser, making way for him; “there’s no
+bad news, I hope?”
+
+“No, nothing bad,” Adam answered, as he went up to Dinah and put out
+his hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up,
+instinctively, as he approached her. A faint blush died away from her
+pale cheek as she put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly.
+
+“It’s an errand to you brought me, Dinah,” said Adam, apparently
+unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; “mother’s a bit
+ailing, and she’s set her heart on your coming to stay the night with
+her, if you’ll be so kind. I told her I’d call and ask you as I came
+from the village. She overworks herself, and I can’t persuade her to
+have a little girl t’ help her. I don’t know what’s to be done.”
+
+Adam released Dinah’s hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an
+answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Poyser said, “Look
+there now! I told you there was folks enow t’ help i’ this parish,
+wi’out going further off. There’s Mrs. Bede getting as old and cas’alty
+as can be, and she won’t let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The
+folks at Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi’out you nor
+she can.”
+
+“I’ll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don’t want anything
+done first, Aunt,” said Dinah, folding up her work.
+
+“Yes, I do want something done. I want you t’ have your tea, child;
+it’s all ready—and you’ll have a cup, Adam, if y’ arena in too big a
+hurry.”
+
+“Yes, I’ll have a cup, please; and then I’ll walk with Dinah. I’m going
+straight home, for I’ve got a lot o’ timber valuations to write out.”
+
+“Why, Adam, lad, are you here?” said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and
+coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as
+much like him as two small elephants are like a large one. “How is it
+we’ve got sight o’ you so long before foddering-time?”
+
+“I came on an errand for Mother,” said Adam. “She’s got a touch of her
+old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit.”
+
+“Well, we’ll spare her for your mother a little while,” said Mr.
+Poyser. “But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on’y her husband.”
+
+“Husband!” said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period
+of the boyish mind. “Why, Dinah hasn’t got a husband.”
+
+“Spare her?” said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and
+then seating herself to pour out the tea. “But we must spare her, it
+seems, and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy,
+what are you doing to your little sister’s doll? Making the child
+naughty, when she’d be good if you’d let her. You shanna have a morsel
+o’ cake if you behave so.”
+
+Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning
+Dolly’s skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to
+the general scorn—an indignity which cut Totty to the heart.
+
+“What do you think Dinah’s been a-telling me since dinner-time?” Mrs.
+Poyser continued, looking at her husband.
+
+“Eh! I’m a poor un at guessing,” said Mr. Poyser.
+
+“Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i’ the mill,
+and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no
+friends.”
+
+Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant
+astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated
+herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and
+was busying herself with the children’s tea. If he had been given to
+making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there
+was certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change
+colour; but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at
+that moment. Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it: it was
+a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came
+because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no
+knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, “Why, I
+hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she’d given up the
+notion o’ going back to her old country.”
+
+“Thought! Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, “and so would anybody else ha’
+thought, as had got their right end up’ards. But I suppose you must
+_be_ a Methodist to know what a Methodist ’ull do. It’s ill guessing
+what the bats are flying after.”
+
+“Why, what have we done to you, Dinah, as you must go away from us?”
+said Mr. Poyser, still pausing over his tea-cup. “It’s like breaking
+your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you’d make
+this your home.”
+
+“Nay, Uncle,” said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. “When I first came,
+I said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to
+my aunt.”
+
+“Well, an’ who said you’d ever left off being a comfort to me?” said
+Mrs. Poyser. “If you didna mean to stay wi’ me, you’d better never ha’
+come. Them as ha’ never had a cushion don’t miss it.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, who objected to exaggerated views. “Thee
+mustna say so; we should ha’ been ill off wi’out her, Lady day was a
+twelvemont’. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But
+I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int’ a
+country where the land, most on’t, isna worth ten shillings an acre,
+rent and profits.”
+
+“Why, that’s just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a
+reason,” said Mrs. Poyser. “She says this country’s too comfortable,
+an’ there’s too much t’ eat, an’ folks arena miserable enough. And
+she’s going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It’s allays
+the way wi’ them meek-faced people; you may’s well pelt a bag o’
+feathers as talk to ’em. But I say it isna religion, to be so
+obstinate—is it now, Adam?”
+
+Adam saw that Dinah was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any
+matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible,
+he said, looking at her affectionately, “Nay, I can’t find fault with
+anything Dinah does. I believe her thoughts are better than our
+guesses, let ’em be what they may. I should ha’ been thankful for her
+to stay among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn’t cross her,
+or make it hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to
+that.”
+
+As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too
+much for Dinah’s susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came
+into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly,
+meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet.
+
+“Mother, what’s Dinah crying for?” said Totty. “She isn’t a naughty
+dell.”
+
+“Thee’st gone a bit too fur,” said Mr. Poyser. “We’ve no right t’
+interfere with her doing as she likes. An’ thee’dst be as angry as
+could be wi’ me, if I said a word against anything she did.”
+
+“Because you’d very like be finding fault wi’out reason,” said Mrs.
+Poyser. “But there’s reason i’ what I say, else I shouldna say it. It’s
+easy talking for them as can’t love her so well as her own aunt does.
+An’ me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared
+sheep when she’s gone from me. An’ to think of her leaving a parish
+where she’s so looked on. There’s Mr. Irwine makes as much of her as if
+she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an’ wi’ that maggot o’
+preaching in her head—God forgi’e me if I’m i’ the wrong to call it
+so.”
+
+“Aye,” said Mr. Poyser, looking jocose; “but thee dostna tell Adam what
+he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Adam, as the
+preaching was the only fault to be found wi’ Dinah, and Mr. Irwine
+says, ‘But you mustn’t find fault with her for that, Mrs. Poyser; you
+forget she’s got no husband to preach to. I’ll answer for it, you give
+Poyser many a good sermon.’ The parson had thee there,” Mr. Poyser
+added, laughing unctuously. “I told Bartle Massey on it, an’ he laughed
+too.”
+
+“Yes, it’s a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at
+one another with a pipe i’ their mouths,” said Mrs. Poyser. “Give
+Bartle Massey his way and he’d have all the sharpness to himself. If
+the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I
+reckon. Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what
+she’s doing, and give her a pretty kiss.”
+
+This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain
+threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy, no
+longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his
+forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she
+felt to be disagreeably personal.
+
+“You’re rare and busy now—eh, Adam?” said Mr. Poyser. “Burge’s getting
+so bad wi’ his asthmy, it’s well if he’ll ever do much riding about
+again.”
+
+“Yes, we’ve got a pretty bit o’ building on hand now,” said Adam, “what
+with the repairs on th’ estate, and the new houses at Treddles’on.”
+
+“I’ll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o’
+land is for him and Mary to go to,” said Mr. Poyser. “He’ll be for
+laying by business soon, I’ll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it
+all and pay him so much by th’ ’ear. We shall see you living on th’
+hill before another twelvemont’s over.”
+
+“Well,” said Adam, “I should like t’ have the business in my own hands.
+It isn’t as I mind much about getting any more money. We’ve enough and
+to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like t’
+have my own way about things—I could try plans then, as I can’t do
+now.”
+
+“You get on pretty well wi’ the new steward, I reckon?” said Mr.
+Poyser.
+
+“Yes, yes; he’s a sensible man enough; understands farming—he’s
+carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day
+towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they’re making.
+But he’s got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a
+man as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it’s just as if they
+wore blinkers like th’ horses and could see nothing o’ one side of ’em.
+Now, there’s Mr. Irwine has got notions o’ building more nor most
+architects; for as for th’ architects, they set up to be fine fellows,
+but the most of ’em don’t know where to set a chimney so as it shan’t
+be quarrelling with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that’s
+got a bit o’ taste makes the best architect for common things; and I’ve
+ten times the pleasure i’ seeing after the work when I’ve made the plan
+myself.”
+
+Mr. Poyser listened with an admiring interest to Adam’s discourse on
+building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his
+corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of
+the master’s eye, for when Adam had done speaking, he got up and said,
+“Well, lad, I’ll bid you good-bye now, for I’m off to the rick-yard
+again.”
+
+Adam rose too, for he saw Dinah entering, with her bonnet on and a
+little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty.
+
+“You’re ready, I see, Dinah,” Adam said; “so we’ll set off, for the
+sooner I’m at home the better.”
+
+“Mother,” said Totty, with her treble pipe, “Dinah was saying her
+prayers and crying ever so.”
+
+“Hush, hush,” said the mother, “little gells mustn’t chatter.”
+
+Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the
+white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser, you
+perceive, had no correct principles of education.
+
+“Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Bede doesn’t want you, Dinah,” said Mrs.
+Poyser: “but you can stay, you know, if she’s ill.”
+
+So, when the good-byes had been said, Dinah and Adam left the Hall Farm
+together.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L
+In the Cottage
+
+
+Adam did not ask Dinah to take his arm when they got out into the lane.
+He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had
+observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought,
+perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked
+apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black
+bonnet hid her face from him.
+
+“You can’t be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Dinah?”
+Adam said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for
+himself in the matter. “It’s a pity, seeing they’re so fond of you.”
+
+“You know, Adam, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them
+and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their
+sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in
+which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too
+abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the
+work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing
+to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall
+find the fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where
+alone it is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I
+have a clear showing that my work lies elsewhere—at least for a time.
+In the years to come, if my aunt’s health should fail, or she should
+otherwise need me, I shall return.”
+
+“You know best, Dinah,” said Adam. “I don’t believe you’d go against
+the wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good
+and sufficient reason in your own conscience. I’ve no right to say
+anything about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have
+to put you above every other friend I’ve got; and if it had been
+ordered so that you could ha’ been my sister, and lived with us all our
+lives, I should ha’ counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to
+us now. But Seth tells me there’s no hope o’ that: your feelings are
+different, and perhaps I’m taking too much upon me to speak about it.”
+
+Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards,
+till they came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through
+first and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the
+unusually high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It
+struck him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave,
+had the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation,
+and the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs,
+was heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only
+sister to Dinah. Adam was silent with surprise and conjecture for some
+moments, and then he said, “I hope I’ve not hurt or displeased you by
+what I’ve said, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I’ve no wish
+different from what you see to be best, and I’m satisfied for you to
+live thirty mile off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just
+as much as I do now, for you’re bound up with what I can no more help
+remembering than I can help my heart beating.”
+
+Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presently
+said, “Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last
+spoke of him?”
+
+Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him as
+she had seen him in the prison.
+
+“Yes,” said Adam. “Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from him
+yesterday. It’s pretty certain, they say, that there’ll be a peace
+soon, though nobody believes it’ll last long; but he says he doesn’t
+mean to come home. He’s no heart for it yet, and it’s better for others
+that he should keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he’s in the right not to
+come. It’s a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he
+always does. There’s one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: ‘You
+can’t think what an old fellow I feel,’ he says; ‘I make no schemes
+now. I’m the best when I’ve a good day’s march or fighting before me.’”
+
+“He’s of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always
+felt great pity,” said Dinah. “That meeting between the brothers, where
+Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful,
+notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me
+greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of
+a mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in
+the midst of much that is unlovely.”
+
+“Ah,” said Adam, “I like to read about Moses best, in th’ Old
+Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other
+folks were going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at
+his life so, and think what’ll come of it after he’s dead and gone. A
+good solid bit o’ work lasts: if it’s only laying a floor down,
+somebody’s the better for it being done well, besides the man as does
+it.”
+
+They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and in
+this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Willow
+Brook, when Adam turned round and said, “Ah, here’s Seth. I thought
+he’d be home soon. Does he know of you’re going, Dinah?”
+
+“Yes, I told him last Sabbath.”
+
+Adam remembered now that Seth had come home much depressed on Sunday
+evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late,
+for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to have
+outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening
+he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came
+quite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate
+eyelids and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but
+Adam was evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken
+Dinah: he wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to
+let Dinah see that he had noticed her face, and only said, “I’m
+thankful you’re come, Dinah, for Mother’s been hungering after the
+sight of you all day. She began to talk of you the first thing in the
+morning.”
+
+When they entered the cottage, Lisbeth was seated in her arm-chair, too
+tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a
+long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when
+she heard the approaching footsteps.
+
+“Coom, child, thee’t coom at last,” she said, when Dinah went towards
+her. “What dost mane by lavin’ me a week an’ ne’er coomin’ a-nigh me?”
+
+“Dear friend,” said Dinah, taking her hand, “you’re not well. If I’d
+known it sooner, I’d have come.”
+
+“An’ how’s thee t’ know if thee dostna coom? Th’ lads on’y know what I
+tell ’em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye’re
+hearty. But I’m none so bad, on’y a bit of a cold sets me achin’. An’
+th’ lads tease me so t’ ha’ somebody wi’ me t’ do the work—they make me
+ache worse wi’ talkin’. If thee’dst come and stay wi’ me, they’d let me
+alone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet
+off, an’ let me look at thee.”
+
+Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was taking
+off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly
+gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and
+gentleness.
+
+“What’s the matter wi’ thee?” said Lisbeth, in astonishment; “thee’st
+been a-cryin’.”
+
+“It’s only a grief that’ll pass away,” said Dinah, who did not wish
+just now to call forth Lisbeth’s remonstrances by disclosing her
+intention to leave Hayslope. “You shall know about it shortly—we’ll
+talk of it to-night. I shall stay with you to-night.”
+
+Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening to
+talk with Dinah alone; for there was a new room in the cottage, you
+remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new
+inmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans to
+make. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would
+like to have Dinah all to herself.
+
+There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the
+cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured,
+hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her
+dim-eyed anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the
+slight form in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in
+helpful activity, or seated close by the old woman’s arm-chair, holding
+her withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language
+which Lisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book.
+She would scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. “Nay, nay, shut
+the book,” she said. “We mun talk. I want t’ know what thee was cryin’
+about. Hast got troubles o’ thy own, like other folks?”
+
+On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each
+other in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggy
+hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his “figuring”; Seth, with
+large rugged features, the close copy of his brother’s, but with thin,
+wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely
+out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly
+bought book—Wesley’s abridgment of Madame Guyon’s life, which was full
+of wonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, “Can I help thee
+with anything in here to-night? I don’t want to make a noise in the
+shop.”
+
+“No, lad,” Adam answered, “there’s nothing but what I must do myself.
+Thee’st got thy new book to read.”
+
+And often, when Seth was quite unconscious, Adam, as he paused after
+drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile
+dawning in his eyes. He knew “th’ lad liked to sit full o’ thoughts he
+could give no account of; they’d never come t’ anything, but they made
+him happy,” and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more and
+more indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness which
+came from the sorrow at work within him.
+
+For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and
+delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not
+outlived his sorrow—had not felt it slip from him as a temporary
+burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It
+would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won
+nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the
+same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light
+thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted
+human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we
+have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be
+thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only
+changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into
+sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our
+best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had
+completely taken place in Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of
+pain, and this he felt would subsist as long as _her_ pain was not a
+memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with
+the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well
+as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It
+becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of
+perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission,
+and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our
+grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such
+periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible
+relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self
+is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and
+exert.
+
+That was Adam’s state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His
+work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very
+early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God’s will—was that
+form of God’s will that most immediately concerned him. But now there
+was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no
+holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when
+duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him
+gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up
+of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment
+and intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could
+never be anything to him but a living memory—a limb lopped off, but not
+gone from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was
+all the while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities
+bought by a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was
+possible, nay, necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with
+another. Yet he was aware that common affection and friendship were
+more precious to him than they used to be—that he clung more to his
+mother and Seth, and had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or
+imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The Poysers,
+too—hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing
+them and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them. He
+would have felt this, probably, even if Dinah had not been with them,
+but he had only said the simplest truth in telling Dinah that he put
+her above all other friends in the world. Could anything be more
+natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the thought of her always
+came as the first ray of returning comfort. The early days of gloom at
+the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by her
+presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come at every spare
+moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been stricken with a
+fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of her darling
+Adam’s grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her light quiet
+movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the
+Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think
+everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been
+better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for
+her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah
+the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a
+little, into a convenient household slave—though Dinah herself was
+rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her
+departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that
+might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to
+marry him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother’s sake, and he could
+not help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth’s wife, would have
+made their home as happy as it could be for them all—how she was the
+one being that would have soothed their mother’s last days into
+peacefulness and rest.
+
+“It’s wonderful she doesn’t love th’ lad,” Adam had said sometimes to
+himself, “for anybody ’ud think he was just cut out for her. But her
+heart’s so taken up with other things. She’s one o’ those women that
+feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o’ their own. She
+thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she’s been
+used so to living in other folks’s cares, she can’t bear the thought of
+her heart being shut up from ’em. I see how it is, well enough. She’s
+cut out o’ different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She’s
+never easy but when she’s helping somebody, and marriage ’ud interfere
+with her ways—that’s true. I’ve no right to be contriving and thinking
+it ’ud be better if she’d have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is—or
+than God either, for He made her what she is, and that’s one o’ the
+greatest blessings I’ve ever had from His hands, and others besides
+me.”
+
+This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam’s mind when he gathered
+from Dinah’s face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that
+she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the
+strongest words his confidence in her decision as right—his resignation
+even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life
+otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were
+chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he
+cared to see her continually—to talk to her with the silent
+consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she
+should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his
+assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there
+remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the
+right thing—that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.
+
+Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she
+was downstairs about five o’clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth’s
+obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned
+to make himself, as Adam said, “very handy in the housework,” that he
+might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope
+you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the
+gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid
+sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep, and
+was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as
+Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had
+never slept in the cottage since that night after Thias’s death, when,
+you remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a
+modified approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had
+made great advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since
+Seth was there to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch
+of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The
+cottage was far from that standard at present, for Lisbeth’s rheumatism
+had forced her to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and
+polishing. When the kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new
+room, where Adam had been writing the night before, to see what
+sweeping and dusting were needed there. She opened the window and let
+in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the
+bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her
+pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept,
+singing to herself in a very low tone—like a sweet summer murmur that
+you have to listen for very closely—one of Charles Wesley’s hymns:
+
+Eternal Beam of Light Divine,
+    Fountain of unexhausted love,
+In whom the Father’s glories shine,
+    Through earth beneath and heaven above;
+
+Jesus! the weary wanderer’s rest,
+    Give me thy easy yoke to bear;
+With steadfast patience arm my breast,
+    With spotless love and holy fear.
+
+Speak to my warring passions, “Peace!”
+    Say to my trembling heart, “Be still!”
+Thy power my strength and fortress is,
+    For all things serve thy sovereign will.
+
+
+She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived
+in Mrs. Poyser’s household, you would know how the duster behaved in
+Dinah’s hand—how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in
+and out of sight—how it went again and again round every bar of the
+chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the
+table, till it came to Adam’s papers and rulers and the open desk near
+them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated,
+looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see how
+much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she
+heard Seth’s step just outside the open door, towards which her back
+was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, “Seth, is your brother
+wrathful when his papers are stirred?”
+
+“Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places,” said a
+deep strong voice, not Seth’s.
+
+It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord. She
+was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing
+else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round,
+but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a
+friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see
+the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his
+wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at
+him.
+
+“What! You think I’m a cross fellow at home, Dinah?” he said,
+smilingly.
+
+“Nay,” said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, “not so. But you might
+be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses,
+the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes.”
+
+“Come, then,” said Adam, looking at her affectionately, “I’ll help you
+move the things, and put ’em back again, and then they can’t get wrong.
+You’re getting to be your aunt’s own niece, I see, for particularness.”
+
+They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered
+herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her
+uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow
+lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be. He
+wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with
+doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him—it was
+easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man—and when at last there
+was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger
+near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading
+tone, “Dinah, you’re not displeased with me for anything, are you? I’ve
+not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?”
+
+The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to
+her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the
+tears coming, and said, “Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?”
+
+“I couldn’t bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to
+you,” said Adam. “And you don’t know the value I set on the very
+thought of you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I’d
+be content for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of
+you was worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and
+not grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting
+with you, Dinah?”
+
+“Yes, dear friend,” said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly,
+“I know you have a brother’s heart towards me, and we shall often be
+with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness
+through manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to
+leave my kindred for a while; but it is a trial—the flesh is weak.”
+
+Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer.
+
+“I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah,” he said. “I’ll say no more.
+Let’s see if Seth’s ready with breakfast now.”
+
+That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too,
+have been in love—perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not
+choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more
+think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by
+which two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little
+quivering rain-streams, before they mingle into one—you will no more
+think these things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs
+of coming spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable
+something in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest
+perceptible budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and
+looks and touches are part of the soul’s language; and the finest
+language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as
+“light,” “sound,” “stars,” “music”—words really not worth looking at,
+or hearing, in themselves, any more than “chips” or “sawdust.” It is
+only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great
+and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing
+too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be
+chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words,
+“light” and “music,” stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory
+and enriching your present with your most precious past.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI
+Sunday Morning
+
+
+Lisbeth’s touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious
+enough to detain Dinah another night from the Hall Farm, now she had
+made up her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends
+must part. “For a long while,” Dinah had said, for she had told Lisbeth
+of her resolve.
+
+“Then it’ll be for all my life, an’ I shall ne’er see thee again,” said
+Lisbeth. “Long while! I’n got no long while t’ live. An’ I shall be
+took bad an’ die, an’ thee canst ne’er come a-nigh me, an’ I shall die
+a-longing for thee.”
+
+That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Adam was
+not in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She
+had tried poor Dinah by returning again and again to the question, why
+she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her
+nothing but whim and “contrairiness”; and still more, by regretting
+that she “couldna’ ha’ one o’ the lads” and be her daughter.
+
+“Thee couldstna put up wi’ Seth,” she said. “He isna cliver enough for
+thee, happen, but he’d ha’ been very good t’ thee—he’s as handy as can
+be at doin’ things for me when I’m bad, an’ he’s as fond o’ the Bible
+an’ chappellin’ as thee art thysen. But happen, thee’dst like a husband
+better as isna just the cut o’ thysen: the runnin’ brook isna athirst
+for th’ rain. Adam ’ud ha’ done for thee—I know he would—an’ he might
+come t’ like thee well enough, if thee’dst stop. But he’s as stubborn
+as th’ iron bar—there’s no bending him no way but’s own. But he’d be a
+fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an’ so
+cliver as he is. And he’d be rare an’ lovin’: it does me good on’y a
+look o’ the lad’s eye when he means kind tow’rt me.”
+
+Dinah tried to escape from Lisbeth’s closest looks and questions by
+finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as
+soon as Seth came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It
+touched Dinah keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look
+round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing
+at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest
+speck in the dim aged eyes. “The God of love and peace be with them,”
+Dinah prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. “Make them glad
+according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years
+wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from
+them; let me have no will but thine.”
+
+Lisbeth turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near
+Seth, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned
+wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he
+meant to give to Dinah before she went away.
+
+“Thee’t see her again o’ Sunday afore she goes,” were her first words.
+“If thee wast good for anything, thee’dst make her come in again o’
+Sunday night wi’ thee, and see me once more.”
+
+“Nay, Mother,” said Seth. “Dinah ’ud be sure to come again if she saw
+right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks
+it ’ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye
+over again.”
+
+“She’d ne’er go away, I know, if Adam ’ud be fond on her an’ marry her,
+but everything’s so contrairy,” said Lisbeth, with a burst of vexation.
+
+Seth paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his
+mother’s face. “What! Has she said anything o’ that sort to thee,
+Mother?” he said, in a lower tone.
+
+“Said? Nay, she’ll say nothin’. It’s on’y the men as have to wait till
+folks say things afore they find ’em out.”
+
+“Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What’s put it into thy
+head?”
+
+“It’s no matter what’s put it into my head. My head’s none so hollow as
+it must get in, an’ nought to put it there. I know she’s fond on him,
+as I know th’ wind’s comin’ in at the door, an’ that’s anoof. An’ he
+might be willin’ to marry her if he know’d she’s fond on him, but he’ll
+ne’er think on’t if somebody doesna put it into’s head.”
+
+His mother’s suggestion about Dinah’s feeling towards Adam was not
+quite a new thought to Seth, but her last words alarmed him, lest she
+should herself undertake to open Adam’s eyes. He was not sure about
+Dinah’s feeling, and he thought he _was_ sure about Adam’s.
+
+“Nay, Mother, nay,” he said, earnestly, “thee mustna think o’ speaking
+o’ such things to Adam. Thee’st no right to say what Dinah’s feelings
+are if she hasna told thee, and it ’ud do nothing but mischief to say
+such things to Adam. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward
+Dinah, but he’s no thoughts towards her that ’ud incline him to make
+her his wife, and I don’t believe Dinah ’ud marry him either. I don’t
+think she’ll marry at all.”
+
+“Eh,” said Lisbeth, impatiently. “Thee think’st so ’cause she wouldna
+ha’ thee. She’ll ne’er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t’ ha’
+thy brother.”
+
+Seth was hurt. “Mother,” he said, in a remonstrating tone, “don’t think
+that of me. I should be as thankful t’ have her for a sister as thee
+wouldst t’ have her for a daughter. I’ve no more thoughts about myself
+in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say’st it again.”
+
+“Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi’ sayin’ things arena as I
+say they are.”
+
+“But, Mother,” said Seth, “thee’dst be doing Dinah a wrong by telling
+Adam what thee think’st about her. It ’ud do nothing but mischief, for
+it ’ud make Adam uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I’m
+pretty sure he feels nothing o’ the sort.”
+
+“Eh, donna tell me what thee’t sure on; thee know’st nought about it.
+What’s he allays goin’ to the Poysers’ for, if he didna want t’ see
+her? He goes twice where he used t’ go once. Happen he knowsna as he
+wants t’ see her; he knowsna as I put salt in’s broth, but he’d miss it
+pretty quick if it warna there. He’ll ne’er think o’ marrying if it
+isna put into’s head, an’ if thee’dst any love for thy mother, thee’dst
+put him up to’t an’ not let her go away out o’ my sight, when I might
+ha’ her to make a bit o’ comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man
+under the white thorn.”
+
+“Nay, Mother,” said Seth, “thee mustna think me unkind, but I should be
+going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Dinah’s
+feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Adam
+by speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to
+do’t. Thee may’st be quite deceived about Dinah. Nay, I’m pretty sure,
+by words she said to me last Sabbath, as she’s no mind to marry.”
+
+“Eh, thee’t as contrairy as the rest on ’em. If it war summat I didna
+want, it ’ud be done fast enough.”
+
+Lisbeth rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop,
+leaving Seth in much anxiety lest she should disturb Adam’s mind about
+Dinah. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since
+Adam’s trouble, Lisbeth had been very timid about speaking to him on
+matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this
+tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Adam would not
+take much notice of what she said.
+
+Seth was right in believing that Lisbeth would be held in restraint by
+timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she
+had an opportunity of speaking to Adam were too rare and short to cause
+her any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded
+over her regretful thoughts about Dinah, till they had grown very near
+that point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing
+out of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning,
+when Seth went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity
+came.
+
+Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Lisbeth, for as
+there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Adam was
+always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she
+could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better
+dinner than usual to prepare for her sons—very frequently for Adam and
+herself alone, Seth being often away the entire day—and the smell of
+the roast meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock
+ticking in a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Adam seated near her
+in his best clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go
+and stroke her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up
+at her and smile, while Gyp, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up
+between them—all these things made poor Lisbeth’s earthly paradise.
+
+The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large
+pictured Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round
+white deal table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire,
+because he knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the
+only day in the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would
+have liked to see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a
+weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for
+history, biography, and poetry. He held one hand thrust between his
+waistcoat buttons, and the other ready to turn the pages, and in the
+course of the morning you would have seen many changes in his face.
+Sometimes his lips moved in semi-articulation—it was when he came to a
+speech that he could fancy himself uttering, such as Samuel’s dying
+speech to the people; then his eyebrows would be raised, and the
+corners of his mouth would quiver a little with sad sympathy—something,
+perhaps old Isaac’s meeting with his son, touched him closely; at other
+times, over the New Testament, a very solemn look would come upon his
+face, and he would every now and then shake his head in serious assent,
+or just lift up his hand and let it fall again. And on some mornings,
+when he read in the Apocrypha, of which he was very fond, the son of
+Sirach’s keen-edged words would bring a delighted smile, though he also
+enjoyed the freedom of occasionally differing from an Apocryphal
+writer. For Adam knew the Articles quite well, as became a good
+churchman.
+
+Lisbeth, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite
+to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going up
+to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This
+morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Lisbeth
+had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair,
+which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the
+large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was
+encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up to
+him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her
+affectionately and say, “Why, Mother, thee look’st rare and hearty this
+morning. Eh, Gyp wants me t’ look at him. He can’t abide to think I
+love thee the best.” Lisbeth said nothing, because she wanted to say so
+many things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was
+a picture—that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been
+rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association
+in Lisbeth’s memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first saw
+Dinah, and Adam had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book
+sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, “That’s
+her—that’s Dinah.”
+
+Adam smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel’s face, said,
+
+“It _is_ a bit like her; but Dinah’s prettier, I think.”
+
+“Well, then, if thee think’st her so pretty, why arn’t fond on her?”
+
+Adam looked up in surprise. “Why, Mother, dost think I don’t set store
+by Dinah?”
+
+“Nay,” said Lisbeth, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that
+she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief
+they might do. “What’s th’ use o’ settin’ store by things as are thirty
+mile off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go
+away.”
+
+“But I’ve no right t’ hinder her, if she thinks well,” said Adam,
+looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a
+series of complaints tending to nothing. Lisbeth sat down again in the
+chair opposite to him, as she said:
+
+“But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy.” Lisbeth dared
+not venture beyond a vague phrase yet.
+
+“Contrairy, mother?” Adam said, looking up again in some anxiety. “What
+have I done? What dost mean?”
+
+“Why, thee’t never look at nothin’, nor think o’ nothin’, but thy
+figurin, an’ thy work,” said Lisbeth, half-crying. “An’ dost think thee
+canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o’ timber?
+An’ what wut do when thy mother’s gone, an’ nobody to take care on thee
+as thee gett’st a bit o’ victual comfortable i’ the mornin’?”
+
+“What hast got i’ thy mind, Mother?” said Adam, vexed at this
+whimpering. “I canna see what thee’t driving at. Is there anything I
+could do for thee as I don’t do?”
+
+“Aye, an’ that there is. Thee might’st do as I should ha’ somebody wi’
+me to comfort me a bit, an’ wait on me when I’m bad, an’ be good to
+me.”
+
+“Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i’ th’ house
+t’ help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o’ work to do.
+We can afford it—I’ve told thee often enough. It ’ud be a deal better
+for us.”
+
+“Eh, what’s the use o’ talking o’ tidy bodies, when thee mean’st one o’
+th’ wenches out o’ th’ village, or somebody from Treddles’on as I ne’er
+set eyes on i’ my life? I’d sooner make a shift an’ get into my own
+coffin afore I die, nor ha’ them folks to put me in.”
+
+Adam was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost
+severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But
+Lisbeth had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a
+minute’s quietness she began again.
+
+“Thee mightst know well enough who ’tis I’d like t’ ha’ wi’ me. It isna
+many folks I send for t’ come an’ see me, I reckon. An’ thee’st had the
+fetchin’ on her times enow.”
+
+“Thee mean’st Dinah, Mother, I know,” said Adam. “But it’s no use
+setting thy mind on what can’t be. If Dinah ’ud be willing to stay at
+Hayslope, it isn’t likely she can come away from her aunt’s house,
+where they hold her like a daughter, and where she’s more bound than
+she is to us. If it had been so that she could ha’ married Seth, that
+’ud ha’ been a great blessing to us, but we can’t have things just as
+we like in this life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without
+her.”
+
+“Nay, but I canna ma’ up my mind, when she’s just cut out for thee; an’
+nought shall ma’ me believe as God didna make her an’ send her there o’
+purpose for thee. What’s it sinnify about her bein’ a Methody! It ’ud
+happen wear out on her wi’ marryin’.”
+
+Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He
+understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the
+conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had
+ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an
+idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his
+mother’s mind as quickly as possible.
+
+“Mother,” he said, gravely, “thee’t talking wild. Don’t let me hear
+thee say such things again. It’s no good talking o’ what can never be.
+Dinah’s not for marrying; she’s fixed her heart on a different sort o’
+life.”
+
+“Very like,” said Lisbeth, impatiently, “very like she’s none for
+marr’ing, when them as she’d be willin’ t’ marry wonna ax her. I
+shouldna ha’ been for marr’ing thy feyther if he’d ne’er axed me; an’
+she’s as fond o’ thee as e’er I war o’ Thias, poor fellow.”
+
+The blood rushed to Adam’s face, and for a few moments he was not quite
+conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for
+him, and he saw nothing but Dinah’s face turned up towards his. It
+seemed as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up
+very speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it
+would have been very foolish in him to believe his mother’s words—she
+could have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief
+very strongly—perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there
+were any to be offered.
+
+“What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee’st got no foundation
+for ’em? Thee know’st nothing as gives thee a right to say that.”
+
+“Then I knowna nought as gi’es me a right to say as the year’s turned,
+for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i’ th’ morning. She isna
+fond o’ Seth, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry _him?_ But I
+can see as she doesna behave tow’rt thee as she daes tow’rt Seth. She
+makes no more o’ Seth’s coming a-nigh her nor if he war Gyp, but she’s
+all of a tremble when thee’t a-sittin’ down by her at breakfast an’
+a-looking at her. Thee think’st thy mother knows nought, but she war
+alive afore thee wast born.”
+
+“But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?” said Adam
+anxiously.
+
+“Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An’ what should
+she do but love thee? Thee’t made to be loved—for where’s there a
+straighter cliverer man? An’ what’s it sinnify her bein’ a Methody?
+It’s on’y the marigold i’ th’ parridge.”
+
+Adam had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the
+book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling
+like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the
+same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust
+his mother’s insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet—and
+yet, now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many
+things, very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an
+imperceptible breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his
+mother’s words.
+
+Lisbeth noticed that he was moved. She went on, “An’ thee’t find out as
+thee’t poorly aff when she’s gone. Thee’t fonder on her nor thee
+know’st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Gyp’s follow thee.”
+
+Adam could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went
+out into the fields.
+
+The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should
+know was not summer’s, even if there were not the touches of yellow on
+the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than
+autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which
+still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow
+of the bushy hedgerows.
+
+Adam needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which this
+new thought of Dinah’s love had taken possession of him, with an
+overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the
+impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till
+that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never
+crossed his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out
+towards that possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his
+own wishes than the bird that flies towards the opening through which
+the daylight gleams and the breath of heaven enters.
+
+The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with
+resignation to the disappointment if his mother—if he himself—proved to
+be mistaken about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of his
+hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to make
+one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Dinah was
+so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was not
+forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving her.
+Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon of
+that morning.
+
+But Seth? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite
+contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had
+never been jealous of his mother’s fondness for Adam. But had _he_ seen
+anything of what their mother talked about? Adam longed to know this,
+for he thought he could trust Seth’s observation better than his
+mother’s. He must talk to Seth before he went to see Dinah, and, with
+this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to
+his mother, “Did Seth say anything to thee about when he was coming
+home? Will he be back to dinner?”
+
+“Aye, lad, he’ll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles’on.
+He’s gone somewhere else a-preachin’ and a-prayin’.”
+
+“Hast any notion which way he’s gone?” said Adam.
+
+“Nay, but he aften goes to th’ Common. Thee know’st more o’s goings nor
+I do.”
+
+Adam wanted to go and meet Seth, but he must content himself with
+walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as
+possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Seth
+would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was
+twelve o’clock. But Adam could not sit down to his reading again, and
+he sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles,
+with eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very
+vividly; but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the
+sky. Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the
+strength of his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new
+love—almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in
+himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that
+the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few
+about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not
+those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger
+experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy’s flutelike voice
+has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper
+music.
+
+At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam
+hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual
+must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough
+that it was nothing alarming.
+
+“Where hast been?” said Adam, when they were side by side.
+
+“I’ve been to the Common,” said Seth. “Dinah’s been speaking the Word
+to a little company of hearers at Brimstone’s, as they call him.
+They’re folks as never go to church hardly—them on the Common—but
+they’ll go and hear Dinah a bit. She’s been speaking with power this
+forenoon from the words, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners
+to repentance.’ And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to
+see. The women mostly bring their children with ’em, but to-day there
+was one stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I
+never saw there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning
+while I was praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down
+and Dinah began to speak, th’ young un stood stock still all at once,
+and began to look at her with’s mouth open, and presently he ran away
+from’s mother and went to Dinah, and pulled at her, like a little dog,
+for her to take notice of him. So Dinah lifted him up and held th’ lad
+on her lap, while she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be
+till he went to sleep—and the mother cried to see him.”
+
+“It’s a pity she shouldna be a mother herself,” said Adam, “so fond as
+the children are of her. Dost think she’s quite fixed against marrying,
+Seth? Dost think nothing ’ud turn her?”
+
+There was something peculiar in his brother’s tone, which made Seth
+steal a glance at his face before he answered.
+
+“It ’ud be wrong of me to say nothing ’ud turn her,” he answered. “But
+if thee mean’st it about myself, I’ve given up all thoughts as she can
+ever be _my_ wife. She calls me her brother, and that’s enough.”
+
+“But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be
+willing to marry ’em?” said Adam rather shyly.
+
+“Well,” said Seth, after some hesitation, “it’s crossed my mind
+sometimes o’ late as she might; but Dinah ’ud let no fondness for the
+creature draw her out o’ the path as she believed God had marked out
+for her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she’s not one to
+be brought under the power of it. And she’s allays seemed clear about
+that—as her work was to minister t’ others, and make no home for
+herself i’ this world.”
+
+“But suppose,” said Adam, earnestly, “suppose there was a man as ’ud
+let her do just the same and not interfere with her—she might do a good
+deal o’ what she does now, just as well when she was married as when
+she was single. Other women of her sort have married—that’s to say, not
+just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and
+needy. There’s Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of.”
+
+A new light had broken in on Seth. He turned round, and laying his hand
+on Adam’s shoulder, said, “Why, wouldst like her to marry _thee_,
+brother?”
+
+Adam looked doubtfully at Seth’s inquiring eyes and said, “Wouldst be
+hurt if she was to be fonder o’ me than o’ thee?”
+
+“Nay,” said Seth warmly, “how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble
+so little that I shouldna feel thy joy?”
+
+There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Seth said,
+“I’d no notion as thee’dst ever think of her for a wife.”
+
+“But is it o’ any use to think of her?” said Adam. “What dost say?
+Mother’s made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she’s been
+saying to me this forenoon. She says she’s sure Dinah feels for me more
+than common, and ’ud be willing t’ have me. But I’m afraid she speaks
+without book. I want to know if thee’st seen anything.”
+
+“It’s a nice point to speak about,” said Seth, “and I’m afraid o’ being
+wrong; besides, we’ve no right t’ intermeddle with people’s feelings
+when they wouldn’t tell ’em themselves.”
+
+Seth paused.
+
+“But thee mightst ask her,” he said presently. “She took no offence at
+_me_ for asking, and thee’st more right than I had, only thee’t not in
+the Society. But Dinah doesn’t hold wi’ them as are for keeping the
+Society so strict to themselves. She doesn’t mind about making folks
+enter the Society, so as they’re fit t’ enter the kingdom o’ God. Some
+o’ the brethren at Treddles’on are displeased with her for that.”
+
+“Where will she be the rest o’ the day?” said Adam.
+
+“She said she shouldn’t leave the farm again to-day,” said Seth,
+“because it’s her last Sabbath there, and she’s going t’ read out o’
+the big Bible wi’ the children.”
+
+Adam thought—but did not say—“Then I’ll go this afternoon; for if I go
+to church, my thoughts ’ull be with her all the while. They must sing
+th’ anthem without me to-day.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII
+Adam and Dinah
+
+
+It was about three o’clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused
+Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was
+gone to church “but th’ young missis”—so he called Dinah—but this did
+not disappoint Adam, although the “everybody” was so liberal as to
+include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not
+unfrequently incompatible with church-going.
+
+There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed,
+and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the
+water gently dripping from the pump—that was the only sound—and he
+knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that
+stillness.
+
+The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the
+great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his
+regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her
+without any difficulty, “I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were
+not at home.” But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and
+he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet
+both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah
+took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table
+near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was
+not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small
+bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in
+Mr. Poyser’s three-cornered chair.
+
+“Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?” Dinah said, recovering
+herself. “Seth said she was well this morning.”
+
+“No, she’s very hearty to-day,” said Adam, happy in the signs of
+Dinah’s feeling at the sight of him, but shy.
+
+“There’s nobody at home, you see,” Dinah said; “but you’ll wait. You’ve
+been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless.”
+
+“Yes,” Adam said, and then paused, before he added, “I was thinking
+about you: that was the reason.”
+
+This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought
+Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words
+caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his
+brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, “Do
+not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound
+at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will
+in going.”
+
+“But if things were different, Dinah,” said Adam, hesitatingly. “If you
+knew things that perhaps you don’t know now....”
+
+Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a
+chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was
+sitting. She wondered, and was afraid—and the next moment her thoughts
+flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones
+that she didn’t know?
+
+Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now
+a self-forgetful questioning in them—for a moment he forgot that he
+wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he
+meant.
+
+“Dinah,” he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, “I love
+you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me.”
+
+Dinah’s lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently
+under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between
+Adam’s. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast.
+
+“Don’t tell me you can’t love me, Dinah. Don’t tell me we must part and
+pass our lives away from one another.”
+
+The tears were trembling in Dinah’s eyes, and they fell before she
+could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice.
+
+“Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part.”
+
+“Not if you love me, Dinah—not if you love me,” Adam said passionately.
+“Tell me—tell me if you can love me better than a brother?”
+
+Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to
+achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from
+the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere
+eyes as she said, “Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you;
+and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could
+find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually.
+I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I
+should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours.”
+
+Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in
+delicious silence—for the first sense of mutual love excludes other
+feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
+
+“Then, Dinah,” Adam said at last, “how can there be anything contrary
+to what’s right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives
+together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be
+holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good.
+I’d never think o’ putting myself between you and God, and saying you
+oughtn’t to do this and you oughtn’t to do that. You’d follow your
+conscience as much as you do now.”
+
+“Yes, Adam,” Dinah said, “I know marriage is a holy state for those who
+are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my
+childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace
+and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes
+for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose
+sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed
+years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would
+draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light
+that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me.
+We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul,
+and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which
+had once been given me and I had put away from me.”
+
+“But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love
+me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn’t
+that a sign that it’s right for you to change your life? Doesn’t the
+love make it right when nothing else would?”
+
+“Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you
+tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become
+dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards
+you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had
+taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was
+becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and
+careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I
+had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was
+beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt
+that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command
+was clear that I must go away.”
+
+“But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you
+love me... it’s all different now. You won’t think o’ going. You’ll
+stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life
+as I never thanked him before.”
+
+“Adam, it’s hard to me to turn a deaf ear... you know it’s hard; but a
+great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out
+your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for
+my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking
+towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I
+have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness
+and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become
+hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer’s
+cross.”
+
+Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her.
+“Adam,” she went on, “you wouldn’t desire that we should seek a good
+through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn’t
+believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that.”
+
+“Yes, Dinah,” said Adam sadly, “I’ll never be the man t’ urge you
+against your conscience. But I can’t give up the hope that you may come
+to see different. I don’t believe your loving me could shut up your
+heart—it’s only adding to what you’ve been before, not taking away from
+it. For it seems to me it’s the same with love and happiness as with
+sorrow—the more we know of it the better we can feel what other
+people’s lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to
+’em, and wishful to help ’em. The more knowledge a man has, the better
+he’ll do’s work; and feeling’s a sort o’ knowledge.”
+
+Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something
+visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, “And
+you can do almost as much as you do now. I won’t ask you to go to
+church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the
+people, and teach ’em; for though I like church best, I don’t put my
+soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your
+own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you’ll have
+more means o’ making ’em a bit comfortable; and you’ll be among all
+your own friends as love you, and can help ’em and be a blessing to ’em
+till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you’d be as near to God as if you
+was living lonely and away from me.”
+
+Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands
+and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her
+grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, “Adam there
+is truth in what you say, and there’s many of the brethren and sisters
+who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged
+by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would
+be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on
+you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a
+division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I
+have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my
+childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls
+me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul
+might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken;
+and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for
+clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves
+entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our
+natural lawful affections on the altar.”
+
+Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah’s was not the voice of caprice or
+insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he
+looked at her.
+
+“But you may come to feel satisfied... to feel that you may come to me
+again, and we may never part, Dinah?”
+
+“We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made
+clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find
+all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that
+were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage.
+But we must wait.”
+
+“Dinah,” said Adam mournfully, “you can’t love me so well as I love
+you, else you’d have no doubts. But it’s natural you shouldn’t, for I’m
+not so good as you. I can’t doubt it’s right for me to love the best
+thing God’s ever given me to know.”
+
+“Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my
+heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on
+the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the
+thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would
+be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me—you will not
+hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost.”
+
+“Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I’ll speak
+no word to disturb you.”
+
+They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the
+family coming from church. Adam said, “Take my arm, Dinah,” and she
+took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since
+they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her
+going away—in the uncertainty of the issue—could rob the sweetness from
+Adam’s sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall
+Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could.
+
+“Hey-day! There’s Adam along wi’ Dinah,” said Mr. Poyser, as he opened
+the far gate into the Home Close. “I couldna think how he happened away
+from church. Why,” added good Martin, after a moment’s pause, “what
+dost think has just jumped into my head?”
+
+“Summat as hadna far to jump, for it’s just under our nose. You mean as
+Adam’s fond o’ Dinah.”
+
+“Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?”
+
+“To be sure I have,” said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if
+possible, to be taken by surprise. “I’m not one o’ those as can see the
+cat i’ the dairy an’ wonder what she’s come after.”
+
+“Thee never saidst a word to me about it.”
+
+“Well, I aren’t like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the
+wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there’s no good i’
+speaking.”
+
+“But Dinah ’ll ha’ none o’ him. Dost think she will?”
+
+“Nay,” said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a
+possible surprise, “she’ll never marry anybody, if he isn’t a Methodist
+and a cripple.”
+
+“It ’ud ha’ been a pretty thing though for ’em t’ marry,” said Martin,
+turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new
+idea. “Thee’dst ha’ liked it too, wouldstna?”
+
+“Ah! I should. I should ha’ been sure of her then, as she wouldn’t go
+away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a
+creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an’ most of
+’em women as I’d be ashamed to show my face, if _my_ dairy things war
+like their’n. There may well be streaky butter i’ the market. An’ I
+should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman,
+with a house of her own over her head; and we’d stock her well wi’
+linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An’ she
+makes one feel safer when she’s i’ the house, for she’s like the driven
+snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow.”
+
+“Dinah,” said Tommy, running forward to meet her, “mother says you’ll
+never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!”
+a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and
+dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness.
+
+“Why, Adam, we missed you i’ the singing to-day,” said Mr. Poyser. “How
+was it?”
+
+“I wanted to see Dinah—she’s going away so soon,” said Adam.
+
+“Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband
+somewhere i’ the parish. If you’ll do that, we’ll forgive you for
+missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper
+o’ Wednesday, and you must come then. There’s Bartle Massey comin’, an’
+happen Craig. You’ll be sure an’ come, now, at seven? The missis wunna
+have it a bit later.”
+
+“Aye,” said Adam, “I’ll come if I can. But I can’t often say what I’ll
+do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You’ll
+stay till the end o’ the week, Dinah?”
+
+“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Poyser. “We’ll have no nay.”
+
+“She’s no call to be in a hurry,” observed Mrs. Poyser. “Scarceness o’
+victual ’ull keep: there’s no need to be hasty wi’ the cooking. An’
+scarceness is what there’s the biggest stock of i’ that country.”
+
+Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other
+things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look
+at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the
+surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly
+having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully
+wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could
+read little beyond the large letters and the Amens.
+
+Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through
+the fields from “afternoon church”—as such walks used to be in those
+old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal,
+was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them
+old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always
+in one place. Leisure is gone—gone where the spinning-wheels are gone,
+and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought
+bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell
+you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create
+leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for
+eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now—eager for
+amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical
+literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing
+and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a
+different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders,
+and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call
+post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent
+digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his
+inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things
+themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and
+homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and
+scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or
+of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer
+pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought
+none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the
+text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the
+prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an
+easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a
+great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and
+qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a
+sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners,
+and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his
+character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons?
+
+Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our
+modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular
+preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or _Sartor Resartus_.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII
+The Harvest Supper
+
+
+As Adam was going homeward, on Wednesday evening, in the six o’clock
+sunlight, he saw in the distance the last load of barley winding its
+way towards the yard-gate of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of
+“Harvest Home!” rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter,
+and more musical through the growing distance, the falling dying sound
+still reached him, as he neared the Willow Brook. The low westering sun
+shone right on the shoulders of the old Binton Hills, turning the
+unconscious sheep into bright spots of light; shone on the windows of
+the cottage too, and made them a-flame with a glory beyond that of
+amber or amethyst. It was enough to make Adam feel that he was in a
+great temple, and that the distant chant was a sacred song.
+
+“It’s wonderful,” he thought, “how that sound goes to one’s heart
+almost like a funeral bell, for all it tells one o’ the joyfullest time
+o’ the year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I
+suppose it’s a bit hard to us to think anything’s over and gone in our
+lives; and there’s a parting at the root of all our joys. It’s like
+what I feel about Dinah. I should never ha’ come to know that her love
+’ud be the greatest o’ blessings to me, if what I counted a blessing
+hadn’t been wrenched and torn away from me, and left me with a greater
+need, so as I could crave and hunger for a greater and a better
+comfort.”
+
+He expected to see Dinah again this evening, and get leave to accompany
+her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time
+when he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope
+that had been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he
+had to do at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven
+before he was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was
+questionable whether, with his longest and quickest strides, he should
+be there in time even for the roast beef, which came after the plum
+pudding, for Mrs. Poyser’s supper would be punctual.
+
+Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when
+Adam entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this
+accompaniment: the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of
+expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be
+performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to
+say to each other—which they had not. And Mr. Poyser, at the head of
+the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey’s
+or Mr. Craig’s ready talk.
+
+“Here, Adam,” said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see
+that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, “here’s a place kept
+for you between Mr. Massey and the boys. It’s a poor tale you couldn’t
+come to see the pudding when it was whole.”
+
+Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman’s figure, but Dinah was
+not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his
+attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that
+Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on
+the eve of her departure.
+
+It was a goodly sight—that table, with Martin Poyser’s round
+good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his
+servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates
+came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really
+forgot to finish his own beef to-night—it was so pleasant to him to
+look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed
+their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year
+except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift
+manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden
+bottles—with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the
+zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds.
+Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must
+find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one
+side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched
+half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as “Tom Saft,” receiving his
+second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom’s face as the
+plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he
+held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too
+strong to continue smouldering in a grin—it burst out the next instant
+in a long-drawn “haw, haw!” followed by a sudden collapse into utter
+gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser’s
+large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards
+Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes
+of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement.
+
+“Tom Saft” was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part
+of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his
+success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail,
+which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and
+then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but
+I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom’s wit should prove to be
+like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day—rather of a
+temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting
+relations of things.
+
+Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and
+labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth
+their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example
+(Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and
+was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the
+close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face.
+Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the “natur” of all
+farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only
+turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their
+hand to. It is true Kester’s knees were much bent outward by this time,
+and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most
+reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the
+object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed
+some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks—for
+if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching—and when
+the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose
+home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the
+rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the
+lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking
+about to get each rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied
+along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden
+globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of
+the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan
+act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have
+stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with
+him every pay-night: not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one,
+that had been tried many times before and had worn well. “Th’ young
+measter’s a merry mon,” Kester frequently remarked; for having begun
+his career by frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser
+but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Martin a young
+master. I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester. You and I are
+indebted to the hard hands of such men—hands that have long ago mingled
+with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they
+could of the earth’s fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their
+own wages.
+
+Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick,
+the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not
+on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was
+confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed
+little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there
+was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own
+respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same
+farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed,
+was not by any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of
+a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the
+bull-dog expression—“Don’t you meddle with me, and I won’t meddle with
+you.” But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather
+than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as “close-fisted”
+with his master’s property as if it had been his own—throwing very
+small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large
+handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion.
+Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge
+against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other,
+and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes;
+but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all
+mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than
+transient fits of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope,
+you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning
+sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists. The
+mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer’s face,
+and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh.
+Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick. At this very
+table, among Mr. Poyser’s men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very
+powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his
+master’s corn in his pockets—an action which, as Ben was not a
+philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind. However, his
+master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways
+had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the
+Poysers. And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse
+because Ben had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of
+depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have
+enlarged them. As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene
+sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed
+for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in
+thinking that Alick’s suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury
+to his innocence.
+
+But _now_ the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving
+a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming
+brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold.
+_Now_, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin—the harvest-song,
+in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be
+singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was
+obliged to be in triple time; the rest was _ad libitum_.
+
+As to the origin of this song—whether it came in its actual state from
+the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a
+school or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of
+unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former
+hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity
+may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a
+condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness.
+Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an
+indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in
+imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration.
+Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an
+original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be
+insensible.
+
+The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That is
+perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our
+forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly
+_forte_, no can was filled.
+
+“Here’s a health unto our master,
+    The founder of the feast;
+Here’s a health unto our master
+    And to our mistress!
+
+And may his doings prosper,
+    Whate’er he takes in hand,
+For we are all his servants,
+    And are at his command.”
+
+
+But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung
+_fortissimo_, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of
+cymbals and drum together, Alick’s can was filled, and he was bound to
+empty it before the chorus ceased.
+
+“Then drink, boys, drink!
+    And see ye do not spill,
+For if ye do, ye shall drink two,
+    For ’tis our master’s will.”
+
+
+When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed
+manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand—and so on,
+till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the
+chorus. Tom Saft—the rogue—took care to spill a little by accident; but
+Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the
+exaction of the penalty.
+
+To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of
+obvious why the “Drink, boys, drink!” should have such an immediate and
+often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all
+faces were at present sober, and most of them serious—it was the
+regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do,
+as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their
+wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone
+out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the
+ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of
+five minutes declared that “Drink, boys, drink!” was not likely to
+begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys
+and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious
+thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father’s
+knee, contributed with her small might and small fist.
+
+When Bartle re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire
+for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner
+knew a song and was “allays singing like a lark i’ the stable,”
+whereupon Mr. Poyser said encouragingly, “Come, Tim, lad, let’s hear
+it.” Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn’t
+sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master’s was echoed all
+round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could
+say, “Come, Tim,” except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of
+unnecessary speech. At last, Tim’s next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began
+to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather
+savage, said, “Let me alooan, will ye? Else I’ll ma’ ye sing a toon ye
+wonna like.” A good-tempered waggoner’s patience has limits, and Tim
+was not to be urged further.
+
+“Well, then, David, ye’re the lad to sing,” said Ben, willing to show
+that he was not discomfited by this check. “Sing ‘My loove’s a roos
+wi’out a thorn.’”
+
+The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted
+expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity
+rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to
+Ben’s invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over
+his mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for
+some time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire
+to hear David’s song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in
+the cellar at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just
+yet.
+
+Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a
+political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally,
+though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific
+information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really
+it was superfluous to know them.
+
+“I’m no reader o’ the paper myself,” he observed to-night, as he filled
+his pipe, “though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there’s
+Miss Lyddy has ’em and ’s done with ’em i’ no time. But there’s Mills,
+now, sits i’ the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from
+morning to night, and when he’s got to th’ end on’t he’s more
+addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He’s full o’ this peace now,
+as they talk on; he’s been reading and reading, and thinks he’s got to
+the bottom on’t. ‘Why, Lor’ bless you, Mills,’ says I, ‘you see no more
+into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I’ll tell
+you what it is: you think it’ll be a fine thing for the country. And
+I’m not again’ it—mark my words—I’m not again’ it. But it’s my opinion
+as there’s them at the head o’ this country as are worse enemies to us
+nor Bony and all the mounseers he’s got at ’s back; for as for the
+mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of ’em at once as if they war
+frogs.’”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much
+intelligence and edification, “they ne’er ate a bit o’ beef i’ their
+lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon.”
+
+“And says I to Mills,” continued Mr. Craig, “‘Will _you_ try to make me
+believe as furriners like them can do us half th’ harm them ministers
+do with their bad government? If King George ’ud turn ’em all away and
+govern by himself, he’d see everything righted. He might take on Billy
+Pitt again if he liked; but I don’t see myself what we want wi’ anybody
+besides King and Parliament. It’s that nest o’ ministers does the
+mischief, I tell you.’”
+
+“Ah, it’s fine talking,” observed Mrs. Poyser, who was now seated near
+her husband, with Totty on her lap—“it’s fine talking. It’s hard work
+to tell which is Old Harry when everybody’s got boots on.”
+
+“As for this peace,” said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side in a
+dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between
+each sentence, “I don’t know. Th’ war’s a fine thing for the country,
+an’ how’ll you keep up prices wi’out it? An’ them French are a wicked
+sort o’ folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight
+’em?”
+
+“Ye’re partly right there, Poyser,” said Mr. Craig, “but I’m not again’
+the peace—to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like,
+an’ _I’m_ in no fear o’ Bony, for all they talk so much o’ his
+cliverness. That’s what I says to Mills this morning. Lor’ bless you,
+he sees no more through Bony!... why, I put him up to more in three
+minutes than he gets from’s paper all the year round. Says I, ‘Am I a
+gardener as knows his business, or arn’t I, Mills? Answer me that.’ ‘To
+be sure y’ are, Craig,’ says he—he’s not a bad fellow, Mills isn’t, for
+a butler, but weak i’ the head. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘you talk o’ Bony’s
+cliverness; would it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I’d
+got nought but a quagmire to work on?’ ‘No,’ says he. ‘Well,’ I says,
+‘that’s just what it is wi’ Bony. I’ll not deny but he may be a bit
+cliver—he’s no Frenchman born, as I understand—but what’s he got at’s
+back but mounseers?’”
+
+Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant
+specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table
+rather fiercely, “Why, it’s a sure thing—and there’s them ’ull bear
+witness to’t—as i’ one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they
+put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits
+the walnut, and you couldn’t tell the monkey from the mounseers!”
+
+“Ah! Think o’ that, now!” said Mr. Poyser, impressed at once with the
+political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an
+anecdote in natural history.
+
+“Come, Craig,” said Adam, “that’s a little too strong. You don’t
+believe that. It’s all nonsense about the French being such poor
+sticks. Mr. Irwine’s seen ’em in their own country, and he says they’ve
+plenty o’ fine fellows among ’em. And as for knowledge, and
+contrivances, and manufactures, there’s a many things as we’re a fine
+sight behind ’em in. It’s poor foolishness to run down your enemies.
+Why, Nelson and the rest of ’em ’ud have no merit i’ beating ’em, if
+they were such offal as folks pretend.”
+
+Mr. Poyser looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition
+of authorities. Mr. Irwine’s testimony was not to be disputed; but, on
+the other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less
+startling. Martin had never “heard tell” of the French being good for
+much. Mr. Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a
+long draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of
+his own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when
+Bartle Massey returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking
+his first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust
+his forefinger into the canister, “Why, Adam, how happened you not to
+be at church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went
+limping without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his
+old age?”
+
+“No, Mr. Massey,” said Adam. “Mr. and Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I
+was. I was in no bad company.”
+
+“She’s gone, Adam—gone to Snowfield,” said Mr. Poyser, reminded of
+Dinah for the first time this evening. “I thought you’d ha’ persuaded
+her better. Nought ’ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon.
+The missis has hardly got over it. I thought she’d ha’ no sperrit for
+th’ harvest supper.”
+
+Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times since Adam had come in,
+but she had had “no heart” to mention the bad news.
+
+“What!” said Bartle, with an air of disgust. “Was there a woman
+concerned? Then I give you up, Adam.”
+
+“But it’s a woman you’n spoke well on, Bartle,” said Mr. Poyser. “Come
+now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha’ been a bad
+invention if they’d all been like Dinah.”
+
+“I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, that was all,” said Bartle.
+“I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears.
+As for other things, I daresay she’s like the rest o’ the women—thinks
+two and two ’ll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough
+about it.”
+
+“Aye, aye!” said Mrs. Poyser; “one ’ud think, an’ hear some folks talk,
+as the men war ’cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’
+only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, _they_ can.
+Perhaps that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.”
+
+Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter and winked at Adam, as much
+as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now.
+
+“Ah!” said Bartle sneeringly, “the women are quick enough—they’re quick
+enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can
+tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows ’em himself.”
+
+“Like enough,” said Mrs. Poyser, “for the men are mostly so slow, their
+thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can
+count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready an’ when he
+outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s
+your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. Howiver, I’m not denyin’
+the women are foolish: God Almighty made ’em to match the men.”
+
+“Match!” said Bartle. “Aye, as vinegar matches one’s teeth. If a man
+says a word, his wife ’ll match it with a contradiction; if he’s a mind
+for hot meat, his wife ’ll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs,
+she’ll match him with whimpering. She’s such a match as the horse-fly
+is to th’ horse: she’s got the right venom to sting him with—the right
+venom to sting him with.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, “I know what the men like—a poor soft, as ’ud
+simper at ’em like the picture o’ the sun, whether they did right or
+wrong, an’ say thank you for a kick, an’ pretend she didna know which
+end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That’s what a man
+wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o’ one fool as ’ull tell
+him he’s wise. But there’s some men can do wi’out that—they think so
+much o’ themselves a’ready. An’ that’s how it is there’s old
+bachelors.”
+
+“Come, Craig,” said Mr. Poyser jocosely, “you mun get married pretty
+quick, else you’ll be set down for an old bachelor; an’ you see what
+the women ’ull think on you.”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Poyser and setting a
+high value on his own compliments, “_I_ like a cleverish woman—a woman
+o’ sperrit—a managing woman.”
+
+“You’re out there, Craig,” said Bartle, dryly; “you’re out there. You
+judge o’ your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the
+things for what they can excel in—for what they can excel in. You don’t
+value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers.
+Now, that’s the way you should choose women. Their cleverness ’ll never
+come to much—never come to much—but they make excellent simpletons,
+ripe and strong-flavoured.”
+
+“What dost say to that?” said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and
+looking merrily at his wife.
+
+“Say!” answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye.
+“Why, I say as some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on
+strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s
+summat wrong i’ their own inside...”
+
+Mrs. Poyser would probably have brought her rejoinder to a further
+climax, if every one’s attention had not at this moment been called to
+the other end of the table, where the lyricism, which had at first only
+manifested itself by David’s _sotto voce_ performance of “My love’s a
+rose without a thorn,” had gradually assumed a rather deafening and
+complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David’s vocalization, was
+impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of
+“Three Merry Mowers,” but David was not to be put down so easily, and
+showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it
+doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when
+old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set
+up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was
+come for him to go off.
+
+The company at Alick’s end of the table took this form of vocal
+entertainment very much as a matter of course, being free from musical
+prejudices; but Bartle Massey laid down his pipe and put his fingers in
+his ears; and Adam, who had been longing to go ever since he had heard
+Dinah was not in the house, rose and said he must bid good-night.
+
+“I’ll go with you, lad,” said Bartle; “I’ll go with you before my ears
+are split.”
+
+“I’ll go round by the Common and see you home, if you like, Mr.
+Massey,” said Adam.
+
+“Aye, aye!” said Bartle; “then we can have a bit o’ talk together. I
+never get hold of you now.”
+
+“Eh! It’s a pity but you’d sit it out,” said Martin Poyser. “They’ll
+all go soon, for th’ missis niver lets ’em stay past ten.”
+
+But Adam was resolute, so the good-nights were said, and the two
+friends turned out on their starlight walk together.
+
+“There’s that poor fool, Vixen, whimpering for me at home,” said
+Bartle. “I can never bring her here with me for fear she should be
+struck with Mrs. Poyser’s eye, and the poor bitch might go limping for
+ever after.”
+
+“I’ve never any need to drive Gyp back,” said Adam, laughing. “He
+always turns back of his own head when he finds out I’m coming here.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Bartle. “A terrible woman!—made of needles, made of
+needles. But I stick to Martin—I shall always stick to Martin. And he
+likes the needles, God help him! He’s a cushion made on purpose for
+’em.”
+
+“But she’s a downright good-natur’d woman, for all that,” said Adam,
+“and as true as the daylight. She’s a bit cross wi’ the dogs when they
+offer to come in th’ house, but if they depended on her, she’d take
+care and have ’em well fed. If her tongue’s keen, her heart’s tender:
+I’ve seen that in times o’ trouble. She’s one o’ those women as are
+better than their word.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Bartle, “I don’t say th’ apple isn’t sound at the
+core; but it sets my teeth on edge—it sets my teeth on edge.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV
+The Meeting on the Hill
+
+
+Adam understood Dinah’s haste to go away, and drew hope rather than
+discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of her
+feeling towards him should hinder her from waiting and listening
+faithfully for the ultimate guiding voice from within.
+
+“I wish I’d asked her to write to me, though,” he thought. “And yet
+even that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be quite quiet
+in her old way for a while. And I’ve no right to be impatient and
+interrupting her with my wishes. She’s told me what her mind is, and
+she’s not a woman to say one thing and mean another. I’ll wait
+patiently.”
+
+That was Adam’s wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the
+first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance
+of Dinah’s confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful
+amount of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the
+middle of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and
+showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long:
+Dinah must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind.
+Let a woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she
+loves him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first
+draught she offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He
+treads the earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her,
+and makes light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out:
+memory gets sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive
+us. Adam was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear
+that perhaps Dinah’s old life would have too strong a grasp upon her
+for any new feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would
+surely have written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared
+that she held it right to discourage him. As Adam’s confidence waned,
+his patience waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He
+must ask Dinah not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was
+needful. He sat up late one night to write her a letter, but the next
+morning he burnt it, afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a
+discouraging answer by letter than from her own lips, for her presence
+reconciled him to her will.
+
+You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of Dinah, and
+when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to
+still it though he may have to put his future in pawn.
+
+But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not be
+displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must
+surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in
+October this view of the case had become so clear to Adam that he was
+already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours
+were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge’s good nag for
+the journey.
+
+What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to
+Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond
+Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees,
+seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he
+knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of
+time—or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters—and
+Adam this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey
+country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of
+the past.
+
+That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices
+and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed
+another, because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to
+ourselves. Adam could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human
+sorrow which had been brought so close to him; he could never thank God
+for another’s misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy
+in Adam’s behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for
+himself. He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said,
+“Evil’s evil, and sorrow’s sorrow, and you can’t alter it’s natur by
+wrapping it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my
+sake, that I should think all square when things turn out well for me.”
+
+But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad
+experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain.
+Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be
+possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which
+his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for
+clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within us
+is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added
+strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a
+painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a
+philosopher to his less complete formula.
+
+Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam’s mind this
+Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His
+feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been
+the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield
+eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love
+for Hetty had been—so deep that the roots of it would never be torn
+away—his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it was
+the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his
+acquaintance with deep sorrow. “It’s like as if it was a new strength
+to me,” he said to himself, “to love her and know as she loves me. I
+shall look t’ her to help me to see things right. For she’s better than
+I am—there’s less o’ self in her, and pride. And it’s a feeling as
+gives you a sort o’ liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when
+you’ve more trust in another than y’ have in yourself. I’ve always been
+thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that’s a poor
+sort o’ life, when you can’t look to them nearest to you t’ help you
+with a bit better thought than what you’ve got inside you a’ready.”
+
+It was more than two o’clock in the afternoon when Adam came in sight
+of the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly towards the
+green valley below, for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near
+the ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh in the soft October
+sunshine than it had in the eager time of early spring, and the one
+grand charm it possessed in common with all wide-stretching woodless
+regions—that it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching
+sky—had a milder, more soothing influence than usual, on this almost
+cloudless day. Adam’s doubts and fears melted under this influence as
+the delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear
+blue above him. He seemed to see Dinah’s gentle face assuring him, with
+its looks alone, of all he longed to know.
+
+He did not expect Dinah to be at home at this hour, but he got down
+from his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might ask where
+she was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following her and bringing
+her home. She was gone to Sloman’s End, a hamlet about three miles off,
+over the hill, the old woman told him—had set off directly after
+morning chapel, to preach in a cottage there, as her habit was. Anybody
+at the town would tell him the way to Sloman’s End. So Adam got on his
+horse again and rode to the town, putting up at the old inn and taking
+a hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from
+whose friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as
+soon as possible and set out towards Sloman’s End. With all his haste
+it was nearly four o’clock before he could set off, and he thought that
+as Dinah had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near
+returning. The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened by
+sheltering trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and as he
+came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn. “Perhaps
+that’s the last hymn before they come away,” Adam thought. “I’ll walk
+back a bit and turn again to meet her, farther off the village.” He
+walked back till he got nearly to the top of the hill again, and seated
+himself on a loose stone, against the low wall, to watch till he should
+see the little black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill.
+He chose this spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away
+from all eyes—no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near—no
+presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky.
+
+She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at least
+watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon shadows
+lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the little black
+figure coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching
+the foot of the hill. Slowly, Adam thought, but Dinah was really
+walking at her usual pace, with a light quiet step. Now she was
+beginning to wind along the path up the hill, but Adam would not move
+yet; he would not meet her too soon; he had set his heart on meeting
+her in this assured loneliness. And now he began to fear lest he should
+startle her too much. “Yet,” he thought, “she’s not one to be
+overstartled; she’s always so calm and quiet, as if she was prepared
+for anything.”
+
+What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she had
+found complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any need of
+his love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with
+fluttering wings.
+
+But now at last she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall.
+It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned
+round to look back at the village—who does not pause and look back in
+mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover,
+he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw
+him. He came within three paces of her and then said, “Dinah!” She
+started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no
+place. “Dinah!” Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her
+mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual
+monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the
+voice.
+
+But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it
+was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did
+not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved
+towards him so that his arm could clasp her round.
+
+And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam was
+content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first.
+
+“Adam,” she said, “it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to yours
+that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now
+you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same
+love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father’s
+Will that I had lost before.”
+
+Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.
+
+“Then we’ll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us.”
+
+And they kissed each other with a deep joy.
+
+What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
+are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on
+each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be
+one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the
+last parting?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV
+Marriage Bells
+
+
+In little more than a month after that meeting on the hill—on a rimy
+morning in departing November—Adam and Dinah were married.
+
+It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge’s men had
+a holiday, and all Mr. Poyser’s, and most of those who had a holiday
+appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly
+an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still
+resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in
+church to see Adam and Dinah married, or near the church door to greet
+them as they came forth. Mrs. Irwine and her daughters were waiting at
+the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to
+shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in
+the absence of Miss Lydia Donnithorne at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills,
+and Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent “the family”
+at the Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with
+familiar faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Dinah when
+she preached on the Green. And no wonder they showed this eager
+interest on her marriage morning, for nothing like Dinah and the
+history which had brought her and Adam Bede together had been known at
+Hayslope within the memory of man.
+
+Bessy Cranage, in her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did
+not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Wiry Ben, who stood near her,
+judiciously suggested, Dinah was not going away, and if Bessy was in
+low spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Dinah’s example
+and marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy,
+just within the church door, there were the Poyser children, peeping
+round the corner of the pews to get a sight of the mysterious ceremony;
+Totty’s face wearing an unusual air of anxiety at the idea of seeing
+cousin Dinah come back looking rather old, for in Totty’s experience no
+married people were young.
+
+I envy them all the sight they had when the marriage was fairly ended
+and Adam led Dinah out of church. She was not in black this morning,
+for her Aunt Poyser would by no means allow such a risk of incurring
+bad luck, and had herself made a present of the wedding dress, made all
+of grey, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Dinah could
+not give way. So the lily face looked out with sweet gravity from under
+a grey Quaker bonnet, neither smiling nor blushing, but with lips
+trembling a little under the weight of solemn feelings. Adam, as he
+pressed her arm to his side, walked with his old erectness and his head
+thrown rather backward as if to face all the world better. But it was
+not because he was particularly proud this morning, as is the wont of
+bridegrooms, for his happiness was of a kind that had little reference
+to men’s opinion of it. There was a tinge of sadness in his deep joy;
+Dinah knew it, and did not feel aggrieved.
+
+There were three other couples, following the bride and bridegroom:
+first, Martin Poyser, looking as cheery as a bright fire on this rimy
+morning, led quiet Mary Burge, the bridesmaid; then came Seth serenely
+happy, with Mrs. Poyser on his arm; and last of all Bartle Massey, with
+Lisbeth—Lisbeth in a new gown and bonnet, too busy with her pride in
+her son and her delight in possessing the one daughter she had desired
+to devise a single pretext for complaint.
+
+Bartle Massey had consented to attend the wedding at Adam’s earnest
+request, under protest against marriage in general and the marriage of
+a sensible man in particular. Nevertheless, Mr. Poyser had a joke
+against him after the wedding dinner, to the effect that in the vestry
+he had given the bride one more kiss than was necessary.
+
+Behind this last couple came Mr. Irwine, glad at heart over this good
+morning’s work of joining Adam and Dinah. For he had seen Adam in the
+worst moments of his sorrow; and what better harvest from that painful
+seed-time could there be than this? The love that had brought hope and
+comfort in the hour of despair, the love that had found its way to the
+dark prison cell and to poor Hetty’s darker soul—this strong gentle
+love was to be Adam’s companion and helper till death.
+
+There was much shaking of hands mingled with “God bless you’s” and
+other good wishes to the four couples, at the churchyard gate, Mr.
+Poyser answering for the rest with unwonted vivacity of tongue, for he
+had all the appropriate wedding-day jokes at his command. And the
+women, he observed, could never do anything but put finger in eye at a
+wedding. Even Mrs. Poyser could not trust herself to speak as the
+neighbours shook hands with her, and Lisbeth began to cry in the face
+of the very first person who told her she was getting young again.
+
+Mr. Joshua Rann, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join in
+the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some
+contempt at these informal greetings which required no official
+co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, “Oh what
+a joyful thing it is,” by way of preluding a little to the effect he
+intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday.
+
+“That’s a bit of good news to cheer Arthur,” said Mr. Irwine to his
+mother, as they drove off. “I shall write to him the first thing when
+we get home.”
+
+
+
+
+Epilogue
+
+
+It is near the end of June, in 1807. The workshops have been shut up
+half an hour or more in Adam Bede’s timber-yard, which used to be
+Jonathan Burge’s, and the mellow evening light is falling on the
+pleasant house with the buff walls and the soft grey thatch, very much
+as it did when we saw Adam bringing in the keys on that June evening
+nine years ago.
+
+There is a figure we know well, just come out of the house, and shading
+her eyes with her hands as she looks for something in the distance, for
+the rays that fall on her white borderless cap and her pale auburn hair
+are very dazzling. But now she turns away from the sunlight and looks
+towards the door.
+
+We can see the sweet pale face quite well now: it is scarcely at all
+altered—only a little fuller, to correspond to her more matronly
+figure, which still seems light and active enough in the plain black
+dress.
+
+“I see him, Seth,” Dinah said, as she looked into the house. “Let us go
+and meet him. Come, Lisbeth, come with Mother.”
+
+The last call was answered immediately by a small fair creature with
+pale auburn hair and grey eyes, little more than four years old, who
+ran out silently and put her hand into her mother’s.
+
+“Come, Uncle Seth,” said Dinah.
+
+“Aye, aye, we’re coming,” Seth answered from within, and presently
+appeared stooping under the doorway, being taller than usual by the
+black head of a sturdy two-year-old nephew, who had caused some delay
+by demanding to be carried on uncle’s shoulder.
+
+“Better take him on thy arm, Seth,” said Dinah, looking fondly at the
+stout black-eyed fellow. “He’s troublesome to thee so.”
+
+“Nay, nay: Addy likes a ride on my shoulder. I can carry him so for a
+bit.” A kindness which young Addy acknowledged by drumming his heels
+with promising force against Uncle Seth’s chest. But to walk by Dinah’s
+side, and be tyrannized over by Dinah’s and Adam’s children, was Uncle
+Seth’s earthly happiness.
+
+“Where didst see him?” asked Seth, as they walked on into the adjoining
+field. “I can’t catch sight of him anywhere.”
+
+“Between the hedges by the roadside,” said Dinah. “I saw his hat and
+his shoulder. There he is again.”
+
+“Trust thee for catching sight of him if he’s anywhere to be seen,”
+said Seth, smiling. “Thee’t like poor mother used to be. She was always
+on the look out for Adam, and could see him sooner than other folks,
+for all her eyes got dim.”
+
+“He’s been longer than he expected,” said Dinah, taking Arthur’s watch
+from a small side pocket and looking at it; “it’s nigh upon seven now.”
+
+“Aye, they’d have a deal to say to one another,” said Seth, “and the
+meeting ’ud touch ’em both pretty closish. Why, it’s getting on towards
+eight years since they parted.”
+
+“Yes,” said Dinah, “Adam was greatly moved this morning at the thought
+of the change he should see in the poor young man, from the sickness he
+has undergone, as well as the years which have changed us all. And the
+death of the poor wanderer, when she was coming back to us, has been
+sorrow upon sorrow.”
+
+“See, Addy,” said Seth, lowering the young one to his arm now and
+pointing, “there’s Father coming—at the far stile.”
+
+Dinah hastened her steps, and little Lisbeth ran on at her utmost speed
+till she clasped her father’s leg. Adam patted her head and lifted her
+up to kiss her, but Dinah could see the marks of agitation on his face
+as she approached him, and he put her arm within his in silence.
+
+“Well, youngster, must I take you?” he said, trying to smile, when Addy
+stretched out his arms—ready, with the usual baseness of infancy, to
+give up his Uncle Seth at once, now there was some rarer patronage at
+hand.
+
+“It’s cut me a good deal, Dinah,” Adam said at last, when they were
+walking on.
+
+“Didst find him greatly altered?” said Dinah.
+
+“Why, he’s altered and yet not altered. I should ha’ known him
+anywhere. But his colour’s changed, and he looks sadly. However, the
+doctors say he’ll soon be set right in his own country air. He’s all
+sound in th’ inside; it’s only the fever shattered him so. But he
+speaks just the same, and smiles at me just as he did when he was a
+lad. It’s wonderful how he’s always had just the same sort o’ look when
+he smiles.”
+
+“I’ve never seen him smile, poor young man,” said Dinah.
+
+“But thee _wilt_ see him smile, to-morrow,” said Adam. “He asked after
+thee the first thing when he began to come round, and we could talk to
+one another. ‘I hope she isn’t altered,’ he said, ‘I remember her face
+so well.’ I told him ‘no,’” Adam continued, looking fondly at the eyes
+that were turned towards his, “only a bit plumper, as thee’dst a right
+to be after seven year. ‘I may come and see her to-morrow, mayn’t I?’
+he said; ‘I long to tell her how I’ve thought of her all these years.’”
+
+“Didst tell him I’d always used the watch?” said Dinah.
+
+“Aye; and we talked a deal about thee, for he says he never saw a woman
+a bit like thee. ‘I shall turn Methodist some day,’ he said, ‘when she
+preaches out of doors, and go to hear her.’ And I said, ‘Nay, sir, you
+can’t do that, for Conference has forbid the women preaching, and she’s
+given it up, all but talking to the people a bit in their houses.’”
+
+“Ah,” said Seth, who could not repress a comment on this point, “and a
+sore pity it was o’ Conference; and if Dinah had seen as I did, we’d
+ha’ left the Wesleyans and joined a body that ’ud put no bonds on
+Christian liberty.”
+
+“Nay, lad, nay,” said Adam, “she was right and thee wast wrong. There’s
+no rules so wise but what it’s a pity for somebody or other. Most o’
+the women do more harm nor good with their preaching—they’ve not got
+Dinah’s gift nor her sperrit—and she’s seen that, and she thought it
+right to set th’ example o’ submitting, for she’s not held from other
+sorts o’ teaching. And I agree with her, and approve o’ what she did.”
+
+Seth was silent. This was a standing subject of difference rarely
+alluded to, and Dinah, wishing to quit it at once, said, “Didst
+remember, Adam, to speak to Colonel Donnithorne the words my uncle and
+aunt entrusted to thee?”
+
+“Yes, and he’s going to the Hall Farm with Mr. Irwine the day after
+to-morrow. Mr. Irwine came in while we were talking about it, and he
+would have it as the Colonel must see nobody but thee to-morrow. He
+said—and he’s in the right of it—as it’ll be bad for him t’ have his
+feelings stirred with seeing many people one after another. ‘We must
+get you strong and hearty,’ he said, ‘that’s the first thing to be done
+Arthur, and then you shall have your own way. But I shall keep you
+under your old tutor’s thumb till then.’ Mr. Irwine’s fine and joyful
+at having him home again.”
+
+Adam was silent a little while, and then said, “It was very cutting
+when we first saw one another. He’d never heard about poor Hetty till
+Mr. Irwine met him in London, for the letters missed him on his
+journey. The first thing he said to me, when we’d got hold o’ one
+another’s hands was, ‘I could never do anything for her, Adam—she lived
+long enough for all the suffering—and I’d thought so of the time when I
+might do something for her. But you told me the truth when you said to
+me once, “There’s a sort of wrong that can never be made up for.”’”
+
+“Why, there’s Mr. and Mrs. Poyser coming in at the yard gate,” said
+Seth.
+
+“So there is,” said Dinah. “Run, Lisbeth, run to meet Aunt Poyser. Come
+in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee.”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADAM BEDE ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
+Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
+on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg™ License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
+other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
+Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+provided that:
+
+• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
+  works.
+
+• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
+
+Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™'s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org.
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact.
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org.
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+