Adam Bede

  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 hadobserved that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought,perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walkedapart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little blackbonnet 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 forhimself 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 themand care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Theirsorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, inwhich I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of tooabundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the workthat God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to ourown souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find thefulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone itis to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clearshowing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the yearsto come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise needme, I shall return."

  "You know best, Dinah," said Adam. "I don't believe you'd go against thewishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good andsufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anythingabout my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put youabove every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so thatyou could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I shouldha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. ButSeth tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, andperhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it."

  Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, tillthey came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through firstand turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusuallyhigh step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struckhim with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, hadthe bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, andthe slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, washeightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sisterto 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'vesaid, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different fromwhat you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mileoff, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I donow, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than Ican help my heart beating."

  Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presentlysaid, "Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we lastspoke of him?"

  Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him asshe had seen him in the prison.

  "Yes," said Adam. "Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from himyesterday. 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 tocome home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that heshould keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he's in the right not to come. It'sa sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he alwaysdoes. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can'tthink what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'mthe 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 alwaysfelt great pity," said Dinah. "That meeting between the brothers, whereEsau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful,notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched megreatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of amean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in themidst 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 weregoing to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his lifeso, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solidbit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's thebetter for it being done well, besides the man as does it."

  They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, andin this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the WillowBrook, when Adam turned round and said, "Ah, here's Seth. I thought he'dbe 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 Sundayevening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late,for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to haveoutweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This eveninghe had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he camequite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelidsand eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Adam wasevidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Dinah: hewore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to let Dinahsee that he had noticed her face, and only said, "I'm thankful you'recome, 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, tootired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed along time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when sheheard the approaching footsteps.

  "Coom, child, thee't coom at last," she said, when Dinah went towardsher. "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'dknown it sooner, I'd have come."

  "An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know whatI tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye'rehearty. 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 meache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let mealone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnetoff, an' let me look at thee."

  Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was takingoff her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newlygathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity andgentleness.

  "What's the matter wi' thee?" said Lisbeth, in astonishment; "thee'stbeen a-cryin'."

  "It's only a grief that'll pass away," said Dinah, who did not wish justnow to call forth Lisbeth's remonstrances by disclosing her intentionto leave Hayslope. "You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of itto-night. I shall stay with you to-night."

  Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole eveningto 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 newinmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans tomake. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would liketo have Dinah all to herself.

  There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in thecottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured,hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyedanxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight formin the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpfulactivity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding herwithered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language whichLisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She wouldscarcely 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. Hastgot troubles o' thy own, like other folks?"

  On the other side of the wall there were th
e two brothers so like eachother in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggyhair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his "figuring"; Seth, withlarge rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin,wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguelyout of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly boughtbook--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full ofwonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, "Can I help theewith anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in theshop."

  "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 afterdrawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smiledawning in his eyes. He knew "th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts hecould give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they madehim happy," and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more andmore indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness whichcame from the sorrow at work within him.

  For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard anddelighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had notoutlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporaryburden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. Itwould be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we wonnothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to thesame blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughtsof human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives,the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forthirrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful thatour sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing itsform, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poorword which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not thatthis transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken placein Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he feltwould subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existingthing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of everynew morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain,without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habitof our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect easeas possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we arecontented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief insilence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periodsthat the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations,beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is thecentre, 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. Hiswork, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from veryearly days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was thatform of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now therewas no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, noholiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance whenduty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gentlyinto rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up ofhard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment andintensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could neverbe anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gonefrom consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all thewhile gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought bya deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay,necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet hewas aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to himthan they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, andhad an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any smalladdition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four dayspassed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words andlooks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, evenif Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truthin 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 thethought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. Theearly days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into softmoonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had comeat every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had beenstricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight ofher darling Adam's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching herlight quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when hewent 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 havebeen better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with herfor her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinahthe preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled alittle, into a convenient household slave--though Dinah herself wasrather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to herdeparture from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing thatmight have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marryhim. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could nothelp thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth's wife, would have madetheir home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the onebeing that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulnessand rest.

  "It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad," Adam had said sometimes tohimself, "for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But herheart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women thatfeel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. Shethinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's beenused so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought ofher heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She'scut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She'snever easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interferewith her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinkingit 'ud be better if she'd have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is--orthan God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' thegreatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me."

  This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam's mind when he gatheredfrom Dinah's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wishthat she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into thestrongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignationeven to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their lifeotherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation werechosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how muchhe cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silentconsciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible sheshould hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect inhis assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet thereremained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite theright thing--that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.

  Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for shewas downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth'sobstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learnedto make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that hemight save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hopeyou will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought thegallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalidsister. 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 asDinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had neverslept in the cottage since that night after Thias's death, when, youremember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a modifiedapproval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had made greatadvances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Seth was thereto help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanlinessand order that
would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The cottage was farfrom that standard at present, for Lisbeth's rheumatism had forced herto give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When thekitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new room, where Adam hadbeen writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting wereneeded 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 ofthe early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburnhair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a verylow tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for veryclosely--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 livedin Mrs. Poyser's household, you would know how the duster behaved inDinah's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledgein and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of thechairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on thetable, till it came to Adam's papers and rulers and the open desk nearthem. 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 seehow much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, sheheard Seth's step just outside the open door, towards which her backwas turned, and said, raising her clear treble, "Seth, is your brotherwrathful when his papers are stirred?"

  "Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places," said a deepstrong 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 nothingelse; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round,but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in afriendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to seethe smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about hiswrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look athim.

  "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 mightbe put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, themeekest of men, was wrathful sometimes."

  "Come, then," said Adam, looking at her affectionately, "I'll help youmove 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 recoveredherself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at heruneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehowlately; 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 withdoing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him--it waseasy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last therewas no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to lingernear her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleadingtone, "Dinah, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I'venot said or done anything to make you think ill of me?"

  The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course toher feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with thetears 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 ofyou, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be contentfor you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you wasworth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and notgrumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting withyou, 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 bewith one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness throughmanifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave mykindred 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 notchoose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no morethink the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by whichtwo human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quiveringrain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think thesethings trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of comingspring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable somethingin the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptiblebudding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks andtouches 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, orhearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is onlythat they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great andbeautiful. 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 andsawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and"music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enrichingyour present with your most precious past.