Adam Bede
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.”