Adam Bede
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