Adam Bede
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,