Adam Bede
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,