Adam Bede
wi’ ye? She’d ha’ helped to pacify her aunt a bit.”
“Dinah wasn’t at Snowfield. She’s been gone to Leeds this fortnight,
and I couldn’t learn from th’ old woman any direction where she is at
Leeds, else I should ha’ brought it you.”
“She’d a deal better be staying wi’ her own kin,” said Mr. Poyser,
indignantly, “than going preaching among strange folks a-that’n.”
“I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser,” said Adam, “for I’ve a deal to see
to.”
“Aye, you’d best be after your business, and I must tell the missis
when I go home. It’s a hard job.”
“But,” said Adam, “I beg particular, you’ll keep what’s happened quiet
for a week or two. I’ve not told my mother yet, and there’s no knowing
how things may turn out.”
“Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We’n no need to say why the
match is broke off, an’ we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi’
me, lad: I wish I could make thee amends.”
There was something in Martin Poyser’s throat at that moment which
caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion.
Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men
grasped each other’s hard hands in mutual understanding.
There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth
to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam
Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey—and to say as
much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the
Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer
that he was gone in search of Hetty.
He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the
impulse which had frequently visited him before—to go to Mr. Irwine,
and make a confidant of him—recurred with the new force which belongs
to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey—a
difficult one—by sea—and no soul would know where he was gone. If
anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any
matter concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling
which made Adam shrink from telling anything which was _her_ secret
must give way before the need there was that she should have some one
else besides himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst
extremity. Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new
guilt, Adam felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty’s
interest called on him to speak.
“I must do it,” said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread
themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in
an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; “it’s the right
thing. I can’t stand alone in this way any longer.”
Chapter XXXIX
The Tidings
Adam turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be
gone out—hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state
of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it
he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.
But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and
though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr.
Irwine’s: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong
to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but
Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he
wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and
uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked
at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and
stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had
somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open—the
stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would
let the master know at once.
Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the
last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam
watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some
reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost
always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything
but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came
to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us
in our sleep.
Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He was
to go into the study immediately. “I can’t think what that strange
person’s come about,” the butler added, from mere incontinence of
remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, “he’s gone i’ the dining-room.
And master looks unaccountable—as if he was frightened.” Adam took no
notice of the words: he could not care about other people’s business.
But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine’s face, he felt
in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely
different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before.
A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine’s hand was on it, but
the changed glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to
preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking
eagerly towards the door, as if Adam’s entrance were a matter of
poignant anxiety to him.
“You want to speak to me, Adam,” he said, in that low constrainedly
quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress
agitation. “Sit down here.” He pointed to a chair just opposite to him,
at no more than a yard’s distance from his own, and Adam sat down with
a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine’s gave an additional
unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his
mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but
imperative reasons.
“I come to you, sir,” he said, “as the gentleman I look up to most of
anybody. I’ve something very painful to tell you—something as it’ll
pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o’ the wrong
other people have done, you’ll see I didn’t speak till I’d good
reason.”
Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, “You was
t’ ha’ married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o’ the fifteenth o’
this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th’ happiest man i’ the
parish. But a dreadful blow’s come upon me.”
Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then,
determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.
“She’s gone away, sir, and we don’t know where. She said she was going
to Snowfield o’ Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch
her back; but she’d never been there, and she took the coach to
Stoniton, and beyond that I can’t trace her. But now I’m going a long
journey to look for her, and I can’t trust t’ anybody but you where I’m
going.”
Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
“Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?” he said.
“It’s plain enough she didn’t want to marry me, sir,” said Adam. “She
didn’t like it when it came so near. But that isn’t all, I doubt.
There’s something else I must tell you, sir. There’s somebody else
concerned besides me.”
A gleam of something—it was almost like relief or joy—came across the
eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine’s face at that moment. Adam was looking on
the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But
when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr.
Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.
“You know who’s the man I’ve reckoned my greatest friend,” he said,
“and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i’ working for
him, and had felt so ever since we were lads....”
Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam’s
arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in
pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, “No, Adam, no—don’t
say it, for God’s sake!”
Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine’s feeling, repented of
the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The
grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back
in his chair, saying, “Go on—I must know it.”
“That man played with Hetty’s feelings, and behaved to her as he’d no
right to do to a girl in her station o’ life—made her presents and used
to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before
he went away—found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.
There’d been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I’d loved
her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his
wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said
solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more
than a bit o’ flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty
he’d meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I
hadn’t understood at the time, as he’d got hold of her heart, and I
thought she’d belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she
seemed to bear it all after a while better than I’d expected... and she
behaved kinder and kinder to me... I daresay she didn’t know her own
feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too
late... I don’t want to blame her... I can’t think as she meant to
deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and—you know
the rest, sir. But it’s on my mind as he’s been false to me, and ’ticed
her away, and she’s gone to him—and I’m going now to see, for I can
never go to work again till I know what’s become of her.”
During Adam’s narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It
was a bitter remembrance to him now—that morning when Arthur
breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a
confession. It was plain enough _now_ what he had wanted to confess.
And if their words had taken another turn... if he himself had been
less fastidious about intruding on another man’s secrets... it was
cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt
and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination
which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as
it rushed upon him was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful
pity, for the man who sat before him—already so bruised, going forth
with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was
close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever
to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that
comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he
must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand
on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said
solemnly:
“Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You
can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both
tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than
any you have yet known. But you are not guilty—you have not the worst
of all sorrows. God help him who has!”
The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam’s there was trembling
suspense, in Mr. Irwine’s hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.
“I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to _him_. She
is in Stonyshire—at Stoniton.”
Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped
to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said,
persuasively, “Wait, Adam, wait.” So he sat down.
“She is in a very unhappy position—one which will make it worse for you
to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever.”