Adam Bede
we should ha’ been married.”
“Aye, my lad,” said Bartle tenderly, “it’s heavy—it’s heavy. But you
must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you’d a notion
she’d got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn’t think she
could have got hardened in that little while to do what she’s done.”
“I know—I know that,” said Adam. “I thought she was loving and
tender-hearted, and wouldn’t tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I
think any other way? And if he’d never come near her, and I’d married
her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha’
done anything bad. What would it ha’ signified—my having a bit o’
trouble with her? It ’ud ha’ been nothing to this.”
“There’s no knowing, my lad—there’s no knowing what might have come.
The smart’s bad for you to bear now: you must have time—you must have
time. But I’ve that opinion of you, that you’ll rise above it all and
be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don’t see.”
“Good come out of it!” said Adam passionately. “That doesn’t alter th’
evil: _her_ ruin can’t be undone. I hate that talk o’ people, as if
there was a way o’ making amends for everything. They’d more need be
brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man’s
spoiled his fellow-creatur’s life, he’s no right to comfort himself
with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else’s good doesn’t
alter her shame and misery.”
“Well, lad, well,” said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast
with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, “it’s
likely enough I talk foolishness. I’m an old fellow, and it’s a good
many years since I was in trouble myself. It’s easy finding reasons why
other folks should be patient.”
“Mr. Massey,” said Adam penitently, “I’m very hot and hasty. I owe you
something different; but you mustn’t take it ill of me.”
“Not I, lad—not I.”
So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing
light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair.
There would soon be no more suspense.
“Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, when he saw the
hand of his watch at six. “If there’s any news come, we shall hear
about it.”
The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction,
through the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as
they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the
prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing
those eager people.
No; there was no news come—no pardon—no reprieve.
Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself
to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he
could not shut out the words.
“The cart is to set off at half-past seven.”
It must be said—the last good-bye: there was no help.
In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah
had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave
Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting.
He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his
senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment
after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied.
But he began to see through the dimness—to see the dark eyes lifted up
to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they
looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with
his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a
tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble
now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the
dimples were all gone—all but one, that never went; and the eyes—O, the
worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty’s. They were Hetty’s
eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to
him from the dead to tell him of her misery.
She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah’s. It
seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and
the pitying love that shone out from Dinah’s face looked like a visible
pledge of the Invisible Mercy.
When the sad eyes met—when Hetty and Adam looked at each other—she felt
the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It
was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect
the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and
the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him.
“Speak to him, Hetty,” Dinah said; “tell him what is in your heart.”
Hetty obeyed her, like a little child.
“Adam... I’m very sorry... I behaved very wrong to you... will you
forgive me... before I die?”
Adam answered with a half-sob, “Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave
thee long ago.”
It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of
meeting Hetty’s eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice
uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less
strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming
unbearable, and the rare tears came—they had never come before, since
he had hung on Seth’s neck in the beginning of his sorrow.
Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that
she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept
hold of Dinah’s hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, “Will
you kiss me again, Adam, for all I’ve been so wicked?”
Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave
each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting.
“And tell him,” Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, “tell him...
for there’s nobody else to tell him... as I went after him and couldn’t
find him... and I hated him and cursed him once... but Dinah says I
should forgive him... and I try... for else God won’t forgive me.”
There was a noise at the door of the cell now—the key was being turned
in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there
were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more—even to see
that Mr. Irwine’s face was one of them. He felt that the last
preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was
silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in
loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.
Chapter XLVII
The Last Moment
It was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own
sorrows—the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with
the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching
multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a
deliberately inflicted sudden death.
All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who
had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much
eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty.
But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Hetty had caught
sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah
convulsively.
“Close your eyes, Hetty,” Dinah said, “and let us pray without ceasing
to God.”
And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of
the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling
intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to
her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.
Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort
of awe—she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when
the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to
her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty’s shriek mingled with the
sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror.
But it was not a shout of execration—not a yell of exultant cruelty.
It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman
cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but
answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were
glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others.
See, he has something in his hand—he is holding it up as if it were a
signal.
The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a
hard-won release from death.
Chapter XLVIII
Another Meeting in the Wood
The next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points
towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was
the Grove by Donnithorne Chase: you know who the men were.
The old squire’s funeral had taken place that morning, the will had
been read, and now in the first breathing-space, Arthur Donnithorne had
come out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new
future before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought
he could do that best in the Grove.
Adam too had come from Stoniton on Monday evening, and to-day he had
not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell
them everything that Mr. Irwine had left untold. He had agreed with the
Poysers that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever
that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods,
and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with
Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Seth in a home within
reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow.
“Seth and me are sure to find work,” he said. “A man that’s got our
trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new
start. My mother won’t stand in the way, for she’s told me, since I
came home, she’d made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if
I wished it, and if I’d be more comfortable elsewhere. It’s wonderful
how quiet she’s been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very
greatness o’ the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be
better in a new country, though there’s some I shall be loath to leave
behind. But I won’t part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr.
Poyser. Trouble’s made us kin.”
“Aye, lad,” said Martin. “We’ll go out o’ hearing o’ that man’s name.
But I doubt we shall ne’er go far enough for folks not to find out as
we’ve got them belonging to us as are transported o’er the seas, and
were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin’ up in our faces, and
our children’s after us.”
That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Adam’s
energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old
occupations till the morrow. “But to-morrow,” he said to himself, “I’ll
go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and
it’s right whether I like it or not.”
This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow:
suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was
resolved not to see Arthur Donnithorne again, if it were possible to
avoid him. He had no message to deliver from Hetty now, for Hetty had
seen Arthur. And Adam distrusted himself—he had learned to dread the
violence of his own feeling. That word of Mr. Irwine’s—that he must
remember what he had felt after giving the last blow to Arthur in the
Grove—had remained with him.
These thoughts about Arthur, like all thoughts that are charged with
strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up
the image of the Grove—of that spot under the overarching boughs where
he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed
by sudden rage.
“I’ll go and see it again to-night for the last time,” he said; “it’ll
do me good; it’ll make me feel over again what I felt when I’d knocked
him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I’d done it,
_before_ I began to think he might be dead.”
In this way it happened that Arthur and Adam were walking towards the