Adam Bede
“Well, I’ve nothin’ to say again’ it.”
Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her
conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort
and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her
from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.
So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor
wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And
when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set up
his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and
comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth’s
ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.
When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said,
“Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?”
“No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself.”
Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she
had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
rather timidly on the bench by Adam’s side and said, “Thee canst pick a
bit while thee’t workin’. I’ll bring thee another drop o’ water.”
“Aye, Mother, do,” said Adam, kindly; “I’m getting very thirsty.”
In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house
but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam’s
tools. The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out
at twelve o’clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing,
twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.
Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with
Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as
passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and
probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the
other in swift succession.
He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the
coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his
father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son’s glance—would sit
down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning
before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while
Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready,
that he had slinked off and left undone—for Lisbeth was always the
first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam’s
severity towards his father.
“So it will go on, worsening and worsening,” thought Adam; “there’s no
slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you ’ve begun to
slip down.” And then the day came back to him when he was a little
fellow and used to run by his father’s side, proud to be taken out to
work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
fellow-workmen how “the little chap had an uncommon notion o’
carpentering.” What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of
distinction as he answered, “I’m Thias Bede’s lad.” He was quite sure
everybody knew Thias Bede—didn’t he make the wonderful pigeon-house at
Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was
three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to
be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness,
when Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of
shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish,
shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the
“Waggon Overthrown.” He had run away once when he was only eighteen,
making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle
over his shoulder, and his “mensuration book” in his pocket, and saying
to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no
longer—he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the
crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got
to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure
everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution
failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his
mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.
“No!” Adam said to himself to-night, “that must never happen again. It
’ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my
poor old mother stood o’ the wrong side. My back’s broad enough and
strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave
the troubles to be borne by them as aren’t half so able. ‘They that are
strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to
please themselves.’ There’s a text wants no candle to show’t; it shines
by its own light. It’s plain enough you get into the wrong road i’ this
life if you run after this and that only for the sake o’ making things
easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough
and think o’ nothing outside it; but if you’ve got a man’s heart and
soul in you, you can’t be easy a-making your own bed an’ leaving the
rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I’ll never slip my neck out o’ the
yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father’s a sore
cross to me, an’s likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?
I’ve got th’ health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it.”
At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the
house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected,
gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door
and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it
an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars
showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of
visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except
a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again,
wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it
called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not
help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told
him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam
was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of
the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more
help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help
trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination
which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region
of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his
hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal
religion, and he often checked Seth’s argumentative spiritualism by
saying, “Eh, it’s a big mystery; thee know’st but little about it.” And
so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a
new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a
divine judgment, he would have said, “May be; but the bearing o’ the
roof and walls wasn’t right, else it wouldn’t ha’ come down”; yet he
believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his
breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow
wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its
natural elements—in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose
our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity
for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer
was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any,
might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take
up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled.
Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was
still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden
grass in front of the cottage.
Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late
years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there
was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his
drunkenness at the “Waggon Overthrown.” Besides, to Adam, the
conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of
his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by
the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought
that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread
lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his
mother were breathing regularly.
Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, “I won’t open
the door again. It’s no use staring about to catch sight of a sound.
Maybe there’s a world about us as we can’t see, but th’ ear’s quicker
than the eye and catches a sound from’t now and then. Some people think
they get a sight on’t too, but they’re mostly folks whose eyes are not
much use to ’em at anything else. For my part, I think it’s better to
see when your perpendicular’s true than to see a ghost.”
Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as
daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time
the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on
the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the
willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the
promise redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already
moving overhead, and presently came downstairs.
“Now, lad,” said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, “the coffin’s done,
and we can take it over to Brox’on, and be back again before half after
six. I’ll take a mouthful o’ oat-cake, and then we’ll be off.”
The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers,
and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the
little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but
about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their
road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the
pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the
birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and
elm. It was a strangely mingled picture—the fresh youth of the summer
morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength
of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin
on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small
farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o’clock the task was
done, the coffin nailed down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home.
They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the
fields and the brook in front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to
Seth what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient
impression from it himself to say, “Seth, lad, if Father isn’t come
home by the time we’ve had our breakfast, I think it’ll be as well for
thee to go over to Treddles’on and look after him, and thee canst get
me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work;
we can make that up. What dost say?”
“I’m willing,” said Seth. “But see what clouds have gathered since we
set out. I’m thinking we shall have more rain. It’ll be a sore time for