Adam Bede
memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with
the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well
as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It
becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of
perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission,
and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our
grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such
periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible
relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self
is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and
exert.
That was Adam’s state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His
work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very
early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God’s will—was that
form of God’s will that most immediately concerned him. But now there
was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no
holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when
duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him
gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up
of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment
and intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could
never be anything to him but a living memory—a limb lopped off, but not
gone from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was
all the while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities
bought by a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was
possible, nay, necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with
another. Yet he was aware that common affection and friendship were
more precious to him than they used to be—that he clung more to his
mother and Seth, and had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or
imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The Poysers,
too—hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing
them and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them. He
would have felt this, probably, even if Dinah had not been with them,
but he had only said the simplest truth in telling Dinah that he put
her above all other friends in the world. Could anything be more
natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the thought of her always
came as the first ray of returning comfort. The early days of gloom at
the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by her
presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come at every spare
moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been stricken with a
fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of her darling
Adam’s grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her light quiet
movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the
Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think
everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been
better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for
her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah
the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a
little, into a convenient household slave—though Dinah herself was
rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her
departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that
might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to
marry him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother’s sake, and he could
not help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth’s wife, would have
made their home as happy as it could be for them all—how she was the
one being that would have soothed their mother’s last days into
peacefulness and rest.
“It’s wonderful she doesn’t love th’ lad,” Adam had said sometimes to
himself, “for anybody ’ud think he was just cut out for her. But her
heart’s so taken up with other things. She’s one o’ those women that
feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o’ their own. She
thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she’s been
used so to living in other folks’s cares, she can’t bear the thought of
her heart being shut up from ’em. I see how it is, well enough. She’s
cut out o’ different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She’s
never easy but when she’s helping somebody, and marriage ’ud interfere
with her ways—that’s true. I’ve no right to be contriving and thinking
it ’ud be better if she’d have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is—or
than God either, for He made her what she is, and that’s one o’ the
greatest blessings I’ve ever had from His hands, and others besides
me.”
This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam’s mind when he gathered
from Dinah’s face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that
she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the
strongest words his confidence in her decision as right—his resignation
even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life
otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were
chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he
cared to see her continually—to talk to her with the silent
consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she
should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his
assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there
remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the
right thing—that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.
Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she
was downstairs about five o’clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth’s
obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned
to make himself, as Adam said, “very handy in the housework,” that he
might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope
you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the
gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid
sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep, and
was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as
Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had
never slept in the cottage since that night after Thias’s death, when,
you remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a
modified approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had
made great advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since
Seth was there to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch
of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The
cottage was far from that standard at present, for Lisbeth’s rheumatism
had forced her to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and
polishing. When the kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new
room, where Adam had been writing the night before, to see what
sweeping and dusting were needed there. She opened the window and let
in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the
bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her
pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept,
singing to herself in a very low tone—like a sweet summer murmur that
you have to listen for very closely—one of Charles Wesley’s hymns:
Eternal Beam of Light Divine,
Fountain of unexhausted love,
In whom the Father’s glories shine,
Through earth beneath and heaven above;
Jesus! the weary wanderer’s rest,
Give me thy easy yoke to bear;
With steadfast patience arm my breast,
With spotless love and holy fear.
Speak to my warring passions, “Peace!”
Say to my trembling heart, “Be still!”
Thy power my strength and fortress is,
For all things serve thy sovereign will.
She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived
in Mrs. Poyser’s household, you would know how the duster behaved in
Dinah’s hand—how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in
and out of sight—how it went again and again round every bar of the
chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the
table, till it came to Adam’s papers and rulers and the open desk near
them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated,
looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see how
much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she
heard Seth’s step just outside the open door, towards which her back
was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, “Seth, is your brother
wrathful when his papers are stirred?”
“Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places,” said a
deep strong voice, not Seth’s.
It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord. She
was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing
else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round,
but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a
friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see
the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his
wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at
him.
“What! You think I’m a cross fellow at home, Dinah?” he said,
smilingly.
“Nay,” said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, “not so. But you might
be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses,
the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes.”
“Come, then,” said Adam, looking at her affectionately, “I’ll help you
move the things, and put ’em back again, and then they can’t get wrong.
You’re getting to be your aunt’s own niece, I see, for particularness.”
They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered
herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her
uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow
lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be. He
wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with
doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him—it was
easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man—and when at last there
was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger
near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading
tone, “Dinah, you’re not displeased with me for anything, are you? I’ve
not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?”
The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to
her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the
tears coming, and said, “Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?”
“I couldn’t bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to
you,” said Adam. “And you don’t know the value I set on the very
thought of you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I’d
be content for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of
you was worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and
not grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting
with you, Dinah?”
“Yes, dear friend,” said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly,
“I know you have a brother’s heart towards me, and we shall often be
with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness
through manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to
leave my kindred for a while; but it is a trial—the flesh is weak.”
Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer.
“I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah,” he said. “I’ll say no more.
Let’s see if Seth’s ready with breakfast now.”
That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too,