Adam Bede

“Eh, my lad, my lad!” Lisbeth burst out immediately, her wailing impulse returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident, “thee’st got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee and be a burden to thee. Thy poor feyther ‘ull ne’er anger thee no more; an’ thy mother may’s well go arter him—the sooner the better—for I’m no good to nobody now. One old coat ‘ull do to patch another, but it’s good for nought else. Thee’dst like to ha’ a wife to mend thy clothes an’ get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An’ I shall be nought but cumber, a-sittin’ i’ th’ chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if thy feyther had lived, he’d ne’er ha’ wanted me to go to make room for another, for he could no more ha’ done wi’out me nor one side o’ the scissars can do wi’out th’ other. Eh, we should ha’ been both flung away together, an’ then I shouldna ha’ seen this day, an’ one buryin’ ‘ud ha’ done for us both.”

Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence—he could not speak otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Lisbeth to know how it affected Adam any more than it is possible for a wounded dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly.

“I know thee couldst do better wi’out me, for thee couldst go where thee likedst an’ marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say thee nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I’d ne’er open my lips to find faut, for when folks is old an’ o’ no use, they may think theirsens well off to get the bit an’ the sup, though they’n to swallow ill words wi’t. An’ if thee’st set thy heart on a lass as’ll bring thee nought and waste all, when thee mightst ha’ them as ‘ud make a man on thee, I’ll say nought, now thy feyther’s dead an’ drownded, for I’m no better nor an old haft when the blade’s gone.”

Adam, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Lisbeth followed him.

“Thee wutna go upstairs an’ see thy feyther then? I’n done everythin’ now, an’ he’d like thee to go an’ look at him, for he war allays so pleased when thee wast mild to him.”

Adam turned round at once and said, “Yes, mother; let us go upstairs. Come, Seth, let us go together.”

They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But Adam did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to encounter more of his mother’s querulous grief, and he went to rest on his bed. Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock herself as before. Seth thought, “She will be quieter by and by, now we have been upstairs”; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend his little fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have some tea.

Lisbeth had been rocking herself in this way for more than five minutes, giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body, when she suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble voice said to her, “Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can be a comfort to you.”

Lisbeth paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron from her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister’s spirit come back to her from the dead after all those years? She trembled and dared not look.

Dinah, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Seth, who, on hearing her voice, had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of Lisbeth’s chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a friendly presence.

Slowly Lisbeth drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim dark eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face—a pure, pale face, with loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder increased; perhaps it WAS an angel. But in the same instant Dinah had laid her hand on Lisbeth’s again, and the old woman looked down at it. It was a much smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and delicate, for Dinah had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand bore the traces of labour from her childhood upwards. Lisbeth looked earnestly at the hand for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on Dinah’s face, said, with something of restored courage, but in a tone of surprise, “Why, ye’re a workin’ woman!”

“Yes, I am Dinah Morris, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at home.”

“Ah!” said Lisbeth slowly, still wondering; “ye comed in so light, like the shadow on the wall, an’ spoke i’ my ear, as I thought ye might be a sperrit. Ye’ve got a’most the face o’ one as is a-sittin’ on the grave i’ Adam’s new Bible.”

“I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Poyser—she’s my aunt, and she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I’m come to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your sons Adam and Seth, and I know you have no daughter; and when the clergyman told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went out towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the place of a daughter in this grief, if you will let me.”

“Ah! I know who y’ are now; y’ are a Methody, like Seth; he’s tould me on you,” said Lisbeth fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain returning, now her wonder was gone. “Ye’ll make it out as trouble’s a good thing, like HE allays does. But where’s the use o’ talkin’ to me a-that’n? Ye canna make the smart less wi’ talkin’. Ye’ll ne’er make me believe as it’s better for me not to ha’ my old man die in’s bed, if he must die, an’ ha’ the parson to pray by him, an’ me to sit by him, an’ tell him ne’er to mind th’ ill words I’ve gi’en him sometimes when I war angered, an’ to gi’ him a bit an’ a sup, as long as a bit an’ a sup he’d swallow. But eh! To die i’ the cold water, an’ us close to him, an’ ne’er to know; an’ me a-sleepin’, as if I ne’er belonged to him no more nor if he’d been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!”

Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, “Yes, dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn’t send me to you to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me. If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won’t send me away? You’re not angry with me for coming?”

“Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come. An’ Seth, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o’ gettin’ ‘t for them as wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin’, for it’s little wage ye get by walkin’ through the wet fields to see an old woman like me....Nay, I’n got no daughter o’ my own—ne’er had one—an’ I warna sorry, for they’re poor queechy things, gells is; I allays wanted to ha’ lads, as could fend for theirsens. An’ the lads ‘ull be marryin’—I shall ha’ daughters eno’, an’ too many. But now, do ye make the tay as ye like it, for I’n got no taste i’ my mouth this day—it’s all one what I swaller—it’s all got the taste o’ sorrow wi’t.”

Dinah took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted Lisbeth’s invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day of hard work and fasting.

Seth was so happy now Dinah was in the house that he could not help thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached himself—it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father’s sad death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Dinah WOULD triumph—it was like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And the feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his mother’s notice, while she was drinking her tea.

“Thee may’st well talk o’ trouble bein’ a good thing, Seth, for thee thriv’st on’t. Thee look’st as if thee know’dst no more o’ care an’ cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin’ awake i’ th’ cradle. For thee’dst allays lie still wi’ thy eyes open, an’ Adam ne’er ‘ud lie still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o’ meal as can ne’er be bruised—though, for the matter o’ that, thy poor feyther war just such another. But ye’ve got the same look too” (here Lisbeth turned to Dinah). “I reckon it’s wi’ bein’ a Methody. Not as I’m a-findin’ faut wi’ ye for’t, for ye’ve no call to be frettin’, an’ somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o’ trouble, they’re like to thrive: it’s a pity they canna ha’t all, an’ take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha’ gi’en ‘em plenty; for when I’d gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and now he’s gone, I’d be glad for the worst o’er again.”

“Yes,” said Dinah, careful not to oppose any feeling of Lisbeth’s, for her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance, always issued in that finest woman’s tact which proceeds from acute and ready sympathy; “yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup of tea and eat a little more.”

“What!” said Lisbeth, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous tone, “had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about your aunt?”

“No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a baby. She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me up as tenderly as if I’d been her own child.”

“Eh, she’d fine work wi’ ye, I’ll warrant, bringin’ ye up from a babby, an’ her a lone woman—it’s ill bringin’ up a cade lamb. But I daresay ye warna franzy, for ye look as if ye’d ne’er been angered i’ your life. But what did ye do when your aunt died, an’ why didna ye come to live in this country, bein’ as Mrs. Poyser’s your aunt too?”

Dinah, seeing that Lisbeth’s attention was attracted, told her the story of her early life—how she had been brought up to work hard, and what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life there—all the details that she thought likely to interest Lisbeth. The old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to the soothing influence of Dinah’s face and voice. After a while she was persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this, believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Dinah would like to be left alone with his mother.

Lisbeth sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and said at last, “Ye’ve got a notion o’ cleanin’ up. I wouldna mind ha’in ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad’s wage i’ fine clothes an’ waste. Ye’re not like the lasses o’ this countryside. I reckon folks is different at Snowfield from what they are here.”

“They have a different sort of life, many of ‘em,” said Dinah; “they work at different things—some in the mill, and many in the mines, in the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere, and there are the children of this world and the children of light there as well as elsewhere. But we’ve many more Methodists there than in this country.”

“Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there’s Will Maskery’s wife, as they say’s a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at, at all. I’d as lief look at a tooad. An’ I’m thinkin’ I wouldna mind if ye’d stay an’ sleep here, for I should like to see ye i’ th’ house i’ th’ mornin’. But mayhappen they’ll be lookin for ye at Mester Poyser’s.”

“No,” said Dinah, “they don’t expect me, and I should like to stay, if you’ll let me.”

“Well, there’s room; I’n got my bed laid i’ th’ little room o’er the back kitchen, an’ ye can lie beside me. I’d be glad to ha’ ye wi’ me to speak to i’ th’ night, for ye’ve got a nice way o’ talkin’. It puts me i’ mind o’ the swallows as was under the thack last ‘ear when they fust begun to sing low an’ soft-like i’ th’ mornin’. Eh, but my old man war fond o’ them birds! An’ so war Adam, but they’n ne’er comed again this ‘ear. Happen THEY’RE dead too.”

“There,” said Dinah, “now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear Mother—for I’m your daughter to-night, you know—I should like you to wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did, when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child. But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now the child was dead, he said, ‘While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.’”

“Eh, that’s a true word,” said Lisbeth. “Yea, my old man wonna come back to me, but I shall go to him—the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as ye like wi’ me: there’s a clean cap i’ that drawer, an’ I’ll go i’ the back kitchen an’ wash my face. An’ Seth, thee may’st reach down Adam’s new Bible wi’ th’ picters in, an’ she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I like them words—‘I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.’”

Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Dinah expressed it, “she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak.” And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

And so there was earnest prayer—there was faith, love, and hope pouring forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love, and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing life. She couldn’t understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under the subduing influence of Dinah’s spirit, she felt that she must be patient and still.

Chapter XI

In the Cottage

IT was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog’s pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but Dinah was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Seth, for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night before. Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last by Dinah’s unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning sleep than was usual with him.

But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to work again when he had had his breakfast.

“There’s nothing but what’s bearable as long as a man can work,” he said to himself; “the natur o’ things doesn’t change, though it seems as if one’s own life was nothing but change. The square o’ four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man’s miserable as when he’s happy; and the best o’ working is, it gives you a grip hold o’ things outside your own lot.”

As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the workshop to look out the wood for his father’s coffin, intending that he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge’s and have the coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not see and hear the sad task going forward at home.

He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light rapid foot on the stairs—certainly not his mother’s. He had been in bed and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and Adam’s imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought—it could not be Hetty; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was to go and see WHO it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to the kitchen door.

“How do you do, Adam Bede?” said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing from her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. “I trust you feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day.”

It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was not very vividly conscious of any woman’s presence except Hetty’s, and he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards her for his brother’s sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in her life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which deepened as she wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his forgetfulness.

“I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see my mother in her trouble,” he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. “I hope my mother was thankful to have you,” he added, wondering rather anxiously what had been Dinah’s reception.

“Yes,” said Dinah, resuming her work, “she seemed greatly comforted after a while, and she’s had a good deal of rest in the night, by times. She was fast asleep when I left her.”

“Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?” said Adam, his thoughts reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE had felt anything about it.

“It was Mr. Irwine, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved for your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my uncle, I’m sure, now he’s heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all yesterday. They’ll look for you there as soon as you’ve got time to go, for there’s nobody round that hearth but what’s glad to see you.”

Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done before.

“But you won’t be there yourself any longer?” he said to Dinah.

“No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must go back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt and her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would like me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night.”

“Ah, then, she’s sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at the beginning, she’s sure to get fond of ‘em; but she’s a strange way of not liking young women. Though, to be sure,” Adam went on, smiling, “her not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn’t like you.”

Hitherto Gyp had been assisting at this conversation in motionless silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his master’s face to watch its expression and observing Dinah’s movements about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Adam uttered the last words was apparently decisive with Gyp of the light in which the stranger was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting aside her sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle against her hand in a friendly way.

“You see Gyp bids you welcome,” said Adam, “and he’s very slow to welcome strangers.”

“Poor dog!” said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, “I’ve a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to ‘em because they couldn’t. I can’t help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there’s no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can’t say half what we feel, with all our words.”

Seth came down now, and was pleased to find Adam talking with Dinah; he wanted Adam to know how much better she was than all other women. But after a few words of greeting, Adam drew him into the workshop to consult about the coffin, and Dinah went on with her cleaning.

By six o’clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what his mother gave them for breakfast. Lisbeth had been unusually silent since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new sensations seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last, after tasting the porridge, she broke silence: