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Adam Bede

by George Eliot · English · Gutenberg #507 · 1,174,923 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Adam Bede

Author: George Eliot


        
Release date: January 21, 2006 [eBook #507]
                Most recently updated: December 2, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/507

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADAM BEDE ***




Adam Bede

by George Eliot


CONTENTS

 Book First
 Chapter I — The Workshop
 Chapter II — The Preaching
 Chapter III — After the Preaching
 Chapter IV — Home and Its Sorrows
 Chapter V — The Rector
 Chapter VI — The Hall Farm
 Chapter VII — The Dairy
 Chapter VIII — A Vocation
 Chapter IX — Hetty’s World
 Chapter X — Dinah Visits Lisbeth
 Chapter XI — In the Cottage
 Chapter XII — In the Wood
 Chapter XIII — Evening in the Wood
 Chapter XIV — The Return Home
 Chapter XV — The Two Bed-Chambers
 Chapter XVI — Links

 Book Second
 Chapter XVII — In Which the Story Pauses a Little
 Chapter XVIII — Church
 Chapter XIX — Adam on a Working Day
 Chapter XX — Adam Visits the Hall Farm
 Chapter XXI — The Night-School and the Schoolmaster

 Book Third
 Chapter XXII — Going to the Birthday Feast
 Chapter XXIII — Dinner-Time
 Chapter XXIV — The Health-Drinking
 Chapter XXV — The Games
 Chapter XXVI — The Dance

 Book Fourth
 Chapter XXVII — A Crisis
 Chapter XXVIII — A Dilemma
 Chapter XXIX — The Next Morning
 Chapter XXX — The Delivery of the Letter
 Chapter XXXI — In Hetty’s Bed-Chamber
 Chapter XXXII — Mrs. Poyser “Has Her Say Out”
 Chapter XXXIII — More Links
 Chapter XXXIV — The Betrothal
 Chapter XXXV — The Hidden Dread

 Book Fifth
 Chapter XXXVI — The Journey of Hope
 Chapter XXXVII — The Journey in Despair
 Chapter XXXVIII — The Quest
 Chapter XXXIX — The Tidings
 Chapter XL — The Bitter Waters Spread
 Chapter XLI — The Eve of the Trial
 Chapter XLII — The Morning of the Trial
 Chapter XLIII — The Verdict
 Chapter XLIV — Arthur’s Return
 Chapter XLV — In the Prison
 Chapter XLVI — The Hours of Suspense
 Chapter XLVII — The Last Moment
 Chapter XLVIII — Another Meeting in the Wood

 Book Sixth
 Chapter XLIX — At the Hall Farm
 Chapter L — In the Cottage
 Chapter LI — Sunday Morning
 Chapter LII — Adam and Dinah
 Chapter LIII — The Harvest Supper
 Chapter LIV — The Meeting on the Hill
 Chapter LV — Marriage Bells

 Epilogue




Book First




Chapter I
The Workshop


With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer
undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the
past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of
ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr.
Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as
it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors
and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike
pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of
the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the
open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the
transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the
fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall.
On a heap of those soft shavings a rough, grey shepherd dog had made
himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his
fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the
tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of
a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone
belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing—

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth...


Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated
attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it
presently broke out again with renewed vigour—

Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear.


Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest
belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a
back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to
take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier
standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm
that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long
supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of
skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified
his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its
contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes
that shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows,
indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly
hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an
expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.

It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam’s brother. He is
nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair
and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to
render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in
form and face. Seth’s broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes are
grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his
brother’s; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and
benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is
not thick and straight, like Adam’s, but thin and wavy, allowing you to
discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very
decidedly over the brow.

The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth;
they scarcely ever spoke to Adam.

The concert of the tools and Adam’s voice was at last broken by Seth,
who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed it
against the wall, and said, “There! I’ve finished my door to-day,
anyhow.”

The workmen all looked up; Jim Salt, a burly, red-haired man known as
Sandy Jim, paused from his planing, and Adam said to Seth, with a sharp
glance of surprise, “What! Dost think thee’st finished the door?”

“Aye, sure,” said Seth, with answering surprise; “what’s awanting
to’t?”

A loud roar of laughter from the other three workmen made Seth look
round confusedly. Adam did not join in the laughter, but there was a
slight smile on his face as he said, in a gentler tone than before,
“Why, thee’st forgot the panels.”

The laughter burst out afresh as Seth clapped his hands to his head,
and coloured over brow and crown.

“Hoorray!” shouted a small lithe fellow called Wiry Ben, running
forward and seizing the door. “We’ll hang up th’ door at fur end o’ th’
shop an’ write on’t ‘Seth Bede, the Methody, his work.’ Here, Jim,
lend’s hould o’ th’ red pot.”

“Nonsense!” said Adam. “Let it alone, Ben Cranage. You’ll mayhap be
making such a slip yourself some day; you’ll laugh o’ th’ other side o’
your mouth then.”

“Catch me at it, Adam. It’ll be a good while afore my head’s full o’
th’ Methodies,” said Ben.

“Nay, but it’s often full o’ drink, and that’s worse.”

Ben, however, had now got the “red pot” in his hand, and was about to
begin writing his inscription, making, by way of preliminary, an
imaginary S in the air.

“Let it alone, will you?” Adam called out, laying down his tools,
striding up to Ben, and seizing his right shoulder. “Let it alone, or
I’ll shake the soul out o’ your body.”

Ben shook in Adam’s iron grasp, but, like a plucky small man as he was,
he didn’t mean to give in. With his left hand he snatched the brush
from his powerless right, and made a movement as if he would perform
the feat of writing with his left. In a moment Adam turned him round,
seized his other shoulder, and, pushing him along, pinned him against
the wall. But now Seth spoke.

“Let be, Addy, let be. Ben will be joking. Why, he’s i’ the right to
laugh at me—I canna help laughing at myself.”

“I shan’t loose him till he promises to let the door alone,” said Adam.

“Come, Ben, lad,” said Seth, in a persuasive tone, “don’t let’s have a
quarrel about it. You know Adam will have his way. You may’s well try
to turn a waggon in a narrow lane. Say you’ll leave the door alone, and
make an end on’t.”

“I binna frighted at Adam,” said Ben, “but I donna mind sayin’ as I’ll
let ’t alone at your askin’, Seth.”

“Come, that’s wise of you, Ben,” said Adam, laughing and relaxing his
grasp.

They all returned to their work now; but Wiry Ben, having had the worst
in the bodily contest, was bent on retrieving that humiliation by a
success in sarcasm.

“Which was ye thinkin’ on, Seth,” he began—“the pretty parson’s face or
her sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?”

“Come and hear her, Ben,” said Seth, good-humouredly; “she’s going to
preach on the Green to-night; happen ye’d get something to think on
yourself then, instead o’ those wicked songs you’re so fond on. Ye
might get religion, and that ’ud be the best day’s earnings y’ ever
made.”

“All i’ good time for that, Seth; I’ll think about that when I’m
a-goin’ to settle i’ life; bachelors doesn’t want such heavy earnin’s.
Happen I shall do the coortin’ an’ the religion both together, as _ye_
do, Seth; but ye wouldna ha’ me get converted an’ chop in atween ye an’
the pretty preacher, an’ carry her aff?”

“No fear o’ that, Ben; she’s neither for you nor for me to win, I
doubt. Only you come and hear her, and you won’t speak lightly on her
again.”

“Well, I’m half a mind t’ ha’ a look at her to-night, if there isn’t
good company at th’ Holly Bush. What’ll she take for her text? Happen
ye can tell me, Seth, if so be as I shouldna come up i’ time for’t.
Will’t be—what come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto
you, and more than a prophetess—a uncommon pretty young woman.”

“Come, Ben,” said Adam, rather sternly, “you let the words o’ the Bible
alone; you’re going too far now.”

“What! Are _ye_ a-turnin’ roun’, Adam? I thought ye war dead again th’
women preachin’, a while agoo?”

“Nay, I’m not turnin’ noway. I said nought about the women preachin’. I
said, You let the Bible alone: you’ve got a jest-book, han’t you, as
you’re rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that.”

“Why, y’ are gettin’ as big a saint as Seth. Y’ are goin’ to th’
preachin’ to-night, I should think. Ye’ll do finely t’ lead the
singin’. But I don’ know what Parson Irwine ’ull say at his gran’
favright Adam Bede a-turnin’ Methody.”

“Never do you bother yourself about me, Ben. I’m not a-going to turn
Methodist any more nor you are—though it’s like enough you’ll turn to
something worse. Mester Irwine’s got more sense nor to meddle wi’
people’s doing as they like in religion. That’s between themselves and
God, as he’s said to me many a time.”

“Aye, aye; but he’s none so fond o’ your dissenters, for all that.”

“Maybe; I’m none so fond o’ Josh Tod’s thick ale, but I don’t hinder
you from making a fool o’ yourself wi’t.”

There was a laugh at this thrust of Adam’s, but Seth said, very
seriously. “Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody’s religion’s
like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the
Methodists have got the root o’ the matter as well as the church
folks.”

“Nay, Seth, lad; I’m not for laughing at no man’s religion. Let ’em
follow their consciences, that’s all. Only I think it ’ud be better if
their consciences ’ud let ’em stay quiet i’ the church—there’s a deal
to be learnt there. And there’s such a thing as being oversperitial; we
must have something beside Gospel i’ this world. Look at the canals,
an’ th’ aqueduc’s, an’ th’ coal-pit engines, and Arkwright’s mills
there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them
things, I reckon. But t’ hear some o’ them preachers, you’d think as a
man must be doing nothing all’s life but shutting’s eyes and looking
what’s agoing on inside him. I know a man must have the love o’ God in
his soul, and the Bible’s God’s word. But what does the Bible say? Why,
it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the
tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a
nice hand. And this is my way o’ looking at it: there’s the sperrit o’
God in all things and all times—weekday as well as Sunday—and i’ the
great works and inventions, and i’ the figuring and the mechanics. And
God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our
souls; and if a man does bits o’ jobs out o’ working hours—builds a
oven for ’s wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at
his bit o’ garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o’ one, he’s doin’
more good, and he’s just as near to God, as if he was running after
some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning.”

“Well done, Adam!” said Sandy Jim, who had paused from his planing to
shift his planks while Adam was speaking; “that’s the best sarmunt I’ve
heared this long while. By th’ same token, my wife’s been a-plaguin’ on
me to build her a oven this twelvemont.”

“There’s reason in what thee say’st, Adam,” observed Seth, gravely.
“But thee know’st thyself as it’s hearing the preachers thee find’st so
much fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un.
It’s the preacher as empties th’ alehouse; and if a man gets religion,
he’ll do his work none the worse for that.”

“On’y he’ll lave the panels out o’ th’ doors sometimes, eh, Seth?” said
Wiry Ben.

“Ah, Ben, you’ve got a joke again’ me as ’ll last you your life. But it
isna religion as was i’ fault there; it was Seth Bede, as was allays a
wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, the more’s the
pity.”

“Ne’er heed me, Seth,” said Wiry Ben, “y’ are a down-right good-hearted
chap, panels or no panels; an’ ye donna set up your bristles at every
bit o’ fun, like some o’ your kin, as is mayhap cliverer.”

“Seth, lad,” said Adam, taking no notice of the sarcasm against
himself, “thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I
said just now. Some ’s got one way o’ looking at things and some ’s got
another.”

“Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean’st me no unkindness,” said Seth, “I know
that well enough. Thee’t like thy dog Gyp—thee bark’st at me sometimes,
but thee allays lick’st my hand after.”

All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock
began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim
had loosed his plane and was reaching his jacket; Wiry Ben had left a
screw half driven in, and thrown his screwdriver into his tool-basket;
Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept silence throughout the
previous conversation, had flung down his hammer as he was in the act
of lifting it; and Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was
putting out his hand towards his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on with
his work as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the
tools, he looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation, “Look there,
now! I can’t abide to see men throw away their tools i’ that way, the
minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i’ their
work and was afraid o’ doing a stroke too much.”

Seth looked a little conscious, and began to be slower in his
preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence, and said, “Aye,
aye, Adam lad, ye talk like a young un. When y’ are six-an’-forty like
me, istid o’ six-an’-twenty, ye wonna be so flush o’ workin’ for
nought.”

“Nonsense,” said Adam, still wrathful; “what’s age got to do with it, I
wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man’s
arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock’s fairly struck,
just as if he’d never a bit o’ pride and delight in ’s work. The very
grindstone ’ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.”

“Bodderation, Adam!” exclaimed Wiry Ben; “lave a chap aloon, will ’ee?
Ye war afinding faut wi’ preachers a while agoo—y’ are fond enough o’
preachin’ yoursen. Ye may like work better nor play, but I like play
better nor work; that’ll ’commodate ye—it laves ye th’ more to do.”

With this exit speech, which he considered effective, Wiry Ben
shouldered his basket and left the workshop, quickly followed by Mum
Taft and Sandy Jim. Seth lingered, and looked wistfully at Adam, as if
he expected him to say something.

“Shalt go home before thee go’st to the preaching?” Adam asked, looking
up.

“Nay; I’ve got my hat and things at Will Maskery’s. I shan’t be home
before going for ten. I’ll happen see Dinah Morris safe home, if she’s
willing. There’s nobody comes with her from Poyser’s, thee know’st.”

“Then I’ll tell mother not to look for thee,” said Adam.

“Thee artna going to Poyser’s thyself to-night?” said Seth rather
timidly, as he turned to leave the workshop.

“Nay, I’m going to th’ school.”

Hitherto Gyp had kept his comfortable bed, only lifting up his head and
watching Adam more closely as he noticed the other workmen departing.
But no sooner did Adam put his ruler in his pocket, and begin to twist
his apron round his waist, than Gyp ran forward and looked up in his
master’s face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would
doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his
emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear
more phlegmatic than nature had made him.

“What! Art ready for the basket, eh, Gyp?” said Adam, with the same
gentle modulation of voice as when he spoke to Seth.

Gyp jumped and gave a short bark, as much as to say, “Of course.” Poor
fellow, he had not a great range of expression.

The basket was the one which on workdays held Adam’s and Seth’s dinner;
and no official, walking in procession, could look more resolutely
unconscious of all acquaintances than Gyp with his basket, trotting at
his master’s heels.

On leaving the workshop Adam locked the door, took the key out, and
carried it to the house on the other side of the woodyard. It was a low
house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant and
mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and
speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb
tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped
linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled
fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory
expectation of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman’s sight seemed to
be dim, for she did not recognize Adam till he said, “Here’s the key,
Dolly; lay it down for me in the house, will you?”

“Aye, sure; but wunna ye come in, Adam? Miss Mary’s i’ th’ house, and
Mester Burge ’ull be back anon; he’d be glad t’ ha’ ye to supper wi’m,
I’ll be’s warrand.”

“No, Dolly, thank you; I’m off home. Good evening.”

Adam hastened with long strides, Gyp close to his heels, out of the
workyard, and along the highroad leading away from the village and down
to the valley. As he reached the foot of the slope, an elderly
horseman, with his portmanteau strapped behind him, stopped his horse
when Adam had passed him, and turned round to have another long look at
the stalwart workman in paper cap, leather breeches, and dark-blue
worsted stockings.

Adam, unconscious of the admiration he was exciting, presently struck
across the fields, and now broke out into the tune which had all day
long been running in his head:

Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
For God’s all-seeing eye surveys
Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways.




Chapter II
The Preaching


About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement
in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its little
street, from the Donnithorne Arms to the churchyard gate, the
inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something
more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The
Donnithorne Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small
farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a
pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise
of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him
for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the
heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson,
the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his
hands in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and
looking towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the
middle of it, which he knew to be the destination of certain
grave-looking men and women whom he had observed passing at intervals.

Mr. Casson’s person was by no means of that common type which can be
allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to
consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to
each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere
might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the
upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and
tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Casson’s head was
not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a “spotty globe,”
as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head
and face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression—which
was chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight
knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth
mention—was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of
personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and
bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in
a man who had been butler to “the family” for fifteen years, and who,
in his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with
his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of
his curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr.
Casson had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but
when he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets,
and thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his
head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous
indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were
diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to
have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door
of the Donnithorne Arms.

“Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler,” said the traveller
to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound
of the horse’s hoofs.

“Why, what’s up in your pretty village, landlord?” he continued,
getting down. “There seems to be quite a stir.”

“It’s a Methodis’ preaching, sir; it’s been gev hout as a young woman’s
a-going to preach on the Green,” answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and
wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. “Will you please to step
in, sir, an’ tek somethink?”

“No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my
horse. And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman
preaching just under his nose?”

“Parson Irwine, sir, doesn’t live here; he lives at Brox’on, over the
hill there. The parsonage here’s a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for
gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir,
an’ puts up his hoss here. It’s a grey cob, sir, an’ he sets great
store by’t. He’s allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I
hed the Donnithorne Arms. I’m not this countryman, you may tell by my
tongue, sir. They’re cur’ous talkers i’ this country, sir; the gentry’s
hard work to hunderstand ’em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir,
an’ got the turn o’ their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you
think the folks here says for ‘hevn’t you?’—the gentry, you know, says,
‘hevn’t you’—well, the people about here says ‘hanna yey.’ It’s what
they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That’s what I’ve
heared Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it’s the dileck, says he.”

“Aye, aye,” said the stranger, smiling. “I know it very well. But
you’ve not got many Methodists about here, surely—in this agricultural
spot? I should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a
Methodist to be found about here. You’re all farmers, aren’t you? The
Methodists can seldom lay much hold on _them_.”

“Why, sir, there’s a pretty lot o’ workmen round about, sir. There’s
Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good
bit o’ building an’ repairs. An’ there’s the stone-pits not far off.
There’s plenty of emply i’ this countryside, sir. An’ there’s a fine
batch o’ Methodisses at Treddles’on—that’s the market town about three
mile off—you’ll maybe ha’ come through it, sir. There’s pretty nigh a
score of ’em on the Green now, as come from there. That’s where our
people gets it from, though there’s only two men of ’em in all
Hayslope: that’s Will Maskery, the wheelwright, and Seth Bede, a young
man as works at the carpenterin’.”

“The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?”

“Nay, sir, she comes out o’ Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off.
But she’s a-visitin’ hereabout at Mester Poyser’s at the Hall Farm—it’s
them barns an’ big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She’s own
niece to Poyser’s wife, an’ they’ll be fine an’ vexed at her for making
a fool of herself i’ that way. But I’ve heared as there’s no holding
these Methodisses when the maggit’s once got i’ their head: many of ’em
goes stark starin’ mad wi’ their religion. Though this young woman’s
quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I’ve not seen her
myself.”

“Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I’ve
been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that
place in the valley. It’s Squire Donnithorne’s, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir, that’s Donnithorne Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn’t
there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I’ve lived butler there
a-going i’ fifteen year. It’s Captain Donnithorne as is th’ heir,
sir—Squire Donnithorne’s grandson. He’ll be comin’ of hage this
’ay-’arvest, sir, an’ we shall hev fine doin’s. He owns all the land
about here, sir, Squire Donnithorne does.”

“Well, it’s a pretty spot, whoever may own it,” said the traveller,
mounting his horse; “and one meets some fine strapping fellows about
too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about half
an hour ago, before I came up the hill—a carpenter, a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along
like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French.”

“Aye, sir, that’s Adam Bede, that is, I’ll be bound—Thias Bede’s son
everybody knows him hereabout. He’s an uncommon clever stiddy fellow,
an’ wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir—if you’ll hexcuse me for
saying so—he can walk forty mile a-day, an’ lift a matter o’ sixty
ston’. He’s an uncommon favourite wi’ the gentry, sir: Captain
Donnithorne and Parson Irwine meks a fine fuss wi’ him. But he’s a
little lifted up an’ peppery-like.”

“Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on.”

“Your servant, sir; good evenin’.”

The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when
he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right
hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with
the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity
to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to
get to the end of his journey, and he paused.

The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road
branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the
church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the
side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of
thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on
the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view
of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of
distant hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which
Hayslope belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire,
overlooked by its barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may
sometimes be seen linked in the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother;
and in two or three hours’ ride the traveller might exchange a bleak
treeless region, intersected by lines of cold grey stone, for one where
his road wound under the shelter of woods, or up swelling hills,
muffled with hedgerows and long meadow-grass and thick corn; and where
at every turn he came upon some fine old country-seat nestled in the
valley or crowning the slope, some homestead with its long length of
barn and its cluster of golden ricks, some grey steeple looking out
from a pretty confusion of trees and thatch and dark-red tiles. It was
just such a picture as this last that Hayslope Church had made to the
traveller as he began to mount the gentle slope leading to its pleasant
uplands, and now from his station near the Green he had before him in
one view nearly all the other typical features of this pleasant land.
High up against the horizon were the huge conical masses of hill, like
giant mounds intended to fortify this region of corn and grass against
the keen and hungry winds of the north; not distant enough to be
clothed in purple mystery, but with sombre greenish sides visibly
specked with sheep, whose motion was only revealed by memory, not
detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the changing hours, but
responding with no change in themselves—left for ever grim and sullen
after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of the April noonday, the
parting crimson glory of the ripening summer sun. And directly below
them the eye rested on a more advanced line of hanging woods, divided
by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops, and not yet deepened
into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but still showing the
warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of the ash and lime.
Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker, as if they had
rolled down and hurried together from the patches left smooth on the
slope, that they might take the better care of the tall mansion which
lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke among them.
Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy pool in
front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would not let
our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead a
foreground which was just as lovely—the level sunlight lying like
transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of the
scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.

He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned a
little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge’s
pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
from old “Feyther Taft” in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long
while, leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little
round heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there
was a new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his
supper, came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze,
willing to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no
means excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join
the Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with
the expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not
have disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the “preacher
woman”—they had only come out to see “what war a-goin’ on, like.” The
men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith’s
shop. But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never
swarm: a whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as
incapable of an undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns
his back on his interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as
if he meant to run away from the answer, and walking a step or two
farther off when the interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group
in the vicinity of the blacksmith’s door was by no means a close one,
and formed no screen in front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself,
who stood with his black brawny arms folded, leaning against the
door-post, and occasionally sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own
jokes, giving them a marked preference over the sarcasms of Wiry Ben,
who had renounced the pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of
seeing life under a new form. But both styles of wit were treated with
equal contempt by Mr. Joshua Rann. Mr. Rann’s leathern apron and
subdued griminess can leave no one in any doubt that he is the village
shoemaker; the thrusting out of his chin and stomach and the twirling
of his thumbs are more subtle indications, intended to prepare unwary
strangers for the discovery that they are in the presence of the parish
clerk. “Old Joshway,” as he is irreverently called by his neighbours,
is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his
lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of
a violoncello, “Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for
ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever”—a
quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present
occasion, but, as with every other anomaly, adequate knowledge will
show it to be a natural sequence. Mr. Rann was inwardly maintaining the
dignity of the Church in the face of this scandalous irruption of
Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up with his own sonorous
utterance of the responses, his argument naturally suggested a
quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday afternoon.

The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright’s to
serve as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs
had been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with
their eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
Cranage, the blacksmith’s buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
Chad’s Bess, who wondered “why the folks war amakin’ faces a that’ns.”
Chad’s Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
red cheeks—namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
cousin and namesake Timothy’s Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
often wished “them ear-rings” might come to good.

Timothy’s Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a
handsome set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the
heavy baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five
in knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck
by way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad’s small terrier.
This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy’s Bess’s
Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty,
had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking
round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide
open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical
accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by
the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy’s Bess’s Ben
first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge
behind his father’s legs.

“Ye gallows young dog,” said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, “if
ye donna keep that stick quiet, I’ll tek it from ye. What dy’e mane by
kickin’ foulks?”

“Here! Gie him here to me, Jim,” said Chad Cranage; “I’ll tie hirs up
an’ shoe him as I do th’ hosses. Well, Mester Casson,” he continued, as
that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, “how are ye t’
naight? Are ye coom t’ help groon? They say folks allays groon when
they’re hearkenin’ to th’ Methodys, as if they war bad i’ th’ inside. I
mane to groon as loud as your cow did th’ other naight, an’ then the
praicher ’ull think I’m i’ th’ raight way.”

“I’d advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad,” said Mr. Casson,
with some dignity; “Poyser wouldn’t like to hear as his wife’s niece
was treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn’t be fond of her
taking on herself to preach.”

“Aye, an’ she’s a pleasant-looked un too,” said Wiry Ben. “I’ll stick
up for the pretty women preachin’; I know they’d persuade me over a
deal sooner nor th’ ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore
the night’s out, an’ begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede.”

“Why, Seth’s looking rether too high, I should think,” said Mr. Casson.
“This woman’s kin wouldn’t like her to demean herself to a common
carpenter.”

“Tchu!” said Ben, with a long treble intonation, “what’s folks’s kin
got to do wi’t? Not a chip. Poyser’s wife may turn her nose up an’
forget bygones, but this Dinah Morris, they tell me, ’s as poor as iver
she was—works at a mill, an’s much ado to keep hersen. A strappin’
young carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Seth, wouldna be a bad
match for her. Why, Poysers make as big a fuss wi’ Adam Bede as if he
war a nevvy o’ their own.”

“Idle talk! idle talk!” said Mr. Joshua Rann. “Adam an’ Seth’s two men;
you wunna fit them two wi’ the same last.”

“Maybe,” said Wiry Ben, contemptuously, “but Seth’s the lad for me,
though he war a Methody twice o’er. I’m fair beat wi’ Seth, for I’ve
been teasin’ him iver sin’ we’ve been workin’ together, an’ he bears me
no more malice nor a lamb. An’ he’s a stout-hearted feller too, for
when we saw the old tree all afire a-comin’ across the fields one
night, an’ we thought as it war a boguy, Seth made no more ado, but he
up to’t as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o’ Will
Maskery’s; an’ there’s Will hisself, lookin’ as meek as if he couldna
knock a nail o’ the head for fear o’ hurtin’t. An’ there’s the pretty
preacher woman! My eye, she’s got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit
nearer.”

Several of the men followed Ben’s lead, and the traveller pushed his
horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly and in advance of
her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was
near Seth’s tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the
cart, and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle
height of woman, though in reality she did not exceed it—an effect
which was due to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her
black stuff dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her
approach and mount the cart—surprise, not so much at the feminine
delicacy of her appearance, as at the total absence of
self-consciousness in her demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her
advance with a measured step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he
had felt sure that her face would be mantled with the smile of
conscious saintship, or else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He
knew but two types of Methodist—the ecstatic and the bilious. But Dinah
walked as simply as if she were going to market, and seemed as
unconscious of her outward appearance as a little boy: there was no
blush, no tremulousness, which said, “I know you think me a pretty
woman, too young to preach”; no casting up or down of the eyelids, no
compression of the lips, no attitude of the arms that said, “But you
must think of me as a saint.” She held no book in her ungloved hands,
but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and
turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keenness in the eyes;
they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they
had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to
give out, rather than impressed by external objects. She stood with her
left hand towards the descending sun, and leafy boughs screened her
from its rays; but in this sober light the delicate colouring of her
face seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at evening. It was
a small oval face, of a uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like
line of cheek and chin, a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and
a low perpendicular brow, surmounted by a rising arch of parting
between smooth locks of pale reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight
back behind the ears, and covered, except for an inch or two above the
brow, by a net Quaker cap. The eyebrows, of the same colour as the
hair, were perfectly horizontal and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes,
though no darker, were long and abundant—nothing was left blurred or
unfinished. It was one of those faces that make one think of white
flowers with light touches of colour on their pure petals. The eyes had
no peculiar beauty, beyond that of expression; they looked so simple,
so candid, so gravely loving, that no accusing scowl, no light sneer
could help melting away before their glance. Joshua Rann gave a long
cough, as if he were clearing his throat in order to come to a new
understanding with himself; Chad Cranage lifted up his leather
skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben wondered how Seth had
the pluck to think of courting her.

“A sweet woman,” the stranger said to himself, “but surely nature never
meant her for a preacher.”

Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical
properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and
psychology, “makes up,” her characters, so that there may be no mistake
about them. But Dinah began to speak.

“Dear friends,” she said in a clear but not loud voice “let us pray for
a blessing.”

She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in
the same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her:
“Saviour of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the
well to draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee
not; she had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy.
But Thou didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her
that her life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her
that blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst
of us, and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor
woman—if their minds are dark, their lives unholy—if they have come out
not seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according
to the free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord,
open their ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and
make them thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.

“Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the
night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with
them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee:
open their eyes that they may see Thee—see Thee weeping over them, and
saying ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life’—see Thee
hanging on the cross and saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do’—see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to
judge them at the last. Amen.”

Dinah opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of
villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.

“Dear friends,” she began, raising her voice a little, “you have all of
you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman read
these words: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.’ Jesus Christ spoke those
words—he said he came _to preach the Gospel to the poor:_ I don’t know
whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you
when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of
evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up
took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I
remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white
hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had
ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and
this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody I
had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from the
sky to preach to us, and I said, ‘Aunt, will he go back to the sky
to-night, like the picture in the Bible?’

“That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our
blessed Lord did—preaching the Gospel to the poor—and he entered into
his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after,
but I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one
thing he told us in his sermon. He told us as ‘Gospel’ meant ‘good
news.’ The Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.

“Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as
I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down
for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear
friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have
been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven’t been to
school much, nor read books, and we don’t know much about anything but
what happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to
hear good news. For when anybody’s well off, they don’t much mind about
hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman’s in
trouble and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a
letter to tell ’em they’ve got a friend as will help ’em. To be sure,
we can’t help knowing something about God, even if we’ve never heard
the Gospel, the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know
everything comes from God: don’t you say almost every day, ‘This and
that will happen, please God,’ and ‘We shall begin to cut the grass
soon, please God to send us a little more sunshine’? We know very well
we are altogether in the hands of God. We didn’t bring ourselves into
the world, we can’t keep ourselves alive while we’re sleeping; the
daylight, and the wind, and the corn, and the cows to give us
milk—everything we have comes from God. And he gave us our souls and
put love between parents and children, and husband and wife. But is
that as much as we want to know about God? We see he is great and
mighty, and can do what he will: we are lost, as if we was struggling
in great waters, when we try to think of him.

“But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
and the wise and the rich. It doesn’t cost him much to give us our
little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick
and helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the
blight come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain
and trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good,
he seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?

“Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
does other good news signify if we haven’t that? For everything else
comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?”

Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind of
God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.

“So you see, dear friends,” she went on, “Jesus spent his time almost
all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
their sins.

“Ah, wouldn’t you love such a man if you saw him—if he were here in
this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.

“Well, dear friends, who _was_ this man? Was he only a good man—a very
good man, and no more—like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
us?... He was the Son of God—‘in the image of the Father,’ the Bible
says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
things—the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that Jesus
showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think
what God was before—the God who made the world and the sky and the
thunder and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the
things he had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as
we might well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour
has showed us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can
understand; he has showed us what God’s heart is, what are his feelings
towards us.

“But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.
Another time he said, ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost’;
and another time, ‘I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance.’

“The _lost!... Sinners!_... Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and
me?”

Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will by
the charm of Dinah’s mellow treble tones, which had a variety of
modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious
skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like
novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear it
sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of
conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the
truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her
hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no
longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly,
though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any
transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the
effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her
voice, and when she came to the question, “Will God take care of us
when we die?” she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that
the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased
to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the
attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she
could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which
must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist
preacher, until she came to the words, “Lost!—Sinners!” when there was
a great change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause
before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating
thoughts that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became
paler; the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears
half-gather without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an
expression of appalled pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a
destroying angel hovering over the heads of the people. Her voice
became deep and muffled, but there was still no gesture. Nothing could
be less like the ordinary type of the Ranter than Dinah. She was not
preaching as she heard others preach, but speaking directly from her
own emotions and under the inspiration of her own simple faith.

But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner
became less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried
to bring home to the people their guilt, their wilful darkness, their
state of disobedience to God—as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin,
the Divine holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour, by which a way
had been opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her
yearning desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied
by addressing her hearers as a body. She appealed first to one and then
to another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was
yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin,
feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their
Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching
for their return.

There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow-Methodists,
but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little
smouldering vague anxiety that might easily die out again was the
utmost effect Dinah’s preaching had wrought in them at present. Yet no
one had retired, except the children and “old Feyther Taft,” who being
too deaf to catch many words, had some time ago gone back to his
inglenook. Wiry Ben was feeling very uncomfortable, and almost wishing
he had not come to hear Dinah; he thought what she said would haunt him
somehow. Yet he couldn’t help liking to look at her and listen to her,
though he dreaded every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and
address him in particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was
now holding the baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man
had rubbed away some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of
being a better fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the
Stone-pits, and cleaning himself more regularly of a Sunday.

In front of Sandy Jim stood Chad’s Bess, who had shown an unwonted
quietude and fixity of attention ever since Dinah had begun to speak.
Not that the matter of the discourse had arrested her at once, for she
was lost in a puzzling speculation as to what pleasure and satisfaction
there could be in life to a young woman who wore a cap like Dinah’s.
Giving up this inquiry in despair, she took to studying Dinah’s nose,
eyes, mouth, and hair, and wondering whether it was better to have such
a sort of pale face as that, or fat red cheeks and round black eyes
like her own. But gradually the influence of the general gravity told
upon her, and she became conscious of what Dinah was saying. The gentle
tones, the loving persuasion, did not touch her, but when the more
severe appeals came she began to be frightened. Poor Bessy had always
been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was
necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She
couldn’t find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often
been tittering when she “curcheyed” to Mr. Irwine; and these religious
deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor
morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class
of feminine characters with whom you may venture to “eat an egg, an
apple, or a nut.” All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto
had not been greatly ashamed of it. But now she began to feel very much
as if the constable had come to take her up and carry her before the
justice for some undefined offence. She had a terrified sense that God,
whom she had always thought of as very far off, was very near to her,
and that Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see
him. For Dinah had that belief in visible manifestations of Jesus,
which is common among the Methodists, and she communicated it
irresistibly to her hearers: she made them feel that he was among them
bodily, and might at any moment show himself to them in some way that
would strike anguish and penitence into their hearts.

“See!” she exclaimed, turning to the left, with her eyes fixed on a
point above the heads of the people. “See where our blessed Lord stands
and weeps and stretches out his arms towards you. Hear what he says:
‘How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!’... and ye would not,” she repeated,
in a tone of pleading reproach, turning her eyes on the people again.
“See the print of the nails on his dear hands and feet. It is your sins
that made them! Ah! How pale and worn he looks! He has gone through all
that great agony in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful
even unto death, and the great drops of sweat fell like blood to the
ground. They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they
mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders. Then
they nailed him up. Ah, what pain! His lips are parched with thirst,
and they mock him still in this great agony; yet with those parched
lips he prays for them, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.’ Then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and he felt
what sinners feel when they are for ever shut out from God. That was
the last drop in the cup of bitterness. ‘My God, my God!’ he cries,
‘why hast Thou forsaken me?’

“All this he bore for you! For you—and you never think of him; for
you—and you turn your backs on him; you don’t care what he has gone
through for you. Yet he is not weary of toiling for you: he has risen
from the dead, he is praying for you at the right hand of God—‘Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And he is upon this
earth too; he is among us; he is there close to you now; I see his
wounded body and his look of love.”

Here Dinah turned to Bessy Cranage, whose bonny youth and evident
vanity had touched her with pity.

“Poor child! Poor child! He is beseeching you, and you don’t listen to
him. You think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never
think of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. Your cheeks
will be shrivelled one day, your hair will be grey, your poor body will
be thin and tottering! Then you will begin to feel that your soul is
not saved; then you will have to stand before God dressed in your sins,
in your evil tempers and vain thoughts. And Jesus, who stands ready to
help you now, won’t help you then; because you won’t have him to be
your Saviour, he will be your judge. Now he looks at you with love and
mercy and says, ‘Come to me that you may have life’; then he will turn
away from you, and say, ‘Depart from me into ever-lasting fire!’”

Poor Bessy’s wide-open black eyes began to fill with tears, her great
red cheeks and lips became quite pale, and her face was distorted like
a little child’s before a burst of crying.

“Ah, poor blind child!” Dinah went on, “think if it should happen to
you as it once happened to a servant of God in the days of her vanity.
_She_ thought of her lace caps and saved all her money to buy ’em; she
thought nothing about how she might get a clean heart and a right
spirit—she only wanted to have better lace than other girls. And one
day when she put her new cap on and looked in the glass, she saw a
bleeding Face crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you
now”—here Dinah pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy—“Ah, tear off
those follies! Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging
adders. They _are_ stinging you—they are poisoning your soul—they are
dragging you down into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for
ever, and for ever, and for ever, further away from light and God.”

Bessy could bear it no longer: a great terror was upon her, and
wrenching her ear-rings from her ears, she threw them down before her,
sobbing aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be “laid
hold on” too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as
nothing less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at
his anvil by way of reassuring himself. “Folks mun ha’ hoss-shoes,
praichin’ or no praichin’: the divil canna lay hould o’ me for that,”
he muttered to himself.

But now Dinah began to tell of the joys that were in store for the
penitent, and to describe in her simple way the divine peace and love
with which the soul of the believer is filled—how the sense of God’s
love turns poverty into riches and satisfies the soul so that no uneasy
desire vexes it, no fear alarms it: how, at last, the very temptation
to sin is extinguished, and heaven is begun upon earth, because no
cloud passes between the soul and God, who is its eternal sun.

“Dear friends,” she said at last, “brothers and sisters, whom I love as
those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great
blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too. I am
poor, like you: I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor
lady can be so happy as me, if they haven’t got the love of God in
their souls. Think what it is—not to hate anything but sin; to be full
of love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that
all things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our
Father’s will; to know that nothing—no, not if the earth was to be
burnt up, or the waters come and drown us—nothing could part us from
God who loves us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because
we are sure that whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.

“Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it
is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like
the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest
can have. God is without end; his love is without end—”

Its streams the whole creation reach,
    So plenteous is the store;
Enough for all, enough for each,
    Enough for evermore.


Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of
the parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words.
The stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if
it had been the development of a drama—for there is this sort of
fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one
the inward drama of the speaker’s emotions—now turned his horse aside
and pursued his way, while Dinah said, “Let us sing a little, dear
friends”; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the
Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of
exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.




Chapter III
After the Preaching


In less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah’s
side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her
hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly
as he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say
to her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity—of
absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment
or with her own personality—an expression that is most of all
discouraging to a lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that
quiet elasticity that asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he
said to himself, “She’s too good and holy for any man, let alone me,”
and the words he had been summoning rushed back again before they had
reached his lips. But another thought gave him courage: “There’s no man
could love her better and leave her freer to follow the Lord’s work.”
They had been silent for many minutes now, since they had done talking
about Bessy Cranage; Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth’s
presence, and her pace was becoming so much quicker that the sense of
their being only a few minutes’ walk from the yard-gates of the Hall
Farm at last gave Seth courage to speak.

“You’ve quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o’ Saturday,
Dinah?”

“Yes,” said Dinah, quietly. “I’m called there. It was borne in upon my
mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who’s in
a decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of
thin white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me.
And this morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words
my eyes fell on were, ‘And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
endeavoured to go into Macedonia.’ If it wasn’t for that clear showing
of the Lord’s will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
I’ve been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
a token that there may be mercy in store for her.”

“God grant it,” said Seth. “For I doubt Adam’s heart is so set on her,
he’ll never turn to anybody else; and yet it ’ud go to my heart if he
was to marry her, for I canna think as she’d make him happy. It’s a
deep mystery—the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the
rest he’s seen i’ the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven
year for _her_, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other
woman for th’ asking. I often think of them words, ‘And Jacob served
seven years for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the
love he had to her.’ I know those words ’ud come true with me, Dinah,
if so be you’d give me hope as I might win you after seven years was
over. I know you think a husband ’ud be taking up too much o’ your
thoughts, because St. Paul says, ‘She that’s married careth for the
things of the world how she may please her husband’; and may happen
you’ll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you
told me o’ your mind last Saturday. But I’ve been thinking it over
again by night and by day, and I’ve prayed not to be blinded by my own
desires, to think what’s only good for me must be good for you too. And
it seems to me there’s more texts for your marrying than ever you can
find against it. For St. Paul says as plain as can be in another place,
‘I will that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house,
give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully’; and then
‘two are better than one’; and that holds good with marriage as well as
with other things. For we should be o’ one heart and o’ one mind,
Dinah. We both serve the same Master, and are striving after the same
gifts; and I’d never be the husband to make a claim on you as could
interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I’d make a
shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty—more than you
can have now, for you’ve got to get your own living now, and I’m strong
enough to work for us both.”

When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
flushed as he went on, his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, “Seth Bede, I thank
you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but ‘as God has distributed to
every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.’ God has
called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave
the brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very
little of this world’s good; where the trees are few, so that a child
might count them, and there’s very hard living for the poor in the
winter. It has been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the
little flock there and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled
with these things from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too
short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for
myself in this world. I’ve not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth,
for when I saw as your love was given to me, I thought it might be a
leading of Providence for me to change my way of life, and that we
should be fellow-helpers; and I spread the matter before the Lord. But
whenever I tried to fix my mind on marriage, and our living together,
other thoughts always came in—the times when I’ve prayed by the sick
and dying, and the happy hours I’ve had preaching, when my heart was
filled with love, and the Word was given to me abundantly. And when
I’ve opened the Bible for direction, I’ve always lighted on some clear
word to tell me where my work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that
you would try to be a help and not a hindrance to my work; but I see
that our marriage is not God’s will—He draws my heart another way. I
desire to live and die without husband or children. I seem to have no
room in my soul for wants and fears of my own, it has pleased God to
fill my heart so full with the wants and sufferings of his poor
people.”

Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, “Well, Dinah, I must seek
for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
I could never joy in anything any more. I think it’s something passing
the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I
trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I
feel more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often
can’t help saying of you what the hymn says—

In darkest shades if she appear,
    My dawning is begun;
She is my soul’s bright morning-star,
    And she my rising sun.


That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn’t be
displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this
country and go to live at Snowfield?”

“No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord’s clear
bidding. It’s a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
Goshen you’ve been used to. We mustn’t be in a hurry to fix and choose
our own lot; we must wait to be guided.”

“But you’d let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
wanted to tell you?”

“Yes, sure; let me know if you’re in any trouble. You’ll be continually
in my prayers.”

They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, “I won’t go in,
Dinah, so farewell.” He paused and hesitated after she had given him
her hand, and then said, “There’s no knowing but what you may see
things different after a while. There may be a new leading.”

“Let us leave that, Seth. It’s good to live only a moment at a time, as
I’ve read in one of Mr. Wesley’s books. It isn’t for you and me to lay
plans; we’ve nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.”

Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk
lingeringly home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to
turn back along the fields through which he and Dinah had already
passed; and I think his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears
long before he had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his
face steadily homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just
learned what it is to love—to love with that adoration which a young
man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than
himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious
feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or
art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under
the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic
statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness
that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love
and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression
into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object
and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift
of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since
the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed
in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there
was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his
fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after
exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.

That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men
and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
and hypocritical jargon—elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.

That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
anything else than Methodists—not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and
charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility
to the three concords, and it is possible—thank Heaven!—to have very
erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which
clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to
her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.

Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath
our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to “hold on tight”; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be
less bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah
does.




Chapter IV
Home and Its Sorrows


A green valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the
basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of
timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.

The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made
of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the
hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey
petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a
strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are
somewhat dim now—perhaps from too much crying—but her broadly marked
eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands
knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she
has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of
water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and
the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not
from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of
large-hearted intelligence.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great
tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us
by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and
ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every
movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the
thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah, so like our mother’s!—averted from
us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the
air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years
ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage—the mechanical
instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the
modelling hand—galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the
long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours
and irrational persistence.

It is such a fond anxious mother’s voice that you hear, as Lisbeth
says, “Well, my lad, it’s gone seven by th’ clock. Thee’t allays stay
till the last child’s born. Thee wants thy supper, I’ll warrand.
Where’s Seth? Gone arter some o’s chapellin’, I reckon?”

“Aye, aye, Seth’s at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where’s
father?” said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into
the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. “Hasn’t he
done the coffin for Tholer? There’s the stuff standing just as I left
it this morning.”

“Done the coffin?” said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting
uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. “Eh, my
lad, he went aff to Treddles’on this forenoon, an’s niver come back. I
doubt he’s got to th’ ‘Waggin Overthrow’ again.”

A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam’s face. He said nothing,
but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.

“What art goin’ to do, Adam?” said the mother, with a tone and look of
alarm. “Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi’out ha’in thy bit o’
supper?”

Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother
threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm,
and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, “Nay, my lad, my lad,
thee munna go wi’out thy supper; there’s the taters wi’ the gravy in
’em, just as thee lik’st ’em. I saved ’em o’ purpose for thee. Come an’
ha’ thy supper, come.”

“Let be!” said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the
planks that stood against the wall. “It’s fine talking about having
supper when here’s a coffin promised to be ready at Brox’on by seven
o’clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha’ been there now, and not a
nail struck yet. My throat’s too full to swallow victuals.”

“Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready,” said Lisbeth. “Thee’t work
thyself to death. It ’ud take thee all night to do’t.”

“What signifies how long it takes me? Isn’t the coffin promised? Can
they bury the man without a coffin? I’d work my right hand off sooner
than deceive people with lies i’ that way. It makes me mad to think
on’t. I shall overrun these doings before long. I’ve stood enough of
’em.”

Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she
had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the
next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never
to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping
bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make
her voice very piteous, she burst out into words.

“Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an’ break thy mother’s
heart, an’ leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha’ ’em carry me
to th’ churchyard, an’ thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i’ my grave
if I donna see thee at th’ last; an’ how’s they to let thee know as I’m
a-dyin’, if thee’t gone a-workin’ i’ distant parts, an’ Seth belike
gone arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for’s hand
shakin’, besides not knowin’ where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy
feyther—thee munna be so bitter again’ him. He war a good feyther to
thee afore he took to th’ drink. He’s a clever workman, an’ taught thee
thy trade, remember, an’s niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill
word—no, not even in ’s drink. Thee wouldstna ha’ ’m go to the
workhus—thy own feyther—an’ him as was a fine-growed man an’ handy at
everythin’ amost as thee art thysen, five-an’-twenty ’ear ago, when
thee wast a baby at the breast.”

Lisbeth’s voice became louder, and choked with sobs—a sort of wail, the
most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and
real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently.

“Now, Mother, don’t cry and talk so. Haven’t I got enough to vex me
without that? What’s th’ use o’ telling me things as I only think too
much on every day? If I didna think on ’em, why should I do as I do,
for the sake o’ keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking
where it’s no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i’stead o’
talking.”

“I know thee dost things as nobody else ’ud do, my lad. But thee’t
allays so hard upo’ thy feyther, Adam. Thee think’st nothing too much
to do for Seth: thee snapp’st me up if iver I find faut wi’ th’ lad.
But thee’t so angered wi’ thy feyther, more nor wi’ anybody else.”

“That’s better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way,
I reckon, isn’t it? If I wasn’t sharp with him he’d sell every bit o’
stuff i’ th’ yard and spend it on drink. I know there’s a duty to be
done by my father, but it isn’t my duty to encourage him in running
headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no
harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with
the work.”

Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking
to console herself somewhat for Adam’s refusal of the supper she had
spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it,
by feeding Adam’s dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his
master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual
course of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him,
and moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting
him to supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated
on his haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam
noticed Gyp’s mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less
tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as
much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that
love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are
dumb?

“Go, Gyp; go, lad!” Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and
Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed
Lisbeth into the house-place.

But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his
master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women
who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if
Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he
compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy
day, he had not a vixen in his eye—a fury with long nails, acrid and
selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but
in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make
uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending
nothing on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example—at once
patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the
livelong day over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen
to-morrow, and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a
certain awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when
he said, “Leave me alone,” she was always silenced.

So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the
sound of Adam’s tools. At last he called for a light and a draught of
water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth
ventured to say as she took it in, “Thy supper stan’s ready for thee,
when thee lik’st.”

“Donna thee sit up, mother,” said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked
off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his
mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with
which at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. “I’ll see to
Father when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall
be easier if thee’t i’ bed.”

“Nay, I’ll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon.”

It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of the
days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth
entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.

“Why, Mother,” he said, “how is it as Father’s working so late?”

“It’s none o’ thy feyther as is a-workin’—thee might know that well
anoof if thy head warna full o’ chapellin’—it’s thy brother as does
iverything, for there’s niver nobody else i’ th’ way to do nothin’.”

Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and
usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed
by her awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to
his mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the
gentle. But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop
and said, “Addy, how’s this? What! Father’s forgot the coffin?”

“Aye, lad, th’ old tale; but I shall get it done,” said Adam, looking
up and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. “Why,
what’s the matter with thee? Thee’t in trouble.”

Seth’s eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
mild face.

“Yes, Addy, but it’s what must be borne, and can’t be helped. Why,
thee’st never been to the school, then?”

“School? No, that screw can wait,” said Adam, hammering away again.

“Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed,” said Seth.

“No, lad, I’d rather go on, now I’m in harness. Thee’t help me to carry
it to Brox’on when it’s done. I’ll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat
thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn’t hear Mother’s talk.”

Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be
persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy
heart, into the house-place.

“Adam’s niver touched a bit o’ victual sin’ home he’s come,” said
Lisbeth. “I reckon thee’st hed thy supper at some o’ thy Methody
folks.”

“Nay, Mother,” said Seth, “I’ve had no supper yet.”

“Come, then,” said Lisbeth, “but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam
’ull happen ate ’em if I leave ’em stannin’. He loves a bit o’ taters
an’ gravy. But he’s been so sore an’ angered, he wouldn’t ate ’em, for
all I’d putten ’em by o’ purpose for him. An’ he’s been a-threatenin’
to go away again,” she went on, whimpering, “an’ I’m fast sure he’ll go
some dawnin’ afore I’m up, an’ niver let me know aforehand, an’ he’ll
niver come back again when once he’s gone. An’ I’d better niver ha’ had
a son, as is like no other body’s son for the deftness an’ th’
handiness, an’ so looked on by th’ grit folks, an’ tall an’ upright
like a poplar-tree, an’ me to be parted from him an’ niver see ’m no
more.”

“Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain,” said Seth, in a soothing
voice. “Thee’st not half so good reason to think as Adam ’ull go away
as to think he’ll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he’s in
wrath—and he’s got excuse for being wrathful sometimes—but his heart
’ud never let him go. Think how he’s stood by us all when it’s been
none so easy—paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier,
an’ turnin’ his earnin’s into wood for father, when he’s got plenty o’
uses for his money, and many a young man like him ’ud ha’ been married
and settled before now. He’ll never turn round and knock down his own
work, and forsake them as it’s been the labour of his life to stand
by.”

“Donna talk to me about’s marr’in’,” said Lisbeth, crying afresh. “He’s
set’s heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as ’ull niver save a penny, an’ ’ull
toss up her head at’s old mother. An’ to think as he might ha’ Mary
Burge, an’ be took partners, an’ be a big man wi’ workmen under him,
like Mester Burge—Dolly’s told me so o’er and o’er again—if it warna as
he’s set’s heart on that bit of a wench, as is o’ no more use nor the
gillyflower on the wall. An’ he so wise at bookin’ an’ figurin’, an’
not to know no better nor that!”

“But, Mother, thee know’st we canna love just where other folks ’ud
have us. There’s nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could
ha’ wished myself as Adam could ha’ made another choice, but I wouldn’t
reproach him for what he can’t help. And I’m not sure but what he tries
to o’ercome it. But it’s a matter as he doesn’t like to be spoke to
about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him.”

“Aye, thee’t allays ready enough at prayin’, but I donna see as thee
gets much wi’ thy prayin’. Thee wotna get double earnin’s o’ this side
Yule. Th’ Methodies ’ll niver make thee half the man thy brother is,
for all they’re a-makin’ a preacher on thee.”

“It’s partly truth thee speak’st there, Mother,” said Seth, mildly;
“Adam’s far before me, an’s done more for me than I can ever do for
him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good.
But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it
brings us what no money can buy—a power to keep from sin and be content
with God’s will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray
to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so
uneasy about things.”

“Unaisy? I’m i’ th’ right on’t to be unaisy. It’s well seen on _thee_
what it is niver to be unaisy. Thee’t gi’ away all thy earnin’s, an’
niver be unaisy as thee’st nothin’ laid up again’ a rainy day. If Adam
had been as aisy as thee, he’d niver ha’ had no money to pay for thee.
Take no thought for the morrow—take no thought—that’s what thee’t
allays sayin’; an’ what comes on’t? Why, as Adam has to take thought
for thee.”

“Those are the words o’ the Bible, Mother,” said Seth. “They don’t mean
as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn’t be overanxious and
worreting ourselves about what’ll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and
leave the rest to God’s will.”

“Aye, aye, that’s the way wi’ thee: thee allays makes a peck o’ thy own
words out o’ a pint o’ the Bible’s. I donna see how thee’t to know as
‘take no thought for the morrow’ means all that. An’ when the Bible’s
such a big book, an’ thee canst read all thro’t, an’ ha’ the pick o’
the texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna
mean so much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that’n; I can
understan’ the tex as he’s allays a-sayin’, ‘God helps them as helps
theirsens.’”

“Nay, Mother,” said Seth, “that’s no text o’ the Bible. It comes out of
a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles’on. It was wrote by a
knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying’s partly
true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God.”

“Well, how’m I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what’s th’ matter wi’
th’ lad? Thee’t hardly atin’ a bit o’ supper. Dostna mean to ha’ no
more nor that bit o’ oat-cake? An’ thee lookst as white as a flick o’
new bacon. What’s th’ matter wi’ thee?”

“Nothing to mind about, Mother; I’m not hungry. I’ll just look in at
Adam again, and see if he’ll let me go on with the coffin.”

“Ha’ a drop o’ warm broth?” said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now
got the better of her “nattering” habit. “I’ll set two-three sticks
a-light in a minute.”

“Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee’t very good,” said Seth, gratefully; and
encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: “Let me pray a bit
with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us—it’ll comfort thee,
happen, more than thee thinkst.”

“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
th’ haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook’s fine and
full now: another day’s rain ’ud cover the plank, and we should have to
go round by the road.”

They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture
through which the brook ran.

“Why, what’s that sticking against the willow?” continued Seth,
beginning to walk faster. Adam’s heart rose to his mouth: the vague
anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no
answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark
uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.

This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom
he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to
live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with
that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through
Adam’s conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out
the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and
when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt
and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was
need for action—forgetting everything but that their father lay dead
before them. Adam was the first to speak.

“I’ll run to Mother,” he said, in a loud whisper. “I’ll be back to thee
in a minute.”

Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons’ breakfast, and their porridge
was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.

“The lads ’ull be fine an’ hungry,” she said, half-aloud, as she
stirred the porridge. “It’s a good step to Brox’on, an’ it’s hungry air
o’er the hill—wi’ that heavy coffin too. Eh! It’s heavier now, wi’ poor
Bob Tholer in’t. Howiver, I’ve made a drap more porridge nor common
this mornin’. The feyther ’ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he’ll
ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn’orth o’ ale, an’ saves a
hap’orth o’ por-ridge—that’s his way o’ layin’ by money, as I’ve told
him many a time, an’ am likely to tell him again afore the day’s out.
Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there’s no denyin’ that.”

But now Lisbeth heard the heavy “thud” of a running footstep on the
turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter,
looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed
towards him before he had time to speak.

“Hush, Mother,” Adam said, rather hoarsely, “don’t be frightened.
Father’s tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
the fire.”

In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew
there was no other way of repressing his mother’s impetuous wailing
grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.

He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
Seth’s, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth’s chief feeling was awe
and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father’s soul; but
Adam’s mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
that we repent of, but our severity.




Chapter V
The Rector


Before twelve o’clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the
water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the
garden of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly
tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed
border flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A
melancholy morning—because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin,
and instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.

But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they
would never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet
morning, Mr. Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at
chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite
well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me
take you into that dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Irwine,
Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist
at whom the severest Church reformer would have found it difficult to
look sour. We will enter very softly and stand still in the open
doorway, without awaking the glossy-brown setter who is stretched
across the hearth, with her two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is
dozing, with his black muzzle aloft, like a sleepy president.

The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window
at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the
furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty,
and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the
large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly
enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth
there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the
same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard
with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once
that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than
wealth, and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely
cut nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a
broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward
and tied behind with a black ribbon—a bit of conservatism in costume
which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round
by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady,
his mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is
well set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace
about her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a
statue of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose,
firm proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and
sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of
cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small
brown hand with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls,
diamonds, and turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully
adjusted over the crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the
white folds about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old
lady in the morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be
dressed so: she is clearly one of those children of royalty who have
never doubted their right divine and never met with any one so absurd
as to question it.

“There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!” says this magnificent old lady,
as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. “I should be
sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings.”

“Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a
game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before
we began. You’ve not won that game by fair means, now, so don’t pretend
it.”

“Yes, yes, that’s what the beaten have always said of great conquerors.
But see, there’s the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more
clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give
you another chance?”

“No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it’s
clearing up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus’n’t we,
Juno?” This was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the
sound of the voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her
master’s leg. “But I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called
away to Tholer’s funeral just when I was going before.”

“It’s of no use, child; she can’t speak to you. Kate says she has one
of her worst headaches this morning.”

“Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she’s never too ill
to care about that.”

If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or
habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical
objection had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many
hundred times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irwine’s
sister Anne had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long
time to dress in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly
daughters.

But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and
stroking Juno’s head, the servant came to the door and said, “If you
please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you are at
liberty.”

“Let him be shown in here,” said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her knitting.
“I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be
dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll.”

In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential
bows, which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp
bark and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger’s legs; while
the two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann’s prominent calf and ribbed worsted
stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over
them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair
and said, “Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you’ve
come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs;
give them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!”

It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden
rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill
dusk. Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of
resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a friend’s face
often bears to the face itself: the lines were all more generous, the
smile brighter, the expression heartier. If the outline had been less
finely cut, his face might have been called jolly; but that was not the
right word for its mixture of bonhomie and distinction.

“Thank Your Reverence,” answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off
the puppies; “I’ll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see
you an’ Mrs. Irwine well, an’ Miss Irwine—an’ Miss Anne, I hope’s as
well as usual.”

“Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She
beats us younger people hollow. But what’s the matter?”

“Why, sir, I had to come to Brox’on to deliver some work, and I thought
it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there’s been i’
the village, such as I hanna seen i’ my time, and I’ve lived in it man
and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th’ Easter dues for
Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the
ringin’ o’ every bell, and the diggin’ o’ every grave, and sung i’ the
choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi’ his
counter-singin’ and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself—one
takin’ it up after another like sheep a-bleatin’ i’ th’ fold. I know
what belongs to bein’ a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin’
i’ respect to Your Reverence, an’ church, an’ king, if I was t’ allow
such goins-on wi’out speakin’. I was took by surprise, an’ knowed
nothin’ on it beforehand, an’ I was so flustered, I was clean as if I’d
lost my tools. I hanna slep’ more nor four hour this night as is past
an’ gone; an’ then it was nothin’ but nightmare, as tired me worse nor
wakin’.”

“Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at
the church lead again?”

“Thieves! No, sir—an’ yet, as I may say, it _is_ thieves, an’
a-thievin’ the church, too. It’s the Methodisses as is like to get th’
upper hand i’ th’ parish, if Your Reverence an’ His Honour, Squire
Donnithorne, doesna think well to say the word an’ forbid it. Not as
I’m a-dictatin’ to you, sir; I’m not forgettin’ myself so far as to be
wise above my betters. Howiver, whether I’m wise or no, that’s neither
here nor there, but what I’ve got to say I say—as the young Methodis
woman as is at Mester Poyser’s was a-preachin’ an’ a-prayin’ on the
Green last night, as sure as I’m a-stannin’ afore Your Reverence now.”

“Preaching on the Green!” said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite
serene. “What, that pale pretty young woman I’ve seen at Poyser’s? I
saw she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her
dress, but I didn’t know she was a preacher.”

“It’s a true word as I say, sir,” rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing his
mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate
three notes of exclamation. “She preached on the Green last night; an’
she’s laid hold of Chad’s Bess, as the girl’s been i’ fits welly iver
sin’.”

“Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she’ll come
round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?”

“No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there’s no knowin’ what’ll come,
if we’re t’ have such preachin’s as that a-goin’ on ivery week—there’ll
be no livin’ i’ th’ village. For them Methodisses make folks believe as
if they take a mug o’ drink extry, an’ make theirselves a bit
comfortable, they’ll have to go to hell for’t as sure as they’re born.
I’m not a tipplin’ man nor a drunkard—nobody can say it on me—but I
like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat’ral when
we’re goin’ the rounds a-singin’, an’ folks offer’t you for nothin’; or
when I’m a-collectin’ the dues; an’ I like a pint wi’ my pipe, an’ a
neighbourly chat at Mester Casson’s now an’ then, for I was brought up
i’ the Church, thank God, an’ ha’ been a parish clerk this
two-an’-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is.”

“Well, what’s your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done?”

“Well, Your Reverence, I’m not for takin’ any measures again’ the young
woman. She’s well enough if she’d let alone preachin’; an’ I hear as
she’s a-goin’ away back to her own country soon. She’s Mr. Poyser’s own
niece, an’ I donna wish to say what’s anyways disrespectful o’ th’
family at th’ Hall Farm, as I’ve measured for shoes, little an’ big,
welly iver sin’ I’ve been a shoemaker. But there’s that Will Maskery,
sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an’ I make no doubt it
was him as stirred up th’ young woman to preach last night, an’ he’ll
be a-bringin’ other folks to preach from Treddles’on, if his comb isn’t
cut a bit; an’ I think as he should be let know as he isna t’ have the
makin’ an’ mendin’ o’ church carts an’ implemen’s, let alone stayin’ i’
that house an’ yard as is Squire Donnithorne’s.”

“Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one come
to preach on the Green before; why should you think they’ll come again?
The Methodists don’t come to preach in little villages like Hayslope,
where there’s only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them.
They might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will
Maskery is no preacher himself, I think.”

“Nay, sir, he’s no gift at stringin’ the words together wi’out book;
he’d be stuck fast like a cow i’ wet clay. But he’s got tongue enough
to speak disrespectful about’s neebors, for he said as I was a blind
Pharisee—a-usin’ the Bible i’ that way to find nick-names for folks as
are his elders an’ betters!—and what’s worse, he’s been heard to say
very unbecomin’ words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as
’ud swear as he called you a ‘dumb dog,’ an’ a ‘idle shepherd.’ You’ll
forgi’e me for sayin’ such things over again.”

“Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they’re
spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He
used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his
wife, they told me; now he’s thrifty and decent, and he and his wife
look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he
interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall
think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it
wouldn’t become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about
trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery
lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a
serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must ‘live and let
live,’ Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing
your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you’ve always done
it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and
things won’t go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it.”

“Your Reverence is very good to say so; an’ I’m sensable as, you not
livin’ i’ the parish, there’s more upo’ my shoulders.”

“To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people’s
eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua. I
shall trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what
Will Maskery says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can
go on taking your pot of beer soberly, when you’ve done your day’s
work, like good churchmen; and if Will Maskery doesn’t like to join
you, but to go to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him;
that’s no business of yours, so long as he doesn’t hinder you from
doing what you like. And as to people saying a few idle words about us,
we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the
rooks cawing about it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday
afternoon, and does his wheelwright’s business steadily in the
weekdays, and as long as he does that he must be let alone.”

“Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an’ shakes his head, an’
looks as sour an’ as coxy when we’re a-singin’ as I should like to
fetch him a rap across the jowl—God forgi’e me—an’ Mrs. Irwine, an’
Your Reverence too, for speakin’ so afore you. An’ he said as our
Christmas singin’ was no better nor the cracklin’ o’ thorns under a
pot.”

“Well, he’s got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden
heads, you know, it can’t be helped. He won’t bring the other people in
Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you
do.”

“Yes, sir, but it turns a man’s stomach t’ hear the Scripture misused
i’ that way. I know as much o’ the words o’ the Bible as he does, an’
could say the Psalms right through i’ my sleep if you was to pinch me;
but I know better nor to take ’em to say my own say wi’. I might as
well take the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals.”

“That’s a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
before——”

While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink
of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and
Joshua Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some
one who paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,

“Godson Arthur—may he come in?”

“Come in, come in, godson!” Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep
half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there
entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in a
sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing
interjections, and hand-shakings, and “How are you’s?” mingled with
joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine
members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best
terms with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne,
known in Hayslope, variously, as “the young squire,” “the heir,” and
“the captain.” He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to
the Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young
gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty’s regulars—he outshone them
as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know more
particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some
tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman whom
you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a
fellow-countryman—well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as
if he could deliver well from the left shoulder and floor his man: I
will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the
difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed
coat, and low top-boots.

Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, “But don’t let
me interrupt Joshua’s business—he has something to say.”

“Humbly begging Your Honour’s pardon,” said Joshua, bowing low, “there
was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove
out o’ my head.”

“Out with it, Joshua, quickly!” said Mr. Irwine.

“Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede’s dead—drownded this
morning, or more like overnight, i’ the Willow Brook, again’ the bridge
right i’ front o’ the house.”

“Ah!” exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal
interested in the information.

“An’ Seth Bede’s been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell
Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t’ allow
his father’s grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother’s
set her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an’ they’d ha’
come theirselves to ask you, but they’ve so much to see after with the
crowner, an’ that; an’ their mother’s took on so, an’ wants ’em to make
sure o’ the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An’ if Your
Reverence sees well and good, I’ll send my boy to tell ’em as soon as I
get home; an’ that’s why I make bold to trouble you wi’ it, His Honour
being present.”

“To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I’ll ride round to
Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall
have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good
morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale.”

“Poor old Thias!” said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. “I’m afraid
the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for
the load to have been taken off my friend Adam’s shoulders in a less
painful way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin
for the last five or six years.”

“He’s a regular trump, is Adam,” said Captain Donnithorne. “When I was
a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of
pocket-money, I’ll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my
woods for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than
any man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of
them that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to
manage, who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I’ve
mentioned the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some
reason or other he has a dislike to Adam, and _I_ can do nothing. But
come, Your Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It’s splendid out of
doors now. We can go to Adam’s together, if you like; but I want to
call at the Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is
keeping for me.”

“You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur,” said Mrs. Irwine. “It’s
nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly.”

“I want to go to the Hall Farm too,” said Mr. Irwine, “to have another
look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
was preaching on the Green last night.”

“Oh, by Jove!” said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. “Why, she looks as
quiet as a mouse. There’s something rather striking about her, though.
I positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her—she was
sitting stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house,
when I rode up and called out, without noticing that she was a
stranger, ‘Is Martin Poyser at home?’ I declare, when she got up and
looked at me and just said, ‘He’s in the house, I believe: I’ll go and
call him,’ I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her.
She looked like St. Catherine in a Quaker dress. It’s a type of face
one rarely sees among our common people.”

“I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin,” said Mrs. Irwine.
“Make her come here on some pretext or other.”

“I don’t know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me
to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua’s denunciation of
his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate
the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm—that is to
say, to your grandfather—to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose
to interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of
hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in the
next number of their magazine. It wouldn’t take me much trouble to
persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that
they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then,
when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk
after their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a
farce as any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for
the last thirty years.”

“It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an ‘idle
shepherd’ and a ‘dumb dog,’” said Mrs. Irwine. “I should be inclined to
check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin.”

“Why, Mother, you don’t think it would be a good way of sustaining my
dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will
Maskery? Besides, I’m not so sure that they _are_ aspersions. I _am_ a
lazy fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that
I’m always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so
that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those
poor lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by
setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their
day’s work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have
our luncheon. Isn’t Kate coming to lunch?”

“Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs,” said Carroll;
“she can’t leave Miss Anne.”

“Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I’ll go up and see Miss Anne
presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur,” Mr.
Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm
out of the sling.

“Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly
for some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the
regiment, though, in the beginning of August. It’s a desperately dull
business being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can
neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make one’s self pleasantly sleepy in
the evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of
July. My grandfather has given me _carte blanche_ for once, and I
promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The
world will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I
shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the
lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon
us like an Olympian goddess.”

“I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
twenty years ago,” said Mrs. Irwine. “Ah, I think I shall see your poor
mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost
like a shroud that very day; and it _was_ her shroud only three months
after; and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her
too. She had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take
after your mother’s family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry,
yellow baby, I wouldn’t have stood godmother to you. I should have been
sure you would turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced,
broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you
a Tradgett.”

“But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother,” said Mr.
Irwine, smiling. “Don’t you remember how it was with Juno’s last pups?
One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three
of its father’s tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to
cheat even you, Mother.”

“Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a
mastiff. You’ll never persuade me that I can’t tell what men are by
their outsides. If I don’t like a man’s looks, depend upon it I shall
never like _him_. I don’t want to know people that look ugly and
disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look
disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take
them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite
ill; it’s like a bad smell.”

“Talking of eyes,” said Captain Donnithorne, “that reminds me that I’ve
got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel
from London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike
stories. It’s a volume of poems, ‘Lyrical Ballads.’ Most of them seem
to be twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style—‘The
Ancient Mariner’ is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as
a story, but it’s a strange, striking thing. I’ll send it over to you;
and there are some other books that _you_ may like to see,
Irwine—pamphlets about Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they
may be. I can’t think what the fellow means by sending such things to
me. I’ve written to him to desire that from henceforth he will send me
no book or pamphlet on anything that ends in _ism_.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’m very fond of _isms_ myself; but I may as
well look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I’ve a
little matter to attend to, Arthur,” continued Mr. Irwine, rising to
leave the room, “and then I shall be ready to set out with you.”

The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old
stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause
before a door at which he knocked gently. “Come in,” said a woman’s
voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that
Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not
have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting
which lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing
what required only the dimmest light—sponging the aching head that lay
on the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor
sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and
sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, “Don’t speak
to her; she can’t bear to be spoken to to-day.” Anne’s eyes were
closed, and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine
went to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed
it, a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was
worth-while to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He
lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left the
room, treading very gently—he had taken off his boots and put on
slippers before he came upstairs. Whoever remembers how many things he
has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of
putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail
insignificant.

And Mr. Irwine’s sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of
Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It
was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such
commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten
miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and
her old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation
in turn with the King’s health, the sweet new patterns in cotton
dresses, the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey’s lawsuit, which was
fretting poor Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of
mentioning the Miss Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village,
who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them
vaguely as “the gentlefolks.” If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who
gave him his flannel jacket, he would have answered, “the gentlefolks,
last winter”; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the “stuff”
the gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were
used with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so
that at the sight of poor Miss Anne’s sallow face, several small
urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst
misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they
had intended to hit Farmer Britton’s ducks. But for all who saw them
through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous
existences—inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without
adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have
been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have
had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had
either been known or invented concerning her, and the general
impression was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters
were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an
eligible offer.

Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant
people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to
affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many
evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic,
and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And
if that handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine,
had not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have
been shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely
wife in his youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the
powder, would have had tall sons and blooming daughters—such
possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for all
the labour they take under the sun. As it was—having with all his three
livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping
his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second
sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such
ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time
providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of
eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation,
but saying laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made it an
excuse for many indulgences which a wife would never have allowed him.
And perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his
sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those
large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a
grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no
self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a
sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for
obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted indulgence
that made him ignore his mother’s hardness towards her daughters, which
was the more striking from its contrast with her doting fondness
towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults.

See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you
walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the
figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the
eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system or
opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the “travelling preacher”
stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general
statement concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district,
whom he described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the
pride of life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses;
asking what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal
shall we be clothed?—careless of dispensing the bread of life to their
flocks, preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and
trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the
pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the
faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical
historian, too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period,
finds honourable members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any
sympathy for the “tribe of canting Methodists,” making statements
scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for
me to say that Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic
classification assigned him. He really had no very lofty aims, no
theological enthusiasm: if I were closely questioned, I should be
obliged to confess that he felt no serious alarms about the souls of
his parishioners, and would have thought it a mere loss of time to talk
in a doctrinal and awakening manner to old “Feyther Taft,” or even to
Chad Cranage the blacksmith. If he had been in the habit of speaking
theoretically, he would perhaps have said that the only healthy form
religion could take in such minds was that of certain dim but strong
emotions, suffusing themselves as a hallowing influence over the family
affections and neighbourly duties. He thought the custom of baptism
more important than its doctrine, and that the religious benefits the
peasant drew from the church where his fathers worshipped and the
sacred piece of turf where they lay buried were but slightly dependent
on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or the sermon. Clearly the
rector was not what is called in these days an “earnest” man: he was
fonder of church history than of divinity, and had much more insight
into men’s characters than interest in their opinions; he was neither
laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious in alms-giving,
and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental palate, indeed, was
rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation from Sophocles or
Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in Isaiah or Amos. But
if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how can you wonder at its
retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in after-life? And Mr.
Irwine’s recollections of young enthusiasm and ambition were all
associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from the Bible.

On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality
towards the rector’s memory, that he was not vindictive—and some
philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant—and there is a
rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from
that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his
body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all
his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes
been lacking to very illustrious virtue—he was tender to other men’s
failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and
they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by
following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which
they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and
witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not
as a subject for panegyric.

Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished,
and have sometimes even been the living representatives of the abuses.
That is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite
fact—that it is better sometimes _not_ to follow great reformers of
abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that
June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
him—portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay
mare, you must have felt that, however ill he harmonized with sound
theories of the clerical office, he somehow harmonized extremely well
with that peaceful landscape.

See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by
rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton side,
where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the
grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and
farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
Farm.




Chapter VI
The Hall Farm


Evidently that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great
hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty
that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to
pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two
stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above
a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy
enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the
brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close
to the rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and
all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure.

It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery
lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as to
bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the
limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the
door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the
door, I think, is like the gate—it is never opened. How it would groan
and grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy,
handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a
sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master
and mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair.

But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a
chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of
walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot
among the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs
echoing from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned
calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel
against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that
terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of
milk.

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for
imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may
climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face to
one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A
large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor;
at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor,
some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And
what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion, a
spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured
rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so
far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the
finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose.
Near it there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy’s leather
long-lashed whip.

The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a
country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere
spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne.
It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some
coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the
genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and
warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its
focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen
and the farmyard.

Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too,
for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by
Mrs. Poyser’s handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger
sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is
pouring down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and
lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the
cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the
channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are
seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as
possible. There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog,
chained against the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the
unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends
forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in
the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their
chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the
discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to
the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato
notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and,
under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices.

For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy there
mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby, the
“whittaw,” otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest
Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that
Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the
morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty
strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men’s shoes brought
into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her
equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since
dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as
everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of
collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer,
and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering
brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time
of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at
least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have
bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak
clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand:
genuine “elbow polish,” as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God
she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel
often took the opportunity, when her aunt’s back was turned, of looking
at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for
the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for
ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great
round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long deal
dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like
jasper.

Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun
shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces
pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass—and
on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on
Dinah’s finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn,
as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for
her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who
was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday’s wash,
had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and
fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her
blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up
the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was
taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs.
Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a
good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion
and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article
in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered
her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap
and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than
feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family
likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast
between her keenness and Dinah’s seraphic gentleness of expression,
might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and
Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of
the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip,
the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily
exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser’s glance. Her
tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came
within earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a
barrel-organ takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left
off.

The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was
inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Poyser
should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
manner, had “cleaned herself” with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret
indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held
up to Molly’s view with cutting eloquence.

“Spinning, indeed! It isn’t spinning as you’d be at, I’ll be bound, and
let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To
think of a gell o’ your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen
men! I’d ha’ been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I’d
been you. And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I
hired you at Treddles’on stattits, without a bit o’ character—as I say,
you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place;
and you knew no more o’ what belongs to work when you come here than
the mawkin i’ the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you
know you was. Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know?
Why, you’d leave the dirt in heaps i’ the corners—anybody ’ud think
you’d never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why,
you’ve wasted as much as your wage i’ the flax you’ve spoiled learning
to spin. And you’ve a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping
and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for
the whittaws, indeed! That’s what you’d like to be doing, is it? That’s
the way with you—that’s the road you’d all like to go, headlongs to
ruin. You’re never easy till you’ve got some sweetheart as is as big a
fool as yourself: you think you’ll be finely off when you’re married, I
daresay, and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a
blanket to cover you, and a bit o’ oat-cake for your dinner, as three
children are a-snatching at.”

“I’m sure I donna want t’ go wi’ the whittaws,” said Molly, whimpering,
and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, “on’y we
allays used to comb the wool for ’n at Mester Ottley’s; an’ so I just
axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
never stir if I do.”

“Mr. Ottley’s, indeed! It’s fine talking o’ what you did at Mr.
Ottley’s. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi’ whittaws
for what I know. There’s no knowing what people _wonna_ like—such ways
as I’ve heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to
know what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And
as to that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent’s before she come to me,
she’d ha’ left the cheeses without turning from week’s end to week’s
end, and the dairy thralls, I might ha’ wrote my name on ’em, when I
come downstairs after my illness, as the doctor said it was
inflammation—it was a mercy I got well of it. And to think o’ your
knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i’ nine months, and not
for want o’ talking to, neither—and what are you stanning there for,
like a jack as is run down, instead o’ getting your wheel out? You’re a
rare un for sitting down to your work a little while after it’s time to
put by.”

“Munny, my iron’s twite told; pease put it down to warm.”

The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little
sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair
at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of
a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an
assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as
anatomy would allow.

“Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!” said Mrs. Poyser, who
was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her
official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. “Never
mind! Mother’s done her ironing now. She’s going to put the ironing
things away.”

“Munny, I tould ’ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd.”

“No, no, no; Totty ’ud get her feet wet,” said Mrs. Poyser, carrying
away her iron. “Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the
butter.”

“I tould ’ike a bit o’ pum-take,” rejoined Totty, who seemed to be
provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the
opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of
starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable
completeness on to the ironing sheet.

“Did ever anybody see the like?” screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards
the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. “The child’s
allays i’ mischief if your back’s turned a minute. What shall I do to
you, you naughty, naughty gell?”

Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and
was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run,
and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like
the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig.

The starch having been wiped up by Molly’s help, and the ironing
apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay
ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry
it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat
down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she
knitted her grey worsted stocking.

“You look th’ image o’ your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing.
I could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she’d done the
house up; only it was a little cottage, Father’s was, and not a big
rambling house as gets dirty i’ one corner as fast as you clean it in
another—but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only
her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader
i’ the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
mother little thought as she’d have a daughter just cut out after the
very pattern o’ Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to
take care on, and bring up with a spoon when _she_ was in the graveyard
at Stoniton. I allays said that o’ Judith, as she’d bear a pound weight
any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the
same from the first o’ my remembering her; it made no difference in
her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a
bit different and wore a different sort o’ cap; but she’d never in her
life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent.”

“She was a blessed woman,” said Dinah; “God had given her a loving,
self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very
fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same
sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven years
old, she used to say, ‘You’ll have a friend on earth in your Aunt
Rachel, if I’m taken from you, for she has a kind heart,’ and I’m sure
I’ve found it so.”

“I don’t know how, child; anybody ’ud be cunning to do anything for
you, I think; you’re like the birds o’ th’ air, and live nobody knows
how. I’d ha’ been glad to behave to you like a mother’s sister, if
you’d come and live i’ this country where there’s some shelter and
victual for man and beast, and folks don’t live on the naked hills,
like poultry a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get
married to some decent man, and there’d be plenty ready to have you, if
you’d only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than
anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you’d marry Seth Bede,
as is a poor wool-gathering Methodist and’s never like to have a penny
beforehand, I know your uncle ’ud help you with a pig, and very like a
cow, for he’s allays been good-natur’d to my kin, for all they’re poor,
and made ’em welcome to the house; and ’ud do for you, I’ll be bound,
as much as ever he’d do for Hetty, though she’s his own niece. And
there’s linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I’ve got lots
o’ sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn’t made up.
There’s a piece o’ sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty
spun—she was a rare girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the
children couldn’t abide her; and, you know, the spinning’s going on
constant, and there’s new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears
out. But where’s the use o’ talking, if ye wonna be persuaded, and
settle down like any other woman in her senses, i’stead o’ wearing
yourself out with walking and preaching, and giving away every penny
you get, so as you’ve nothing saved against sickness; and all the
things you’ve got i’ the world, I verily believe, ’ud go into a bundle
no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you’ve got notions i’
your head about religion more nor what’s i’ the Catechism and the
Prayer-book.”

“But not more than what’s in the Bible, Aunt,” said Dinah.

“Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter,” Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather
sharply; “else why shouldn’t them as know best what’s in the Bible—the
parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it—do the same
as you do? But, for the matter o’ that, if everybody was to do like
you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to do
without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was
allays talking as we must despise the things o’ the world as you say, I
should like to know where the pick o’ the stock, and the corn, and the
best new-milk cheeses ’ud have to go. Everybody ’ud be wanting bread
made o’ tail ends and everybody ’ud be running after everybody else to
preach to ’em, istead o’ bringing up their families, and laying by
against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can’t be the right
religion.”

“Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to
forsake their work and their families. It’s quite right the land should
be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things of
this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their
families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the
Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul’s wants while they
are caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot
is cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits
us for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in
trying to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help
running if you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house;
the voice would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in
trouble or in danger, and you couldn’t rest without running to help her
and comfort her.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, “I know it
’ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You’d make me
the same answer, at th’ end. I might as well talk to the running brook
and tell it to stan’ still.”

The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs.
Poyser to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the
yard, the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands
all the while. But she had not been standing there more than five
minutes before she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a
flurried, awe-stricken tone, “If there isn’t Captain Donnithorne and
Mr. Irwine a-coming into the yard! I’ll lay my life they’re come to
speak about your preaching on the Green, Dinah; it’s you must answer
’em, for I’m dumb. I’ve said enough a’ready about your bringing such
disgrace upo’ your uncle’s family. I wouldn’t ha’ minded if you’d been
Mr. Poyser’s own niece—folks must put up wi’ their own kin, as they put
up wi’ their own noses—it’s their own flesh and blood. But to think of
a niece o’ mine being cause o’ my husband’s being turned out of his
farm, and me brought him no fortin but my savin’s——”

“Nay, dear Aunt Rachel,” said Dinah gently, “you’ve no cause for such
fears. I’ve strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my
uncle and the children from anything I’ve done. I didn’t preach without
direction.”

“Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction,” said Mrs.
Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. “When there’s a bigger
maggot than usual in your head you call it ‘direction’; and then
nothing can stir you—you look like the statty o’ the outside o’
Treddles’on church, a-starin’ and a-smilin’ whether it’s fair weather
or foul. I hanna common patience with you.”

By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got down
from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser
advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between
anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety
on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a
whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when
they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.

“Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?” said Mr.
Irwine, with his stately cordiality. “Our feet are quite dry; we shall
not soil your beautiful floor.”

“Oh, sir, don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Poyser. “Will you and the
captain please to walk into the parlour?”

“No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser,” said the captain, looking eagerly
round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not
find. “I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room
I know. I should like every farmer’s wife to come and look at it for a
pattern.”

“Oh, you’re pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat,” said Mrs.
Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain’s evident
good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw,
was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her.

“Poyser is not at home, is he?” said Captain Donnithorne, seating
himself where he could see along the short passage to the open
dairy-door.

“No, sir, he isn’t; he’s gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor,
about the wool. But there’s Father i’ the barn, sir, if he’d be of any
use.”

“No, thank you; I’ll just look at the whelps and leave a message about
them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband;
I want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when
he’s likely to be at liberty?”

“Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it’s o’ Treddles’on
market-day—that’s of a Friday, you know. For if he’s anywhere on the
farm we can send for him in a minute. If we’d got rid o’ the
Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of
it, for if ever anything happens, he’s sure to be gone to the
Scantlands. Things allays happen so contrairy, if they’ve a chance; and
it’s an unnat’ral thing to have one bit o’ your farm in one county and
all the rest in another.”

“Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce’s farm, especially
as he wants dairyland and you’ve got plenty. I think yours is the
prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if
I were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out,
and do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself.”

“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, “you wouldn’t like it at
all. As for farming, it’s putting money into your pocket wi’ your right
hand and fetching it out wi’ your left. As fur as I can see, it’s
raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for
yourself and your children as you go along. Not as you’d be like a poor
man as wants to get his bread—you could afford to lose as much money as
you liked i’ farming—but it’s poor fun losing money, I should think,
though I understan’ it’s what the great folks i’ London play at more
than anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey’s eldest
son had lost thousands upo’ thousands to the Prince o’ Wales, and they
said my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know
more about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think
as you’d like it; and this house—the draughts in it are enough to cut
you through, and it’s my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten,
and the rats i’ the cellar are beyond anything.”

“Why, that’s a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing
you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there’s no chance of
that. I’m not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I’m a
stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to
part with such good tenants as you.”

“Well, sir, if he thinks so well o’ Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you
could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five
closes, for my husband’s been asking and asking till he’s tired, and to
think o’ what he’s done for the farm, and’s never had a penny allowed
him, be the times bad or good. And as I’ve said to my husband often and
often, I’m sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t
be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o’ them as have got the
power i’ their hands, but it’s more than flesh and blood ’ull bear
sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and
hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may
swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green
again i’ the sheaf—and after all, at th’ end o’ the year, it’s like as
if you’d been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your
pains.”

Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along
without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The
confidence she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force
that overcame all resistance.

“I’m afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak
about the gates, Mrs. Poyser,” said the captain, “though I assure you
there’s no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your
husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within ten
miles of us; and as for the kitchen,” he added, smiling, “I don’t
believe there’s one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I’ve never
seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser.”

“Indeed, sir, it’s not fit for you to go in, for Hetty’s in the middle
o’ making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I’m quite
ashamed.” This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the
captain was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his
opinion of her to the appearance of her dairy.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s in capital order. Take me in,” said the
captain, himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.




Chapter VII
The Dairy


The dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets—such coolness, such
purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of
wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of
red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey
limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they
surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little
pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
the scale.

Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under
long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him
about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and
cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity
but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had been
bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be
interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty
tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of
themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not
only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a
beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle
rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to
toddle and to engage in conscious mischief—a beauty with which you can
never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to
comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel’s
was that sort of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to
despise all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of
mentors, continually gazed at Hetty’s charms by the sly, fascinated in
spite of herself; and after administering such a scolding as naturally
flowed from her anxiety to do well by her husband’s niece—who had no
mother of her own to scold her, poor thing!—she would often confess to
her husband, when they were safe out of hearing, that she firmly
believed, “the naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she
looked.”

It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty’s cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at
work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her
white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was
the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with
its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it
fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled
buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have
had when empty of her foot and ankle—of little use, unless you have
seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you
had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your
eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes
when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty
like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
day. Hetty’s was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false
air of innocence—the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand
in the middle of a bog.

And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty
girl is thrown in making up butter—tossing movements that give a
charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round
white neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the
hand, and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be
effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes.
And then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm—it is so
pure, so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a
beautiful firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover,
Hetty was particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one
performance of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe
criticism; so she handled it with all the grace that belongs to
mastery.

“I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
Mrs. Poyser,” said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently
admired the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede
turnips and shorthorns. “You know what is to happen then, and I shall
expect you to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest.
Will you promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don’t
get your promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the
smart young farmers will take care to secure you.”

Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire
could be excluded by any meaner partners.

“Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I’m
sure, whenever you’re pleased to dance with her, she’ll be proud and
thankful, if she stood still all the rest o’ th’ evening.”

“Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who
can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won’t you?” the captain
continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him.

Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
half-coquettish glance at him as she said, “Yes, thank you, sir.”

“And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your
little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on
the estate to be there—all those who will be fine young men and women
when I’m a bald old fellow.”

“Oh dear, sir, that ’ull be a long time first,” said Mrs. Poyser, quite
overcome at the young squire’s speaking so lightly of himself, and
thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount
this remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought
to be “very full of his jokes,” and was a great favourite throughout
the estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure
things would be different when the reins got into his hands—there was
to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and
returns of ten per cent.

“But where _is_ Totty to-day?” he said. “I want to see her.”

“Where is the little un, Hetty?” said Mrs. Poyser. “She came in here
not long ago.”

“I don’t know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think.”

The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty,
passed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however,
without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her
person and attire unfit for presentation.

“And do you carry the butter to market when you’ve made it?” said the
Captain to Hetty, meanwhile.

“Oh no, sir; not when it’s so heavy. I’m not strong enough to carry it.
Alick takes it on horseback.”

“No, I’m sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights.
But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don’t you? Why
don’t you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it’s so green and
pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church.”

“Aunt doesn’t like me to go a-walking only when I’m going somewhere,”
said Hetty. “But I go through the Chase sometimes.”

“And don’t you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw
you once in the housekeeper’s room.”

“It isn’t Mrs. Best, it’s Mrs. Pomfret, the lady’s maid, as I go to
see. She’s teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I’m going to
tea with her to-morrow afternoon.”

The reason why there had been space for this _tête-à-tête_ can only be
known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered
rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment
allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore.
But now she appeared holding her mother’s hand—the end of her round
nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and
water.

“Here she is!” said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the
low stone shelf. “Here’s Totty! By the by, what’s her other name? She
wasn’t christened Totty.”

“Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte’s her christened
name. It’s a name i’ Mr. Poyser’s family: his grandmother was named
Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it’s got to
Totty. To be sure it’s more like a name for a dog than a Christian
child.”

“Totty’s a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a
pocket on?” said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets.

Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a
tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse.

“It dot notin’ in it,” she said, as she looked down at it very
earnestly.

“No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I’ve got some
things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare
I’ve got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise
they make in Totty’s pink pocket.” Here he shook the pocket with the
five sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose
in great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by
staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in
the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, “Oh for shame,
you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he’s given you, I’m
sure, sir, it’s very kind of you; but she’s spoiled shameful; her
father won’t have her said nay in anything, and there’s no managing
her. It’s being the youngest, and th’ only gell.”

“Oh, she’s a funny little fatty; I wouldn’t have her different. But I
must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me.”

With a “good-bye,” a bright glance, and a bow to Hetty Arthur left the
dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector
had been so much interested in his conversation with Dinah that he
would not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what
they had been saying to each other.




Chapter VIII
A Vocation


Dinah, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of
the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr.
Irwine looking at her and advancing towards her. He had never yet
spoken to her, or stood face to face with her, and her first thought,
as her eyes met his, was, “What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that
the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish.”
The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to
her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place
if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance.

“You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood, I think?” were his first
words, as he seated himself opposite to her.

“No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. But my aunt was very
kind, wanting me to have rest from my work there, because I’d been ill,
and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while.”

“Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once had occasion to go there.
It’s a dreary bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill there; but
that’s many years ago now. I suppose the place is a good deal changed
by the employment that mill must have brought.”

“It _is_ changed so far as the mill has brought people there, who get a
livelihood for themselves by working in it, and make it better for the
tradesfolks. I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful, for
thereby I have enough and to spare. But it’s still a bleak place, as
you say, sir—very different from this country.”

“You have relations living there, probably, so that you are attached to
the place as your home?”

“I had an aunt there once; she brought me up, for I was an orphan. But
she was taken away seven years ago, and I have no other kindred that I
know of, besides my Aunt Poyser, who is very good to me, and would have
me come and live in this country, which to be sure is a good land,
wherein they eat bread without scarceness. But I’m not free to leave
Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like
the small grass on the hill-top.”

“Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there;
you are a Methodist—a Wesleyan, I think?”

“Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause to
be thankful for the privileges I have had thereby from my earliest
childhood.”

“And have you been long in the habit of preaching? For I understand you
preached at Hayslope last night.”

“I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one.”

“Your Society sanctions women’s preaching, then?”

“It doesn’t forbid them, sir, when they’ve a clear call to the work,
and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the
strengthening of God’s people. Mrs. Fletcher, as you may have heard
about, was the first woman to preach in the Society, I believe, before
she was married, when she was Miss Bosanquet; and Mr. Wesley approved
of her undertaking the work. She had a great gift, and there are many
others now living who are precious fellow-helpers in the work of the
ministry. I understand there’s been voices raised against it in the
Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to
nought. It isn’t for men to make channels for God’s Spirit, as they
make channels for the watercourses, and say, ‘Flow here, but flow not
there.’”

“But don’t you find some danger among your people—I don’t mean to say
that it is so with you, far from it—but don’t you find sometimes that
both men and women fancy themselves channels for God’s Spirit, and are
quite mistaken, so that they set about a work for which they are unfit
and bring holy things into contempt?”

“Doubtless it is so sometimes; for there have been evil-doers among us
who have sought to deceive the brethren, and some there are who deceive
their own selves. But we are not without discipline and correction to
put a check upon these things. There’s a very strict order kept among
us, and the brethren and sisters watch for each other’s souls as they
that must give account. They don’t go every one his own way and say,
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”

“But tell me—if I may ask, and I am really interested in knowing it—how
you first came to think of preaching?”

“Indeed, sir, I didn’t think of it at all—I’d been used from the time I
was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and
sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in class, and was much
drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach,
for when I’m not greatly wrought upon, I’m too much given to sit still
and keep by myself. It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with
the thought of God overflowing my soul—as the pebbles lie bathed in the
Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great—aren’t they, sir? They seem to
lie upon us like a deep flood; and it’s my besetment to forget where I
am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could
give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of
them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes
it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words
were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts
are full and we can’t help it. And those were always times of great
blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a
congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little
children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite
suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work
that was laid upon me.”

“But tell me the circumstances—just how it was, the very day you began
to preach.”

“It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man,
one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps—that’s a
village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines,
and where there’s no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep
without a shepherd. It’s better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we
set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a
wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where
there’s no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look
smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you
feel the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton,
brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of
falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and
praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as
carrying on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village,
the people were expecting him, for he’d appointed the time and the
place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the
Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest,
so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn’t stand
up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the
cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people, thinking we’d go
into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them. But as I
passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at
the doors, and the hard looks of the men, who seemed to have their eyes
no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had
been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky, I felt a great movement
in my soul, and I trembled as if I was shaken by a strong spirit
entering into my weak body. And I went to where the little flock of
people was gathered together, and stepped on the low wall that was
built against the green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given
to me abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages,
and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the Lord.
That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I’ve preached ever
since.”

Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in
her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling
treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to
gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Irwine
was deeply interested. He said to himself, “He must be a miserable prig
who would act the pedagogue here: one might as well go and lecture the
trees for growing in their own shape.”

“And you never feel any embarrassment from the sense of your youth—that
you are a lovely young woman on whom men’s eyes are fixed?” he said
aloud.

“No, I’ve no room for such feelings, and I don’t believe the people
ever take notice about that. I think, sir, when God makes His presence
felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any
heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.
I’ve preached to as rough ignorant people as can be in the villages
about Snowfield—men that looked very hard and wild—but they never said
an uncivil word to me, and often thanked me kindly as they made way for
me to pass through the midst of them.”

“_That_ I can believe—that I can well believe,” said Mr. Irwine,
emphatically. “And what did you think of your hearers last night, now?
Did you find them quiet and attentive?”

“Very quiet, sir, but I saw no signs of any great work upon them,
except in a young girl named Bessy Cranage, towards whom my heart
yearned greatly, when my eyes first fell on her blooming youth, given
up to folly and vanity. I had some private talk and prayer with her
afterwards, and I trust her heart is touched. But I’ve noticed that in
these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green
pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the
cattle, there’s a strange deadness to the Word, as different as can be
from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy
woman who preaches there. It’s wonderful how rich is the harvest of
souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a
prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil. I
think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so
dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at
ease.”

“Why, yes, our farm-labourers are not easily roused. They take life
almost as slowly as the sheep and cows. But we have some intelligent
workmen about here. I daresay you know the Bedes; Seth Bede, by the by,
is a Methodist.”

“Yes, I know Seth well, and his brother Adam a little. Seth is a
gracious young man—sincere and without offence; and Adam is like the
patriarch Joseph, for his great skill and knowledge and the kindness he
shows to his brother and his parents.”

“Perhaps you don’t know the trouble that has just happened to them?
Their father, Matthias Bede, was drowned in the Willow Brook last
night, not far from his own door. I’m going now to see Adam.”

“Ah, their poor aged mother!” said Dinah, dropping her hands and
looking before her with pitying eyes, as if she saw the object of her
sympathy. “She will mourn heavily, for Seth has told me she’s of an
anxious, troubled heart. I must go and see if I can give her any help.”

As she rose and was beginning to fold up her work, Captain Donnithorne,
having exhausted all plausible pretexts for remaining among the
milk-pans, came out of the dairy, followed by Mrs. Poyser. Mr. Irwine
now rose also, and, advancing towards Dinah, held out his hand, and
said, “Good-bye. I hear you are going away soon; but this will not be
the last visit you will pay your aunt—so we shall meet again, I hope.”

His cordiality towards Dinah set all Mrs. Poyser’s anxieties at rest,
and her face was brighter than usual, as she said, “I’ve never asked
after Mrs. Irwine and the Miss Irwines, sir; I hope they’re as well as
usual.”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poyser, except that Miss Anne has one of her bad
headaches to-day. By the by, we all liked that nice cream-cheese you
sent us—my mother especially.”

“I’m very glad, indeed, sir. It is but seldom I make one, but I
remembered Mrs. Irwine was fond of ’em. Please to give my duty to her,
and to Miss Kate and Miss Anne. They’ve never been to look at my
poultry this long while, and I’ve got some beautiful speckled chickens,
black and white, as Miss Kate might like to have some of amongst hers.”

“Well, I’ll tell her; she must come and see them. Good-bye,” said the
rector, mounting his horse.

“Just ride slowly on, Irwine,” said Captain Donnithorne, mounting also.
“I’ll overtake you in three minutes. I’m only going to speak to the
shepherd about the whelps. Good-bye, Mrs. Poyser; tell your husband I
shall come and have a long talk with him soon.”

Mrs. Poyser curtsied duly, and watched the two horses until they had
disappeared from the yard, amidst great excitement on the part of the
pigs and the poultry, and under the furious indignation of the
bull-dog, who performed a Pyrrhic dance, that every moment seemed to
threaten the breaking of his chain. Mrs. Poyser delighted in this noisy
exit; it was a fresh assurance to her that the farm-yard was well
guarded, and that no loiterers could enter unobserved; and it was not
until the gate had closed behind the captain that she turned into the
kitchen again, where Dinah stood with her bonnet in her hand, waiting
to speak to her aunt, before she set out for Lisbeth Bede’s cottage.

Mrs. Poyser, however, though she noticed the bonnet, deferred remarking
on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at Mr. Irwine’s
behaviour.

“Why, Mr. Irwine wasn’t angry, then? What did he say to you, Dinah?
Didn’t he scold you for preaching?”

“No, he was not at all angry; he was very friendly to me. I was quite
drawn out to speak to him; I hardly know how, for I had always thought
of him as a worldly Sadducee. But his countenance is as pleasant as the
morning s

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