room; I’n got my bed laid i’ th’ little room o’er the back kitchen, an’ ye can lie beside me. I’d be glad to ha’ ye wi’ me to speak to i’ th’ night, for ye’ve got a nice way o’ talkin’. It puts me i’ mind o’ the swallows as was under the thack last ’ear when they fust begun to sing low an’ soft-like i’ th’ mornin’. Eh, but my old man war fond o’ them birds! An’ so war Adam, but they’n ne’er comed again this ’ear. Happen they’re dead too.”
“There,” said Dinah, “now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear Mother—for I’m your daughter to-night, you know—I should like you to wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did, when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child. But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now the child was dead, he said, ‘While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.’”
“Eh, that’s a true word,” said Lisbeth. “Yea, my old man wonna come back to me, but I shall go to him—the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as ye like wi’ me: there’s a clean cap i’ that drawer, an’ I’ll go i’ the back kitchen an’ wash my face. An’ Seth, thee may’st reach down Adam’s new Bible wi’ th’ picters in, an’ she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I like them words—‘I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.’”
Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Dinah expressed it, “she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak.” And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
And so there was earnest prayer—there was faith, love, and hope pouring forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love, and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing life. She couldn’t understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under the subduing influence of Dinah’s spirit, she felt that she must be patient and still.
Chapter XI.
In the Cottage.
It was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog’s pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but Dinah was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Seth, for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night before. Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last by Dinah’s unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning sleep than was usual with him.
But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to work again when he had had his breakfast.
“There’s nothing but what’s bearable as long as a man can work,” he said to himself; “the natur o’ things doesn’t change, though it seems as if one’s own life was nothing but change. The square o’ four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man’s miserable as when he’s happy; and the best o’ working is, it gives you a grip hold o’ things outside your own lot.”
As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the workshop to look out the wood for his father’s coffin, intending that he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge’s and have the coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not see and hear the sad task going forward at home.
He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light rapid foot on the stairs—certainly not his mother’s. He had been in bed and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and Adam’s imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought—it could not be Hetty; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was to go and see who it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to the kitchen door.
“How do you do, Adam Bede?” said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing from her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. “I trust you feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day.”
It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was not very vividly conscious of any woman’s presence except Hetty’s, and he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards her for his brother’s sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in her life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which deepened as she wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his forgetfulness.
“I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see my mother in her trouble,” he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. “I hope my mother was thankful to have you,” he added, wondering rather anxiously what had been Dinah’s reception.
