Adam Bede

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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.