 CHAPTER 15 THE TWO BED CHAMBERS Hedy and Dina both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light, which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of the moon, more than enough strength to enable Hedy to move about and undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the old painted linen press, on which she hung her hat and gown. She could see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin cushion. She could see a reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking glass, quite as distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her hair and put on her nightcap. A queer old looking glass, Hedy got into an ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been considered a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the poiser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of Jean-Tierre household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for it. It had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it. It had a firm, hoggony base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners, without giving you the trouble of reaching them. Above all it had a brass candle socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic air to the very last. But Hedy objected to it because it had numerous dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing would remove, and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was fixed in an upright position, so that she could only get one good view of her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting down on a low chair before her dressing table. And the dressing table was no dressing table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the most awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hedy this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual. Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and unlocking one of the lower drawers in the chest reached from it two short bits of wax candle, secretly bought at Triddleston, and stuck them in the two brass sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the candles, and last of all a small red-frained, shilling-looking glass without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning her head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her brush and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her hair and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia Donothorn's dressing room. It was soon done, and the dark, high-synthened curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form a dark curtain, throwing in to relieve her round white neck. Then she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before her, still like the picture. Even the old, mottled glass couldn't help sending back a lovely image, nonetheless lovely because heady stays were not of white satin, such as I feel sure heroines must generally wear, but of dark, greenish cotton texture. Oh yes, she was very pretty. Captain Donothorn thought so. Prettier than anybody about Hayslope, prettier than any of the ladies she had ever seen visiting at the Chase. Indeed it seemed fine ladies were rather old and ugly, and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's daughter, who was called the beauty of Trudelston. And heady looked at herself tonight with quite a different sensation from what she had ever felt before. There was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over again those pretty things she had heard in the wood. His arm was round her, and the delicate rose scent of his hair was with her still. The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return. But heady seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting, for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the linen press, and a pair of large earrings out of the sacred drawer from which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of wrents, but it would make a becoming board around her shoulders, and set off the whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little earrings she had in her ears. Oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her ears bored! And put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked just as well as what the ladies were. And so she sat down again with the large earrings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round her shoulders. She looked down at her arms. No arms could be prettier down to a little way below the elbow. They were white and plump, and dimpled to match her cheeks. But towards the wrist she thought with fixation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that ladies never did. Captain Donathon couldn't like her to go on doing work. He would like to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings. He would like to see her in nice clothes with silk clocks to them, for he must love her very much. No one else had ever put his arm around her and kissed her in that way. He would want to marry her and make a lady of her. She could hardly dare to shape the thought. Yet how else could it be? Marry her quite secretly, as Mr. James, the doctor's assistant, married the doctor's niece, and nobody ever found it out for a long while after, and then it was of no use to be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in Hedy's hearing. She didn't know how it would be, but it was quite plain the old squire could never be told anything about it, for Hedy was ready to faint with awe and fright if she came across him at the chase. He might have been earth-born for what she knew. It had never entered her mind that he had been young like other men. He had always been the old squire at whom everybody was frightened. Oh, it was impossible to think how it would be. But Captain Donathon would know. He was a great gentleman, and could have his way in everything, and could buy everything he liked. And nothing could be as it had been again. Perhaps some day she should be a grandlady and ride in her coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded silk, with feathers in her hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like Miss Lydia and Lady Daisy, when she saw them going into the dining room one evening as she peeped through the little round window in the lobby. Only she should not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same thickness like Lady Daisy, but very pretty, with her hair done in a great many different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes in a white one. She didn't know what she liked best, and Mary Burge and everybody would perhaps see her going out in her carriage, or rather, they would hear of it. It was impossible to imagine these things happening at Hayslip inside of her aunt. At the thought of all this splendor, Hedy got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with a bang on the floor. But she was too eagerly occupied with her vision to care about picking it up, and after a momentary start began to pace with a pigeon-like statelyness backwards and forwards along her room, in her colored stays and colored skirt, and the old black lace scarf around her shoulders, and the great glass earrings in her ears. How pretty the little pest looks in that odd dress. It would be the easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her. There is such a sweet baby-like roundness about her face and figure. The delicate dark rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck. Her great dark eyes with their long eyelashes touch one so strangely as if an imprisoned frisky sprite looked out from them. Ah, what a price the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hedy. How the man envy him who comes to the wedding breakfast and see her hanging on his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round, soft, flexible thing. Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes wrong, it must be the husband's fault there. He can make her what he likes, that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so, too. The little darling is so fond of him. Her little vanities are so bewitching he wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser. Those kitten-like glances and movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise. Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own which she uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids, delicate as petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will do it on her children. She is almost a child herself and the little pink round things will hang about her like florets around the central flower and the husband will look on. He's smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses, to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom towards which his sweet wife will look reverently and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage such as they made in the golden age when the men were all wise and majestic and the women all lovely and loving. It was very much in this way that our friend Adam B. thought about Hedy. Only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself, it is only because she doesn't love me well enough. And he was sure that her love, whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration, pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of any pretty woman. If you ever could, without hard head-breaking demonstration, believe evil of the one supremely pretty woman who has bewitched you. No, people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it. Arthur Donathon, too, had the same sort of notion about Hedy so far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering, tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate. And if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself being virtuously tender to her because the poor thing is so clingingly fond of him. God made these dear women so, and it is a convenient arrangement in case of sickness. After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way sometimes and must think both better and worse of people than they deserve. Nature has her language and she is not unvaricious, but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. Long dark eyelashes. Now, what can be more exquisite? I find it impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep gray eye with a long dark eyelash in spite of an experience which has shown me that they may go along with deceit, speculation, and stupidity. But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals, or else that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us. No eyelashes could be more beautiful than headies, and now, while she walks with her pigeon-like statelyness along the room and looks down on her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim, ill-defined pictures that her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future, but of every picture she is the central figure in fine clothes. Captain Donathon is very close to her, putting his arm around her, perhaps kissing her, and everybody else is admiring and envying her, especially Mary Burge, whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the sight of headies or splendid toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle with this dream of the future, any loving thought of her second parents, of the children she had helped attend, of any youthful companion, any pet animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not one. There are some plans that have hardly any roots. You may tear them from their native nook of rock or wall and just lay them over your ornamental flowerpot and they blossom none the worse. Hedy could have cast all her past life behind her and never cared to be reminded of it again. I think she had no feeling at all towards the old house and did not like the Jacob's ladder and the long row of hollyhocks in the garden better than other flowers, perhaps not so well. It was wonderful how little she seemed to care about waiting on her uncle, who had been a good father to her. She hardly ever remembered to reach him his pipe at the right time without being told, unless a visitor happened to be there, who would have a better opportunity of seeing her as she walked across the earth. Hedy did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people and as for those tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Toddy, they had been the very nuisance of her life as bad as buzzing insects that will come teasing you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm for the children born before him had died and so Hedy had had them all three, one after the other, toddling by her side in the meadow or playing about her on wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were out of hand now but Toddy was still a day-long plague, worse than either of the others had been because there was more fuss made about her and there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hedy would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again. They were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time for the lambs were got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys, Hedy would have hated the very word hatching if her aunt had not bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under their mother's wing never touched Hedy with any pleasure. That was not the sort of prettiness she cared about but she did care about the prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Trattleston Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled, so charming as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the hen coop that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to suspect her of that hardness. Molly the housemaid with a turn up nose and a protuberant jaw was really a tender hearted girl and as Mrs. Poiser said, a jewel to look after the poultry. But her stolid face showed nothing of this maternal delight any more than a brown earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it. It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty. So it is not surprising that Mrs. Poiser with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected from Hedy in the way of feeling. And in moments of indignation she had sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband. She's no better than a peacock as it strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks in the parish was dying. There's nothing seems to give her a turn in the inside not even when we thought Toddy had tumbled into the pit. We had to think of that dear cherub and we found her with her little shoes stuck in the mud and crying fit to break her heart by the far horse bit. But Hedy never minded it, I could see, though she's been at the nursing of the child ever since it was a baby. It's my believer her heart's as hard as pebble. Nay, nay, said Mr. Poiser, they mustn't judge Hedy too hard. Them young girls are like the unripe grain. They'll make good meal by and by but they're squashy as yet. They'd see Hedy'll be all right and she's got a good husband and children of her own. I don't want to be hard upon the gal. She's got clever fingers of her own and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her with butter for she's got a cool hand. And let be what may, I'd strive to do my part by Anissa yours and that I've done for I've taught her everything as belongs to a house and I've told her her duty often enough though, God knows, no breath to spare and that catching pain comes on dreadful by times. With them three girls in the house I'd need have twice the strength to keep them up to their work. It's like having roast meat at three fires. As soon as you've blasted one, another's burning. Hedy stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery which Mrs. Poiser disapproved but she would have been ready to die with shame, vexation and fright if her aunt had this moment open the door and seen her with her bits of candle lighted and strutting about decked in her scarf and earrings. To prevent such a surprise, she always bolted her door and she had not forgotten to do so tonight. It was well for there now came a light tap and Hedy with a leaping heart rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She did not stay to take out her earrings but she threw off her scarf and let it fall on the floor before the light tap came again. We shall know how it was that the light tap came if we leave Hedy for a short time and return to Dina at the moment when she had delivered Tati to her mother's arms and was come upstairs to her bedroom adjoining Hedy's. Dina delighted in her bedroom window being on the second story of that tall house it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window where she could place her chair and now the first thing she did on entering her room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful fields beyond which the large moon was rising just above the hedgerow elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying and next to that the meadow where the grass was half moan and lay in silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full for there was to be only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a long time to come but she thought little of leaving the mere scene for to her bleak snow field had just as many charms. She thought of all the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful fields and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance forever. She thought of the struggles and the wariness that might lie before them in the rest of their life's journey when she would be away from them and know nothing of what was befalling them and the pressure of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed her eyes that she might feel more intensely the presence of a love and sympathy deeper and more tender than was breath from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah's mode of praying and solitude simply to close her eyes and to feel herself enclosed by the divine presence. Then gradually her fears, her yearning anxieties for others melted away like ice crystals in a warm ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still with her hands crossed on her lap and the pale light resting on her calm face for at least 10 minutes when she was startled by a loud sound apparently of something falling in Heddy's room. But like all sounds that fall on her ears in a state of abstraction, it had no distinct character but was simply loud and startling so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted it rightly. She rose and listened but all was quiet afterwards and she reflected that Heddy might merely have knocked something down in getting into bed. She began slowly to undress but now owing to the suggestion of this sound her thoughts became concentrated on Heddy, that sweet young thing with life and all its trails before her, the solemn daily duties of the wife and mother and her mind so unprepared for them all that merely on little foolish selfish pleasures like a child hugging its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in which it will have to bear hunger and cold and unsheltered darkness. Dina felt a double care for Heddy because she shared Seth's anxious interest in his brother's lot and she had not come to the conclusion that Heddy did not love Adam well enough to marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of any warm, self-devoting love in Heddy's nature to regard the coldness of her behavior towards Adam as any indication that he was not the man she would like to have for her husband. Then this blank in Heddy's nature, instead of exciting Dina's dislike, only touched her with a deeper pity. The lovely face and form affected her as beauty always affects a pure and tender mind free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent divine gift that gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow with which it was mingled as the canker in the lily white bud is more grievous to behold than in a common pot herb. By the time Dina had undressed and put on her nightgown, this feeling about Heddy had gathered a painful intensity. Her imagination had created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow in which she saw the poor thing struggling, torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and finding none. It was in this way that Dina's imagination and sympathy acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a deep longing to go now and pour into Heddy's ear all the words of tender warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Heddy was already asleep. Dina put her ear to the partition and heard still some slight noises which convinced her that Heddy was not yet in bed. So she hesitated. She was not quite certain of a divine direction. The voice that told her to go to Heddy seemed no stronger than the other voice which said that Heddy was wary and that going to her now in an unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately. Dina was not satisfied with the more unmistakable guidance than those inward voices. There was late enough for her, if she opened her Bible, to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her. She knew the physiognomy of every page and could tell on what book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number. It was a small, thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges. Dina laid its sideways on the window edge where the light was strongest and then opened it with her forefinger. The first words she looked at were those at the top of the left-hand page and they all wept sore and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him. That was enough for Dina. She had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus when Paul had felt bound to open his heart in Elastic's rotation in mourning. She hesitated no longer, but opening her own door gently went and tapped on Heddy's. We know she had to tap twice because Heddy had to put out her candles and throw off her black-laced scarf, but after the second tap, the door was opened immediately. Dina said, "'Will you let me come in, Heddy?' and Heddy, without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider and let her in." What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that mingled twilight and moonlight. Heddy, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back and the bobbles in her ears. Dina, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has returned charged with sublime her secrets and a sublime her love. They were nearly of the same height. Dina evidently a little taller as she put her arm round Heddy's waist and kissed her forehead. "'I knew you were not in bed, my dear,' she said in her sweet, clear voice, which was irritating to Heddy, mingling with her own peevish fixation like music with jangling chains. "'For I heard you moving, and I long to speak to you again tonight, for it is the last but one that I shall be here, and we don't know what may happen tomorrow to keep us apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?' "'Oh, yes.' "'Oh, yes,' said Heddy, hastily turning round and reaching the second chair in the room, glad that Dina looked as if she did not notice her earrings. Dina sat down and Heddy began to brush together her hair before twisting it up, doing it with an air of excessive indifference which belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Dina's eyes gradually relieved her. They seemed unobservant of all details. "'Dear Heddy,' she said, "'it has been borne in upon my mind tonight that you may someday be in trouble. Trouble is appointed for us all here below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help than the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever you are in trouble and need a friend that will always feel for you and love you, you have got that friend in Dina Morris at Snowfield, and if you come to her or send for her, she'll never forget this night and the words you're speaking to you now. Will you remember it, Heddy?' "'Yes,' said Heddy, rather frightened. "'But why should you think I shall be in trouble? Do you know of anything?' Heddy had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Dina leaned forwards and took her hands as she answered. "'Because, dear, trouble comes to us all in this life. We set our hearts on things which isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing. The people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us. Sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies. We go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen to you. And I desire for you that while you are young, you should seek for strength from your heavenly Father, that you may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day.' Dina paused and released Heddy's hands that she might not hinder her. Heddy sat quite still. She felt no response within herself to Dina's anxious affectation, but Dina's words uttered with solemn pathetic distinctness affected her with a chill fear. Her flesh had died away almost to paleness. She had the timidity of a luxurious pleasure-seeking nature which shrinks from the hint of pain. Dina saw the effect, and her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest, till Heddy, full of a vague fear that something evil was some time to befall her, began to cry. It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes, incurred in taking things up by the wrong end and fancying her space wider than it is. Dina had never seen Heddy affected in this way before, and with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing and began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Heddy was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time, she became irritated under Dina's caress. She pushed her away impatiently and said, with a childish sobbing voice, don't talk to me so, Dina, why do you come to frighten me? I've never done anything to you. Why can't you let me be? Poor Dina felt a pain. She was too wise to persist and only said mildly, yes, my dear, you're tired. I won't hinder you any longer. Make haste and get into bed. Good night. She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had been a ghost, but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that filled her heart. As for Heddy, she was soon in the wood again, her waking dreams being merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused. End of chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Adam Bede. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Adam Bede by George Elliott. Chapter 16, Lynx. Arthur Donothorn, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to go and see Mr. Irwin this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing so early that he determines to go before breakfast instead of after. The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half past nine, the ladies of the family having a different breakfast hour. Arthur will have an early ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best over a meal. The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in an enlightened age and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol shot, is quite a well-bred and smiling procedure. Now it has become a request for a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third glasses of Claret. Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms that they committed you to the fulfillment of a resolution by some outward deed. When you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing particular to say. However, Arthur Donothorn, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open his heart to the rector and the swirling sound of the scythe as he passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now for getting in the hay about which the farmers have been fearful and there is something so helpful in the sharing of a joy that is general and not merely personal, that this thought about the hay harvest reacts on a state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A man about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to be felt out of a child's story book, but when you are among the fields and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to simple natural pleasures. Arthur had passed the village of Hayslip and was approaching the Brockston side of the hill. When, at a turning in the road, he saw a figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to mistake for anyone else than Adam Bede, even if there had been no gray tail as shepherd dog at his heels. He was striding along at his usual rapid pace and Arthur pushed on his horse to overtake him for he retained too much of his boyish feeling for Adam to miss an opportunity of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that good fellow did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage. Our friend Arthur liked to do everything that was handsome and to have his handsome deeds recognized. Adam looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's heels and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam would have done more for Arthur Donothorn than for any other young man in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have lost than the two feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket. It was Arthur's present, bought with his pocket money when he was a fair-haired lad of eleven and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with gifts of superfluous thread reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a pride in the little squire in those early days and the feeling had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of rank and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to everyone who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for questioning them. He had no theories about setting the world to rights but he saw there was a great deal of damage done by building with ill-seasoned timber by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of things by slovenly joiner's work and by hasty contracts that could never be fulfilled without ruining somebody and he resolved for his part to set his face against such doings. On these points, he would have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in Loamshire or Stonyshire either but he felt that beyond these it would be better for him to defer to people who were more knowing than himself. He saw as plainly as possible how ill the woods on this state were managed and the shameful state of the farm buildings and if Old Squire Donothorn had asked him the effect of this mismanagement he would have spoken his opinion without flinching but the impulse to a respectful demeanor towards a gentleman would have been strong within him all the while. The word gentleman had a spell for Adam and as he often said, he couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxied to his betters. I must remind you again that Adam had the blood of the peasant in his veins and that since he was in his prime half a century ago you must expect some of his characteristics to be obsolete. Towards the young Squire this instinctive reverence of Adams was assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that he thought far more of Arthur's good qualities and attached far more value to very slight actions of his than if they had been the qualities and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it would be a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young Squire came into this state. Such a generous open-hearted disposition as he had and an uncommon notion about improvements and repairs considering he was only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect and affection in the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Arthur Donothorn wrote up. Well, Adam, how are you? said Arthur holding out his hand. He never shook hands with any of the farmers and Adam felt the honor keenly. I could swear to your back a long way off. It's just the same back only broader as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember? Aye, sir, I remember. It'd be a poor look out if folks didn't remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no more about old friends than we do about new ones then. You're going to Brockston, I suppose? said Arthur, putting his horse on at a slow pace while Adam walked by his side. How are you going to the rectory? No, sir, I'm going to see about Bradwell's barn. They're afraid of the roof pushing the walls out and I'm going to see what can be done with it before we send the stuff and the workmen. Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Adam, doesn't he? I should think he will make you his partner soon. He will if he's wise. Nay, sir, I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do this business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as a drive and nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it. I know that, Adam. I know you work for him as well as if you were working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now and could turn the business to better account, perhaps. The old man must give up his business some time and he has no son. I suppose you'll want a son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of his own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into the business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest some money in that way for the sake of having you settled on the estate. I'm sure I should profit by it in the end and perhaps I shall be better off in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I'm of age and when I've paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look about me. You're very good to say so, sir, and I'm not unthinkful. But, Adam continued in a decided tone, I shouldn't like to make any offers to Mr. Burge or to have any made for me. I see no clear road to a partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that'd be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair interest then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time. Very well, Adam, said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwin had said about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge. We'll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be buried? On Sunday, sir, Mr. Irwin's coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad when it's over, for I think my mother will perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people. They've no way of working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree. You've had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam. I don't think you've ever been hair-brained and light-hearted, like other youngsters. You've always had some care on your mind. Why, yes, sir, but that's nothing to make a fuss about. If we're men and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't be like the birds as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their wings and never know their kin when they see them and get a fresh lot every year. I've had enough to be thankful for. I always had health and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work, and I counted a great thing as I've had Bartle Massey's night school to go to. He's helped me to knowledge I could never have got by myself. What a rare fellow you are, Adam, said Arthur, after a pause in which he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. I could hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you. God forbid I should ever do that, sir, said Adam, looking around at Arthur and smiling. I used to fight for fun, but I've never done that since I was the cause of poor gill-tranter being laid up for a fortnight. I'll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel. If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up. Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that made him say it presently, I should think now, Adam, you never have any struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had made up your mind. It was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you would knock down your drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean, you are never shilly, shall he, first making up your mind that you won't do a thing and then doing it after all? Well, said Adam slowly, after a moment's hesitation. No, I don't remember ever being seesaw in that way. When I had made my mind up, as you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out of my mouth for things when I know I should have a heavy conscience after them. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit of bad workmanship. You never see the end of the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor lookout to come into the world to make your fellow creatures worse off instead of better. But there's a difference between the things folks call wrong. I'm not for making a sin of every little fool's trick or bit of nonsense anybody may be led into, like some of them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether it isn't worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit of fun. But it isn't my way to be seesaw about anything. I think my fault lies the other way. When I've said a thing, if it's only to myself, it's hard for me to go back. Yes, that's just what I expected of you, said Arthur. You've got an iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man's resolution may be, it costs him something to carry it out now and then. We may determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our pockets, but we can't prevent our mouths from watering. That's true, sir, but there's nothing like settling with ourselves, as there's a deal we must do without in this life. It's no use looking on life as if it was a tredlescent fare, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where's the use of me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do. I'm not sure of that, Adam. You've had four or five years of experience more than I've had, and I think your life has been a better school to you than college has been to me. Why, sir, you seem to think of college something like what Bartol Lassie does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders, just good for nothing, but to hold the stuff is his poured into him. But he's got a tongue like a sharp blade Bartol has. It never touches anything, but it cuts. Here's the turning, sir. I must bid you good morning as you're going to the rectory. Goodbye, Adam, goodbye. Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate and walked along the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the rector always breakfasted in his study and the study lay on the left hand of this door, opposite the dining room. It was a small low room belonging to the old part of the house, dark with the somber covers of the books that line the walls. Yet it looked very cheery this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell a slant on the great glass globe with goldfish in it, which stood on a scatliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast table, and by the side of this breakfast table was a group which would have made any room enticing. In the crimson damask, easy chair set Mr. Irwin with that radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning toilet. His finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno's brown curly back and close to Juno's tail which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure. The two brown pups were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat Pug with the air of a maiden lady who looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses which she made as little show as possible of observing. On the table at Mr. Irwin's elbow lay the first volume of the foolish eschelis which Arthur knew well by sight and the silver coffee pot which Carol was bringing in sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast. Hello, Arthur, that's a good fellow. You're just in time, said Mr. Irwin as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window sill. Carol, we shall want more coffee and eggs and haven't you got some cold foul for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days, Arthur. You haven't been to breakfast with me these five years. It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast, said Arthur, and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn't agree with him. Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose. He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwin's presence than the confidence which he had thought quite easy before suddenly appeared the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of shaking hands, he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make Irwin understand his position unless he told him those little scenes in the wood and how could he tell them without looking like a fool? And then his weakness in coming back from Gowens and doing the very opposite of what he intended. Irwin would think him a shully shally fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way. The conversation might lead up to it. I like breakfast time better than any other moment in the day, said Mr. Irwin. No dust is settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favorite book by me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much that regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become studious again, but presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has killed a hare, and when I've got through my justicing, as Carol calls it, I'm inclined for a ride round the glib, and on my way back I meet with the master of the workhouse who has got a long story of a mutinous pauper to tell me. And so the day goes on, and I'm always the same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D'Oily left Treadleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should have had a pleasanter prospect before me, but scholarship doesn't run in your family blood. No, indeed. It is well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in parliament six or seven years hence. Cross engines, itterabimus, ecwar, and a few shreds of that sort will perhaps stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinion so as to introduce them. But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a country gentleman as far as I can see. He'd much better have a knowledge of manures. I've been reading your friend Arthur Young's books lately, and there's nothing I should like better than to carry out some of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their land. And as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives, but there's nothing I should like better than to undertake the stonisher side of the estate, it's in a dismal condition, and set improvements on foot and gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like to know all the laborers and see them touching their hats to me with a look of goodwill. Bravo, Arthur. A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn't make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing the quantity of food to maintain scholars and rectors who appreciate scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord, may I be there to see? You want a portly rector to complete the picture and take his tithe of all the respect and honor you get by your hard work? Only don't set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to get in consequence. I'm not sure that men are the fondest of those who try to be useful to them. You know, Gawen has got the curses of the whole neighborhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old boy, popularity or usefulness, else you may happen to miss both. Oh, Gawen is harsh in his manners. He doesn't make himself personally agreeable to his tenants. I don't believe there's anything you can't prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn't live in a neighborhood where I was not respected and beloved and it's very pleasant to go among the tenants here. They seem all so well inclined to me. I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances were made to them and their buildings attended to, one could persuade them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are. Then mind you fall in love in the right place and don't get a wife who will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes. She says, I'll never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he falls in love with. She thinks your lady love will rule me as the moon rules the tides, but I feel bound to stand up for you as my pupil you know and I maintain that you're not of that watery quality. So mind you don't disgrace my judgment. Arthur winced under the speech for keen old Mrs. Irwin's opinion about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a thing to make a fuss about and what could Irwin do for him that he could not do for himself. He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg's lameness, go on Rattler and let Pym follow as well as he could on the old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee, but the next minute as he was lifting the cup to his lips he remembered how thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwin. No, he would not be vacillating again. He would do what he had meant to do this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite a different topics his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause for this rush and rebound of feeling before he answered. But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't ensure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman. Yes, but there's difference between love and smallpox or bewitchment either. That if you detect the disease at an early stage and try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any further development of symptoms and there are certain alternative doses which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences before his mind. This gives you a sort of smoked glass through which you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline. Though I'm afraid by and by the smoked glasses apt to be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I dare say now even a man fortified the knowledge of the classics might be lured into an impudent marriage in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the Prometheus. The smile that flitted across Arthur's face was a faint one and instead of following Mr. Irwin's playful lead he said quite seriously, yes, that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing that after all one's reflection and quiet determinations we should be ruled by moods that one can't calculate on beforehand. I don't think a man ought to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way in spite of his resolutions. But the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom. Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances which one might never have done otherwise. Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank note unless the bank note lies within convenient reach but he won't make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank note for falling in his way. But surely you don't think a man who struggles against the temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all. No, certainly, I pity him in proportion to his struggles for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences quite apart from any fluctuations that went before. Consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves and it is best to fix our minds on that certainty instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion, Arthur. Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this philosophical general way? In asking this question, Mr. Irwin pushed his plate away through himself back in his chair and looked straight at Arthur. He really suspected that Arthur wanted to tell him something and thought of smoothing the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought suddenly and involuntary to the brink of confession, Arthur shrank back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended. It would quite mislead Irwin. He would imagine there was a deep passion for Heady while there was no such thing. He was conscious of coloring and was annoyed at his boyishness. Oh no, no danger, he said as indifferently as he could. I don't know that I am more liable to your resolution than other people. Only there are little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might happen in the future. Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur's which had a sort of back stairs influence not admitted to himself? Our mental businesses carried on much in the same way as the business of the state. A great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery too, I believe there is often a small and noticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent secretly busy in Arthur's mind at this moment. Possibly it was the fear lest you might hear after find the fact of having made a confession to the rector a serious annoyance in case you should not be able to quite to carry out as good resolutions. I dare not assert that it was not so. The human soul is a very complex thing. The idea of Heady had just crossed Mr. Irwin's mind as he looked inquiringly at Arthur but his disclaiming in different answer confirmed the thought which had quickly followed that there could be nothing serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever saw her except that church and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Poiser and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no more serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the little chits vanity and in this way perturbed the rustic drama of her life. Arthur would soon join his regiment and be far away. No, there could be no danger in that quarter even if Arthur's character had not been a strong security against it. His honest patronizing pride and the goodwill and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance still more against a lower kind of folly. If there had been anything special on Arthur's mind in the previous conversation it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details and Mr. Irwin was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He perceived a change of subject would be welcome and said, by the way, Arthur, at your colonel's birthday fat there were some transparencies that made a great effect in honor of Britannia and Pitt and the Loamshire militia and above all the generous youth, the hero of the day. Don't you think you should get up something of the same sort to astonish our weak minds? The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating the rope to which he might have clung had drifted away he must trust now to his own swimming. In 10 minutes from that time Mr. Irwin was called for on business and Arthur, bidding him goodbye, mounted his horse again with a sense of dissatisfaction which he tried to quell by determining to set off for Eagledale without an hour's delay. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of Adam Bede This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Adam Bede by George Elliott Chapter 17, in which the story pauses a little. This rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan, I hear one of my readers exclaim. How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice. You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things quite as good as reading a sermon. Certainly I could if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things that they never have been and never will be. Then of course I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking. I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens on the contrary that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused, but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is as if I were in the witness box narrating my experience on oath. 60 years ago it is a long time so no wonder things have changed. All clergymen were not zealous. Indeed there's reason to believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small and it is probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Haslip in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you liked Mr. Irwin. 10 to one you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste. Perhaps you will say, do improve the facts a little then, make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like, do touch it up with a tasteful pencil and make believe it is not quite such a mixed and tangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able to admire without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions. We shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to undoubting confidence. But my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor. With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing. With your neighbor, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence. Nay, with your excellent husband himself who has other irritating habits beside that of not wiping his shoes. These fellow mortals, everyone must be accepted as they are. You can neither straighten their noses nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions. And it is these people amongst whom your life is past that it is needful you should tolerate, pity and love. It is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that she would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields, on the real breathing men and women who can be chilled by her indifference or injured by her prejudice, who can be cheered and helped onward by her fellow feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken brave justice. So I am content to tell my simple story without trying to make things seem better than they were, dreading nothing indeed but falsity which in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin. The longer the claws and the larger the wings, the better. But that marvelous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real, unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings, much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. It is for this rare precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous home in the existence which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow mortals than the life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking from cloud-born angels, from prophets, symbols, and heroic warriors to an old woman bending over her flower pot or eating her solitary dinner while the noon-day light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mobcap and just touches the rim of her spinning wheel and her stone jug and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her. Or I turn to that village wedding kept between four brown walls where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips and probably with quart pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and goodwill. foe, says my idealistic friend, what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy, ugly people! But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope. I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly and even among those lords of their kind, the British, squat figures, ill-shape and nostrils and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying. Yet to my certain knowledge, tender hearts have beaten for them and their miniatures, flattering, but still not lovely, are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron who could have never in her best days have been handsome and yet she had a packet of yellow love letters in a private drawer and sweet children showered kisses on her solid cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes of middle stature and feeble beards who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who wattles. Yes, thank God, human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth. It does not wait for beauty. It flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children, in our gardens and in our houses, but let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel if you can with a floating violet robe and a face paled by the celestial light. Paint us yet oftener a Madonna turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory. But do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of art those old women scraping carrots with their work worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world, those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curves and their clusters of onions. In this world, there are so many of these common course-people who have no picture as sentimental wretchedness. It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let art always remind us of them. Therefore, let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things, men who see beauty in these commonplace things and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world, few sublimely beautiful women, few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities. I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday fellow men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude whose face as I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lasaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers. It is more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me or in the clergymen of my own parish who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillitson than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. And so I come back to Mr. Irwin with whom I desire you to be in perfect charity as far as you may be from satisfying your demands on the clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not, as you ought to have been, a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national church. But I am not sure of that, at least I know that the people in Broxton and Haslop would have been very sorry to part with their clergymen and that most faces brightened at his approach. And until it can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love, I must believe that Mr. Irwin's influence in his parish is a more wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ride, who came here twenty years afterwards when Mr. Irwin had been gathered to his father's. It is true Mr. Ride insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation, visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh, put a stop indeed to the Christmas rounds of the church singers as promoting drunkenness and too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam Bede to whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr. Ride. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him so that almost every churchgoer under 50 began to distinguish as well between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that standard as if he had been born in bread a dissenter. And for some time after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that quiet rural district. But, said Adam, I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a youngin' as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions that's people doing the right thing, it's feelings, it's the same with the notions in religion as it is with mathematics. A man may be able to work problems straight off in his head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease. Somehow the congregation began to fall off and people began to speak lighter, Mr. Ride. I believe he meant right at bottom, but you see he was sourish tempered and was for beating down prices with the people who's worked for him and his preaching wouldn't go down well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my Lord Judge of the Parish, punishing folks for doing wrong and he scolded him for the pulpit as if he'd been a renter and yet he couldn't abide the dissenters and was a deal more set against him than Mr. Irwin was. And then he didn't keep within his income for he seemed to think at first go off that 600 a year was to make him as big a man as Mr. Donothorn. That's a sore mischief I've often seen with the poor curates jumping into a bitter living all of a sudden. Mr. Ride was a deal thought on at a distance I believe and he wrote books, but as for mathematics and the nature of things he was as ignorant as a woman. He was very knowing about doctrines and used to call them the bulwarks of the Reformation, but I've always mistrusted that sort of learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. But now Mr. Irwin was as different as could be, as quick. He understood what you meant in a minute and he knew all about building and could see when you'd made a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers and the old women and the labors as he did to the gentry. We never saw him interfering and scolding and trying to play the emperor. He was a fine man as ever you said eyes on and so kind to his mother and sisters. That poor sickly Miss Anne. He seemed to think more of her than of anybody else in the world. There wasn't a soul in the parish had a word to say against him and a servant stayed with him till they were so old and pottering he had to hire other folks to do their work. Well, I said that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays, but I dare say if your old friend Mr. Irwin were to come to life again and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you wouldn't be rather ashamed that he didn't preach better after all your praise of him. Nae nae said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in his chair as if he were ready to meet all inferences. Nobody has ever heard me say Mr. Irwin was much of a preacher. He didn't go into deep spiritual experience and I know there's a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square and say do this and that'll follow and do that and this'll follow. There's things go on in the soul and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind as the scripture says and part your life into almost so you look back on yourself as if you were somebody else. Those are things that you can't bottle up and do this and do that and I'll go so far with the strongest methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep spiritual things in religion. You can't make much out of talking about it but you feel it. Mr. Irwin didn't go into those things. He preached short moral sermons and that was all but then he acted pretty much up to what he said. He didn't set up for being so different from other folks one day and then be as like him as two peas the next and he made folks love him and respect him and that was better nor stern up their gall with being over busy. Mrs. Poiser used to say you know she would have her word about everything. She said, Mr. Irwin was like a good meal of victual. You were the better for him without thinking on it and Mr. Ride was like a dose of physics. He gripped you and warred at you and after all he left you much the same. But didn't Mr. Ride preach a great deal more about the spiritual part of religion that you talk about him? Couldn't you get more out of his sermons than out of Mr. Irwin's? Eh, I know him. He preached a deal about doctrines but I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a young him as religion is something else besides doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding names for your feelings so as you can talk of them when you've never known them just as a man may talk tools when he knows their names though he's never so much seen them still less handle them. I've heard a deal a doctrine in my time for I used to go after the dissenting preachers along with Seth when I was a lad of 17 and got puzzling myself a deal about the Armenians and the Calvinists. The Wesleyans, you know, are stronger minions and Seth who could never abide anything harsh and was always for hope in the best held fast by the Wesleyans from the very first but I thought I could pick a whole or two in their notions and I got disputing with one of the class leaders down at Treadelson and harassed him so. First to this side then to that till at last he said, young man it's the devil making you see your pride and concede as a weapon to war against the simplicity of truth. I couldn't help laughing then but as I was going home I thought the man wasn't far wrong. I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means and whether folks are saved all by God's grace or whether there goes an ounce of their own will to it was no part of real religion at all. You may talk of these things for hours on end and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceded for it. So I took to go and know her but to church and hearing nobody but Mr. Irwin for he said nothing but what was good and what should be the wiser for remembering and I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mystery is a God's dealings and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand. And they're poor, foolish questions after all for what have we got either inside or outside of us but what comes from God? If we got a resolution to do right he gave it us, I reckon, first or last but I see plain enough we shall never do it without a resolution and that's enough for me. Adam, you perceive, was a warm admirer perhaps a partial judge of Mr. Irwin as happily some of us still are of the people we have known familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty order of minds who pant after the ideal and are oppressed by a general sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with the confidence of these select natures and find them to concur in the experience that great men are overestimated and small men are unsupportable that if you would love a woman without ever looking back on your love as a folly she must die when you are courting her and if you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism you must never make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own experience has been. I'm afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions which anyone moderately acquainted with French literature can command at a moment's notice. Human converse I think some wise man has remarked is not rigidly sincere but I herewith discharge my conscience and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English who were occasionally fretful in their temper and who had never moved in a higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer and that the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is lovable the way I have learned something of its deep pathos its sublime mysteries has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighborhoods where they dwelt. 10 to one most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity sought nothing at all in them for I have observed this remarkable coincidence that the select natures who pant after the ideal and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command the reverence and love are curiously in unison with the narrow-wiston pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbors in the village of Sheperton sum up his opinion of the people in his own parish and they were all the people he knew in these emphatic words. Aye sir, I've said it often and I'll say it again. There are poor lot in this parish or poor lot, sir, big and little. I think he had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish he might find neighbors worthy of him and indeed he did subsequently transfer himself to the Saracen's head which was doing a thriving business in the back street of a neighboring market town. But oddly enough he has found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants of Sheperton. A poor lot, sir, big and little and the most comes for a go with gin are no better than them as comes for a pint of two penny, a poor lot. End of chapter 17.