Chapter XXXIX
The Tidings
ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might
be gone out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together
produced a state of strong excitement before he reached the
rectory gate, and outside it he saw the deep marks of a recent
hoof on the gravel.
But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and
though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr.
Irwine's: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must
belong to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at
home, then; but Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell
Carroll that he wanted to speak to the rector. The double
suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the
strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as he threw
himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the clock
on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said,
but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming
out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at
once.
Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along
the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick,
and Adam watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he
had had some reason for doing so. In our times of bitter
suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our
consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial
perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us
rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our
sleep.
Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden.
He was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that
strange person's come about," the butler added, from mere
incontinence of remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's
gone i' the dining-room. And master looks unaccountable--as if he
was frightened." Adam took no notice of the words: he could not
care about other people's business. But when he entered the study
and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt in an instant that there
was a new expression in it, strangely different from the warm
friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter lay open
on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed
glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to
preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking
eagerly towards the door, as if Adam's entrance were a matter of
poignant anxiety to him.
"You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low
constrainedly quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to
suppress agitation. "Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just
opposite to him, at no more than a yard's distance from his own,
and Adam sat down with a sense that this cold manner of Mr.
Irwine's gave an additional unexpected difficulty to his
disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to a measure, he
was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons.
"I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most
of anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as
it'll pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o'
the wrong other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till
I'd good reason."
Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously,
"You was t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the
fifteenth o' this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th'
happiest man i' the parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me."
Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but
then, determined to control himself, walked to the window and
looked out.
"She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was
going to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last
Sunday to fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took
the coach to Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now
I'm going a long journey to look for her, and I can't trust t'
anybody but you where I'm going."
Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
"Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said.
"It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam.
"She didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I
doubt. There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's
somebody else concerned besides me."
A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came
across the eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment.
Adam was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next
words were hard to speak. But when he went on, he lifted up his
head and looked straight at Mr. Irwine. He would do the thing he
had resolved to do, without flinching.
"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he
said, "and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i'
working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads...."
Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped
Adam's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like
a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No,
Adam, no--don't say it, for God's sake!"
Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented
of the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed
silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine
threw himself back in his chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it."
"That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd
no right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents
and used to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only
two days before he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were
parting in the Grove. There'd been nothing said between me and
Hetty then, though I'd loved her for a long while, and she knew
it. But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and
blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that,
as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o' flirting.
But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty he'd meant nothing,
for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn't
understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and I
thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter,
and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd
expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she
didn't know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back
upon her when it was too late...I don't want to blame her...I
can't think as she meant to deceive me. But I was encouraged to
think she loved me, and--you know the rest, sir. But it's on my
mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away, and she's gone
to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to work again
till I know what's become of her."
During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon
him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when
Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge
of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to
confess. And if their words had taken another turn...if he
himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man's
secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out
rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole history
now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back
upon the past. But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was
thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man
who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad blind
resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon
him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have
feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that
comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish
he must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put
his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this
time, as he said solemnly:
"Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life.
You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God
requires both tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow
coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not
guilty--you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who
has!"
The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was
trembling suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity.
But he went on.
"I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him.
She is in Stonyshire--at Stoniton."
Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have
leaped to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm
again and said, persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down.
"She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse
for you to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for
ever."
Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved
again, and he whispered, "Tell me."
"She has been arrested...she is in prison."
It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of
resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said,
loudly and sharply, "For what?"
"For a great crime--the murder of her child."
"It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his cnair and
making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again,
setting his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr.
Irwine. "It isn't possible. She never had a child. She can't be
guilty. WHO says it?"
"God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is."
"But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me
everything."
"Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken,
and the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She
will not confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I
fear, there can be no doubt it is Hetty. The description of her
person corresponds, only that she is said to look very pale and
ill. She had a small red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with
two names written in it--one at the beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel,
Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah Morris, Snowfield.'
She will not say which is her own name--she denies everything, and
will answer no questions, and application has been made to me, as
a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her, for it
was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own
name."
"But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said
Adam, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his
whole frame. "I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and
none of us know it."
"Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the
crime; but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it.
Try and read that letter, Adam."
Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix
his eyes steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give
some orders. When he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the
first page--he couldn't read--he could not put the words together
and make out what they meant. He threw it down at last and
clenched his fist.
"It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his
door, not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me
first. Let 'em put HIM on his trial--let him stand in court
beside her, and I'll tell 'em how he got hold of her heart, and
'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to me. Is HE to go free, while
they lay all the punishment on her...so weak and young?"
The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to
poor Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the
corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst
out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O
God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too hard to think she's
wicked."
Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to
utter soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam
before him, with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes
over a young face in moments of terrible emotion--the hard
bloodless look of the skin, the deep lines about the quivering
mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight of this strong firm man
shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow, moved him so deeply
that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless, with his eyes
vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short
space he was living through all his love again.
"She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes,
as if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide
it...I forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee
wast deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but
they'll never make me believe it."
He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with
fierce abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make
him go and look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he
can't forget it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he
lives it shall follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--
I'll fetch him, I'll drag him myself."
In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically
and looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or
who was present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now
took him by the arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No,
Adam, no; I'm sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be
done for her, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance.
The punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is
no longer in Ireland. He must be on his way home--or would be,
long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for
him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go with me
to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as
soon as you can compose yourself."
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of
the actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and
listened.
"Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and
act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the
good Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I
can bear to think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--
from your sense of duty to God and man--that you will try to act
as long as action can be of any use."
In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for
Adam's own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the
best means of counteracting the violence of suffering in these
first hours.
"You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a
moment's pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is
there, you know."
"Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the
folks at th' Hall Farm?"
"I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I
shall have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now,
and I shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are
ready."
