Chapter LIV
The Meeting on the Hill
ADAM understood Dinah's haste to go away, and drew hope rather
than discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of
her feeling towards him should hinder her from waiting and
listening faithfully for the ultimate guiding voice from within.
"I wish I'd asked her to write to me, though," he thought. "And
yet even that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be
quite quiet in her old way for a while. And I've no right to be
impatient and interrupting her with my wishes. She's told me what
her mind is, and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean
another. I'll wait patiently."
That was Adam's wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the
first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the
remembrance of Dinah's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is
a wonderful amount of sustenance in the first few words of love.
But towards the middle of October the resolution began to dwindle
perceptibly, and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The
weeks were unusually long: Dinah must surely have had more than
enough time to make up her mind. Let a woman say what she will
after she has once told a man that she loves him, he is a little
too flushed and exalted with that first draught she offers him to
care much about the taste of the second. He treads the earth with
a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes light of
all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets
sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us.
Adam was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear
that perhaps Dinah's old life would have too strong a grasp upon
her for any new feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she
would surely have written to him to give him some comfort; but it
appeared that she held it right to discourage him. As Adam's
confidence waned, his patience waned with it, and he thought he
must write himself. He must ask Dinah not to leave him in painful
doubt longer than was needful. He sat up late one night to write
her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it, afraid of its
effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer by letter
than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her
will.
You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of
Dinah, and when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a
lover is likely to still it though he may have to put his future
in pawn.
But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not
be displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go.
She must surely expect that he would go before long. By the
second Sunday in October this view of the case had become so clear
to Adam that he was already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback
this time, for his hours were precious now, and he had borrowed
Jonathan Burge's good nag for the journey.
What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often
been to Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield,
but beyond Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the
meagre trees, seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that
painful past which he knew so well by heart. But no story is the
same to us after a lapse of time--or rather, we who read it are no
longer the same interpreters--and Adam this morning brought with
him new thoughts through that grey country, thoughts which gave an
altered significance to its story of the past.
That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which
rejoices and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or
crushed another, because it has been made a source of unforeseen
good to ourselves. Adam could never cease to mourn over that
mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so close to him; he
could never thank God for another's misery. And if I were capable
of that narrow-sighted joy in Adam's behalf, I should still know
he was not the man to feel it for himself. He would have shaken
his head at such a sentiment and said, "Evil's evil, and sorrow's
sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping it up in other
words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I should
think all square when things turn out well for me."
But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad
experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain.
Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it
would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful
process by which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had
been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of
higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing
with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return
to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to
return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete
formula.
Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind
this Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the
past. His feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life
with her, had been the distant unseen point towards which that
hard journey from Snowfield eighteen months ago had been leading
him. Tender and deep as his love for Hetty had been--so deep that
the roots of it would never be torn away--his love for Dinah was
better and more precious to him, for it was the outgrowth of that
fuller life which had come to him from his acquaintance with deep
sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to me," he said to
himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall look t'
her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I am--
there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as
gives you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless,
when you've more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've
always been thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me,
and that's a poor sort o' life, when you can't look to them
nearest to you t' help you with a bit better thought than what
you've got inside you a'ready."
It was more than two o'clock in the afternoon when Adam came in
sight of the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly
towards the green valley below, for the first glimpse of the old
thatched roof near the ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh
in the soft October sunshine than it had in the eager time of
early spring, and the one grand charm it possessed in common with
all wide-stretching woodless regions--that it filled you with a
new consciousness of the overarching sky--had a milder, more
soothing influence than usual, on this almost cloudless day.
Adam's doubts and fears melted under this influence as the
delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear
blue above him. He seemed to see Dinah's gentle face assuring
him, with its looks alone, of all he longed to know.
He did not expect Dinah to be at home at this hour, but he got
down from his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might
ask where she was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following
her and bringing her home. She was gone to Sloman's End, a hamlet
about three miles off, over the hill, the old woman told him--had
set off directly after morning chapel, to preach in a cottage
there, as her habit was. Anybody at the town would tell him the
way to Sloman's End. So Adam got on his horse again and rode to
the town, putting up at the old inn and taking a hasty dinner
there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from whose
friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as soon
as possible and set out towards Sloman's End. With all his haste
it was nearly four o'clock before he could set off, and he thought
that as Dinah had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near
returning. The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened
by sheltering trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and
as he came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn.
"Perhaps that's the last hymn before they come away," Adam
thought. "I'll walk back a bit and turn again to meet her,
farther off the village." He walked back till he got nearly to
the top of the hill again, and seated himself on a loose stone,
against the low wall, to watch till he should see the little black
figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill. He chose this
spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away from all
eyes--no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near--no
presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing
sky.
She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at
least watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon
shadows lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the
little black figure coming from between the grey houses and
gradually approaching the foot of the hill. Slowly, Adam thought,
but Dinah was really walking at her usual pace, with a light quiet
step. Now she was beginning to wind along the path up the hill,
but Adam would not move yet; he would not meet her too soon; he
had set his heart on meeting her in this assured loneliness. And
now he began to fear lest he should startle her too much. "Yet,"
he thought, "she's not one to be overstartled; she's always so
calm and quiet, as if she was prepared for anything."
What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she
had found complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any
need of his love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope
pauses with fluttering wings.
But now at last she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone
wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had
paused and turned round to look back at the village--who does not
pause and look back in mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with
the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for
her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three
paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She started without looking
round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah!" Adam
said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. She was so
accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions
that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the
voice.
But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning
love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed
man! She did not start again at the sight of him; she said
nothing, but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her
round.
And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam
was content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first.
"Adam," she said, "it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to
yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this
moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled
with the same love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do
our heavenly Father's Will that I had lost before."
Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.
"Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us."
And they kissed each other with a deep joy.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that
they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour,
to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in
all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories
at the moment of the last parting?
