Adam Bede by George Eliot (top ten books of all time .txt) 📕
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- Author: George Eliot
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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 chair 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.”
The Bitter Waters Spread
Mr. Irwine returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that Squire Donnithorne was dead—found dead in his bed at ten o’clock that morning—and that Mrs. Irwine desired him to say she should be awake when Mr. Irwine came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without seeing her.
“Well, Dauphin,” Mrs. Irwine said, as her son entered her room, “you’re come at last. So the old gentleman’s fidgetiness and low spirits, which made him send for Arthur in that sudden way, really meant something. I suppose Carroll has told you that Donnithorne was found dead in his bed this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though I daresay I shan’t live to prognosticate anything but my own death.”
“What have they done about Arthur?” said Mr. Irwine. “Sent a messenger to await him at Liverpool?”
“Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Arthur, I shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He’ll be as happy as a king now.”
Mr. Irwine could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with anxiety and exertion, and his mother’s light words were almost intolerable.
“What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are you thinking of the danger for Arthur in crossing that frightful Irish Channel at this time of year?”
“No, Mother, I’m not thinking of that; but I’m not prepared to rejoice just now.”
“You’ve been worried by this law business that you’ve been to Stoniton about. What in the world is it, that you can’t tell me?”
“You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell you at present. Good-night: you’ll sleep now you have no longer anything to listen for.”
Mr. Irwine gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Arthur, since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather’s death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go to bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the morning’s heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm and to Adam’s home.
Adam himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from seeing Hetty, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again.
“It’s no use, sir,” he said to the rector, “it’s no use for me to go back. I can’t go to work again while she’s here, and I couldn’t bear the sight o’ the things and folks round home. I’ll take a bit of a room here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in time, to bear seeing her.”
Adam had not been shaken in his belief that Hetty was innocent of the crime she was charged with, for Mr. Irwine, feeling that the belief in her guilt would be a crushing addition to Adam’s load, had kept from him the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any reason for thrusting the whole burden on Adam at once, and Mr. Irwine, at parting, only said, “If the evidence should tell too strongly against her, Adam, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other circumstances will be a plea for her.”
“Ah, and it’s right people should know how she was tempted into the wrong way,” said Adam, with bitter earnestness. “It’s right they should know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi’ notions. You’ll remember, sir, you’ve promised to tell my mother, and Seth, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else they’ll think harder of her than she deserves. You’ll be doing her a hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her ha’ done what she may. If you spare him, I’ll expose him!”
“I think your demand is just, Adam,” said Mr. Irwine, “but when you are calmer, you will judge Arthur more mercifully. I say nothing now, only that his punishment is in other hands than ours.”
Mr. Irwine felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of Arthur’s sad part in the story of sin and sorrow—he who cared for Arthur with fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly pride. But he saw clearly that the secret must be known before long, even apart from Adam’s determination, since it was scarcely to be supposed that Hetty would persist to the end in her obstinate silence. He made up his mind to withhold nothing from the Poysers, but to tell them the worst at once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of their suddenness. Hetty’s trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and they were to be held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be hoped that Martin Poyser could escape the pain of being called as a witness, and it was better he should know everything as long beforehand as possible.
Before ten o’clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was a house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Martin Poyser the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Hetty. He and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register; and Hetty had brought disgrace on them all—disgrace that could never be wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of father and son—the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all other sensibility—and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband. We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of
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