After the Preaching
In less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah’s
side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her
hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly
as he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say
to her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity—of
absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment
or with her own personality—an expression that is most of all
discouraging to a lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that
quiet elasticity that asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he
said to himself, “She’s too good and holy for any man, let alone me,”
and the words he had been summoning rushed back again before they had
reached his lips. But another thought gave him courage: “There’s no man
could love her better and leave her freer to follow the Lord’s work.”
They had been silent for many minutes now, since they had done talking
about Bessy Cranage; Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth’s
presence, and her pace was becoming so much quicker that the sense of
their being only a few minutes’ walk from the yard-gates of the Hall
Farm at last gave Seth courage to speak.
“You’ve quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o’ Saturday,
Dinah?”
“Yes,” said Dinah, quietly. “I’m called there. It was borne in upon my
mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who’s in
a decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of
thin white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me.
And this morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words
my eyes fell on were, ‘And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
endeavoured to go into Macedonia.’ If it wasn’t for that clear showing
of the Lord’s will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
I’ve been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
a token that there may be mercy in store for her.”
“God grant it,” said Seth. “For I doubt Adam’s heart is so set on her,
he’ll never turn to anybody else; and yet it ’ud go to my heart if he
was to marry her, for I canna think as she’d make him happy. It’s a
deep mystery—the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the
rest he’s seen i’ the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven
year for _her_, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other
woman for th’ asking. I often think of them words, ‘And Jacob served
seven years for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the
love he had to her.’ I know those words ’ud come true with me, Dinah,
if so be you’d give me hope as I might win you after seven years was
over. I know you think a husband ’ud be taking up too much o’ your
thoughts, because St. Paul says, ‘She that’s married careth for the
things of the world how she may please her husband’; and may happen
you’ll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you
told me o’ your mind last Saturday. But I’ve been thinking it over
again by night and by day, and I’ve prayed not to be blinded by my own
desires, to think what’s only good for me must be good for you too. And
it seems to me there’s more texts for your marrying than ever you can
find against it. For St. Paul says as plain as can be in another place,
‘I will that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house,
give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully’; and then
‘two are better than one’; and that holds good with marriage as well as
with other things. For we should be o’ one heart and o’ one mind,
Dinah. We both serve the same Master, and are striving after the same
gifts; and I’d never be the husband to make a claim on you as could
interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I’d make a
shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty—more than you
can have now, for you’ve got to get your own living now, and I’m strong
enough to work for us both.”
When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
flushed as he went on, his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, “Seth Bede, I thank
you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but ‘as God has distributed to
every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.’ God has
called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave
the brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very
little of this world’s good; where the trees are few, so that a child
might count them, and there’s very hard living for the poor in the
winter. It has been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the
little flock there and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled
with these things from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too
short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for
myself in this world. I’ve not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth,
for when I saw as your love was given to me, I thought it might be a
leading of Providence for me to change my way of life, and that we
should be fellow-helpers; and I spread the matter before the Lord. But
whenever I tried to fix my mind on marriage, and our living together,
other thoughts always came in—the times when I’ve prayed by the sick
and dying, and the happy hours I’ve had preaching, when my heart was
filled with love, and the Word was given to me abundantly. And when
I’ve opened the Bible for direction, I’ve always lighted on some clear
word to tell me where my work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that
you would try to be a help and not a hindrance to my work; but I see
that our marriage is not God’s will—He draws my heart another way. I
desire to live and die without husband or children. I seem to have no
room in my soul for wants and fears of my own, it has pleased God to
fill my heart so full with the wants and sufferings of his poor
people.”
Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, “Well, Dinah, I must seek
for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
I could never joy in anything any more. I think it’s something passing
the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I
trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I
feel more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often
can’t help saying of you what the hymn says—
In darkest shades if she appear,
My dawning is begun;
She is my soul’s bright morning-star,
And she my rising sun.
That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn’t be
displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this
country and go to live at Snowfield?”
“No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord’s clear
bidding. It’s a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
Goshen you’ve been used to. We mustn’t be in a hurry to fix and choose
our own lot; we must wait to be guided.”
“But you’d let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
wanted to tell you?”
“Yes, sure; let me know if you’re in any trouble. You’ll be continually
in my prayers.”
They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, “I won’t go in,
Dinah, so farewell.” He paused and hesitated after she had given him
her hand, and then said, “There’s no knowing but what you may see
things different after a while. There may be a new leading.”
“Let us leave that, Seth. It’s good to live only a moment at a time, as
I’ve read in one of Mr. Wesley’s books. It isn’t for you and me to lay
plans; we’ve nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.”
Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk
lingeringly home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to
turn back along the fields through which he and Dinah had already
passed; and I think his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears
long before he had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his
face steadily homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just
learned what it is to love—to love with that adoration which a young
man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than
himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious
feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or
art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under
the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic
statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness
that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love
and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression
into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object
and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift
of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since
the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed
in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there
was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his
fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after
exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.
That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men
and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
and hypocritical jargon—elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.
That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
anything else than Methodists—not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and
charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility
to the three concords, and it is possible—thank Heaven!—to have very
erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which
clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to
her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.
Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath
our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.
Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to “hold on tight”; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be
less bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah
does.