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 him 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 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.”