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?