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?
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