The Essential Works of George Eliot. George Eliot

your mind, Dinah, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn’t that a sign that it’s right for you to change your life? Doesn’t the love make it right when nothing else would?”

      “Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away.”

      “But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love me … it’s all different now. You won’t think o’ going. You’ll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before.”

      “Adam, it’s hard to me to turn a deaf ear … you know it’s hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer’s cross.”

      Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. “Adam,” she went on, “you wouldn’t desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn’t believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that.”

      “Yes, Dinah,” said Adam sadly, “I’ll never be the man t’ urge you against your conscience. But I can’t give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don’t believe your loving me could shut up your heart—it’s only adding to what you’ve been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it’s the same with love and happiness as with sorrow—the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people’s lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to ’em, and wishful to help ’em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he’ll do’s work; and feeling’s a sort o’ knowledge.”

      Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, “And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won’t ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach ’em. for though I like church best, I don’t put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you’ll have more means o’ making ’em a bit comfortable; and you’ll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help ’em and be a blessing to ’em till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you’d be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me.”

      Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, “Adam there is truth in what you say, and there’s many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar.”

      Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah’s was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her.

      “But you may come to feel satisfied … to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Dinah?”

      “We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait.”

      “Dinah,” said Adam mournfully, “you can’t love me so well as I love you, else you’d have no doubts. But it’s natural you shouldn’t, for I’m not so good as you. I can’t doubt it’s right for me to love the best thing God’s ever given me to know.”

      “Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me—you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost.”

      “Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I’ll speak no word to disturb you.”

      They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Adam said, “Take my arm, Dinah,” and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away—in the uncertainty of the issue—could rob the sweetness from Adam’s sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could.

      “Hey-day! There’s Adam along wi’ Dinah,” said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. “I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why,” added good Martin, after a moment’s pause, “what dost think has just jumped into my head?”

      “Summat as hadna far to jump, for it’s just under our nose. You mean as Adam’s fond o’ Dinah.”

      “Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?”

      “To be sure I have,” said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. “I’m not one o’ those as can see the cat i’ the dairy an’ wonder what she’s come after.”

      “Thee never saidst a word to me about it.”

      “Well, I aren’t like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there’s no good i’ speaking.”

      “But Dinah ’ll ha’ none o’ him. Dost think she will?”

      “Nay,” said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, “she’ll never marry anybody, if he isn’t a Methodist and a cripple.”

      “It ’ud ha’ been a pretty thing though for ’em t’ marry,” said Martin, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. “Thee’dst ha’ liked it too, wouldstna?”

      “Ah! I should. I should ha’ been sure of her then, as she wouldn’t go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an’ most of ’em women as I’d be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their’n. There may well be streaky butter i’ the market. An’ I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we’d stock her well wi’ linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An’ she makes one feel safer when she’s i’ the house, for she’s like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow.”

      “Dinah,” said Tommy, running forward to meet her, “mother