first to speak.
“Adam,” he said, quietly, “it may be a good thing that we have met here, for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you to-morrow.”
He paused, but Adam said nothing.
“I know it is painful to you to meet me,” Arthur went on, “but it is not likely to happen again for years to come.”
“No, sir,” said Adam, coldly, “that was what I meant to write to you to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end between us, and somebody else put in my place.”
Arthur felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he spoke again.
“It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don’t want to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for my sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the evil consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don’t mean consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be done, and you can help me. Will you listen to me patiently?”
“Yes, sir,” said Adam, after some hesitation; “I’ll hear what it is. If I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger ’ull mend nothing, I know. We’ve had enough o’ that.”
“I was going to the Hermitage,” said Arthur. “Will you go there with me and sit down? We can talk better there.”
The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been less painful.
They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Arthur said, “I’m going away, Adam; I’m going into the army.”
Poor Arthur felt that Adam ought to be affected by this announcement—ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But Adam’s lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face unchanged.
“What I want to say to you,” Arthur continued, “is this: one of my reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope—may leave their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice I would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through my—through what has happened.”
Arthur’s words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had anticipated. Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in the face as Arthur was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, “The time’s past for that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong; sacrifices won’t undo it when it’s done. When people’s feelings have got a deadly wound, they can’t be cured with favours.”
“Favours!” said Arthur, passionately; “no; how can you suppose I meant that? But the Poysers—Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the place where they have lived so many years—for generations. Don’t you see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know them?”
“That’s true,” said Adam coldly. “But then, sir, folks’s feelings are not so easily overcome. It’ll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a strange place, among strange faces, when he’s been bred up on the Hall Farm, and his father before him; but then it ’ud be harder for a man with his feelings to stay. I don’t see how the thing’s to be made any other than hard. There’s a sort o’ damage, sir, that can’t be made up for.”
Arthur was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in him this evening, his pride winced under Adam’s mode of treating him. Wasn’t he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his most cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago—Adam was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most irritating to Arthur’s eager ardent nature. But his anger was subdued by the same influence that had subdued Adam’s when they first confronted each other—by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face. The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said, “But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct—by giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking what will be the effect in the future.
“If I were going to stay here and act as landlord,” he added presently, with still more eagerness—“if I were careless about what I’ve done—what I’ve been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for going away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then for trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I’m going away for years—when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan of happiness I’ve ever formed—it is impossible for a sensible man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers refusing to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace—Mr. Irwine has told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they can’t remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts—if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods.”
Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, “You know that’s a good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And you don’t know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and take my name. He is a good fellow.”
Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be thrust away. He was silent; yet Arthur saw an answer in his face that induced him to go on, with growing earnestness.
“And then, if you would talk to the Poysers—if you would talk the matter over with Mr. Irwine—he means to see you to-morrow—and then if you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go….I know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me—I mean nothing of that kind—but I’m sure they would suffer less in the end. Irwine thinks so too. And Mr. Irwine is to have the chief authority on the estate—he has consented to undertake that. They will really be under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same with you, Adam, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse pain that could incline you to go.”
Arthur was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some agitation in his voice, “I wouldn’t act so towards you, I know. If you were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the best.”
Adam made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground. Arthur went on, “Perhaps you’ve never done anything you’ve had bitterly to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it’s worse for me than for you.”
Arthur rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the windows, looking out and turning his back on Adam, as he continued, passionately, “Haven’t I loved her too? Didn’t I see her yesterday? Shan’t I carry the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And don’t you think you would suffer more if you’d been in fault?”
There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam’s mind was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards