It was about three o’clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church “but th’ young missis”—so he called Dinah—but this did not disappoint Adam, although the “everybody” was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going.
There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the water gently dripping from the pump—that was the only sound—and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness.
The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, “I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were not at home.” But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr. Poyser’s three-cornered chair.
“Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?” Dinah said, recovering herself. “Seth said she was well this morning.”
“No, she’s very hearty to-day,” said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah’s feeling at the sight of him, but shy.
“There’s nobody at home, you see,” Dinah said; “but you’ll wait. You’ve been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless.”
“Yes,” Adam said, and then paused, before he added, “I was thinking about you: that was the reason.”
This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, “Do not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going.”
“But if things were different, Dinah,” said Adam, hesitatingly. “If you knew things that perhaps you don’t know now….”
Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid—and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn’t know?
Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them—for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant.
“Dinah,” he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, “I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me.”
Dinah’s lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Adam’s. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast.
“Don’t tell me you can’t love me, Dinah. Don’t tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another.”
The tears were trembling in Dinah’s eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice.
“Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part.”
“Not if you love me, Dinah—not if you love me,” Adam said passionately. “Tell me—tell me if you can love me better than a brother?”
Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere eyes as she said, “Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours.”
Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence—for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
“Then, Dinah,” Adam said at last, “how can there be anything contrary to what’s right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I’d never think o’ putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn’t to do this and you oughtn’t to do that. You’d follow your conscience as much as you do now.”
“Yes, Adam,” Dinah said, “I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me.”
“But if a new feeling has come into 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