“Why, what do you do here, young woman?” the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had done in her momentary dream under her aunt’s glance. She felt that she was like a beggar already—found sleeping in that place. But in spite of her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence here, that she found words at once.
“I lost my way,” she said. “I’m travelling—north’ard, and I got away from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you tell me the way to the nearest village?”
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, “Aw, I can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin’ out o’ the highroad?” he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. “Y’ull be gettin’ into mischief, if you dooant mind.”
“Yes,” said Hetty, “I won’t do it again. I’ll keep in the road, if you’ll be so good as show me how to get to it.”
“Why dooant you keep where there’s a finger-poasses an’ folks to ax the way on?” the man said, still more gruffly. “Anybody ’ud think you was a wild woman, an’ look at yer.”
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning, she held it out to him and said, “Thank you; will you please to take something for your trouble?”
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, “I want none o’ your money. You’d better take care on’t, else you’ll get it stool from yer, if you go trapesin’ about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway.”
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way. Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of drowning herself—she could not do it, at least while she had money left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man’s hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death—it was worse; it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah—if nobody besides Dinah would ever know—Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than she could rush on death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less and less able to bear the day’s weariness. And yet—such is the strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very ends we dread—Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard, unloving, despairing soul looking out of it—with the narrow heart and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!
Chapter III.
The Quest.
The first ten days after Hetty’s departure passed as quietly as any other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least, perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return; she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day (Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day—Dinah too, if she were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.
His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs. Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at Snowfield. “Though,” said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, “you might tell her she’s got but one aunt left, and she’s wasted pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p’rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o’ broken hearts among strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless.”
“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man perfectly heart-whole, “it isna so bad as that. Thee’t looking rarely now, and getting flesh every day. But I’d be glad for Dinah t’ come, for she’d help thee wi’ the little uns: they took t’ her wonderful.”
So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky, and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship.
“Good-bye, lad,” said Adam, laying his hand on Seth’s shoulder and looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. “I wish thee wast going all the way wi’ me, and as happy as I am.”
“I’m content, Addy, I’m content,” said Seth cheerfully. “I’ll be an old bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi’ thy children.”
The’y turned away from each other,