Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.
So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth’s ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.
When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, “Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?”
“No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself.”
Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down rather timidly on the bench by Adam’s side and said, “Thee canst pick a bit while thee’t workin’. I’ll bring thee another drop o’ water.”
“Aye, Mother, do,” said Adam, kindly; “I’m getting very thirsty.”
In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam’s tools. The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at twelve o’clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.
Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession.
He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son’s glance—would sit down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had slinked off and left undone—for Lisbeth was always the first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam’s severity towards his father.
“So it will go on, worsening and worsening,” thought Adam; “there’s no slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you ’ve begun to slip down.” And then the day came back to him when he was a little fellow and used to run by his father’s side, proud to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his fellow-workmen how “the little chap had an uncommon notion o’ carpentering.” What a fine active fellow his father was then! When people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction as he answered, “I’m Thias Bede’s lad.” He was quite sure everybody knew Thias Bede—didn’t he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the “Waggon Overthrown.” He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over his shoulder, and his “mensuration book” in his pocket, and saying to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no longer—he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.
“No!” Adam said to himself to-night, “that must never happen again. It ’ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my poor old mother stood o’ the wrong side. My back’s broad enough and strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave the troubles to be borne by them as aren’t half so able. ‘They that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to please themselves.’ There’s a text wants no candle to show’t; it shines by its own light. It’s plain enough you get into the wrong road i’ this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o’ making things easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o’ nothing outside it; but if you’ve got a man’s heart and soul in you, you can’t be easy a-making your own bed an’ leaving the rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I’ll never slip my neck out o’ the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father’s a sore cross to me, an’s likely to be for many a long year to come. What then? I’ve got th’ health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it.”
At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected, gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal religion, and he often checked Seth’s argumentative spiritualism by saying, “Eh, it’s a big mystery; thee know’st but little about it.” And so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine judgment, he would have said, “May be; but the bearing o’ the roof and walls wasn’t right, else it wouldn’t ha’ come down” ; yet he believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural elements—in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any, might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled. Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden grass in front of the cottage.
Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his drunkenness at the “Waggon Overthrown.” Besides, to Adam, the conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his mother were breathing regularly.
Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, “I won’t open the door again. It’s no use staring about to catch sight of a sound. Maybe there’s a world about us as we can’t see, but th’ ear’s quicker than the eye and catches a sound from’t now and then. Some people think they get a sight on’t too, but they’re mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to ’em at anything else. For my part, I think it’s better to see when your perpendicular’s true than to see a ghost.”
Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving overhead, and presently came downstairs.
“Now, lad,” said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, “the coffin’s done, and we can take it over to Brox’on, and be back again before half after six. I’ll take a mouthful o’ oat-cake, and then we’ll be off.”
The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers, and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely mingled picture—the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o’clock the task was done, the coffin nailed down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself to say, “Seth, lad, if Father isn’t come home by the time we’ve had our breakfast, I think it’ll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles’on and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost say?”
“I’m willing,” said Seth. “But see what clouds have gathered since we set out. I’m thinking we shall have more rain. It’ll be a sore time for th’ haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook’s fine and full now: another day’s rain ’ud cover the plank, and we should have to go round by the road.”
They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran.
“Why, what’s that sticking against the willow?” continued Seth, beginning to walk faster. Adam’s heart rose to his mouth: the vague anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.
This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through Adam’s conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need for action—forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them. Adam was the first to speak.
“I’ll run to Mother,” he said, in a loud whisper. “I’ll be back to thee in a minute.”
Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons’ breakfast, and their porridge was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.
“The lads ’ull be fine an’ hungry,” she said, half-aloud, as she stirred the porridge. “It’s a good step to Brox’on, an’ it’s hungry air o’er the hill—wi’ that heavy coffin too. Eh! It’s heavier now, wi’ poor Bob Tholer in’t. Howiver, I’ve made a drap more porridge nor common this mornin’. The feyther ’ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he’ll ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn’orth o’ ale, an’ saves a hap’orth o’ por-ridge—that’s his way o’ layin’ by money, as I’ve told him many a time, an’ am likely to tell him again afore the day’s out. Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there’s no denyin’ that.”
But now Lisbeth heard the heavy “thud” of a running footstep on the turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him before he had time to speak.
“Hush, Mother,” Adam said, rather hoarsely, “don’t be frightened. Father’s tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again. Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as the fire.”
In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there was no other way of repressing his mother’s impetuous wailing grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.
He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like Seth’s, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth’s chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father’s soul; but Adam’s mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity. When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.