<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"></SPAN></p>
<h2> Chapter XIX </h2>
<h3> Adam on a Working Day </h3>
<p>NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed itself
without having produced the threatened consequences. "The weather"—as
he observed the next morning—"the weather, you see, 's a ticklish
thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on't sometimes when a wise man misses; that's
why the almanecks get so much credit. It's one o' them chancy things as
fools thrive on."</p>
<p>This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no
one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the
meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and daughters
did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give their help
in tossing the hay; and when Adam was marching along the lanes, with his
basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound of jocose talk and
ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose talk of hay-makers is
best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round the cows' necks, it has
rather a coarse sound when it comes close, and may even grate on your ears
painfully; but heard from far off, it mingles very prettily with the other
joyous sounds of nature. Men's muscles move better when their souls are
making merry music, though their merriment is of a poor blundering sort,
not at all like the merriment of birds.</p>
<p>And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when the
warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the
morning—when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to
keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason Adam
was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for the rest
of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which was being
put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he had been busy
since early morning with the packing of panels, doors, and chimney-pieces,
in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while Jonathan Burge himself
had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await its arrival and direct the
workmen.</p>
<p>This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under the
charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw Hetty
in the sunshine—a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays that
tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought, yesterday
when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church, that there was
a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he had not seen
before, and he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy with his
family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy came from quite
another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little woman's
face we love as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts
of answers to our own yearnings. It was impossible for Adam not to feel
that what had happened in the last week had brought the prospect of
marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had felt keenly the danger that some
other man might step in and get possession of Hetty's heart and hand,
while he himself was still in a position that made him shrink from asking
her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope that she was fond of
him—and his hope was far from being strong—he had been too
heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for himself and Hetty—a
home such as he could expect her to be content with after the comfort and
plenty of the Farm. Like all strong natures, Adam had confidence in his
ability to achieve something in the future; he felt sure he should some
day, if he lived, be able to maintain a family and make a good broad path
for himself; but he had too cool a head not to estimate to the full the
obstacles that were to be overcome. And the time would be so long! And
there was Hetty, like a bright-cheeked apple hanging over the orchard
wall, within sight of everybody, and everybody must long for her! To be
sure, if she loved him very much, she would be content to wait for him:
but DID she love him? His hopes had never risen so high that he had dared
to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be aware that her uncle and
aunt would have looked kindly on his suit, and indeed, without this
encouragement he would never have persevered in going to the Farm; but it
was impossible to come to any but fluctuating conclusions about Hetty's
feelings. She was like a kitten, and had the same distractingly pretty
looks, that meant nothing, for everybody that came near her.</p>
<p>But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of his
burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year his
circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to think
of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother, he knew:
she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had set her mind
especially against Hetty—perhaps for no other reason than that she
suspected Hetty to be the woman he HAD chosen. It would never do, he
feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when he was
married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to leave him!
Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with his mother,
but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his will was strong—it
would be better for her in the end. For himself, he would have liked that
they should all live together till Seth was married, and they might have
built a bit themselves to the old house, and made more room. He did not
like "to part wi' th' lad": they had hardly every been separated for more
than a day since they were born.</p>
<p>But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this way—making
arrangements for an uncertain future—than he checked himself. "A
pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the
garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation." Whenever Adam
was strongly convinced of any proposition, it took the form of a principle
in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted on, as much as the knowledge
that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he
had accused himself of: he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness
that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling,
how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling,
falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one
way in which a strong determined soul can learn it—by getting his
heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not
only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering.
That is a long and hard lesson, and Adam had at present only learned the
alphabet of it in his father's sudden death, which, by annihilating in an
instant all that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of
thought and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness.</p>
<p>But it was Adam's strength, not its correlative hardness, that influenced
his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind that it would
be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming young girl, so
long as he had no other prospect than that of growing poverty with a
growing family. And his savings had been so constantly drawn upon (besides
the terrible sweep of paying for Seth's substitute in the militia) that he
had not enough money beforehand to furnish even a small cottage, and keep
something in reserve against a rainy day. He had good hope that he should
be "firmer on his legs" by and by; but he could not be satisfied with a
vague confidence in his arm and brain; he must have definite plans, and
set about them at once. The partnership with Jonathan Burge was not to be
thought of at present—there were things implicitly tacked to it that
he could not accept; but Adam thought that he and Seth might carry on a
little business for themselves in addition to their journeyman's work, by
buying a small stock of superior wood and making articles of household
furniture, for which Adam had no end of contrivances. Seth might gain more
by working at separate jobs under Adam's direction than by his
journeyman's work, and Adam, in his overhours, could do all the "nice"
work that required peculiar skill. The money gained in this way, with the
good wages he received as foreman, would soon enable them to get
beforehand with the world, so sparingly as they would all live now. No
sooner had this little plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be
busy with exact calculations about the wood to be bought and the
particular article of furniture that should be undertaken first—a
kitchen cupboard of his own contrivance, with such an ingenious
arrangement of sliding-doors and bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing
household provender, and such a symmetrical result to the eye, that every
good housewife would be in raptures with it, and fall through all the
gradations of melancholy longing till her husband promised to buy it for
her. Adam pictured to himself Mrs. Poyser examining it with her keen eye
and trying in vain to find out a deficiency; and, of course, close to Mrs.
Poyser stood Hetty, and Adam was again beguiled from calculations and
contrivances into dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go and see her this
evening—it was so long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would
have liked to go to the night-school, to see why Bartle Massey had not
been at church yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill; but,
unless he could manage both visits, this last must be put off till
to-morrow—the desire to be near Hetty and to speak to her again was
too strong.</p>
<p>As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of his
walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of the old
house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work is like
the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who has to bear his
part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their accustomed thrill, and
what was a moment before joy, vexation, or ambition, begins its change
into energy. All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the
narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the
cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought.
Look at Adam through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding
with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how
a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or
as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in
upheaving a weight of timber, saying, "Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too
much gristle i' thy bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the
motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his
distances are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare
muscular arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden
meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong
barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn
psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet
presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which jars
with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in the secret, you
might not have guessed what sad memories what warm affection, what tender
fluttering hopes, had their home in this athletic body with the broken
finger-nails—in this rough man, who knew no better lyrics than he
could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional hymn; who knew the
smallest possible amount of profane history; and for whom the motion and
shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the changes of the seasons
lay in the region of mystery just made visible by fragmentary knowledge.
It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and work in overhours to know
what he knew over and above the secrets of his handicraft, and that
acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the nature of the materials
he worked with, which was made easy to him by inborn inherited faculty—to
get the mastery of his pen, and write a plain hand, to spell without any
other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable
character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller,
and, moreover, to learn his musical notes and part-singing. Besides all
this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal books; Poor
Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress,
with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey's Dictionary,
Valentine and Orson, and part of a History of Babylon, which Bartle Massey
had lent him. He might have had many more books from Bartle Massey, but he
had no time for reading "the commin print," as Lisbeth called it, so busy
as he was with figures in all the leisure moments which he did not fill up
with extra carpentry.</p>
<p>Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly
speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary
character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion that
the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over his
shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and the
strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our friend
Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and
there in every generation of our peasant artisans—with an
inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need
and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful
courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as geniuses, most
commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and conscience to do
well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo
beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find
there some good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral
produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish
abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two generations
after them. Their employers were the richer for them, the work of their
hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided well the
hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel or paper
caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and red paint;
in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honour at church and
at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters, seated
round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how pleased they were when
they first earned their twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and
never put off the workman's coal on weekdays. They have not had the art of
getting rich, but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work
is all out of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a
machine; the master who employed them says, "Where shall I find their
like?"</p>
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