Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you donât realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Adam Bede by George Eliot (ebook reader for pc .TXT) đ
- Author: George Eliot
Book online «Adam Bede by George Eliot (ebook reader for pc .TXT) đ». Author George Eliot
Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, âWell, Dinah, I must seek for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible. But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone, I could never joy in anything any more. I think itâs something passing the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I feel more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often canât help saying of you what the hymn saysâ
In darkest shades if she appear,
My dawning is begun;
She is my soulâs bright morning-star,
And she my rising sun.
That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldnât be displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this country and go to live at Snowfield?â
âNo, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lordâs clear bidding. Itâs a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of Goshen youâve been used to. We mustnât be in a hurry to fix and choose our own lot; we must wait to be guided.â
âBut youâd let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I wanted to tell you?â
âYes, sure; let me know if youâre in any trouble. Youâll be continually in my prayers.â
They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, âI wonât go in, Dinah, so farewell.â He paused and hesitated after she had given him her hand, and then said, âThereâs no knowing but what you may see things different after a while. There may be a new leading.â
âLet us leave that, Seth. Itâs good to live only a moment at a time, as Iâve read in one of Mr. Wesleyâs books. It isnât for you and me to lay plans; weâve nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.â
Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk lingeringly home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to turn back along the fields through which he and Dinah had already passed; and I think his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears long before he had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his face steadily homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to loveâto love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.
That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical jargonâelements which are regarded as an exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.
That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were anything else than Methodistsânot indeed of that modern type which reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Stillâif I have read religious history arightâfaith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possibleâthank Heaven!âto have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbourâs child to âstop the fits,â may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.
Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.
Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling him to âhold on tightâ; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah does.
Home and Its Sorrows
A green valley with a brook running through it, full almost to overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows. Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.
The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim nowâperhaps from too much cryingâbut her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyesâah, so like our motherâs!âaverted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritageâthe mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling handâgalls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence.
It is such a fond anxious motherâs voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says, âWell, my lad, itâs gone seven by thâ clock. Theeât allays stay till the last childâs born. Thee wants thy supper, Iâll warrand. Whereâs Seth? Gone arter some oâs chapellinâ, I reckon?â
âAye, aye, Sethâs at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But whereâs father?â said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. âHasnât he done the coffin for Tholer? Thereâs the stuff standing just as I left it this morning.â
âDone the coffin?â said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. âEh, my lad, he went aff to Treddlesâon this forenoon, anâs niver come back. I doubt heâs got to thâ âWaggin Overthrowâ again.â
A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adamâs face. He said nothing, but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.
âWhat art goinâ to do, Adam?â said the mother, with a tone and look of alarm. âThee wouldstna go to work again, wiâout haâin thy bit oâ supper?â
Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, âNay, my lad, my lad, thee munna go wiâout thy supper; thereâs the taters wiâ the gravy in âem, just as thee likâst âem. I saved âem oâ purpose for thee. Come anâ haâ thy supper, come.â
âLet be!â said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the planks that stood against the wall. âItâs fine talking about having supper when hereâs a coffin promised to be ready at Broxâon by seven oâclock to-morrow morning, and ought to haâ been there now, and not a nail struck yet. My throatâs too full to swallow victuals.â
âWhy, thee canstna get the coffin ready,â said Lisbeth. âTheeât work thyself to death. It âud take thee all night to doât.â
âWhat signifies how long it takes me? Isnât the coffin promised? Can they bury the man without a coffin? Iâd work my right hand off sooner than deceive people with lies iâ that way. It makes me mad to think onât. I shall overrun these doings before long. Iâve stood enough of âem.â
Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice very piteous, she burst out into words.
âNay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away anâ break thy motherâs heart, anâ leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna haâ âem carry me to thâ churchyard, anâ thee not to follow me. I shanna rest iâ
Comments (0)