Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this
last observation, but the subject was not developed
farther, for now they had reached the turning in the
road where Adam and his companions must say “good-bye.”
The gardener, too, would have had to turn off in the
same direction if he had not accepted Mr. Poyser’s
invitation to tea. Mrs. Poyser duly seconded
the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace
not to make her neighbours welcome to her house:
personal likes and dislikes must not interfere with
that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr. Craig had always
been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm,
and Mrs. Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she
had “nothing to say again’ him, on’y
it was a pity he couldna be hatched o’er again,
an’ hatched different.”
So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them,
wound their way down to the valley and up again to
the old house, where a saddened memory had taken the
place of a long, long anxiety—where Adam
would never have to ask again as he entered, “Where’s
Father?”
And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company,
went back to the pleasant bright house-place at the
Hall Farm—all with quiet minds, except
Hetty, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was
only the more puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared
that his absence was quite voluntary; he need not
have gone—he would not have gone if he had
wanted to see her. She had a sickening sense that
no lot could ever be pleasant to her again if her
Thursday night’s vision was not to be fulfilled;
and in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment
and doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being
with Arthur again, of meeting his loving glance, and
hearing his soft words with that eager yearning which
one may call the “growing pain” of passion.
Chapter XIX
Adam on a Working Day
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.”
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.
