Adam Bede by George Eliot - A complete eBook in pages (391 / 550)

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Adam Bede by George Eliot
Book, page 391 / 550

basket and walked across the field, but it was some time before
she got in the right direction for the stile. The exercise and
the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her,
however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude.
There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as
she set down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of
their movement comforted her, for it assured her that her
impression was right--this was the field where she had seen the
hovel, for it was the field where the sheep were. Right on along
the path, and she would get to it. She reached the opposite gate,
and felt her way along its rails and the rails of the sheep-fold,
till her hand encountered the pricking of the gorsy wall.
Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped her
way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw
on the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of
escape. Tears came--she had never shed tears before since she
left Windsor--tears and sobs of hysterical joy that she had still
hold of life, that she was still on the familiar earth, with the
sheep near her. The very consciousness of her own limbs was a
delight to her: she turned up her sleeves, and kissed her arms
with the passionate love of life. Soon warmth and weariness
lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell continually into
dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool again--fancying
that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking with a start,
and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless sleep
came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the
gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief
of unconsciousness.

Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It
seemed to Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into
another dream--that she was in the hovel, and her aunt was
standing over her with a candle in her hand. She trembled under
her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes. There was no candle, but
there was light in the hovel--the light of early morning through
the open door. And there was a face looking down on her; but it
was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a smock-frock.

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