There was a slight pause before Adam said, “My temper got the better of me, and I said things as wasn’t true. I’d no right to speak as if you’d known you was doing me an injury: you’d no grounds for knowing it; I’ve always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could.”
He paused again before he went on.
“And perhaps I judged you too harsh—I’m apt to be harsh—and you may have acted out o’ thoughtlessness more than I should ha’ believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We’re not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it’s all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you.”
Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more—he was too painfully embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer. Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of tactics. His deed was reacting upon him—was already governing him tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved. And when he heard the words of honest retractation—when he heard the sad appeal with which Adam ended—he was obliged to rejoice in the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.
“Say no more about our anger, Adam,” he said, at last, very languidly, for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; “I forgive your momentary injustice—it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because we’ve fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for I believe I’ve been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake hands.”
Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still.
“I don’t like to say ‘No’ to that, sir,” he said, “but I can’t shake hands till it’s clear what we mean by’t. I was wrong when I spoke as if you’d done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn’t wrong in what I said before, about your behaviour t’ Hetty, and I can’t shake hands with you as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you’ve cleared that up better.”
Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand. He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he could, “I don’t know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I’ve told you already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if you are right in supposing there is any danger in it—I’m going away on Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given you, I’m heartily sorry for it. I can say no more.”
Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the conflict within him. It was of no use now—his resolution not to speak till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and looking down on him as he lay.
“It’ll be better for me to speak plain,” he said, with evident effort, “though it’s hard work. You see, sir, this isn’t a trifle to me, whatever it may be to you. I’m none o’ them men as can go making love first to one woman and then t’ another, and don’t think it much odds which of ’em I take. What I feel for Hetty’s a different sort o’ love, such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God as has given it to ’em. She’s more nor everything else to me, all but my conscience and my good name. And if it’s true what you’ve been saying all along—and if it’s only been trifling and flirting as you call it, as ’ll be put an end to by your going away—why, then, I’d wait, and hope her heart ’ud turn to me after all. I’m loath to think you’d speak false to me, and I’ll believe your word, however things may look.”