SILAS MARNER by George Eliot

SILAS MARNER
The Weaver of Raveloe
by George Eliot
(Mary Anne Evans)
1861
"A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."
--WORDSWORTH.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--
and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their
toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in
districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the
hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny
country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The
shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men
appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for
what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale
men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The
shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag
held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong
linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of
weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely
without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition
clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted,
or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the
pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had
their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained
unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?
To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct
experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their
untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as
the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and
even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to
be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any
surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had
ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any
reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All
cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument
the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in
itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner,
were mostly not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such a
matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which
rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly
hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way
it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants from
the town into the country--were to the last regarded as aliens by
their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits
which belong to a state of loneliness.
In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas
Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among
the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from
the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's
loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the
winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a
half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave
off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the
stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious
action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority,
drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the
bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened
that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became
aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he
liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom,
and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always
enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was it
possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas
Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not
close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart
cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in
the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint
that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and
add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair
enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange
lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be
caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for
the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and
benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion
can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most
easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who
have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a
life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic
religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range
of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is
almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all
overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear.
"Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat?" I
once said to an old labouring man, who was in his last illness, and
who had refused all the food his wife had offered him. "No," he
answered, "I've never been used to nothing but common victual, and
I can't eat that." Experience had bred no fancies in him that
could raise the phantasm of appetite.
And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered,
undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one of those barren
parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization--inhabited by
meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay
in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry
England, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point of
view, paid highly-desirable tithes. But it was nestled in a snug
well-wooded hollow, quite an hour's journey on horseback from any
turnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of the
coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an important-looking
village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of
it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with
well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close
upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory,
which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the
churchyard:--a village which showed at once the summits of its
social life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park
and manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs
in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough
money from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a
rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter
tide.
It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe;
he was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent short-sighted
brown eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for
people of average culture and experience, but for the villagers near
whom he had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which
corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his
advent from an unknown region called "North'ard". So had his way
of life:--he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he
never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or
to gossip at the wheelwright's: he sought no man or woman, save for
the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with
necessaries; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he
would never urge one of them to accept him against her will--quite
as if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a dead
man come to life again. This view of Marner's personality was not
without another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes; for
Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that one evening as he was
returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with
a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile as
a man in his senses would have done; and that, on coming up to him,
he saw that Marner's eyes were set like a dead man's, and he spoke
to him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his hands
clutched the bag as if they'd been made of iron; but just as he had
made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came all right again,
like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and said
"Good-night", and walked off. All this Jem swore he had seen,
more by token that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on
Squire Cass's land, down by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner must
have been in a "fit", a word which seemed to explain things
otherwise incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the
parish, shook his head, and asked if anybody was ever known to go
off in a fit and not fall down. A fit was a stroke, wasn't it? and
it was in the nature of a stroke to partly take away the use of a
man's limbs and throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children to
look to. No, no; it was no stroke that would let a man stand on his
legs, like a horse between the shafts, and then walk off as soon as
you can say "Gee!" But there might be such a thing as a man's
soul being loose from his body, and going out and in, like a bird
out of its nest and back; and that was how folks got over-wise, for
they went to school in this shell-less state to those who could
teach them more than their neighbours could learn with their five
senses and the parson. And where did Master Marner get his
knowledge of herbs from--and charms too, if he liked to give them
away? Jem Rodney's story was no more than what might have been
expected by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates,
and made her sleep like a baby, when her heart had been beating
enough to burst her body, for two months and more, while she had
been under the doctor's care. He might cure more folks if he would;
but he was worth speaking fair, if it was only to keep him from
doing you a mischief.
It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for
protecting him from the persecution that his singularities might
have drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the old
linen-weaver in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his
handicraft made him a highly welcome settler to the richer
housewives of the district, and even to the more provident
cottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the year's end.
Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any repugnance
or suspicion which was not confirmed by a deficiency in the quality
or the tale of the cloth he wove for them. And the years had rolled
on without producing any change in the impressions of the neighbours
concerning Marner, except the change from novelty to habit. At the
end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things about
Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite so
often, but they believed them much more strongly when they did say
them. There was only one important addition which the years had
brought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight of
money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men" than
himself.
But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and
his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner's
inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every
fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to
solitude. His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with
the movement, the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which,
in that day as in this, marked the life of an artisan early
incorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman
has the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and
has, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in the
government of his community. Marner was highly thought of in that
little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in
Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life
and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him
ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious
rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour
or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a medical
explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas
himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful
self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie
therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar
discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was
discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision
during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others
that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour.
A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the
subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a
less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas was
both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men,
culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and
so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and
knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with
medicinal herbs and their preparation--a little store of wisdom
which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of late
years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without
prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the
inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of
foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the
character of a temptation.
Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little
older than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close
friendship that it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to
call them David and Jonathan. The real name of the friend was
William Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining instance of
youthful piety, though somewhat given to over-severity towards
weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold
himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever blemishes others
might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; for
Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, at
an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on
contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's
face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that
defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes,
was strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward
triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips
of William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversation
between the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed
that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with
fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he
had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his
conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words "calling and
election sure" standing by themselves on a white page in the open
Bible. Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced
weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young winged things,
fluttering forsaken in the twilight.
It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had
suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a
closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young
servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual
savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to
him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in
their Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that
Silas's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and
amidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed to
him by his fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with
the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special
dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a
visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his
friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul. Silas,
feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office,
felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning
him; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the perception that
Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation
between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard and
involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she
wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their
engagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in the
prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off without strict
investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would be
sanctioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the senior
deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, he
was tended night and day by some of the younger brethren or sisters.
Silas frequently took his turn in the night-watching with William,
the one relieving the other at two in the morning. The old man,
contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery, when
one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual
audible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he
had to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly. Examination
convinced him that the deacon was dead--had been dead some time,
for the limbs were rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been
asleep, and looked at the clock: it was already four in the morning.
How was it that William had not come? In much anxiety he went to
seek for help, and soon there were several friends assembled in the
house, the minister among them, while Silas went away to his work,
wishing he could have met William to know the reason of his
non-appearance. But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of going to
seek his friend, William came, and with him the minister. They came
to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; and
to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only reply
was, "You will hear." Nothing further was said until Silas was
seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes of
those who to him represented God's people fixed solemnly upon him.
Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas,
and asked him if he knew where he had left that knife? Silas said,
he did not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket--
but he was trembling at this strange interrogation. He was then
exhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife
had been found in the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside--
found in the place where the little bag of church money had lain,
which the minister himself had seen the day before. Some hand had
removed that bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the man
to whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas was mute with
astonishment: then he said, "God will clear me: I know nothing
about the knife being there, or the money being gone. Search me and
my dwelling; you will find nothing but three pound five of my own
savings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months." At
this William groaned, but the minister said, "The proof is heavy
against you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night last
past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for William
Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness from
going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he had
not come; and, moreover, you neglected the dead body."
"I must have slept," said Silas. Then, after a pause, he added,
"Or I must have had another visitation like that which you have all
seen me under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was
not in the body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search me
and my dwelling, for I have been nowhere else."
The search was made, and it ended--in William Dane's finding the
well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas's
chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to
hide his sin any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach on
him, and said, "William, for nine years that we have gone in and
out together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear
me."
"Brother," said William, "how do I know what you may have done in
the secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over
you?"
Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came
over his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed
checked again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and
made him tremble. But at last he spoke feebly, looking at William.
"I remember now--the knife wasn't in my pocket."
William said, "I know nothing of what you mean." The other
persons present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to say
that the knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he
only said, "I am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear
me."
On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any
resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary
to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which
prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less
scandal to the community. But the members were bound to take other
measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and
drawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to
those who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which
has gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his
brethren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate
divine interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and mourning
behind for him even then--that his trust in man had been cruelly
bruised. _The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty._ He was
solemnly suspended from church-membership, and called upon to render
up the stolen money: only on confession, as the sign of repentance,
could he be received once more within the folds of the church.
Marner listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to depart,
he went towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agitation--
"The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to
cut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket
again. _You_ stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the
sin at my door. But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just
God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that
bears witness against the innocent."
There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.
William said meekly, "I leave our brethren to judge whether this is
the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas."
Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul--that shaken
trust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving
nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to
himself, "_She_ will cast me off too." And he reflected that, if
she did not believe the testimony against him, her whole faith must
be upset as his was. To people accustomed to reason about the forms
in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is
difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which
the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of
reflection. We are apt to think it inevitable that a man in
Marner's position should have begun to question the validity of an
appeal to the divine judgment by drawing lots; but to him this would
have been an effort of independent thought such as he had never
known; and he must have made the effort at a moment when all his
energies were turned into the anguish of disappointed faith. If
there is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their
sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that spring from
false ideas for which no man is culpable.
Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair,
without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in
his innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing
unbelief, by getting into his loom and working away as usual; and
before many hours were past, the minister and one of the deacons
came to him with the message from Sarah, that she held her
engagement to him at an end. Silas received the message mutely, and
then turned away from the messengers to work at his loom again. In
little more than a month from that time, Sarah was married to
William Dane; and not long afterwards it was known to the brethren
in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town.
CHAPTER II
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning,
sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views
of life, on their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that
their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are
suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them
know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas--
where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other
forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds
that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps
sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes
dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is
dreamy because it is linked with no memories. But even _their_
experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to imagine what was the
effect on a simple weaver like Silas Marner, when he left his own
country and people and came to settle in Raveloe. Nothing could be
more unlike his native town, set within sight of the widespread
hillsides, than this low, wooded region, where he felt hidden even
from the heavens by the screening trees and hedgerows. There was
nothing here, when he rose in the deep morning quiet and looked out
on the dewy brambles and rank tufted grass, that seemed to have any
relation with that life centring in Lantern Yard, which had once
been to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The whitewashed
walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a
subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then
another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at
once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the
pulpit where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and
swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long accustomed manner;
the very pauses between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given
out, and the recurrent swell of voices in song: these things had
been the channel of divine influences to Marner--they were the
fostering home of his religious emotions--they were Christianity
and God's kingdom upon earth. A weaver who finds hard words in his
hymn-book knows nothing of abstractions; as the little child knows
nothing of parental love, but only knows one face and one lap
towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and nurture.
And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world
in Raveloe?--orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the
large church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at
their own doors in service-time; the purple-faced farmers jogging
along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men
supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and
where women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to
come. There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall
that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain.
In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each
territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a
man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his
native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the
groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And
poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling
of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness,
from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the
Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the
prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had
taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and
needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to
bitterness. The little light he possessed spread its beams so
narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to
create for him the blackness of night.
His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and
he went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he
was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the
tale of Mrs. Osgood's table-linen sooner than she expected--
without contemplating beforehand the money she would put into his
hand for the work. He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure
impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily,
tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over
the loveless chasms of his life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with
throwing the shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares in
the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there were the
calls of hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own
breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well,
and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate
promptings helped, along with the weaving, to reduce his life to the
unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought
of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and
fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future
was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.
Thought was arrested by utter bewilderment, now its old narrow
pathway was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the
bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves.
But at last Mrs. Osgood's table-linen was finished, and Silas was
paid in gold. His earnings in his native town, where he worked for
a wholesale dealer, had been after a lower rate; he had been paid
weekly, and of his weekly earnings a large proportion had gone to
objects of piety and charity. Now, for the first time in his life,
he had five bright guineas put into his hand; no man expected a
share of them, and he loved no man that he should offer him a share.
But what were the guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless
days of weaving? It was needless for him to ask that, for it was
pleasant to him to feel them in his palm, and look at their bright
faces, which were all his own: it was another element of life, like
the weaving and the satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof
from the life of belief and love from which he had been cut off.
The weaver's hand had known the touch of hard-won money even before
the palm had grown to its full breadth; for twenty years, mysterious
money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the
immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the
years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the
_purpose_ then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of
looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled
effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire; and
as Silas walked homeward across the fields in the twilight, he drew
out the money and thought it was brighter in the gathering gloom.
About this time an incident happened which seemed to open a
possibility of some fellowship with his neighbours. One day, taking
a pair of shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife seated by
the fire, suffering from the terrible symptoms of heart-disease and
dropsy, which he had witnessed as the precursors of his mother's
death. He felt a rush of pity at the mingled sight and remembrance,
and, recalling the relief his mother had found from a simple
preparation of foxglove, he promised Sally Oates to bring her
something that would ease her, since the doctor did her no good. In
this office of charity, Silas felt, for the first time since he had
come to Raveloe, a sense of unity between his past and present life,
which might have been the beginning of his rescue from the
insect-like existence into which his nature had shrunk. But Sally
Oates's disease had raised her into a personage of much interest and
importance among the neighbours, and the fact of her having found
relief from drinking Silas Marner's "stuff" became a matter of
general discourse. When Doctor Kimble gave physic, it was natural
that it should have an effect; but when a weaver, who came from
nobody knew where, worked wonders with a bottle of brown waters, the
occult character of the process was evident. Such a sort of thing
had not been known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had
charms as well as "stuff": everybody went to her when their
children had fits. Silas Marner must be a person of the same sort,
for how did he know what would bring back Sally Oates's breath, if
he didn't know a fine sight more than that? The Wise Woman had
words that she muttered to herself, so that you couldn't hear what
they were, and if she tied a bit of red thread round the child's toe
the while, it would keep off the water in the head. There were
women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise
Woman's little bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had
never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had. Silas Marner could
very likely do as much, and more; and now it was all clear how he
should have come from unknown parts, and be so "comical-looking".
But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the doctor, for he would be
sure to set his face against Marner: he was always angry about the
Wise Woman, and used to threaten those who went to her that they
should have none of his help any more.
Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by mothers
who wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough, or bring back the
milk, and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the
knots in the hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the
applicants brought silver in their palms. Silas might have driven a
profitable trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs;
but money on this condition was no temptation to him: he had never
known an impulse towards falsity, and he drove one after another
away with growing irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had
spread even to Tarley, and it was long before people ceased to take
long walks for the sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his
wisdom was at length changed into dread, for no one believed him
when he said he knew no charms and could work no cures, and every
man and woman who had an accident or a new attack after applying to
him, set the misfortune down to Master Marner's ill-will and
irritated glances. Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity
towards Sally Oates, which had given him a transient sense of
brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him and his
neighbours, and made his isolation more complete.
Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns grew to a
heap, and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to
solve the problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen
hours a-day on as small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut
up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the
moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until
the growth of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles,
has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of
inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or
sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient
habit? That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating
money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in
the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it.
Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into
a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a
satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world, made a
hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense
nature, have sat weaving, weaving--looking towards the end of his
pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle,
and everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had
come to mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only
grew, but it remained with him. He began to think it was conscious
of him, as his loom was, and he would on no account have exchanged
those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with
unknown faces. He handled them, he counted them, till their form
and colour were like the satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was
only in the night, when his work was done, that he drew them out to
enjoy their companionship. He had taken up some bricks in his floor
underneath his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the
iron pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the
bricks with sand whenever he replaced them. Not that the idea of
being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his mind:
hoarding was common in country districts in those days; there were
old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known to have their
savings by them, probably inside their flock-beds; but their rustic
neighbours, though not all of them as honest as their ancestors in
the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay a
plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in their own
village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to
"run away"--a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.
So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his
guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening
itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and
satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had
reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any
contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The
same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when
they have been cut off from faith and love--only, instead of a
loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research,
some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. Strangely
Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant
mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced
the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has
no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to look
trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to see only
one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which
they hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow, that,
though he was not yet forty, the children always called him "Old
Master Marner".
Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened,
which showed that the sap of affection was not all gone. It was one
of his daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple of fields
off, and for this purpose, ever since he came to Raveloe, he had had
a brown earthenware pot, which he held as his most precious utensil
among the very few conveniences he had granted himself. It had been
his companion for twelve years, always standing on the same spot,
always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that its
form had an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the
impress of its handle on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with
that of having the fresh clear water. One day as he was returning
from the well, he stumbled against the step of the stile, and his
brown pot, falling with force against the stones that overarched the
ditch below him, was broken in three pieces. Silas picked up the
pieces and carried them home with grief in his heart. The brown pot
could never be of use to him any more, but he stuck the bits
together and propped the ruin in its old place for a memorial.
This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after
he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear
filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow
growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such
even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint
as the holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at
night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew
forth his gold. Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for
the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them two thick
leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent
themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone as they
came pouring out of the dark leather mouths! The silver bore no
large proportion in amount to the gold, because the long pieces of
linen which formed his chief work were always partly paid for in
gold, and out of the silver he supplied his own bodily wants,
choosing always the shillings and sixpences to spend in this way.
He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver--the
crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his
labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed
his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular
piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers,
and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the
work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children--thought of
the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years,
through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end
quite hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts
were still with his loom and his money when he made his journeys
through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work,
so that his steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the
lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged
to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet
that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth
into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the
barren sand.
But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great
change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a
singular manner with the life of his neighbours.
CHAPTER III
The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large
red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the
high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one
among several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with
the title of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was also
understood to be of timeless origin--the Raveloe imagination
having never ventured back to that fearful blank when there were no
Osgoods--still, he merely owned the farm he occupied; whereas
Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him
quite as if he had been a lord.
It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar
favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of
prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and
yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad
husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking
now in relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for
our old-fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all
life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and
breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of
heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and
crossing each other with incalculable results. Raveloe lay low
among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents
of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank
freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously
in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were
entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their
feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which were the heirlooms
of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams,
but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they
were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great
merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for
the poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and
the barrels of ale--they were on a large scale, and lasted a good
while, especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up
their best gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the
risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in
rainy or snowy weather, when there was no knowing how high the water
would rise, it was not to be supposed that they looked forward to a
brief pleasure. On this ground it was always contrived in the dark
seasons, when there was little work to be done, and the hours were
long, that several neighbours should keep open house in succession.
So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and
freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher
up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams
and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun
butter in all its freshness--everything, in fact, that appetites
at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not
in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.
For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was
without that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain
of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped
to account not only for there being more profusion than finished
excellence in the holiday provisions, but also for the frequency
with which the proud Squire condescended to preside in the parlour
of the Rainbow rather than under the shadow of his own dark
wainscot; perhaps, also, for the fact that his sons had turned out
rather ill. Raveloe was not a place where moral censure was severe,
but it was thought a weakness in the Squire that he had kept all his
sons at home in idleness; and though some licence was to be allowed
to young men whose fathers could afford it, people shook their heads
at the courses of the second son, Dunstan, commonly called Dunsey
Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting might turn out to be a
sowing of something worse than wild oats. To be sure, the
neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunsey--a
spiteful jeering fellow, who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when
other people went dry--always provided that his doings did not
bring trouble on a family like Squire Cass's, with a monument in the
church, and tankards older than King George. But it would be a
thousand pities if Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine open-faced
good-natured young man who was to come into the land some day,
should take to going along the same road with his brother, as he had
seemed to do of late. If he went on in that way, he would lose Miss
Nancy Lammeter; for it was well known that she had looked very shyly
on him ever since last Whitsuntide twelvemonth, when there was so
much talk about his being away from home days and days together.
There was something wrong, more than common--that was quite clear;
for Mr. Godfrey didn't look half so fresh-coloured and open as he
used to do. At one time everybody was saying, What a handsome
couple he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make! and if she could come
to be mistress at the Red House, there would be a fine change, for
the Lammeters had been brought up in that way, that they never
suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in their
household had of the best, according to his place. Such a
daughter-in-law would be a saving to the old Squire, if she never
brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be feared that,
notwithstanding his incomings, there were more holes in his pocket
than the one where he put his own hand in. But if Mr. Godfrey
didn't turn over a new leaf, he might say "Good-bye" to Miss Nancy
Lammeter.
It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with his hands in
his side-pockets and his back to the fire, in the dark wainscoted
parlour, one late November afternoon in that fifteenth year of Silas
Marner's life at Raveloe. The fading grey light fell dimly on the
walls decorated with guns, whips, and foxes' brushes, on coats and
hats flung on the chairs, on tankards sending forth a scent of flat
ale, and on a half-choked fire, with pipes propped up in the
chimney-corners: signs of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing
charm, with which the look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey's blond
face was in sad accordance. He seemed to be waiting and listening
for some one's approach, and presently the sound of a heavy step,
with an accompanying whistle, was heard across the large empty
entrance-hall.
The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking young man entered,
with the flushed face and the gratuitously elated bearing which mark
the first stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the sight of
him Godfrey's face parted with some of its gloom to take on the more
active expression of hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that lay on
the hearth retreated under the chair in the chimney-corner.
"Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?" said Dunsey, in
a mocking tone. "You're my elders and betters, you know; I was
obliged to come when you sent for me."
"Why, this is what I want--and just shake yourself sober and
listen, will you?" said Godfrey, savagely. He had himself been
drinking more than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom into
uncalculating anger. "I want to tell you, I must hand over that
rent of Fowler's to the Squire, or else tell him I gave it you; for
he's threatening to distrain for it, and it'll all be out soon,
whether I tell him or not. He said, just now, before he went out,
he should send word to Cox to distrain, if Fowler didn't come and
pay up his arrears this week. The Squire's short o' cash, and in no
humour to stand any nonsense; and you know what he threatened, if
ever he found you making away with his money again. So, see and get
the money, and pretty quickly, will you?"
"Oh!" said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his brother and
looking in his face. "Suppose, now, you get the money yourself,
and save me the trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it
over to me, you'll not refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me:
it was your brotherly love made you do it, you know."
Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. "Don't come near me
with that look, else I'll knock you down."
"Oh no, you won't," said Dunsey, turning away on his heel,
however. "Because I'm such a good-natured brother, you know.
I might get you turned out of house and home, and cut off with a
shilling any day. I might tell the Squire how his handsome son was
married to that nice young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy
because he couldn't live with his drunken wife, and I should slip
into your place as comfortable as could be. But you see, I don't do
it--I'm so easy and good-natured. You'll take any trouble for me.
You'll get the hundred pounds for me--I know you will."
"How can I get the money?" said Godfrey, quivering. "I haven't
a shilling to bless myself with. And it's a lie that you'd slip
into my place: you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all. For
if you begin telling tales, I'll follow. Bob's my father's
favourite--you know that very well. He'd only think himself well
rid of you."
"Never mind," said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as he looked
out of the window. "It 'ud be very pleasant to me to go in your
company--you're such a handsome brother, and we've always been so
fond of quarrelling with one another, I shouldn't know what to do
without you. But you'd like better for us both to stay at home
together; I know you would. So you'll manage to get that little sum
o' money, and I'll bid you good-bye, though I'm sorry to part."
Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and seized him
by the arm, saying, with an oath--
"I tell you, I have no money: I can get no money."
"Borrow of old Kimble."
"I tell you, he won't lend me any more, and I shan't ask him."
"Well, then, sell Wildfire."
"Yes, that's easy talking. I must have the money directly."
"Well, you've only got to ride him to the hunt to-morrow. There'll
be Bryce and Keating there, for sure. You'll get more bids than
one."
"I daresay, and get back home at eight o'clock, splashed up to the
chin. I'm going to Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance."
"Oho!" said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and trying to
speak in a small mincing treble. "And there's sweet Miss Nancy
coming; and we shall dance with her, and promise never to be naughty
again, and be taken into favour, and --"
"Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool," said Godfrey,
turning red, "else I'll throttle you."
"What for?" said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but taking
a whip from the table and beating the butt-end of it on his palm.
"You've a very good chance. I'd advise you to creep up her sleeve
again: it 'ud be saving time, if Molly should happen to take a drop
too much laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Miss Nancy
wouldn't mind being a second, if she didn't know it. And you've got
a good-natured brother, who'll keep your secret well, because you'll
be so very obliging to him."
"I'll tell you what it is," said Godfrey, quivering, and pale
again, "my patience is pretty near at an end. If you'd a little
more sharpness in you, you might know that you may urge a man a bit
too far, and make one leap as easy as another. I don't know but
what it is so now: I may as well tell the Squire everything myself--
I should get you off my back, if I got nothing else. And, after
all, he'll know some time. She's been threatening to come herself
and tell him. So, don't flatter yourself that your secrecy's worth
any price you choose to ask. You drain me of money till I have got
nothing to pacify _her_ with, and she'll do as she threatens some
day. It's all one. I'll tell my father everything myself, and you
may go to the devil."
Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that there was a
point at which even the hesitating Godfrey might be driven into
decision. But he said, with an air of unconcern--
"As you please; but I'll have a draught of ale first." And
ringing the bell, he threw himself across two chairs, and began to
rap the window-seat with the handle of his whip.
Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his
fingers among the contents of his side-pockets, and looking at the
floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal
courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved
were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. His
natural irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a
position in which dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on
all sides, and his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy
Dunstan and anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he
must bring on himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him
than the present evil. The results of confession were not
contingent, they were certain; whereas betrayal was not certain.
From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense and
vacillation with a sense of repose. The disinherited son of a small
squire, equally disinclined to dig and to beg, was almost as
helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by the favour of earth and sky,
has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot where it first shot upward.
Perhaps it would have been possible to think of digging with some
cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be won on those terms; but,
since he must irrevocably lose _her_ as well as the inheritance, and
must break every tie but the one that degraded him and left him
without motive for trying to recover his better self, he could
imagine no future for himself on the other side of confession but
that of "'listing for a soldier"--the most desperate step, short
of suicide, in the eyes of respectable families. No! he would
rather trust to casualties than to his own resolve--rather go on
sitting at the feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though with the
sword hanging over him and terror in his heart, than rush away into
the cold darkness where there was no pleasure left. The utmost
concession to Dunstan about the horse began to seem easy, compared
with the fulfilment of his own threat. But his pride would not let
him recommence the conversation otherwise than by continuing the
quarrel. Dunstan was waiting for this, and took his ale in shorter
draughts than usual.
"It's just like you," Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, "to
talk about my selling Wildfire in that cool way--the last thing
I've got to call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had
in my life. And if you'd got a spark of pride in you, you'd be
ashamed to see the stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it.
But it's my belief you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the
pleasure of making somebody feel he'd got a bad bargain."
"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, very placably, "you do me justice, I
see. You know I'm a jewel for 'ticing people into bargains. For
which reason I advise you to let _me_ sell Wildfire. I'd ride him
to the hunt to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I shouldn't look so
handsome as you in the saddle, but it's the horse they'll bid for,
and not the rider."
"Yes, I daresay--trust my horse to you!"
"As you please," said Dunstan, rapping the window-seat again with
an air of great unconcern. "It's _you_ have got to pay Fowler's
money; it's none of my business. You received the money from him
when you went to Bramcote, and _you_ told the Squire it wasn't paid.
I'd nothing to do with that; you chose to be so obliging as to give
it me, that was all. If you don't want to pay the money, let it
alone; it's all one to me. But I was willing to accommodate you by
undertaking to sell the horse, seeing it's not convenient to you to
go so far to-morrow."
Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have liked to spring
on Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, and flog him to within an
inch of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he
was mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings
stronger even than his resentment. When he spoke again, it was in a
half-conciliatory tone.
"Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You'll sell him
all fair, and hand over the money? If you don't, you know,
everything 'ull go to smash, for I've got nothing else to trust to.
And you'll have less pleasure in pulling the house over my head,
when your own skull's to be broken too."
"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, rising; "all right. I thought you'd
come round. I'm the fellow to bring old Bryce up to the scratch.
I'll get you a hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny."
"But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did
yesterday, and then you can't go," said Godfrey, hardly knowing
whether he wished for that obstacle or not.
"Not _it_," said Dunstan. "I'm always lucky in my weather. It
might rain if you wanted to go yourself. You never hold trumps, you
know--I always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got
the luck, so you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence;
you'll _ne_-ver get along without me."
"Confound you, hold your tongue!" said Godfrey, impetuously.
"And take care to keep sober to-morrow, else you'll get pitched on
your head coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it."
"Make your tender heart easy," said Dunstan, opening the door.
"You never knew me see double when I'd got a bargain to make; it
'ud spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm warranted to fall
on my legs."
With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to
that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now
unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting,
drinking, card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of
seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing
from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are
perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal
enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual
urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives
of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very prosaic
figures--men whose only work was to ride round their land, getting
heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who passed the rest of
their days in the half-listless gratification of senses dulled by
monotony--had a certain pathos in them nevertheless. Calamities
came to _them_ too, and their early errors carried hard
consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of
purity, order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the vision of a
life in which the days would not seem too long, even without
rioting; but the maiden was lost, and the vision passed away, and
then what was left to them, especially when they had become too
heavy for the hunt, or for carrying a gun over the furrows, but to
drink and get merry, or to drink and get angry, so that they might
be independent of variety, and say over again with eager emphasis
the things they had said already any time that twelvemonth?
Assuredly, among these flushed and dull-eyed men there were some
whom--thanks to their native human-kindness--even riot could
never drive into brutality; men who, when their cheeks were fresh,
had felt the keen point of sorrow or remorse, had been pierced by
the reeds they leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters
from which no struggle could loose them; and under these sad
circumstances, common to us all, their thoughts could find no
resting-place outside the ever-trodden round of their own petty
history.
That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this
six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction,
helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal
relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret
marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of
low passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to
be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's bitter memory. He had long
known that the delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by
Dunstan, who saw in his brother's degrading marriage the means of
gratifying at once his jealous hate and his cupidity. And if
Godfrey could have felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that
destiny had put into his mouth would have chafed him less
intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud when he was alone
had had no other object than Dunstan's diabolical cunning, he might
have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But he had
something else to curse--his own vicious folly, which now seemed
as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices
do when their promptings have long passed away. For four years he
had thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient
worship, as the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she
would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his
father's home had never been; and it would be easy, when she was
always near, to shake off those foolish habits that were no
pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling vacancy. Godfrey's
was an essentially domestic nature, bred up in a home where the
hearth had no smiles, and where the daily habits were not chastised
by the presence of household order. His easy disposition made him
fall in unresistingly with the family courses, but the need of some
tender permanent affection, the longing for some influence that
would make the good he preferred easy to pursue, caused the
neatness, purity, and liberal orderliness of the Lammeter household,
sunned by the smile of Nancy, to seem like those fresh bright hours
of the morning when temptations go to sleep and leave the ear open
to the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry, sobriety, and
peace. And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to
save him from a course which shut him out of it for ever. Instead
of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would
have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step
firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into mud and slime, in
which it was useless to struggle. He had made ties for himself
which robbed him of all wholesome motive, and were a constant
exasperation.
Still, there was one position worse than the present: it was the
position he would be in when the ugly secret was disclosed; and the
desire that continually triumphed over every other was that of
warding off the evil day, when he would have to bear the
consequences of his father's violent resentment for the wound
inflicted on his family pride--would have, perhaps, to turn his
back on that hereditary ease and dignity which, after all, was a
sort of reason for living, and would carry with him the certainty
that he was banished for ever from the sight and esteem of Nancy
Lammeter. The longer the interval, the more chance there was of
deliverance from some, at least, of the hateful consequences to
which he had sold himself; the more opportunities remained for him
to snatch the strange gratification of seeing Nancy, and gathering
some faint indications of her lingering regard. Towards this
gratification he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then, after
having passed weeks in which he had avoided her as the far-off
bright-winged prize that only made him spring forward and find his
chain all the more galling. One of those fits of yearning was on
him now, and it would have been strong enough to have persuaded him
to trust Wildfire to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning,
even if he had not had another reason for his disinclination towards
the morrow's hunt. That other reason was the fact that the
morning's meet was near Batherley, the market-town where the unhappy
woman lived, whose image became more odious to him every day; and to
his thought the whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a man
creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest
nature; and the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was
fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to
enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him
a ready-garnished home.
What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well
go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting:
everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though,
for his own part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting.
Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him,
and had been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience
for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust her away without
looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the
unresenting Snuff--perhaps because she saw no other career open to
her.
CHAPTER IV
Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously
quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on his hunter,
had to take his way along the lane which, at its farther extremity,
passed by the piece of unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where
stood the cottage, once a stone-cutter's shed, now for fifteen years
inhabited by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this
season, with the moist trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy
water high up in the deserted quarry. That was Dunstan's first
thought as he approached it; the second was, that the old fool of a
weaver, whose loom he heard rattling already, had a great deal of
money hidden somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had
often heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never thought of
suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade the old
fellow into lending the money on the excellent security of the young
Squire's prospects? The resource occurred to him now as so easy and
agreeable, especially as Marner's hoard was likely to be large
enough to leave Godfrey a handsome surplus beyond his immediate
needs, and enable him to accommodate his faithful brother, that he
had almost turned the horse's head towards home again. Godfrey
would be ready enough to accept the suggestion: he would snatch
eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with Wildfire.
But when Dunstan's meditation reached this point, the inclination to
go on grew strong and prevailed. He didn't want to give Godfrey
that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed.
Moreover, Dunstan enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having
a horse to sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain,
swaggering, and possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the
satisfaction attendant on selling his brother's horse, and not the
less have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow
Marner's money. So he rode on to cover.
Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would
be--he was such a lucky fellow.
"Heyday!" said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire,
"you're on your brother's horse to-day: how's that?"
"Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose delight in lying,
grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the
likelihood that his hearer would not believe him--"Wildfire's
mine now."
"What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack of yours?"
said Bryce, quite aware that he should get another lie in answer.
"Oh, there was a little account between us," said Dunsey,
carelessly, "and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by
taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch
for a mare o' Jortin's--as rare a bit o' blood as ever you threw
your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him,
though I'd a bid of a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from
a man over at Flitton--he's buying for Lord Cromleck--a fellow
with a cast in his eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean to stick
to Wildfire: I shan't get a better at a fence in a hurry. The
mare's got more blood, but she's a bit too weak in the
hind-quarters."
Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and
Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many
human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they
both considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce
replied ironically--
"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never
heard of a man who didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of
half as much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you
get a hundred."
Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated.
It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and
twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at
the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise
for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley,
and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him
home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run,
encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy
from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not
easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take
the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took
one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake.
His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped
without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned
on his flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that
Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his
stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which
had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and
under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident
happened; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not
troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-off
stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the
line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it
was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote
consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all
over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of
witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable.
Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much
swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right
hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his way to
Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt.
His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home
forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and
along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to
other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about
taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same
time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he
always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he
himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick
long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The
idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it
had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance
with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter
the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of
his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous
plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was
ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three
small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a
colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the
stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with
Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the direction in which the run
had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he
was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness
of head, was only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception
that there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course
of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and a mist was
gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better. He
remembered having crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a
little while before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat,
twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle,
and rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if
to assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set
off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of
bodily exertion, which somehow and at some time he should be able to
dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the
Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so
exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a
desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of
unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through
the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was
Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it
had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it,
that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold
handle--they could only see that it was a very handsome whip.
Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in
whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen
when people get close to each other; but when he at last found
himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul,
he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But
now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen
than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable
to slip--hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps by
dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow.
He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening at the
Stone-pits: he should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He
found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not
expected--namely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently
guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's cottage. That cottage and
the money hidden within it had been in his mind continually during
his walk, and he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting
the weaver to part with the immediate possession of his money for
the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a
little frightening added to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical
convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible
demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as for security,
he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him
believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the
miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over to
his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to
that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks
of Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had
become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a
natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be
several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had possibly
got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was
still nearly three-quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was
becoming unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain.
He turned up the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the
right way, since he was not certain whether the light were in front
or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground before him
cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the
door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old
fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no
movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver
gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a
strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more
loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through
the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the
latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened.
But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he
found himself in front of a bright fire which lit up every corner of
the cottage--the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table--
and showed him that Marner was not there.
Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to Dunsey than
the bright fire on the brick hearth: he walked in and seated himself
by it at once. There was something in front of the fire, too, that
would have been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a
different stage of cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended
from the kettle-hanger by a string passed through a large door-key,
in a way known to primitive housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But
the pork had been hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger,
apparently to prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly
during the owner's absence. The old staring simpleton had hot meat
for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People had always said he
lived on mouldy bread, on purpose to check his appetite. But where
could he be at this time, and on such an evening, leaving his supper
in this stage of preparation, and his door unfastened? Dunstan's
own recent difficulty in making his way suggested to him that the
weaver had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch in fuel, or for
some such brief purpose, and had slipped into the Stone-pit. That
was an interesting idea to Dunstan, carrying consequences of entire
novelty. If the weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? Who
would know where his money was hidden? _Who would know that anybody
had come to take it away?_ He went no farther into the subtleties of
evidence: the pressing question, "Where _is_ the money?" now took
such entire possession of him as to make him quite forget that the
weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once arriving at
an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the
impression that the notion from which the inference started was
purely problematic. And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind of a
possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding-places
where he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the
thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage had no
thatch; and Dunstan's first act, after a train of thought made rapid
by the stimulus of cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he
did so, his eyes travelled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks,
distinct in the fire-light, were discernible under the sprinkling of
sand. But not everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only,
which was quite covered with sand, and sand showing the marks of
fingers, which had apparently been careful to spread it over a given
space. It was near the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan
darted to that spot, swept away the sand with his whip, and,
inserting the thin end of the hook between the bricks, found that
they were loose. In haste he lifted up two bricks, and saw what he
had no doubt was the object of his search; for what could there be
but money in those two leathern bags? And, from their weight, they
must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt round the hole, to be
certain that it held no more; then hastily replaced the bricks, and
spread the sand over them. Hardly more than five minutes had passed
since he entered the cottage, but it seemed to Dunstan like a long
while; and though he was without any distinct recognition of the
possibility that Marner might be alive, and might re-enter the
cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying hold on
him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his hand. He would
hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what he should do
with the bags. He closed the door behind him immediately, that he
might shut in the stream of light: a few steps would be enough to
carry him beyond betrayal by the gleams from the shutter-chinks and
the latch-hole. The rain and darkness had got thicker, and he was
glad of it; though it was awkward walking with both hands filled, so
that it was as much as he could do to grasp his whip along with one
of the bags. But when he had gone a yard or two, he might take his
time. So he stepped forward into the darkness.
CHAPTER V
When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner was
not more than a hundred yards away from it, plodding along from the
village with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, and
with a horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind
was at ease, free from the presentiment of change. The sense of
security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction,
and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the
conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse
of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this
logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should
never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added
condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that
he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a
reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is
beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the older a man
gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing
conception of his own death. This influence of habit was
necessarily strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner's--
who saw no new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in
him the idea of the unexpected and the changeful; and it explains
simply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his
house and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was
thinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because it
would be hot and savoury; and secondly, because it would cost him
nothing. For the little bit of pork was a present from that
excellent housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to whom he had this
day carried home a handsome piece of linen; and it was only on
occasion of a present like this, that Silas indulged himself with
roast-meat. Supper was his favourite meal, because it came at his
time of revelry, when his heart warmed over his gold; whenever he
had roast-meat, he always chose to have it for supper. But this
evening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast round
his bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule over his
door-key, passed it through the handle, and made it fast on the
hanger, than he remembered that a piece of very fine twine was
indispensable to his "setting up" a new piece of work in his loom
early in the morning. It had slipped his memory, because, in coming
from Mr. Lammeter's, he had not had to pass through the village; but
to lose time by going on errands in the morning was out of the
question. It was a nasty fog to turn out into, but there were
things Silas loved better than his own comfort; so, drawing his pork
to the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern
and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, would
have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his
door without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding his
supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What
thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this?
and why should he come on this particular night, when he had never
come through all the fifteen years before? These questions were not
distinctly present in Silas's mind; they merely serve to represent
the vaguely-felt foundation of his freedom from anxiety.
He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done:
he opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as
he had left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of
heat. He trod about the floor while putting by his lantern and
throwing aside his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks of
Dunstan's feet on the sand in the marks of his own nailed boots.
Then he moved his pork nearer to the fire, and sat down to the
agreeable business of tending the meat and warming himself at the
same time.
Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale
face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have
understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion
with which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few
men could be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simple
soul, not even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any
vice directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put
out, and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the
force of his nature to his work and his money; and like all objects
to which a man devotes himself, they had fashioned him into
correspondence with themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it
without ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him, and confirmed more
and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response. His
gold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power of
loving together into a hard isolation like its own.
As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to
wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would
be pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his
unwonted feast. For joy is the best of wine, and Silas's guineas
were a golden wine of that sort.
He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his
loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed
the bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap
violently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at
once--only terror, and the eager effort to put an end to the
terror. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to
think it possible that his eyes had deceived him; then he held the
candle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more and
more. At last he shook so violently that he let fall the candle,
and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that he
might think. Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden
resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man falling into
dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones; and
Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off the
moment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his bed
over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven
where he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to be
searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the
hole. There was no untried refuge left for a moment's shelter from
the terrible truth.
Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the
prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that
expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images,
which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being
dissipated by the external fact. Silas got up from his knees
trembling, and looked round at the table: didn't the gold lie there
after all? The table was bare. Then he turned and looked behind
him--looked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown
eyes after some possible appearance of the bags where he had already
sought them in vain. He could see every object in his cottage--
and his gold was not there.
Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild
ringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he
stood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first
maddening pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards
his loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctively
seeking this as the strongest assurance of reality.
And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock
of certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself,
and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and
made to restore the gold. The thought brought some new strength
with it, and he started from his loom to the door. As he opened it
the rain beat in upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily.
There were no footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps?
When had the thief come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the
door had been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on
his return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he said to
himself, everything was the same as when he had left it. The sand
and bricks looked as if they had not been moved. _Was_ it a thief
who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that no hands could
reach, which had delighted in making him a second time desolate? He
shrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind with struggling
effort on the robber with hands, who could be reached by hands. His
thoughts glanced at all the neighbours who had made any remarks, or
asked any questions which he might now regard as a ground of
suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise
disreputable: he had often met Marner in his journeys across the
fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver's money;
nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when he
called to light his pipe, instead of going about his business. Jem
Rodney was the man--there was ease in the thought. Jem could be
found and made to restore the money: Marner did not want to punish
him, but only to get back his gold which had gone from him, and left
his soul like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert. The robber
must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal authority were
confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and the
great people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, and
Squire Cass--would make Jem Rodney, or somebody else, deliver up
the stolen money. He rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus of
this hope, forgetting to cover his head, not caring to fasten his
door; for he felt as if he had nothing left to lose. He ran
swiftly, till want of breath compelled him to slacken his pace as he
was entering the village at the turning close to the Rainbow.
The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort for
rich and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of
linen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers and
dignities of Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss
public. He lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or
kitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty customers of the
house were in the habit of assembling, the parlour on the left being
reserved for the more select society in which Squire Cass frequently
enjoyed the double pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But
the parlour was dark to-night, the chief personages who ornamented
its circle being all at Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance, as Godfrey
Cass was. And in consequence of this, the party on the
high-screened seats in the kitchen was more numerous than usual;
several personages, who would otherwise have been admitted into the
parlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and condescension
for their betters, being content this evening to vary their
enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they could
themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.
CHAPTER VI
The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas
approached the door of the Rainbow, had, as usual, been slow and
intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to
be puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more
important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire,
staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man
who winked; while the beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets
and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands
across their mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a funereal
duty attended with embarrassing sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the
landlord, a man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof
from human differences as those of beings who were all alike in need
of liquor, broke silence, by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin
the butcher--
"Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday,
Bob?"
The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to
answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat and replied,
"And they wouldn't be fur wrong, John."
After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as
before.
"Was it a red Durham?" said the farrier, taking up the thread of
discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.
The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the
butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of
answering.
"Red it was," said the butcher, in his good-humoured husky treble--
"and a Durham it was."
"Then you needn't tell _me_ who you bought it of," said the
farrier, looking round with some triumph; "I know who it is has got
the red Durhams o' this country-side. And she'd a white star on her
brow, I'll bet a penny?" The farrier leaned forward with his hands
on his knees as he put this question, and his eyes twinkled
knowingly.
"Well; yes--she might," said the butcher, slowly, considering
that he was giving a decided affirmative. "I don't say
contrairy."
"I knew that very well," said the farrier, throwing himself
backward again, and speaking defiantly; "if _I_ don't know
Mr. Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does--that's all.
And as for the cow you've bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been
at the drenching of her--contradick me who will."
The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational
spirit was roused a little.
"I'm not for contradicking no man," he said; "I'm for peace and
quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs--I'm for cutting 'em
short myself; but _I_ don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's a
lovely carkiss--and anybody as was reasonable, it 'ud bring tears
into their eyes to look at it."
"Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is," pursued the
farrier, angrily; "and it was Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told a
lie when you said it was a red Durham."
"I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness
as before, "and I contradick none--not if a man was to swear
himself black: he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bargains. All I
say is, it's a lovely carkiss. And what I say, I'll stick to; but
I'll quarrel wi' no man."
"No," said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the
company generally; "and p'rhaps you aren't pig-headed; and p'rhaps
you didn't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'rhaps you didn't say
she'd got a star on her brow--stick to that, now you're at it."
"Come, come," said the landlord; "let the cow alone. The truth
lies atween you: you're both right and both wrong, as I allays say.
And as for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say nothing to that;
but this I say, as the Rainbow's the Rainbow. And for the matter o'
that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters, _you_ know the most
upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey? You remember when first
Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, and took the Warrens?"
Mr. Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter of which functions
rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-featured
young man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and
twirled his thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned
with criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord's
appeal, and said--
"Aye, aye; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid
by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to
school at Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since
my day."
"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with
an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out of my
place. As the psalm says--
"I know what's right, nor only so,
But also practise what I know.""
"Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune, when it's set for
you; if you're for prac_tis_ing, I wish you'd prac_tise_ that,"
said a large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his
week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked,
as he spoke, at two of the company, who were known officially as the
"bassoon" and the "key-bugle", in the confidence that he was
expressing the sense of the musical profession in Raveloe.
Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to
deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation--
"Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm in the wrong,
I'm not the man to say I won't alter. But there's people set up
their own ears for a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow
'em. There may be two opinions, I hope."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with this
attack on youthful presumption; "you're right there, Tookey:
there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of
himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be
two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself."
"Well, Mr. Macey," said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general
laughter, "I undertook to partially fill up the office of
parish-clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities
should make you unfitting; and it's one of the rights thereof to
sing in the choir--else why have you done the same yourself?"
"Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks," said Ben
Winthrop. "The old gentleman's got a gift. Why, the Squire used
to invite him to take a glass, only to hear him sing the "Red
Rovier"; didn't he, Mr. Macey? It's a nat'ral gift. There's my
little lad Aaron, he's got a gift--he can sing a tune off
straight, like a throstle. But as for you, Master Tookey, you'd
better stick to your "Amens": your voice is well enough when you
keep it up in your nose. It's your inside as isn't right made for
music: it's no better nor a hollow stalk."
This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke
to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by
everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's epigram.
"I see what it is plain enough," said Mr. Tookey, unable to keep
cool any longer. "There's a consperacy to turn me out o' the
choir, as I shouldn't share the Christmas money--that's where it
is. But I shall speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I'll not be put upon by
no man."
"Nay, nay, Tookey," said Ben Winthrop. "We'll pay you your share
to keep out of it--that's what we'll do. There's things folks 'ud
pay to be rid on, besides varmin."
"Come, come," said the landlord, who felt that paying people for
their absence was a principle dangerous to society; "a joke's a
joke. We're all good friends here, I hope. We must give and take.
You're both right and you're both wrong, as I say. I agree wi'
Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions; and if mine was asked, I
should say they're both right. Tookey's right and Winthrop's right,
and they've only got to split the difference and make themselves
even."
The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt
at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself, and
never went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely
to be in requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher, having
music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey's
defeat and for the preservation of the peace.
"To be sure," he said, following up the landlord's conciliatory
view, "we're fond of our old clerk; it's nat'ral, and him used to
be such a singer, and got a brother as is known for the first
fiddler in this country-side. Eh, it's a pity but what Solomon
lived in our village, and could give us a tune when we liked; eh,
Mr. Macey? I'd keep him in liver and lights for nothing--that I
would."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency; "our
family's been known for musicianers as far back as anybody can tell.
But them things are dying out, as I tell Solomon every time he comes
round; there's no voices like what there used to be, and there's
nobody remembers what we remember, if it isn't the old crows."
"Aye, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these
parts, don't you, Mr. Macey?" said the landlord.
"I should think I did," said the old man, who had now gone through
that complimentary process necessary to bring him up to the point of
narration; "and a fine old gentleman he was--as fine, and finer
nor the Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from a bit north'ard, so
far as I could ever make out. But there's nobody rightly knows
about those parts: only it couldn't be far north'ard, nor much
different from this country, for he brought a fine breed o' sheep
with him, so there must be pastures there, and everything
reasonable. We heared tell as he'd sold his own land to come and
take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as had land of his
own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place. But they said it
was along of his wife's dying; though there's reasons in things as
nobody knows on--that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some
folks are so wise, they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and
all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and
they niver see't. Howsomever, it was soon seen as we'd got a new
parish'ner as know'd the rights and customs o' things, and kep a
good house, and was well looked on by everybody. And the young man--
that's the Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver a sister--
soon begun to court Miss Osgood, that's the sister o' the Mr. Osgood
as now is, and a fine handsome lass she was--eh, you can't think--
they pretend this young lass is like her, but that's the way wi'
people as don't know what come before 'em. _I_ should know, for I
helped the old rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I helped him marry 'em."
Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in instalments,
expecting to be questioned according to precedent.
"Aye, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't it, Mr. Macey, so as
you were likely to remember that marriage?" said the landlord, in
a congratulatory tone.
"I should think there did--a _very_ partic'lar thing," said
Mr. Macey, nodding sideways. "For Mr. Drumlow--poor old
gentleman, I was fond on him, though he'd got a bit confused in his
head, what wi' age and wi' taking a drop o' summat warm when the
service come of a cold morning. And young Mr. Lammeter, he'd have
no way but he must be married in Janiwary, which, to be sure, 's a
unreasonable time to be married in, for it isn't like a christening
or a burying, as you can't help; and so Mr. Drumlow--poor old
gentleman, I was fond on him--but when he come to put the
questions, he put 'em by the rule o' contrairy, like, and he says,
"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded wife?" says he, and then he
says, "Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded husband?" says he.
But the partic'larest thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on
it but me, and they answered straight off "yes", like as if it had
been me saying "Amen" i' the right place, without listening to what
went before."
"But _you_ knew what was going on well enough, didn't you,
Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh?" said the butcher.
"Lor bless you!" said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at
the impotence of his hearer's imagination--"why, I was all of a
tremble: it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by the two tails, like;
for I couldn't stop the parson, I couldn't take upon me to do that;
and yet I said to myself, I says, "Suppose they shouldn't be fast
married, 'cause the words are contrairy?" and my head went working
like a mill, for I was allays uncommon for turning things over and
seeing all round 'em; and I says to myself, "Is't the meanin' or the
words as makes folks fast i' wedlock?" For the parson meant right,
and the bride and bridegroom meant right. But then, when I come to
think on it, meanin' goes but a little way i' most things, for you
may mean to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then
where are you? And so I says to mysen, "It isn't the meanin', it's
the glue." And I was worreted as if I'd got three bells to pull at
once, when we went into the vestry, and they begun to sign their
names. But where's the use o' talking?--you can't think what
goes on in a 'cute man's inside."
"But you held in for all that, didn't you, Mr. Macey?" said the
landlord.
"Aye, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi' Mr. Drumlow, and then
I out wi' everything, but respectful, as I allays did. And he made
light on it, and he says, "Pooh, pooh, Macey, make yourself easy,"
he says; "it's neither the meaning nor the words--it's the
re_ges_ter does it--that's the glue." So you see he settled it
easy; for parsons and doctors know everything by heart, like, so as
they aren't worreted wi' thinking what's the rights and wrongs o'
things, as I'n been many and many's the time. And sure enough the
wedding turned out all right, on'y poor Mrs. Lammeter--that's Miss
Osgood as was--died afore the lasses was growed up; but for
prosperity and everything respectable, there's no family more looked
on."
Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard this story many times,
but it was listened to as if it had been a favourite tune, and at
certain points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily suspended,
that the listeners might give their whole minds to the expected
words. But there was more to come; and Mr. Snell, the landlord,
duly put the leading question.
"Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn't they say, when
he come into these parts?"
"Well, yes," said Mr. Macey; "but I daresay it's as much as this
Mr. Lammeter's done to keep it whole. For there was allays a talk
as nobody could get rich on the Warrens: though he holds it cheap,
for it's what they call Charity Land."
"Aye, and there's few folks know so well as you how it come to be
Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the butcher.
"How should they?" said the old clerk, with some contempt.
"Why, my grandfather made the grooms' livery for that Mr. Cliff as
came and built the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they're stables
four times as big as Squire Cass's, for he thought o' nothing but
hosses and hunting, Cliff didn't--a Lunnon tailor, some folks
said, as had gone mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't ride; lor bless
you! they said he'd got no more grip o' the hoss than if his legs
had been cross-sticks: my grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so
many and many a time. But ride he would, as if Old Harry had been
a-driving him; and he'd a son, a lad o' sixteen; and nothing would
his father have him do, but he must ride and ride--though the lad
was frighted, they said. And it was a common saying as the father
wanted to ride the tailor out o' the lad, and make a gentleman on
him--not but what I'm a tailor myself, but in respect as God made
me such, I'm proud on it, for "Macey, tailor", 's been wrote up over
our door since afore the Queen's heads went out on the shillings.
But Cliff, he was ashamed o' being called a tailor, and he was sore
vexed as his riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the gentlefolks
hereabout could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got sickly and
died, and the father didn't live long after him, for he got queerer
nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night,
wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights
burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a
mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb
creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd
left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and
that's how the Warrens come to be Charity Land; though, as for the
stables, Mr. Lammeter never uses 'em--they're out o' all charicter--
lor bless you! if you was to set the doors a-banging in 'em, it
'ud sound like thunder half o'er the parish."
"Aye, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks see
by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the landlord.
"Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that's all," said
Mr. Macey, winking mysteriously, "and then make believe, if you
like, as you didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping
o' the hosses, nor the cracking o' the whips, and howling, too, if
it's tow'rt daybreak. "Cliff's Holiday" has been the name of it
ever sin' I were a boy; that's to say, some said as it was the
holiday Old Harry gev him from roasting, like. That's what my
father told me, and he was a reasonable man, though there's folks
nowadays know what happened afore they were born better nor they
know their own business."
"What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?" said the landlord, turning
to the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his cue.
"There's a nut for _you_ to crack."
Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was proud of
his position.
"Say? I say what a man _should_ say as doesn't shut his eyes to
look at a finger-post. I say, as I'm ready to wager any man ten
pound, if he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the pasture before
the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises,
if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and
I've said it many a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a ten-pun'
note on their ghos'es as they make so sure of."
"Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is," said Ben Winthrop.
"You might as well bet a man as he wouldn't catch the rheumatise if
he stood up to 's neck in the pool of a frosty night. It 'ud be
fine fun for a man to win his bet as he'd catch the rheumatise.
Folks as believe in Cliff's Holiday aren't agoing to ventur near it
for a matter o' ten pound."
"If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it," said Mr. Macey,
with a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs together, "he's no call
to lay any bet--let him go and stan' by himself--there's nobody
'ull hinder him; and then he can let the parish'ners know if they're
wrong."
"Thank you! I'm obliged to you," said the farrier, with a snort
of scorn. "If folks are fools, it's no business o' mine. _I_
don't want to make out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready.
But I'm not against a bet--everything fair and open. Let any man
bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and
stand by myself. I want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd fill
this pipe."
"Ah, but who's to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? That's no
fair bet," said the butcher.
"No fair bet?" replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. "I should like to
hear any man stand up and say I want to bet unfair. Come now,
Master Lundy, I should like to hear you say it."
"Very like you would," said the butcher. "But it's no business
o' mine. You're none o' my bargains, and I aren't a-going to try
and 'bate your price. If anybody 'll bid for you at your own
vallying, let him. I'm for peace and quietness, I am."
"Yes, that's what every yapping cur is, when you hold a stick up at
him," said the farrier. "But I'm afraid o' neither man nor ghost,
and I'm ready to lay a fair bet. _I_ aren't a turn-tail cur."
"Aye, but there's this in it, Dowlas," said the landlord, speaking
in a tone of much candour and tolerance. "There's folks, i' my
opinion, they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a
pike-staff before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my
wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under
her nose. I never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself,
"Very like I haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a
ghost for a smell, or else contrairiways. And so, I'm for holding
with both sides; for, as I say, the truth lies between 'em. And if
Dowlas was to go and stand, and say he'd never seen a wink o'
Cliff's Holiday all the night through, I'd back him; and if anybody
said as Cliff's Holiday was certain sure, for all that, I'd back
_him_ too. For the smell's what I go by."
The landlord's analogical argument was not well received by the
farrier--a man intensely opposed to compromise.
"Tut, tut," he said, setting down his glass with refreshed
irritation; "what's the smell got to do with it? Did ever a ghost
give a man a black eye? That's what I should like to know. If
ghos'es want me to believe in 'em, let 'em leave off skulking i' the
dark and i' lone places--let 'em come where there's company and
candles."
"As if ghos'es 'ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!"
said Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence
to apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.
CHAPTER VII
Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had
a more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them;
for the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing
in the warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the
company with his strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a
simultaneous movement, like the antennae of startled insects, and
every man present, not excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an
impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an
apparition; for the door by which Silas had entered was hidden by
the high-screened seats, and no one had noticed his approach.
Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be supposed to
have felt an argumentative triumph, which would tend to neutralize
his share of the general alarm. Had he not always said that when
Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul went loose
from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on the
whole, he would have been as well contented without it. For a few
moments there was a dead silence, Marner's want of breath and
agitation not allowing him to speak. The landlord, under the
habitual sense that he was bound to keep his house open to all
company, and confident in the protection of his unbroken neutrality,
at last took on himself the task of adjuring the ghost.
"Master Marner," he said, in a conciliatory tone, "what's lacking
to you? What's your business here?"
"Robbed!" said Silas, gaspingly. "I've been robbed! I want the
constable--and the Justice--and Squire Cass--and
Mr. Crackenthorp."
"Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney," said the landlord, the idea of a
ghost subsiding; "he's off his head, I doubt. He's wet through."
Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently near Marner's
standing-place; but he declined to give his services.
"Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you've a mind,"
said Jem, rather sullenly. "He's been robbed, and murdered too,
for what I know," he added, in a muttering tone.
"Jem Rodney!" said Silas, turning and fixing his strange eyes on
the suspected man.
"Aye, Master Marner, what do you want wi' me?" said Jem,
trembling a little, and seizing his drinking-can as a defensive
weapon.
"If it was you stole my money," said Silas, clasping his hands
entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry, "give it me back--
and I won't meddle with you. I won't set the constable on you.
Give it me back, and I'll let you--I'll let you have a guinea."
"Me stole your money!" said Jem, angrily. "I'll pitch this can
at your eye if you talk o' _my_ stealing your money."
"Come, come, Master Marner," said the landlord, now rising
resolutely, and seizing Marner by the shoulder, "if you've got any
information to lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you're in
your right mind, if you expect anybody to listen to you. You're as
wet as a drownded rat. Sit down and dry yourself, and speak
straight forrard."
"Ah, to be sure, man," said the farrier, who began to feel that he
had not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion. "Let's
have no more staring and screaming, else we'll have you strapped for
a madman. That was why I didn't speak at the first--thinks I, the
man's run mad."
"Aye, aye, make him sit down," said several voices at once, well
pleased that the reality of ghosts remained still an open question.
The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to sit
down on a chair aloof from every one else, in the centre of the
circle and in the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble
to have any distinct purpose beyond that of getting help to recover
his money, submitted unresistingly. The transient fears of the
company were now forgotten in their strong curiosity, and all faces
were turned towards Silas, when the landlord, having seated himself
again, said--
"Now then, Master Marner, what's this you've got to say--as
you've been robbed? Speak out."
"He'd better not say again as it was me robbed him," cried Jem
Rodney, hastily. "What could I ha' done with his money? I could
as easy steal the parson's surplice, and wear it."
"Hold your tongue, Jem, and let's hear what he's got to say," said
the landlord. "Now then, Master Marner."
Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the
mysterious character of the robbery became evident.
This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe
neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and
feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest
promise of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of
his passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness
rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than
without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we
detect the smallest sign of the bud.
The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to
him, gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity of his
distress: it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner
was telling the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at
once from the nature of his statements to the absence of any motive
for making them falsely, but because, as Mr. Macey observed, "Folks
as had the devil to back 'em were not likely to be so mushed" as
poor Silas was. Rather, from the strange fact that the robber had
left no traces, and had happened to know the nick of time, utterly
incalculable by mortal agents, when Silas would go away from home
without locking his door, the more probable conclusion seemed to be,
that his disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed,
had been broken up, and that, in consequence, this ill turn had been
done to Marner by somebody it was quite in vain to set the constable
after. Why this preternatural felon should be obliged to wait till
the door was left unlocked, was a question which did not present
itself.
"It isn't Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner," said
the landlord. "You mustn't be a-casting your eye at poor Jem.
There may be a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a
hare or so, if anybody was bound to keep their eyes staring open,
and niver to wink; but Jem's been a-sitting here drinking his can,
like the decentest man i' the parish, since before you left your
house, Master Marner, by your own account."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey; "let's have no accusing o' the
innicent. That isn't the law. There must be folks to swear again'
a man before he can be ta'en up. Let's have no accusing o' the
innicent, Master Marner."
Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be
awakened by these words. With a movement of compunction as new and
strange to him as everything else within the last hour, he started
from his chair and went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he
wanted to assure himself of the expression in his face.
"I was wrong," he said--"yes, yes--I ought to have thought.
There's nothing to witness against you, Jem. Only you'd been into
my house oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head.
I don't accuse you--I won't accuse anybody--only," he added,
lifting up his hands to his head, and turning away with bewildered
misery, "I try--I try to think where my guineas can be."
"Aye, aye, they're gone where it's hot enough to melt 'em, I
doubt," said Mr. Macey.
"Tchuh!" said the farrier. And then he asked, with a
cross-examining air, "How much money might there be in the bags,
Master Marner?"
"Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve and sixpence, last
night when I counted it," said Silas, seating himself again, with a
groan.
"Pooh! why, they'd be none so heavy to carry. Some tramp's been
in, that's all; and as for the no footmarks, and the bricks and the
sand being all right--why, your eyes are pretty much like a
insect's, Master Marner; they're obliged to look so close, you can't
see much at a time. It's my opinion as, if I'd been you, or you'd
been me--for it comes to the same thing--you wouldn't have
thought you'd found everything as you left it. But what I vote is,
as two of the sensiblest o' the company should go with you to Master
Kench, the constable's--he's ill i' bed, I know that much--and
get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for that's the law, and I
don't think anybody 'ull take upon him to contradick me there. It
isn't much of a walk to Kench's; and then, if it's me as is deppity,
I'll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your premises; and
if anybody's got any fault to find with that, I'll thank him to
stand up and say it out like a man."
By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his
self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named
as one of the superlatively sensible men.
"Let us see how the night is, though," said the landlord, who also
considered himself personally concerned in this proposition. "Why,
it rains heavy still," he said, returning from the door.
"Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain," said the
farrier. "For it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears as
respectable men like us had a information laid before 'em and took
no steps."
The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of
the company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high
ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take
on himself the chill dignity of going to Kench's. But to the
farrier's strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his
proposing himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old
gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to
him by his father, that no doctor could be a constable.
"And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cow-doctor--
for a fly's a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly," concluded
Mr. Macey, wondering a little at his own "'cuteness".
There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course
indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a
doctor could be a constable if he liked--the law meant, he needn't
be one if he didn't like. Mr. Macey thought this was nonsense,
since the law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other
folks. Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of
other men not to like being constables, how came Mr. Dowlas to be so
eager to act in that capacity?
"_I_ don't want to act the constable," said the farrier, driven
into a corner by this merciless reasoning; "and there's no man can
say it of me, if he'd tell the truth. But if there's to be any
jealousy and en_vy_ing about going to Kench's in the rain, let them
go as like it--you won't get me to go, I can tell you."
By the landlord's intervention, however, the dispute was
accommodated. Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a second person
disinclined to act officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with
some old coverings, turned out with his two companions into the rain
again, thinking of the long night-hours before him, not as those do
who long to rest, but as those who expect to "watch for the
morning".
CHAPTER VIII
When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood's party at midnight, he
was not much surprised to learn that Dunsey had not come home.
Perhaps he had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for another chance--
perhaps, on that foggy afternoon, he had preferred housing
himself at the Red Lion at Batherley for the night, if the run had
kept him in that neighbourhood; for he was not likely to feel much
concern about leaving his brother in suspense. Godfrey's mind was
too full of Nancy Lammeter's looks and behaviour, too full of the
exasperation against himself and his lot, which the sight of her
always produced in him, for him to give much thought to Wildfire, or
to the probabilities of Dunstan's conduct.
The next morning the whole village was excited by the story of the
robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else, was occupied in gathering
and discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stone-pits. The
rain had washed away all possibility of distinguishing foot-marks,
but a close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the
direction opposite to the village, a tinder-box, with a flint and
steel, half sunk in the mud. It was not Silas's tinder-box, for the
only one he had ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the
inference generally accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch
was somehow connected with the robbery. A small minority shook
their heads, and intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery
to have much light thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master
Marner's tale had a queer look with it, and that such things had
been known as a man's doing himself a mischief, and then setting the
justice to look for the doer. But when questioned closely as to
their grounds for this opinion, and what Master Marner had to gain
by such false pretences, they only shook their heads as before, and
observed that there was no knowing what some folks counted gain;
moreover, that everybody had a right to their own opinions, grounds
or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody knew, was partly
crazy. Mr. Macey, though he joined in the defence of Marner against
all suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the tinder-box; indeed,
repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion, tending to imply that
everything must be done by human hands, and that there was no power
which could make away with the guineas without moving the bricks.
Nevertheless, he turned round rather sharply on Mr. Tookey, when the
zealous deputy, feeling that this was a view of the case peculiarly
suited to a parish-clerk, carried it still farther, and doubted
whether it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when the
circumstances were so mysterious.
"As if," concluded Mr. Tookey--"as if there was nothing but
what could be made out by justices and constables."
"Now, don't you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey," said
Mr. Macey, nodding his head aside admonishingly. "That's what
you're allays at; if I throw a stone and hit, you think there's
summat better than hitting, and you try to throw a stone beyond.
What I said was against the tinder-box: I said nothing against
justices and constables, for they're o' King George's making, and it
'ud be ill-becoming a man in a parish office to fly out again' King
George."
While these discussions were going on amongst the group outside the
Rainbow, a higher consultation was being carried on within, under
the presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector, assisted by Squire
Cass and other substantial parishioners. It had just occurred to
Mr. Snell, the landlord--he being, as he observed, a man
accustomed to put two and two together--to connect with the
tinder-box, which, as deputy-constable, he himself had had the
honourable distinction of finding, certain recollections of a pedlar
who had called to drink at the house about a month before, and had
actually stated that he carried a tinder-box about with him to light
his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed out. And as
memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes
surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered a vivid
impression of the effect produced on him by the pedlar's countenance
and conversation. He had a "look with his eye" which fell
unpleasantly on Mr. Snell's sensitive organism. To be sure, he
didn't say anything particular--no, except that about the
tinder-box--but it isn't what a man says, it's the way he says it.
Moreover, he had a swarthy foreignness of complexion which boded
little honesty.
"Did he wear ear-rings?" Mr. Crackenthorp wished to know, having
some acquaintance with foreign customs.
"Well--stay--let me see," said Mr. Snell, like a docile
clairvoyante, who would really not make a mistake if she could help
it. After stretching the corners of his mouth and contracting his
eyes, as if he were trying to see the ear-rings, he appeared to give
up the effort, and said, "Well, he'd got ear-rings in his box to
sell, so it's nat'ral to suppose he might wear 'em. But he called
at every house, a'most, in the village; there's somebody else,
mayhap, saw 'em in his ears, though I can't take upon me rightly to
say."
Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else would
remember the pedlar's ear-rings. For on the spread of inquiry among
the villagers it was stated with gathering emphasis, that the parson
had wanted to know whether the pedlar wore ear-rings in his ears,
and an impression was created that a great deal depended on the
eliciting of this fact. Of course, every one who heard the
question, not having any distinct image of the pedlar as _without_
ear-rings, immediately had an image of him _with_ ear-rings, larger
or smaller, as the case might be; and the image was presently taken
for a vivid recollection, so that the glazier's wife, a
well-intentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose house was
among the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as sure as
ever she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas that
was ever coming, that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape of
the young moon, in the pedlar's two ears; while Jinny Oates, the
cobbler's daughter, being a more imaginative person, stated not only
that she had seen them too, but that they had made her blood creep,
as it did at that very moment while there she stood.
Also, by way of throwing further light on this clue of the
tinder-box, a collection was made of all the articles purchased from
the pedlar at various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be
exhibited there. In fact, there was a general feeling in the
village, that for the clearing-up of this robbery there must be a
great deal done at the Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife
an excuse for going there while it was the scene of severe public
duties.
Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indignation also,
when it became known that Silas Marner, on being questioned by the
Squire and the parson, had retained no other recollection of the
pedlar than that he had called at his door, but had not entered his
house, having turned away at once when Silas, holding the door ajar,
had said that he wanted nothing. This had been Silas's testimony,
though he clutched strongly at the idea of the pedlar's being the
culprit, if only because it gave him a definite image of a
whereabout for his gold after it had been taken away from its
hiding-place: he could see it now in the pedlar's box. But it was
observed with some irritation in the village, that anybody but a
"blind creatur" like Marner would have seen the man prowling
about, for how came he to leave his tinder-box in the ditch close
by, if he hadn't been lingering there? Doubtless, he had made his
observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might know--
and only look at him--that the weaver was a half-crazy miser. It
was a wonder the pedlar hadn't murdered him; men of that sort, with
rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;
there had been one tried at the 'sizes, not so long ago but what
there were people living who remembered it.
Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell's
frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it
lightly, stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the
pedlar, and thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all
nonsense, he said, about the man's evil looks. But this was spoken
of in the village as the random talk of youth, "as if it was only
Mr. Snell who had seen something odd about the pedlar!" On the
contrary, there were at least half-a-dozen who were ready to go
before Justice Malam, and give in much more striking testimony than
any the landlord could furnish. It was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey
would not go to Tarley and throw cold water on what Mr. Snell said
there, and so prevent the justice from drawing up a warrant. He was
suspected of intending this, when, after mid-day, he was seen
setting off on horseback in the direction of Tarley.
But by this time Godfrey's interest in the robbery had faded before
his growing anxiety about Dunstan and Wildfire, and he was going,
not to Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in uncertainty about
them any longer. The possibility that Dunstan had played him the
ugly trick of riding away with Wildfire, to return at the end of a
month, when he had gambled away or otherwise squandered the price of
the horse, was a fear that urged itself upon him more, even, than
the thought of an accidental injury; and now that the dance at
Mrs. Osgood's was past, he was irritated with himself that he had
trusted his horse to Dunstan. Instead of trying to still his fears,
he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings
to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less
likely to come; and when he heard a horse approaching at a trot, and
saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond an angle of the lane, he felt
as if his conjuration had succeeded. But no sooner did the horse
come within sight, than his heart sank again. It was not Wildfire;
and in a few moments more he discerned that the rider was not
Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled up to speak, with a face that implied
something disagreeable.
"Well, Mr. Godfrey, that's a lucky brother of yours, that Master
Dunsey, isn't he?"
"What do you mean?" said Godfrey, hastily.
"Why, hasn't he been home yet?" said Bryce.
"Home? no. What has happened? Be quick. What has he done with
my horse?"
"Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had parted
with it to him."
"Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?" said Godfrey,
flushed with exasperation.
"Worse than that," said Bryce. "You see, I'd made a bargain with
him to buy the horse for a hundred and twenty--a swinging price,
but I always liked the horse. And what does he do but go and stake
him--fly at a hedge with stakes in it, atop of a bank with a ditch
before it. The horse had been dead a pretty good while when he was
found. So he hasn't been home since, has he?"
"Home? no," said Godfrey, "and he'd better keep away. Confound
me for a fool! I might have known this would be the end of it."
"Well, to tell you the truth," said Bryce, "after I'd bargained
for the horse, it did come into my head that he might be riding and
selling the horse without your knowledge, for I didn't believe it
was his own. I knew Master Dunsey was up to his tricks sometimes.
But where can he be gone? He's never been seen at Batherley. He
couldn't have been hurt, for he must have walked off."
"Hurt?" said Godfrey, bitterly. "He'll never be hurt--he's
made to hurt other people."
"And so you _did_ give him leave to sell the horse, eh?" said
Bryce.
"Yes; I wanted to part with the horse--he was always a little too
hard in the mouth for me," said Godfrey; his pride making him wince
under the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a matter of
necessity. "I was going to see after him--I thought some
mischief had happened. I'll go back now," he added, turning the
horse's head, and wishing he could get rid of Bryce; for he felt
that the long-dreaded crisis in his life was close upon him.
"You're coming on to Raveloe, aren't you?"
"Well, no, not now," said Bryce. "I _was_ coming round there,
for I had to go to Flitton, and I thought I might as well take you
in my way, and just let you know all I knew myself about the horse.
I suppose Master Dunsey didn't like to show himself till the ill
news had blown over a bit. He's perhaps gone to pay a visit at the
Three Crowns, by Whitbridge--I know he's fond of the house."
"Perhaps he is," said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing
himself, he said, with an effort at carelessness, "We shall hear of
him soon enough, I'll be bound."
"Well, here's my turning," said Bryce, not surprised to perceive
that Godfrey was rather "down"; "so I'll bid you good-day, and
wish I may bring you better news another time."
Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of
confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no
longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the
very next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be
sure to come back shortly, and, finding that he must bear the brunt
of his father's anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even
though he had nothing to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps,
by which he might still win Dunstan's silence and put off the evil
day: he might tell his father that he had himself spent the money
paid to him by Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an
offence before, the affair would blow over after a little storming.
But Godfrey could not bend himself to this. He felt that in letting
Dunstan have the money, he had already been guilty of a breach of
trust hardly less culpable than that of spending the money directly
for his own behoof; and yet there was a distinction between the two
acts which made him feel that the one was so much more blackening
than the other as to be intolerable to him.
"I don't pretend to be a good fellow," he said to himself; "but
I'm not a scoundrel--at least, I'll stop short somewhere. I'll
bear the consequences of what I _have_ done sooner than make believe
I've done what I never would have done. I'd never have spent the
money for my own pleasure--I was tortured into it."
Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional
fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a complete
avowal to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire's loss
till the next morning, that it might serve him as an introduction to
heavier matter. The old Squire was accustomed to his son's frequent
absence from home, and thought neither Dunstan's nor Wildfire's
non-appearance a matter calling for remark. Godfrey said to himself
again and again, that if he let slip this one opportunity of
confession, he might never have another; the revelation might be
made even in a more odious way than by Dunstan's malignity: _she_
might come as she had threatened to do. And then he tried to make
the scene easier to himself by rehearsal: he made up his mind how he
would pass from the admission of his weakness in letting Dunstan
have the money to the fact that Dunstan had a hold on him which he
had been unable to shake off, and how he would work up his father to
expect something very bad before he told him the fact. The old
Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger,
and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided--
as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many
violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of
his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating
force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became
unrelentingly hard. This was his system with his tenants: he
allowed them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their
stock, sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,--and
then, when he became short of money in consequence of this
indulgence, he took the hardest measures and would listen to no
appeal. Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force
because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his
father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual
irresolution deprived him of all sympathy. (He was not critical on
the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; _that_ seemed to
him natural enough.) Still there was just the chance, Godfrey
thought, that his father's pride might see this marriage in a light
that would induce him to hush it up, rather than turn his son out
and make the family the talk of the country for ten miles round.
This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before
him pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that
he had done with inward debating. But when he awoke in the still
morning darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening
thoughts; it was as if they had been tired out and were not to be
roused to further work. Instead of arguments for confession, he
could now feel the presence of nothing but its evil consequences:
the old dread of disgrace came back--the old shrinking from the
thought of raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy--
the old disposition to rely on chances which might be favourable to
him, and save him from betrayal. Why, after all, should he cut off
the hope of them by his own act? He had seen the matter in a wrong
light yesterday. He had been in a rage with Dunstan, and had
thought of nothing but a thorough break-up of their mutual
understanding; but what it would be really wisest for him to do, was
to try and soften his father's anger against Dunsey, and keep things
as nearly as possible in their old condition. If Dunsey did not
come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the
rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away
still longer), everything might blow over.
CHAPTER IX
Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but
lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had
finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always
took a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one
breakfasted at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was
always the latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning
appetite before he tried it. The table had been spread with
substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself--
a tall, stout man of sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and
rather hard glance seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble
mouth. His person showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was
slovenly; and yet there was something in the presence of the old
Squire distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the
parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined as he, but, having
slouched their way through life with a consciousness of being in the
vicinity of their "betters", wanted that self-possession and
authoritativeness of voice and carriage which belonged to a man who
thought of superiors as remote existences with whom he had
personally little more to do than with America or the stars. The
Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to the
presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that
was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with
any gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by
comparison.
He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, "What, sir!
haven't _you_ had your breakfast yet?" but there was no pleasant
morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness,
but because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such
homes as the Red House.
"Yes, sir," said Godfrey, "I've had my breakfast, but I was
waiting to speak to you."
"Ah! well," said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into
his chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was
felt in Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut
a piece of beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come
in with him. "Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters'
business is your own pleasure, mostly. There's no hurry about it
for anybody but yourselves."
The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a
fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that
youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged
wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm.
Godfrey waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been
brought and the door closed--an interval during which Fleet, the
deer-hound, had consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man's
holiday dinner.
"There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire," he began;
"happened the day before yesterday."
"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught
of ale. "I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir.
I never threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha'
whistled for another, for _my_ father wasn't quite so ready to
unstring as some other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a
new leaf--_they_ must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as
short o' cash as a roadside pauper. And that fool Kimble says the
newspaper's talking about peace. Why, the country wouldn't have a
leg to stand on. Prices 'ud run down like a jack, and I should
never get my arrears, not if I sold all the fellows up. And there's
that damned Fowler, I won't put up with him any longer; I've told
Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The lying scoundrel told me
he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last month. He takes advantage
because he's on that outlying farm, and thinks I shall forget him."
The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted
manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a
pretext for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant
to ward off any request for money on the ground of the misfortune
with Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on
his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an
attitude of mind the utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure.
But he must go on, now he had begun.
"It's worse than breaking the horse's knees--he's been staked and
killed," he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun
to cut his meat. "But I wasn't thinking of asking you to buy me
another horse; I was only thinking I'd lost the means of paying you
with the price of Wildfire, as I'd meant to do. Dunsey took him to
the hunt to sell him for me the other day, and after he'd made a
bargain for a hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the
hounds, and took some fool's leap or other that did for the horse at
once. If it hadn't been for that, I should have paid you a hundred
pounds this morning."
The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his
son in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a
probable guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion
of the paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son
to pay him a hundred pounds.
"The truth is, sir--I'm very sorry--I was quite to blame,"
said Godfrey. "Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He paid it to
me, when I was over there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered
me for the money, and I let him have it, because I hoped I should be
able to pay it you before this."
The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking,
and found utterance difficult. "You let Dunsey have it, sir? And
how long have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must _collogue_
with him to embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell
you I won't have it. I'll turn the whole pack of you out of the
house together, and marry again. I'd have you to remember, sir, my
property's got no entail on it;--since my grandfather's time the
Casses can do as they like with their land. Remember that, sir.
Let Dunsey have the money! Why should you let Dunsey have the
money? There's some lie at the bottom of it."
"There's no lie, sir," said Godfrey. "I wouldn't have spent the
money myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him
have it. But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's the
whole story. I never meant to embezzle money, and I'm not the man
to do it. You never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir."
"Where's Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go
and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he
wanted the money for, and what he's done with it. He shall repent
it. I'll turn him out. I said I would, and I'll do it. He shan't
brave me. Go and fetch him."
"Dunsey isn't come back, sir."
"What! did he break his own neck, then?" said the Squire, with
some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his
threat.
"No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and
Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again
by-and-by. I don't know where he is."
"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me
that," said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was
not within reach.
"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a
feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being
sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish
without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with
invented motives.
"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to
some trick, and you've been bribing him not to tell," said the
Squire, with a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his
heart beat violently at the nearness of his father's guess. The
sudden alarm pushed him on to take the next step--a very slight
impulse suffices for that on a downward road.
"Why, sir," he said, trying to speak with careless ease, "it was
a little affair between me and Dunsey; it's no matter to anybody
else. It's hardly worth while to pry into young men's fooleries: it
wouldn't have made any difference to you, sir, if I'd not had the
bad luck to lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money."
"Fooleries! Pshaw! it's time you'd done with fooleries. And I'd
have you know, sir, you _must_ ha' done with 'em," said the Squire,
frowning and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goings-on
are not what I shall find money for any longer. There's my
grandfather had his stables full o' horses, and kept a good house,
too, and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if
I hadn't four good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like
horse-leeches. I've been too good a father to you all--that's
what it is. But I shall pull up, sir."
Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his
judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father's
indulgence had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for
some discipline that would have checked his own errant weakness and
helped his better will. The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily,
took a deep draught of ale, then turned his chair from the table,
and began to speak again.
"It'll be all the worse for you, you know--you'd need try and
help me keep things together."
"Well, sir, I've often offered to take the management of things,
but you know you've taken it ill always, and seemed to think I
wanted to push you out of your place."
"I know nothing o' your offering or o' my taking it ill," said the
Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions
unmodified by detail; "but I know, one while you seemed to be
thinking o' marrying, and I didn't offer to put any obstacles in
your way, as some fathers would. I'd as lieve you married
Lammeter's daughter as anybody. I suppose, if I'd said you nay,
you'd ha' kept on with it; but, for want o' contradiction, you've
changed your mind. You're a shilly-shally fellow: you take after
your poor mother. She never had a will of her own; a woman has no
call for one, if she's got a proper man for her husband. But _your_
wife had need have one, for you hardly know your own mind enough to
make both your legs walk one way. The lass hasn't said downright
she won't have you, has she?"
"No," said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; "but I
don't think she will."
"Think! why haven't you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to
it, you want to have _her_--that's the thing?"
"There's no other woman I want to marry," said Godfrey, evasively.
"Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that's all, if you
haven't the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn't likely to be
loath for his daughter to marry into _my_ family, I should think.
And as for the pretty lass, she wouldn't have her cousin--and
there's nobody else, as I see, could ha' stood in your way."
"I'd rather let it be, please sir, at present," said Godfrey, in
alarm. "I think she's a little offended with me just now, and I
should like to speak for myself. A man must manage these things for
himself."
"Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can't turn over a
new leaf. That's what a man must do when he thinks o' marrying."
"I don't see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn't
like to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don't think
she'd come to live in this house with all my brothers. It's a
different sort of life to what she's been used to."
"Not come to live in this house? Don't tell me. You ask her,
that's all," said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh.
"I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir," said Godfrey. "I
hope you won't try to hurry it on by saying anything."
"I shall do what I choose," said the Squire, "and I shall let you
know I'm master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop
into somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox's,
but wait for me. And tell 'em to get my horse saddled. And stop:
look out and get that hack o' Dunsey's sold, and hand me the money,
will you? He'll keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know
where he's sneaking--I daresay you do--you may tell him to spare
himself the journey o' coming back home. Let him turn ostler, and
keep himself. He shan't hang on me any more."
"I don't know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn't my place to
tell him to keep away," said Godfrey, moving towards the door.
"Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go and order my horse,"
said the Squire, taking up a pipe.
Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved
by the sense that the interview was ended without having made any
change in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself
still further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about
his proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some
after-dinner words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter he should be
thrown into the embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline
her when she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual
refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some
favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences--
perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence.
And in this point of trusting to some throw of fortune's dice,
Godfrey can hardly be called specially old-fashioned. Favourable
Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices
instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man
of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his
mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him
from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside
his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and
he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a
possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a
possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming.
Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will
inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone
may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray
his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning
complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend
will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue
the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him,
and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance,
which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil
principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by
which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.
CHAPTER X
Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man
of capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions
without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were
not on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to
neglect the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot
concerning a pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a
foreign complexion, carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and
wearing large rings in his ears. But either because inquiry was too
slow-footed to overtake him, or because the description applied to
so many pedlars that inquiry did not know how to choose among them,
weeks passed away, and there was no other result concerning the
robbery than a gradual cessation of the excitement it had caused in
Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly a subject of remark: he
had once before had a quarrel with his father, and had gone off,
nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six weeks, take up his
old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His own family, who
equally expected this issue, with the sole difference that the
Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old quarters,
never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood
noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed
some offence against his father, was enough to prevent surprise. To
connect the fact of Dunsey's disappearance with that of the robbery
occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of every
one's thought--even Godfrey's, who had better reason than any one
else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no
mention of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago,
when it was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his
imagination constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him
continually in some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on
leaving Wildfire--saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and
meditating a return home to the old amusement of tormenting his
elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two
facts together, I doubt whether a combination so injurious to the
prescriptive respectability of a family with a mural monument and
venerable tankards, would not have been suppressed as of unsound
tendency. But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance of
spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality into the channel
of nightmare, are great preservatives against a dangerous
spontaneity of waking thought.
When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good
company, the balance continued to waver between the rational
explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an
impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of
the tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a
muddle-headed and credulous set, who, because they themselves were
wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook;
and the adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their
antagonists were animals inclined to crow before they had found any
corn--mere skimming-dishes in point of depth--whose
clear-sightedness consisted in supposing there was nothing behind a
barn-door because they couldn't see through it; so that, though
their controversy did not serve to elicit the fact concerning the
robbery, it elicited some true opinions of collateral importance.
But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush the slow current of
Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering
desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were
arguing at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he
lost his gold, it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a
life as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly
endure any subtraction but such as would put an end to it
altogether. But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with
immediate purpose which fenced him in from the wide, cheerless
unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round
which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied
the need for clinging. But now the fence was broken down--the
support was snatched away. Marner's thoughts could no longer move
in their old round, and were baffled by a blank like that which
meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on its homeward
path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern
in the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet was
gone; the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening
had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul's craving. The
thought of the money he would get by his actual work could bring no
joy, for its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and
hope was too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination
to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.
He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now
and then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his
thoughts had come round again to the sudden chasm--to the empty
evening-time. And all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by
his dull fire, he leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his
head with his hands, and moaned very low--not as one who seeks to
be heard.
And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by
the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a
man who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what
was worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a
neighbourly way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning
enough to keep his own. He was generally spoken of as a "poor
mushed creatur"; and that avoidance of his neighbours, which had
before been referred to his ill-will and to a probable addiction to
worse company, was now considered mere craziness.
This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The
odour of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when
superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in
well-to-do families; and Silas's misfortune had brought him
uppermost in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood.
Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas that his money had
probably been taken from him because he thought too much of it and
never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs'
pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against
the clerical character. Neighbours who had nothing but verbal
consolation to give showed a disposition not only to greet Silas and
discuss his misfortune at some length when they encountered him in
the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at his cottage
and getting him to repeat all the details on the very spot; and then
they would try to cheer him by saying, "Well, Master Marner, you're
no worse off nor other poor folks, after all; and if you was to be
crippled, the parish 'ud give you a 'lowance."
I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our
neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in
spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black
puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own
egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a
mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe;
but it was often of a beery and bungling sort, and took the shape
least allied to the complimentary and hypocritical.
Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas
know that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed
lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs--
"Come, Master Marner, why, you've no call to sit a-moaning. You're
a deal better off to ha' lost your money, nor to ha' kep it by foul
means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as
you were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than
what you are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced
creatur, partly like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there's
no knowing: it isn't every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry's had
the making of--I mean, speaking o' toads and such; for they're
often harmless, like, and useful against varmin. And it's pretty
much the same wi' you, as fur as I can see. Though as to the yarbs
and stuff to cure the breathing, if you brought that sort o'
knowledge from distant parts, you might ha' been a bit freer of it.
And if the knowledge wasn't well come by, why, you might ha' made up
for it by coming to church reg'lar; for, as for the children as the
Wise Woman charmed, I've been at the christening of 'em again and
again, and they took the water just as well. And that's reasonable;
for if Old Harry's a mind to do a bit o' kindness for a holiday,
like, who's got anything against it? That's my thinking; and I've
been clerk o' this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there's no cussing o'
folks as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say
what he will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying--for there's
windings i' things as they may carry you to the fur end o' the
prayer-book afore you get back to 'em--my advice is, as you keep
up your sperrits; for as for thinking you're a deep un, and ha' got
more inside you nor 'ull bear daylight, I'm not o' that opinion at
all, and so I tell the neighbours. For, says I, you talk o' Master
Marner making out a tale--why, it's nonsense, that is: it 'ud take
a 'cute man to make a tale like that; and, says I, he looked as
scared as a rabbit."
During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his
previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his
hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been
listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply,
but Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant
to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as
sunshine falls on the wretched--he had no heart to taste it, and
felt that it was very far off him.
"Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?" said
Mr. Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.
"Oh," said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, "I
thank you--thank you--kindly."
"Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would," said Mr. Macey; "and
my advice is--have you got a Sunday suit?"
"No," said Marner.
"I doubted it was so," said Mr. Macey. "Now, let me advise you
to get a Sunday suit: there's Tookey, he's a poor creatur, but he's
got my tailoring business, and some o' my money in it, and he shall
make a suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can
come to church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you've never heared
me say "Amen" since you come into these parts, and I recommend you
to lose no time, for it'll be poor work when Tookey has it all to
himself, for I mayn't be equil to stand i' the desk at all, come
another winter." Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some
sign of emotion in his hearer; but not observing any, he went on.
"And as for the money for the suit o' clothes, why, you get a
matter of a pound a-week at your weaving, Master Marner, and you're
a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed. Why, you couldn't ha'
been five-and-twenty when you come into these parts, eh?"
Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, "I don't know; I can't rightly say--it's a long
while since."
After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that
Mr. Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that
Marner's head was "all of a muddle", and that it was to be doubted
if he ever knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse
heathen than many a dog.
Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright's wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person
in the parish who would not have held that to go to church every
Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand
well with Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours--
a wish to be better than the "common run", that would have
implied a reflection on those who had had godfathers and godmothers
as well as themselves, and had an equal right to the
burying-service. At the same time, it was understood to be
requisite for all who were not household servants, or young men, to
take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire Cass
himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
"good livers" went to church with greater, though still with
moderate, frequency.
Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this
threw a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the
morning, which it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet
she had not the vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a
necessary condition of such habits: she was a very mild, patient
woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more
serious elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them. She was
the person always first thought of in Raveloe when there was illness
or death in a family, when leeches were to be applied, or there was
a sudden disappointment in a monthly nurse. She was a "comfortable
woman"--good-looking, fresh-complexioned, having her lips always
slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the
doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never whimpering; no
one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to
shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal
mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben
Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well
with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes and joviality as
patiently as everything else, considering that "men _would_ be
so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it
had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and
turkey-cocks.
This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn
strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of
a sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron
with her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small
lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe.
Aaron, an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched
frill which looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his
adventurous curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that
the big-eyed weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety
was much increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard
the mysterious sound of the loom.
"Ah, it is as I thought," said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.
They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did
come to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have
done, at a visit that had been unasked for and unexpected.
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure
inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left
groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had
inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if
any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a
slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a
faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. He opened the
door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning her
greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that she
was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed
the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest
way--
"I'd a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned
out better nor common, and I'd ha' asked you to accept some, if
you'd thought well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o'
bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's
stomichs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know,
God help 'em."
Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked
her kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed
to look so at everything he took into his hand--eyed all the while
by the wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an
outwork of his mother's chair, and was peeping round from behind it.
"There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em
myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows
what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as
is on the pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?"
Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.
"Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly. "Well,
whativer the letters are, they've a good meaning; and it's a stamp
as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un,
and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and I've allays put it
on too; for if there's any good, we've need of it i' this world."
"It's I. H. S.," said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron
peeped round the chair again.
"Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off," said Dolly. "Ben's
read 'em to me many and many a time, but they slip out o' my mind
again; the more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they
wouldn't be in the church; and so I prick 'em on all the loaves and
all the cakes, though sometimes they won't hold, because o' the
rising--for, as I said, if there's any good to be got we've need
of it i' this world--that we have; and I hope they'll bring good
to you, Master Marner, for it's wi' that will I brought you the
cakes; and you see the letters have held better nor common."
Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was
no possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that
made itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling
than before--"Thank you--thank you kindly." But he laid down
the cakes and seated himself absently--drearily unconscious of any
distinct benefit towards which the cakes and the letters, or even
Dolly's kindness, could tend for him.
"Ah, if there's good anywhere, we've need of it," repeated Dolly,
who did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at
Silas pityingly as she went on. "But you didn't hear the
church-bells this morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn't know
it was Sunday. Living so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay;
and then, when your loom makes a noise, you can't hear the bells,
more partic'lar now the frost kills the sound."
"Yes, I did; I heard 'em," said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a
mere accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had
been no bells in Lantern Yard.
"Dear heart!" said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. "But
what a pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean
yourself--if you _didn't_ go to church; for if you'd a roasting
bit, it might be as you couldn't leave it, being a lone man. But
there's the bakehus, if you could make up your mind to spend a
twopence on the oven now and then,--not every week, in course--I
shouldn't like to do that myself,--you might carry your bit o'
dinner there, for it's nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot
of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can't know your dinner from
Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day, this blessed Christmas as is
ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go
to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and
then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the better, and you'd know
which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i' Them as
knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all
to do."
Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech
for her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she
would have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a
basin of gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before
been closely urged on the point of his absence from church, which
had only been thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he
was too direct and simple to evade Dolly's appeal.
"Nay, nay," he said, "I know nothing o' church. I've never been
to church."
"No!" said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking
herself of Silas's advent from an unknown country, she said, "Could
it ha' been as they'd no church where you was born?"
"Oh, yes," said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture
of leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. "There was
churches--a many--it was a big town. But I knew nothing of 'em--
I went to chapel."
Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid
of inquiring further, lest "chapel" might mean some haunt of
wickedness. After a little thought, she said--
"Well, Master Marner, it's niver too late to turn over a new leaf,
and if you've niver had no church, there's no telling the good it'll
do you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when
I've been and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and
glory o' God, as Mr. Macey gives out--and Mr. Crackenthorp saying
good words, and more partic'lar on Sacramen' Day; and if a bit o'
trouble comes, I feel as I can put up wi' it, for I've looked for
help i' the right quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all
give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it
isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we
are, and come short o' Their'n."
Poor Dolly's exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather
unmeaningly on Silas's ears, for there was no word in it that could
rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his
comprehension was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no
heresy of Dolly's, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous
familiarity. He remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to
the part of Dolly's speech which he fully understood--her
recommendation that he should go to church. Indeed, Silas was so
unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief questions and answers
necessary for the transaction of his simple business, that words did
not easily come to him without the urgency of a distinct purpose.
But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver's awful
presence, had advanced to his mother's side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back
a little, and rubbed his head against his mother's shoulder, but
still thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand
out for it.
"Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; "why, you don't want cake again yet awhile. He's
wonderful hearty," she went on, with a little sigh--"that he is,
God knows. He's my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me
or the father must allays hev him in our sight--that we must."
She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a "pictur of a child". But Marner, on the other
side of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim
round, with two dark spots in it.
"And he's got a voice like a bird--you wouldn't think," Dolly
went on; "he can sing a Christmas carril as his father's taught
him; and I take it for a token as he'll come to good, as he can
learn the good tunes so quick. Come, Aaron, stan' up and sing the
carril to Master Marner, come."
Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother's shoulder.
"Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly, gently. "Stan' up, when mother
tells you, and let me hold the cake till you've done."
Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre,
under protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of
coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over
his eyes, and then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if
he looked anxious for the "carril", he at length allowed his head
to be duly adjusted, and standing behind the table, which let him
appear above it only as far as his broad frill, so that he looked
like a cherubic head untroubled with a body, he began with a clear
chirp, and in a melody that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer
"God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas-day."
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.
"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. "There's no other music equil to
the Christmas music--"Hark the erol angils sing." And you may
judge what it is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the
voices, as you can't help thinking you've got to a better place
a'ready--for I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them
put us in it as knows best--but what wi' the drink, and the
quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen
times and times, one's thankful to hear of a better. The boy sings
pretty, don't he, Master Marner?"
"Yes," said Silas, absently, "very pretty."
The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of
the effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he
was grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer
Aaron a bit more cake.
"Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner," said Dolly, holding down
Aaron's willing hands. "We must be going home now. And so I wish
you good-bye, Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in
your inside, as you can't fend for yourself, I'll come and clean up
for you, and get you a bit o' victual, and willing. But I beg and
pray of you to leave off weaving of a Sunday, for it's bad for soul
and body--and the money as comes i' that way 'ull be a bad bed to
lie down on at the last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody knows where,
like the white frost. And you'll excuse me being that free with
you, Master Marner, for I wish you well--I do. Make your bow,
Aaron."
Silas said "Good-bye, and thank you kindly," as he opened the door
for Dolly, but he couldn't help feeling relieved when she was gone--
relieved that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her
simple view of life and its comforts, by which she had tried to
cheer him, was only like a report of unknown objects, which his
imagination could not fashion. The fountains of human love and of
faith in a divine love had not yet been unlocked, and his soul was
still the shrunken rivulet, with only this difference, that its
little groove of sand was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly
against dark obstruction.
And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and
Dolly Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating
his meat in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a
neighbourly present. In the morning he looked out on the black
frost that seemed to press cruelly on every blade of grass, while
the half-icy red pool shivered under the bitter wind; but towards
evening the snow began to fall, and curtained from him even that
dreary outlook, shutting him close up with his narrow grief. And he
sat in his robbed home through the livelong evening, not caring to
close his shutters or lock his door, pressing his head between his
hands and moaning, till the cold grasped him and told him that his
fire was grey.
Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas
Marner who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted
in an unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had
become dim.
But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was
fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among
the abundant dark-green boughs--faces prepared for a longer
service than usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those
green boughs, the hymn and anthem never heard but at Christmas--
even the Athanasian Creed, which was discriminated from the others
only as being longer and of exceptional virtue, since it was only
read on rare occasions--brought a vague exulting sense, for which
the grown men could as little have found words as the children, that
something great and mysterious had been done for them in heaven
above and in earth below, which they were appropriating by their
presence. And then the red faces made their way through the black
biting frost to their own homes, feeling themselves free for the
rest of the day to eat, drink, and be merry, and using that
Christian freedom without diffidence.
At Squire Cass's family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan--
nobody was sorry for his absence, or feared it would be too long.
The doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the
annual Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions,
rising to the climax of Mr. Kimble's experience when he walked the
London hospitals thirty years back, together with striking
professional anecdotes then gathered. Whereupon cards followed,
with aunt Kimble's annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's
irascibility concerning the odd trick which was rarely explicable to
him, when it was not on his side, without a general visitation of
tricks to see that they were formed on sound principles: the whole
being accompanied by a strong steaming odour of spirits-and-water.
But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly family party, was
not the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the season at the Red
House. It was the great dance on New Year's Eve that made the glory
of Squire Cass's hospitality, as of his forefathers', time out of
mind. This was the occasion when all the society of Raveloe and
Tarley, whether old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances,
or cooled acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning
runaway calves, or acquaintances founded on intermittent
condescension, counted on meeting and on comporting themselves with
mutual appropriateness. This was the occasion on which fair dames
who came on pillions sent their bandboxes before them, supplied with
more than their evening costume; for the feast was not to end with a
single evening, like a paltry town entertainment, where the whole
supply of eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is
scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for a siege; and as for
the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on floors, they were as
plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that had killed
its own geese for many generations.
Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year's Eve with a
foolish reckless longing, that made him half deaf to his importunate
companion, Anxiety.
"Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blow-up,
and how will you bribe his spite to silence?" said Anxiety.
"Oh, he won't come home before New Year's Eve, perhaps," said
Godfrey; "and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with her, and
get a kind look from her in spite of herself."
"But money is wanted in another quarter," said Anxiety, in a
louder voice, "and how will you get it without selling your
mother's diamond pin? And if you don't get it...?"
"Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any
rate, there's one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy is coming."
"Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that
will oblige you to decline marrying her--and to give your
reasons?"
"Hold your tongue, and don't worry me. I can see Nancy's eyes,
just as they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already."
But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to
be utterly quieted even by much drinking.
CHAPTER XI
Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a
pillion, and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with
a crown resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a
coachman's greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would
only allow of miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal
deficiencies of contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow
cheeks into lively contrast. It was all the greater triumph to Miss
Nancy Lammeter's beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in
that costume, as, seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect
father, she held one arm round him, and looked down, with open-eyed
anxiety, at the treacherous snow-covered pools and puddles, which
sent up formidable splashings of mud under the stamp of Dobbin's
foot. A painter would, perhaps, have preferred her in those moments
when she was free from self-consciousness; but certainly the bloom
on her cheeks was at its highest point of contrast with the
surrounding drab when she arrived at the door of the Red House, and
saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift her from the pillion. She wished
her sister Priscilla had come up at the same time behind the
servant, for then she would have contrived that Mr. Godfrey should
have lifted off Priscilla first, and, in the meantime, she would
have persuaded her father to go round to the horse-block instead of
alighting at the door-steps. It was very painful, when you had made
it quite clear to a young man that you were determined not to marry
him, however much he might wish it, that he would still continue to
pay you marked attentions; besides, why didn't he always show the
same attentions, if he meant them sincerely, instead of being so
strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if he didn't
want to speak to her, and taking no notice of her for weeks and
weeks, and then, all on a sudden, almost making love again?
Moreover, it was quite plain he had no real love for her, else he
would not let people have _that_ to say of him which they did say.
Did he suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man,
squire or no squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had
been used to see in her own father, who was the soberest and best
man in that country-side, only a little hot and hasty now and then,
if things were not done to the minute.
All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy's mind, in their
habitual succession, in the moments between her first sight of
Mr. Godfrey Cass standing at the door and her own arrival there.
Happily, the Squire came out too and gave a loud greeting to her
father, so that, somehow, under cover of this noise she seemed to
find concealment for her confusion and neglect of any suitably
formal behaviour, while she was being lifted from the pillion by
strong arms which seemed to find her ridiculously small and light.
And there was the best reason for hastening into the house at once,
since the snow was beginning to fall again, threatening an
unpleasant journey for such guests as were still on the road. These
were a small minority; for already the afternoon was beginning to
decline, and there would not be too much time for the ladies who
came from a distance to attire themselves in readiness for the early
tea which was to inspirit them for the dance.
There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered,
mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but
the Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought
of so much that it had been watched for from the windows, for
Mrs. Kimble, who did the honours at the Red House on these great
occasions, came forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct
her up-stairs. Mrs. Kimble was the Squire's sister, as well as the
doctor's wife--a double dignity, with which her diameter was in
direct proportion; so that, a journey up-stairs being rather
fatiguing to her, she did not oppose Miss Nancy's request to be
allowed to find her way alone to the Blue Room, where the Miss
Lammeters' bandboxes had been deposited on their arrival in the
morning.
There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine compliments
were not passing and feminine toilettes going forward, in various
stages, in space made scanty by extra beds spread upon the floor;
and Miss Nancy, as she entered the Blue Room, had to make her little
formal curtsy to a group of six. On the one hand, there were ladies
no less important than the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant's
daughters from Lytherly, dressed in the height of fashion, with the
tightest skirts and the shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss
Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures) with a shyness not unsustained by
inward criticism. Partly, Miss Ladbrook felt that her own skirt
must be regarded as unduly lax by the Miss Gunns, and partly, that
it was a pity the Miss Gunns did not show that judgment which she
herself would show if she were in their place, by stopping a little
on this side of the fashion. On the other hand, Mrs. Ladbrook was
standing in skull-cap and front, with her turban in her hand,
curtsying and smiling blandly and saying, "After you, ma'am," to
another lady in similar circumstances, who had politely offered the
precedence at the looking-glass.
But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her curtsy than an elderly lady
came forward, whose full white muslin kerchief, and mob-cap round
her curls of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast with the
puffed yellow satins and top-knotted caps of her neighbours. She
approached Miss Nancy with much primness, and said, with a slow,
treble suavity--
"Niece, I hope I see you well in health." Miss Nancy kissed her
aunt's cheek dutifully, and answered, with the same sort of amiable
primness, "Quite well, I thank you, aunt; and I hope I see you the
same."
"Thank you, niece; I keep my health for the present. And how is my
brother-in-law?"
These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it was
ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were all as well as usual,
and the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must certainly
arrive shortly, and that travelling on pillions in snowy weather was
unpleasant, though a joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy was
formally introduced to her aunt's visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being
the daughters of a mother known to _their_ mother, though now for
the first time induced to make a journey into these parts; and these
ladies were so taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and
figure in an out-of-the-way country place, that they began to feel
some curiosity about the dress she would put on when she took off
her joseph. Miss Nancy, whose thoughts were always conducted with
the propriety and moderation conspicuous in her manners, remarked to
herself that the Miss Gunns were rather hard-featured than
otherwise, and that such very low dresses as they wore might have
been attributed to vanity if their shoulders had been pretty, but
that, being as they were, it was not reasonable to suppose that they
showed their necks from a love of display, but rather from some
obligation not inconsistent with sense and modesty. She felt
convinced, as she opened her box, that this must be her aunt
Osgood's opinion, for Miss Nancy's mind resembled her aunt's to a
degree that everybody said was surprising, considering the kinship
was on Mr. Osgood's side; and though you might not have supposed it
from the formality of their greeting, there was a devoted attachment
and mutual admiration between aunt and niece. Even Miss Nancy's
refusal of her cousin Gilbert Osgood (on the ground solely that he
was her cousin), though it had grieved her aunt greatly, had not in
the least cooled the preference which had determined her to leave
Nancy several of her hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert's future wife
be whom she might.
Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the Miss Gunns were quite
content that Mrs. Osgood's inclination to remain with her niece gave
them also a reason for staying to see the rustic beauty's toilette.
And it was really a pleasure--from the first opening of the
bandbox, where everything smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, to the
clasping of the small coral necklace that fitted closely round her
little white neck. Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of
delicate purity and nattiness: not a crease was where it had no
business to be, not a bit of her linen professed whiteness without
fulfilling its profession; the very pins on her pincushion were
stuck in after a pattern from which she was careful to allow no
aberration; and as for her own person, it gave the same idea of
perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a little bird. It is true
that her light-brown hair was cropped behind like a boy's, and was
dressed in front in a number of flat rings, that lay quite away from
her face; but there was no sort of coiffure that could make Miss
Nancy's cheek and neck look otherwise than pretty; and when at last
she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her lace tucker, her
coral necklace, and coral ear-drops, the Miss Gunns could see
nothing to criticise except her hands, which bore the traces of
butter-making, cheese-crushing, and even still coarser work. But
Miss Nancy was not ashamed of that, for even while she was dressing
she narrated to her aunt how she and Priscilla had packed their
boxes yesterday, because this morning was baking morning, and since
they were leaving home, it was desirable to make a good supply of
meat-pies for the kitchen; and as she concluded this judicious
remark, she turned to the Miss Gunns that she might not commit the
rudeness of not including them in the conversation. The Miss Gunns
smiled stiffly, and thought what a pity it was that these rich
country people, who could afford to buy such good clothes (really
Miss Nancy's lace and silk were very costly), should be brought up
in utter ignorance and vulgarity. She actually said "mate" for
"meat", "'appen" for "perhaps", and "oss" for "horse",
which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly society, who
habitually said 'orse, even in domestic privacy, and only said
'appen on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking. Miss
Nancy, indeed, had never been to any school higher than Dame
Tedman's: her acquaintance with profane literature hardly went
beyond the rhymes she had worked in her large sampler under the lamb
and the shepherdess; and in order to balance an account, she was
obliged to effect her subtraction by removing visible metallic
shillings and sixpences from a visible metallic total. There is
hardly a servant-maid in these days who is not better informed than
Miss Nancy; yet she had the essential attributes of a lady--high
veracity, delicate honour in her dealings, deference to others, and
refined personal habits,--and lest these should not suffice to
convince grammatical fair ones that her feelings can at all resemble
theirs, I will add that she was slightly proud and exacting, and as
constant in her affection towards a baseless opinion as towards an
erring lover.
The anxiety about sister Priscilla, which had grown rather active by
the time the coral necklace was clasped, was happily ended by the
entrance of that cheerful-looking lady herself, with a face made
blowsy by cold and damp. After the first questions and greetings,
she turned to Nancy, and surveyed her from head to foot--then
wheeled her round, to ascertain that the back view was equally
faultless.
"What do you think o' _these_ gowns, aunt Osgood?" said
Priscilla, while Nancy helped her to unrobe.
"Very handsome indeed, niece," said Mrs. Osgood, with a slight
increase of formality. She always thought niece Priscilla too
rough.
"I'm obliged to have the same as Nancy, you know, for all I'm five
years older, and it makes me look yallow; for she never _will_ have
anything without I have mine just like it, because she wants us to
look like sisters. And I tell her, folks 'ull think it's my
weakness makes me fancy as I shall look pretty in what she looks
pretty in. For I _am_ ugly--there's no denying that: I feature my
father's family. But, law! I don't mind, do you?" Priscilla here
turned to the Miss Gunns, rattling on in too much preoccupation with
the delight of talking, to notice that her candour was not
appreciated. "The pretty uns do for fly-catchers--they keep the
men off us. I've no opinion o' the men, Miss Gunn--I don't know
what _you_ have. And as for fretting and stewing about what
_they_'ll think of you from morning till night, and making your life
uneasy about what they're doing when they're out o' your sight--as
I tell Nancy, it's a folly no woman need be guilty of, if she's got
a good father and a good home: let her leave it to them as have got
no fortin, and can't help themselves. As I say,
Mr. Have-your-own-way is the best husband, and the only one I'd ever
promise to obey. I know it isn't pleasant, when you've been used to
living in a big way, and managing hogsheads and all that, to go and
put your nose in by somebody else's fireside, or to sit down by
yourself to a scrag or a knuckle; but, thank God! my father's a
sober man and likely to live; and if you've got a man by the
chimney-corner, it doesn't matter if he's childish--the business
needn't be broke up."
The delicate process of getting her narrow gown over her head
without injury to her smooth curls, obliged Miss Priscilla to pause
in this rapid survey of life, and Mrs. Osgood seized the opportunity
of rising and saying--
"Well, niece, you'll follow us. The Miss Gunns will like to go
down."
"Sister," said Nancy, when they were alone, "you've offended the
Miss Gunns, I'm sure."
"What have I done, child?" said Priscilla, in some alarm.
"Why, you asked them if they minded about being ugly--you're so
very blunt."
"Law, did I? Well, it popped out: it's a mercy I said no more, for
I'm a bad un to live with folks when they don't like the truth. But
as for being ugly, look at me, child, in this silver-coloured silk--
I told you how it 'ud be--I look as yallow as a daffadil.
Anybody 'ud say you wanted to make a mawkin of me."
"No, Priscy, don't say so. I begged and prayed of you not to let
us have this silk if you'd like another better. I was willing to
have _your_ choice, you know I was," said Nancy, in anxious
self-vindication.
"Nonsense, child! you know you'd set your heart on this; and
reason good, for you're the colour o' cream. It 'ud be fine doings
for you to dress yourself to suit _my_ skin. What I find fault
with, is that notion o' yours as I must dress myself just like you.
But you do as you like with me--you always did, from when first
you begun to walk. If you wanted to go the field's length, the
field's length you'd go; and there was no whipping you, for you
looked as prim and innicent as a daisy all the while."
"Priscy," said Nancy, gently, as she fastened a coral necklace,
exactly like her own, round Priscilla's neck, which was very far
from being like her own, "I'm sure I'm willing to give way as far
as is right, but who shouldn't dress alike if it isn't sisters?
Would you have us go about looking as if we were no kin to one
another--us that have got no mother and not another sister in the
world? I'd do what was right, if I dressed in a gown dyed with
cheese-colouring; and I'd rather you'd choose, and let me wear what
pleases you."
"There you go again! You'd come round to the same thing if one
talked to you from Saturday night till Saturday morning. It'll be
fine fun to see how you'll master your husband and never raise your
voice above the singing o' the kettle all the while. I like to see
the men mastered!"
"Don't talk _so_, Priscy," said Nancy, blushing. "You know I
don't mean ever to be married."
"Oh, you never mean a fiddlestick's end!" said Priscilla, as she
arranged her discarded dress, and closed her bandbox. "Who shall
_I_ have to work for when father's gone, if you are to go and take
notions in your head and be an old maid, because some folks are no
better than they should be? I haven't a bit o' patience with you--
sitting on an addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh un
in the world. One old maid's enough out o' two sisters; and I shall
do credit to a single life, for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come,
we can go down now. I'm as ready as a mawkin _can_ be--there's
nothing awanting to frighten the crows, now I've got my ear-droppers
in."
As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlour together,
any one who did not know the character of both might certainly have
supposed that the reason why the square-shouldered, clumsy,
high-featured Priscilla wore a dress the facsimile of her pretty
sister's, was either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the
malicious contrivance of the other in order to set off her own rare
beauty. But the good-natured self-forgetful cheeriness and
common-sense of Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one
suspicion; and the modest calm of Nancy's speech and manners told
clearly of a mind free from all disavowed devices.
Places of honour had been kept for the Miss Lammeters near the head
of the principal tea-table in the wainscoted parlour, now looking
fresh and pleasant with handsome branches of holly, yew, and laurel,
from the abundant growths of the old garden; and Nancy felt an
inward flutter, that no firmness of purpose could prevent, when she
saw Mr. Godfrey Cass advancing to lead her to a seat between himself
and Mr. Crackenthorp, while Priscilla was called to the opposite
side between her father and the Squire. It certainly did make some
difference to Nancy that the lover she had given up was the young
man of quite the highest consequence in the parish--at home in a
venerable and unique parlour, which was the extremity of grandeur in
her experience, a parlour where _she_ might one day have been
mistress, with the consciousness that she was spoken of as "Madam
Cass", the Squire's wife. These circumstances exalted her inward
drama in her own eyes, and deepened the emphasis with which she
declared to herself that not the most dazzling rank should induce
her to marry a man whose conduct showed him careless of his
character, but that, "love once, love always", was the motto of a
true and pure woman, and no man should ever have any right over her
which would be a call on her to destroy the dried flowers that she
treasured, and always would treasure, for Godfrey Cass's sake. And
Nancy was capable of keeping her word to herself under very trying
conditions. Nothing but a becoming blush betrayed the moving
thoughts that urged themselves upon her as she accepted the seat
next to Mr. Crackenthorp; for she was so instinctively neat and
adroit in all her actions, and her pretty lips met each other with
such quiet firmness, that it would have been difficult for her to
appear agitated.
It was not the rector's practice to let a charming blush pass
without an appropriate compliment. He was not in the least lofty or
aristocratic, but simply a merry-eyed, small-featured, grey-haired
man, with his chin propped by an ample, many-creased white neckcloth
which seemed to predominate over every other point in his person,
and somehow to impress its peculiar character on his remarks; so
that to have considered his amenities apart from his cravat would
have been a severe, and perhaps a dangerous, effort of abstraction.
"Ha, Miss Nancy," he said, turning his head within his cravat and
smiling down pleasantly upon her, "when anybody pretends this has
been a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw the roses blooming on
New Year's Eve--eh, Godfrey, what do _you_ say?"
Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking at Nancy very markedly;
for though these complimentary personalities were held to be in
excellent taste in old-fashioned Raveloe society, reverent love has
a politeness of its own which it teaches to men otherwise of small
schooling. But the Squire was rather impatient at Godfrey's showing
himself a dull spark in this way. By this advanced hour of the day,
the Squire was always in higher spirits than we have seen him in at
the breakfast-table, and felt it quite pleasant to fulfil the
hereditary duty of being noisily jovial and patronizing: the large
silver snuff-box was in active service and was offered without fail
to all neighbours from time to time, however often they might have
declined the favour. At present, the Squire had only given an
express welcome to the heads of families as they appeared; but
always as the evening deepened, his hospitality rayed out more
widely, till he had tapped the youngest guests on the back and shown
a peculiar fondness for their presence, in the full belief that they
must feel their lives made happy by their belonging to a parish
where there was such a hearty man as Squire Cass to invite them and
wish them well. Even in this early stage of the jovial mood, it was
natural that he should wish to supply his son's deficiencies by
looking and speaking for him.
"Aye, aye," he began, offering his snuff-box to Mr. Lammeter, who
for the second time bowed his head and waved his hand in stiff
rejection of the offer, "us old fellows may wish ourselves young
to-night, when we see the mistletoe-bough in the White Parlour.
It's true, most things are gone back'ard in these last thirty years--
the country's going down since the old king fell ill. But when I
look at Miss Nancy here, I begin to think the lasses keep up their
quality;--ding me if I remember a sample to match her, not when I
was a fine young fellow, and thought a deal about my pigtail. No
offence to you, madam," he added, bending to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who
sat by him, "I didn't know _you_ when you were as young as Miss
Nancy here."
Mrs. Crackenthorp--a small blinking woman, who fidgeted
incessantly with her lace, ribbons, and gold chain, turning her head
about and making subdued noises, very much like a guinea-pig that
twitches its nose and soliloquizes in all company indiscriminately--
now blinked and fidgeted towards the Squire, and said, "Oh, no--no offence."
This emphatic compliment of the Squire's to Nancy was felt by others
besides Godfrey to have a diplomatic significance; and her father
gave a slight additional erectness to his back, as he looked across
the table at her with complacent gravity. That grave and orderly
senior was not going to bate a jot of his dignity by seeming elated
at the notion of a match between his family and the Squire's: he was
gratified by any honour paid to his daughter; but he must see an
alteration in several ways before his consent would be vouchsafed.
His spare but healthy person, and high-featured firm face, that
looked as if it had never been flushed by excess, was in strong
contrast, not only with the Squire's, but with the appearance of the
Raveloe farmers generally--in accordance with a favourite saying
of his own, that "breed was stronger than pasture".
"Miss Nancy's wonderful like what her mother was, though; isn't
she, Kimble?" said the stout lady of that name, looking round for
her husband.
But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that
title without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile man, was
flitting about the room with his hands in his pockets, making
himself agreeable to his feminine patients, with medical
impartiality, and being welcomed everywhere as a doctor by
hereditary right--not one of those miserable apothecaries who
canvass for practice in strange neighbourhoods, and spend all their
income in starving their one horse, but a man of substance, able to
keep an extravagant table like the best of his patients. Time out
of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble; Kimble was inherently
a doctor's name; and it was difficult to contemplate firmly the
melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no son, so that his
practice might one day be handed over to a successor with the
incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the wiser
people in Raveloe would employ Dr. Blick of Flitton--as less
unnatural.
"Did you speak to me, my dear?" said the authentic doctor, coming
quickly to his wife's side; but, as if foreseeing that she would be
too much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went on immediately--
"Ha, Miss Priscilla, the sight of you revives the taste of that
super-excellent pork-pie. I hope the batch isn't near an end."
"Yes, indeed, it is, doctor," said Priscilla; "but I'll answer
for it the next shall be as good. My pork-pies don't turn out well
by chance."
"Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?--because folks forget
to take your physic, eh?" said the Squire, who regarded physic and
doctors as many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy--
tasting a joke against them when he was in health, but impatiently
eager for their aid when anything was the matter with him. He
tapped his box, and looked round with a triumphant laugh.
"Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has," said the
doctor, choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather than
allow a brother-in-law that advantage over him. "She saves a
little pepper to sprinkle over her talk--that's the reason why she
never puts too much into her pies. There's my wife now, she never
has an answer at her tongue's end; but if I offend her, she's sure
to scarify my throat with black pepper the next day, or else give me
the colic with watery greens. That's an awful tit-for-tat." Here
the vivacious doctor made a pathetic grimace.
"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, laughing above
her double chin with much good-humour, aside to Mrs. Crackenthorp,
who blinked and nodded, and seemed to intend a smile, which, by the
correlation of forces, went off in small twitchings and noises.
"I suppose that's the sort of tit-for-tat adopted in your
profession, Kimble, if you've a grudge against a patient," said the
rector.
"Never do have a grudge against our patients," said Mr. Kimble,
"except when they leave us: and then, you see, we haven't the
chance of prescribing for 'em. Ha, Miss Nancy," he continued,
suddenly skipping to Nancy's side, "you won't forget your promise?
You're to save a dance for me, you know."
"Come, come, Kimble, don't you be too for'ard," said the Squire.
"Give the young uns fair-play. There's my son Godfrey'll be
wanting to have a round with you if you run off with Miss Nancy.
He's bespoke her for the first dance, I'll be bound. Eh, sir! what
do you say?" he continued, throwing himself backward, and looking
at Godfrey. "Haven't you asked Miss Nancy to open the dance with
you?"
Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this significant insistence
about Nancy, and afraid to think where it would end by the time his
father had set his usual hospitable example of drinking before and
after supper, saw no course open but to turn to Nancy and say, with
as little awkwardness as possible--
"No; I've not asked her yet, but I hope she'll consent--if
somebody else hasn't been before me."
"No, I've not engaged myself," said Nancy, quietly, though
blushingly. (If Mr. Godfrey founded any hopes on her consenting to
dance with him, he would soon be undeceived; but there was no need
for her to be uncivil.)
"Then I hope you've no objections to dancing with me," said
Godfrey, beginning to lose the sense that there was anything
uncomfortable in this arrangement.
"No, no objections," said Nancy, in a cold tone.
"Ah, well, you're a lucky fellow, Godfrey," said uncle Kimble;
"but you're my godson, so I won't stand in your way. Else I'm not
so very old, eh, my dear?" he went on, skipping to his wife's side
again. "You wouldn't mind my having a second after you were gone--
not if I cried a good deal first?"
"Come, come, take a cup o' tea and stop your tongue, do," said
good-humoured Mrs. Kimble, feeling some pride in a husband who must
be regarded as so clever and amusing by the company generally. If
he had only not been irritable at cards!
While safe, well-tested personalities were enlivening the tea in
this way, the sound of the fiddle approaching within a distance at
which it could be heard distinctly, made the young people look at
each other with sympathetic impatience for the end of the meal.
"Why, there's Solomon in the hall," said the Squire, "and playing
my fav'rite tune, _I_ believe--"The flaxen-headed ploughboy"--
he's for giving us a hint as we aren't enough in a hurry to hear him
play. Bob," he called out to his third long-legged son, who was at
the other end of the room, "open the door, and tell Solomon to come
in. He shall give us a tune here."
Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling as he walked, for he
would on no account break off in the middle of a tune.
"Here, Solomon," said the Squire, with loud patronage. "Round
here, my man. Ah, I knew it was "The flaxen-headed ploughboy":
there's no finer tune."
Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an abundant crop of long
white hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, advanced to the
indicated spot, bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as to
say that he respected the company, though he respected the key-note
more. As soon as he had repeated the tune and lowered his fiddle,
he bowed again to the Squire and the rector, and said, "I hope I
see your honour and your reverence well, and wishing you health and
long life and a happy New Year. And wishing the same to you,
Mr. Lammeter, sir; and to the other gentlemen, and the madams, and
the young lasses."
As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed in all directions
solicitously, lest he should be wanting in due respect. But
thereupon he immediately began to prelude, and fell into the tune
which he knew would be taken as a special compliment by
Mr. Lammeter.
"Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye," said Mr. Lammeter when the fiddle
paused again. "That's "Over the hills and far away", that is. My
father used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, "Ah, lad, _I_
come from over the hills and far away." There's a many tunes I
don't make head or tail of; but that speaks to me like the
blackbird's whistle. I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the
name of a tune."
But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and presently
broke with much spirit into "Sir Roger de Coverley", at which
there was a sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing voices.
"Aye, aye, Solomon, we know what that means," said the Squire,
rising. "It's time to begin the dance, eh? Lead the way, then,
and we'll all follow you."
So Solomon, holding his white head on one side, and playing
vigorously, marched forward at the head of the gay procession into
the White Parlour, where the mistletoe-bough was hung, and
multitudinous tallow candles made rather a brilliant effect,
gleaming from among the berried holly-boughs, and reflected in the
old-fashioned oval mirrors fastened in the panels of the white
wainscot. A quaint procession! Old Solomon, in his seedy clothes
and long white locks, seemed to be luring that decent company by the
magic scream of his fiddle--luring discreet matrons in
turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp herself, the summit of
whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire's
shoulder--luring fair lasses complacently conscious of very short
waists and skirts blameless of front-folds--luring burly fathers
in large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part
shy and sheepish, in short nether garments and very long coat-tails.
Already Mr. Macey and a few other privileged villagers, who were
allowed to be spectators on these great occasions, were seated on
benches placed for them near the door; and great was the admiration
and satisfaction in that quarter when the couples had formed
themselves for the dance, and the Squire led off with
Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands with the rector and Mrs. Osgood.
That was as it should be--that was what everybody had been used to--
and the charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony.
It was not thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and
middle-aged people to dance a little before sitting down to cards,
but rather as part of their social duties. For what were these if
not to be merry at appropriate times, interchanging visits and
poultry with due frequency, paying each other old-established
compliments in sound traditional phrases, passing well-tried
personal jokes, urging your guests to eat and drink too much out of
hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in your neighbour's
house to show that you liked your cheer? And the parson naturally
set an example in these social duties. For it would not have been
possible for the Raveloe mind, without a peculiar revelation, to
know that a clergyman should be a pale-faced memento of solemnities,
instead of a reasonably faulty man whose exclusive authority to read
prayers and preach, to christen, marry, and bury you, necessarily
coexisted with the right to sell you the ground to be buried in and
to take tithe in kind; on which last point, of course, there was a
little grumbling, but not to the extent of irreligion--not of
deeper significance than the grumbling at the rain, which was by no
means accompanied with a spirit of impious defiance, but with a
desire that the prayer for fine weather might be read forthwith.
There was no reason, then, why the rector's dancing should not be
received as part of the fitness of things quite as much as the
Squire's, or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey's official respect
should restrain him from subjecting the parson's performance to that
criticism with which minds of extraordinary acuteness must
necessarily contemplate the doings of their fallible fellow-men.
"The Squire's pretty springe, considering his weight," said
Mr. Macey, "and he stamps uncommon well. But Mr. Lammeter beats
'em all for shapes: you see he holds his head like a sodger, and he
isn't so cushiony as most o' the oldish gentlefolks--they run fat
in general; and he's got a fine leg. The parson's nimble enough,
but he hasn't got much of a leg: it's a bit too thick down'ard, and
his knees might be a bit nearer wi'out damage; but he might do
worse, he might do worse. Though he hasn't that grand way o' waving
his hand as the Squire has."
"Talk o' nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood," said Ben Winthrop, who
was holding his son Aaron between his knees. "She trips along with
her little steps, so as nobody can see how she goes--it's like as
if she had little wheels to her feet. She doesn't look a day older
nor last year: she's the finest-made woman as is, let the next be
where she will."
"I don't heed how the women are made," said Mr. Macey, with some
contempt. "They wear nayther coat nor breeches: you can't make
much out o' their shapes."
"Fayder," said Aaron, whose feet were busy beating out the tune,
"how does that big cock's-feather stick in Mrs. Crackenthorp's
yead? Is there a little hole for it, like in my shuttle-cock?"
"Hush, lad, hush; that's the way the ladies dress theirselves, that
is," said the father, adding, however, in an undertone to
Mr. Macey, "It does make her look funny, though--partly like a
short-necked bottle wi' a long quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there's
the young Squire leading off now, wi' Miss Nancy for partners!
There's a lass for you!--like a pink-and-white posy--there's
nobody 'ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I shouldn't wonder
if she's Madam Cass some day, arter all--and nobody more
rightfuller, for they'd make a fine match. You can find nothing
against Master Godfrey's shapes, Macey, _I_'ll bet a penny."
Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his head further on one side,
and twirled his thumbs with a presto movement as his eyes followed
Godfrey up the dance. At last he summed up his opinion.
"Pretty well down'ard, but a bit too round i' the shoulder-blades.
And as for them coats as he gets from the Flitton tailor, they're a
poor cut to pay double money for."
"Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks," said Ben, slightly
indignant at this carping. "When I've got a pot o' good ale, I
like to swaller it, and do my inside good, i'stead o' smelling and
staring at it to see if I can't find faut wi' the brewing. I should
like you to pick me out a finer-limbed young fellow nor Master
Godfrey--one as 'ud knock you down easier, or 's more
pleasanter-looksed when he's piert and merry."
"Tchuh!" said Mr. Macey, provoked to increased severity, "he
isn't come to his right colour yet: he's partly like a slack-baked
pie. And I doubt he's got a soft place in his head, else why should
he be turned round the finger by that offal Dunsey as nobody's seen
o' late, and let him kill that fine hunting hoss as was the talk o'
the country? And one while he was allays after Miss Nancy, and then
it all went off again, like a smell o' hot porridge, as I may say.
That wasn't my way when _I_ went a-coorting."
"Ah, but mayhap Miss Nancy hung off, like, and your lass didn't,"
said Ben.
"I should say she didn't," said Mr. Macey, significantly.
"Before I said "sniff", I took care to know as she'd say "snaff",
and pretty quick too. I wasn't a-going to open _my_ mouth, like a
dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi' nothing to swaller."
"Well, I think Miss Nancy's a-coming round again," said Ben, "for
Master Godfrey doesn't look so down-hearted to-night. And I see
he's for taking her away to sit down, now they're at the end o' the
dance: that looks like sweethearting, that does."
The reason why Godfrey and Nancy had left the dance was not so
tender as Ben imagined. In the close press of couples a slight
accident had happened to Nancy's dress, which, while it was short
enough to show her neat ankle in front, was long enough behind to be
caught under the stately stamp of the Squire's foot, so as to rend
certain stitches at the waist, and cause much sisterly agitation in
Priscilla's mind, as well as serious concern in Nancy's. One's
thoughts may be much occupied with love-struggles, but hardly so as
to be insensible to a disorder in the general framework of things.
Nancy had no sooner completed her duty in the figure they were
dancing than she said to Godfrey, with a deep blush, that she must
go and sit down till Priscilla could come to her; for the sisters
had already exchanged a short whisper and an open-eyed glance full
of meaning. No reason less urgent than this could have prevailed on
Nancy to give Godfrey this opportunity of sitting apart with her.
As for Godfrey, he was feeling so happy and oblivious under the long
charm of the country-dance with Nancy, that he got rather bold on
the strength of her confusion, and was capable of leading her
straight away, without leave asked, into the adjoining small
parlour, where the card-tables were set.
"Oh no, thank you," said Nancy, coldly, as soon as she perceived
where he was going, "not in there. I'll wait here till Priscilla's
ready to come to me. I'm sorry to bring you out of the dance and
make myself troublesome."
"Why, you'll be more comfortable here by yourself," said the
artful Godfrey: "I'll leave you here till your sister can come."
He spoke in an indifferent tone.
That was an agreeable proposition, and just what Nancy desired; why,
then, was she a little hurt that Mr. Godfrey should make it? They
entered, and she seated herself on a chair against one of the
card-tables, as the stiffest and most unapproachable position she
could choose.
"Thank you, sir," she said immediately. "I needn't give you any
more trouble. I'm sorry you've had such an unlucky partner."
"That's very ill-natured of you," said Godfrey, standing by her
without any sign of intended departure, "to be sorry you've danced
with me."
"Oh, no, sir, I don't mean to say what's ill-natured at all," said
Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty. "When gentlemen have
so many pleasures, one dance can matter but very little."
"You know that isn't true. You know one dance with you matters
more to me than all the other pleasures in the world."
It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything so direct
as that, and Nancy was startled. But her instinctive dignity and
repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and
only throw a little more decision into her voice, as she said--
"No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that's not known to me, and I have very
good reasons for thinking different. But if it's true, I don't wish
to hear it."
"Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy--never think well of me,
let what would happen--would you never think the present made
amends for the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up
everything you didn't like?"
Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking
to Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had
got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by
the possibility Godfrey's words suggested, but this very pressure of
emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for her roused
all her power of self-command.
"I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey,"
she answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone,
"but it 'ud be better if no change was wanted."
"You're very hard-hearted, Nancy," said Godfrey, pettishly. "You
might encourage me to be a better fellow. I'm very miserable--but
you've no feeling."
"I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin
with," said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself.
Godfrey was delighted with that little flash, and would have liked
to go on and make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so exasperatingly
quiet and firm. But she was not indifferent to him _yet_, though--
The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, "Dear heart
alive, child, let us look at this gown," cut off Godfrey's hopes of
a quarrel.
"I suppose I must go now," he said to Priscilla.
"It's no matter to me whether you go or stay," said that frank
lady, searching for something in her pocket, with a preoccupied
brow.
"Do _you_ want me to go?" said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was
now standing up by Priscilla's order.
"As you like," said Nancy, trying to recover all her former
coldness, and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown.
"Then I like to stay," said Godfrey, with a reckless determination
to get as much of this joy as he could to-night, and think nothing
of the morrow.
CHAPTER XII
While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the
sweet presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of that hidden
bond which at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle
irritation with the very sunshine, Godfrey's wife was walking with
slow uncertain steps through the snow-covered Raveloe lanes,
carrying her child in her arms.
This journey on New Year's Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance
which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of
passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as
his wife. There would be a great party at the Red House on New
Year's Eve, she knew: her husband would be smiling and smiled upon,
hiding _her_ existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she
would mar his pleasure: she would go in her dingy rags, with her
faded face, once as handsome as the best, with her little child that
had its father's hair and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire
as his eldest son's wife. It is seldom that the miserable can help
regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less
miserable. Molly knew that the cause of her dingy rags was not her
husband's neglect, but the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved,
body and soul, except in the lingering mother's tenderness that
refused to give him her hungry child. She knew this well; and yet,
in the moments of wretched unbenumbed consciousness, the sense of
her want and degradation transformed itself continually into
bitterness towards Godfrey. _He_ was well off; and if she had her
rights she would be well off too. The belief that he repented his
marriage, and suffered from it, only aggravated her vindictiveness.
Just and self-reproving thoughts do not come to us too thickly, even
in the purest air, and with the best lessons of heaven and earth;
how should those white-winged delicate messengers make their way to
Molly's poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher memories than those
of a barmaid's paradise of pink ribbons and gentlemen's jokes?
She had set out at an early hour, but had lingered on the road,
inclined by her indolence to believe that if she waited under a warm
shed the snow would cease to fall. She had waited longer than she
knew, and now that she found herself belated in the snow-hidden
ruggedness of the long lanes, even the animation of a vindictive
purpose could not keep her spirit from failing. It was seven
o'clock, and by this time she was not very far from Raveloe, but she
was not familiar enough with those monotonous lanes to know how near
she was to her journey's end. She needed comfort, and she knew but
one comforter--the familiar demon in her bosom; but she hesitated
a moment, after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it
to her lips. In that moment the mother's love pleaded for painful
consciousness rather than oblivion--pleaded to be left in aching
weariness, rather than to have the encircling arms benumbed so that
they could not feel the dear burden. In another moment Molly had
flung something away, but it was not the black remnant--it was an
empty phial. And she walked on again under the breaking cloud, from
which there came now and then the light of a quickly veiled star,
for a freezing wind had sprung up since the snowing had ceased. But
she walked always more and more drowsily, and clutched more and more
automatically the sleeping child at her bosom.
Slowly the demon was working his will, and cold and weariness were
his helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme immediate longing
that curtained off all futurity--the longing to lie down and
sleep. She had arrived at a spot where her footsteps were no longer
checked by a hedgerow, and she had wandered vaguely, unable to
distinguish any objects, notwithstanding the wide whiteness around
her, and the growing starlight. She sank down against a straggling
furze bush, an easy pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was
soft. She did not feel that the bed was cold, and did not heed
whether the child would wake and cry for her. But her arms had not
yet relaxed their instinctive clutch; and the little one slumbered
on as gently as if it had been rocked in a lace-trimmed cradle.
But the complete torpor came at last: the fingers lost their
tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the
bosom, and the blue eyes opened wide on the cold starlight. At
first there was a little peevish cry of "mammy", and an effort to
regain the pillowing arm and bosom; but mammy's ear was deaf, and
the pillow seemed to be slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the
child rolled downward on its mother's knees, all wet with snow, its
eyes were caught by a bright glancing light on the white ground,
and, with the ready transition of infancy, it was immediately
absorbed in watching the bright living thing running towards it, yet
never arriving. That bright living thing must be caught; and in an
instant the child had slipped on all-fours, and held out one little
hand to catch the gleam. But the gleam would not be caught in that
way, and now the head was held up to see where the cunning gleam
came from. It came from a very bright place; and the little one,
rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy shawl in
which it was wrapped trailing behind it, and the queer little bonnet
dangling at its back--toddled on to the open door of Silas
Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where there was a
bright fire of logs and sticks, which had thoroughly warmed the old
sack (Silas's greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry. The
little one, accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without
notice from its mother, squatted down on the sack, and spread its
tiny hands towards the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling and
making many inarticulate communications to the cheerful fire, like a
new-hatched gosling beginning to find itself comfortable. But
presently the warmth had a lulling effect, and the little golden
head sank down on the old sack, and the blue eyes were veiled by
their delicate half-transparent lids.
But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to
his hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child.
During the last few weeks, since he had lost his money, he had
contracted the habit of opening his door and looking out from time
to time, as if he thought that his money might be somehow coming
back to him, or that some trace, some news of it, might be
mysteriously on the road, and be caught by the listening ear or the
straining eye. It was chiefly at night, when he was not occupied in
his loom, that he fell into this repetition of an act for which he
could have assigned no definite purpose, and which can hardly be
understood except by those who have undergone a bewildering
separation from a supremely loved object. In the evening twilight,
and later whenever the night was not dark, Silas looked out on that
narrow prospect round the Stone-pits, listening and gazing, not with
hope, but with mere yearning and unrest.
This morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was
New Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung
out and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring
his money back again. This was only a friendly Raveloe-way of
jesting with the half-crazy oddities of a miser, but it had perhaps
helped to throw Silas into a more than usually excited state. Since
the on-coming of twilight he had opened his door again and again,
though only to shut it immediately at seeing all distance veiled by
the falling snow. But the last time he opened it the snow had
ceased, and the clouds were parting here and there. He stood and
listened, and gazed for a long while--there was really something
on the road coming towards him then, but he caught no sign of it;
and the stillness and the wide trackless snow seemed to narrow his
solitude, and touched his yearning with the chill of despair. He
went in again, and put his right hand on the latch of the door to
close it--but he did not close it: he was arrested, as he had been
already since his loss, by the invisible wand of catalepsy, and
stood like a graven image, with wide but sightless eyes, holding
open his door, powerless to resist either the good or the evil that
might enter there.
When Marner's sensibility returned, he continued the action which
had been arrested, and closed his door, unaware of the chasm in his
consciousness, unaware of any intermediate change, except that the
light had grown dim, and that he was chilled and faint. He thought
he had been too long standing at the door and looking out. Turning
towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent
forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his
fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to
his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in
front of the hearth. Gold!--his own gold--brought back to him
as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin
to beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch
out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold
seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned
forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the
hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers
encountered soft warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his
knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping
child--a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its
head. Could this be his little sister come back to him in a dream--
his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a
year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or
stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas's
blank wonderment. _Was_ it a dream? He rose to his feet again,
pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and
sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision--
it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of the child,
and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister.
Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an
inexplicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories. How and
when had the child come in without his knowledge? He had never been
beyond the door. But along with that question, and almost thrusting
it away, there was a vision of the old home and the old streets
leading to Lantern Yard--and within that vision another, of the
thoughts which had been present with him in those far-off scenes.
The thoughts were strange to him now, like old friendships
impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that this
child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life: it
stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloe--old
quiverings of tenderness--old impressions of awe at the
presentiment of some Power presiding over his life; for his
imagination had not yet extricated itself from the sense of mystery
in the child's sudden presence, and had formed no conjectures of
ordinary natural means by which the event could have been brought
about.
But there was a cry on the hearth: the child had awaked, and Marner
stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung round his neck, and burst
louder and louder into that mingling of inarticulate cries with
"mammy" by which little children express the bewilderment of
waking. Silas pressed it to him, and almost unconsciously uttered
sounds of hushing tenderness, while he bethought himself that some
of his porridge, which had got cool by the dying fire, would do to
feed the child with if it were only warmed up a little.
He had plenty to do through the next hour. The porridge, sweetened
with some dry brown sugar from an old store which he had refrained
from using for himself, stopped the cries of the little one, and
made her lift her blue eyes with a wide quiet gaze at Silas, as he
put the spoon into her mouth. Presently she slipped from his knee
and began to toddle about, but with a pretty stagger that made Silas
jump up and follow her lest she should fall against anything that
would hurt her. But she only fell in a sitting posture on the
ground, and began to pull at her boots, looking up at him with a
crying face as if the boots hurt her. He took her on his knee
again, but it was some time before it occurred to Silas's dull
bachelor mind that the wet boots were the grievance, pressing on her
warm ankles. He got them off with difficulty, and baby was at once
happily occupied with the primary mystery of her own toes, inviting
Silas, with much chuckling, to consider the mystery too. But the
wet boots had at last suggested to Silas that the child had been
walking on the snow, and this roused him from his entire oblivion of
any ordinary means by which it could have entered or been brought
into his house. Under the prompting of this new idea, and without
waiting to form conjectures, he raised the child in his arms, and
went to the door. As soon as he had opened it, there was the cry of
"mammy" again, which Silas had not heard since the child's first
hungry waking. Bending forward, he could just discern the marks
made by the little feet on the virgin snow, and he followed their
track to the furze bushes. "Mammy!" the little one cried again
and again, stretching itself forward so as almost to escape from
Silas's arms, before he himself was aware that there was something
more than the bush before him--that there was a human body, with
the head sunk low in the furze, and half-covered with the shaken
snow.
CHAPTER XIII
It was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and the
entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself had passed
into easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual
accomplishments, could at length be prevailed on to dance a
hornpipe, and when the Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering
snuff, and patting his visitors' backs, to sitting longer at the
whist-table--a choice exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being
always volatile in sober business hours, became intense and bitter
over cards and brandy, shuffled before his adversary's deal with a
glare of suspicion, and turned up a mean trump-card with an air of
inexpressible disgust, as if in a world where such things could
happen one might as well enter on a course of reckless profligacy.
When the evening had advanced to this pitch of freedom and
enjoyment, it was usual for the servants, the heavy duties of supper
being well over, to get their share of amusement by coming to look
on at the dancing; so that the back regions of the house were left
in solitude.
There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from the
hall, and they were both standing open for the sake of air; but the
lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only the
upper doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe,
and his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he repeatedly
declared to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that
implied this to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the
centre of a group who had placed themselves opposite the performer,
not far from the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off,
not to admire his brother's dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who
was seated in the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because
he wished to avoid suggesting himself as a subject for the Squire's
fatherly jokes in connection with matrimony and Miss Nancy
Lammeter's beauty, which were likely to become more and more
explicit. But he had the prospect of dancing with her again when
the hornpipe was concluded, and in the meanwhile it was very
pleasant to get long glances at her quite unobserved.
But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those long
glances, they encountered an object as startling to him at that
moment as if it had been an apparition from the dead. It _was_ an
apparition from that hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street,
behind the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the
gaze of respectable admirers. It was his own child, carried in
Silas Marner's arms. That was his instantaneous impression,
unaccompanied by doubt, though he had not seen the child for months
past; and when the hope was rising that he might possibly be
mistaken, Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Lammeter had already advanced to
Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent. Godfrey joined them
immediately, unable to rest without hearing every word--trying to
control himself, but conscious that if any one noticed him, they
must see that he was white-lipped and trembling.
But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas Marner;
the Squire himself had risen, and asked angrily, "How's this?--
what's this?--what do you do coming in here in this way?"
"I'm come for the doctor--I want the doctor," Silas had said, in
the first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp.
"Why, what's the matter, Marner?" said the rector. "The
doctor's here; but say quietly what you want him for."
"It's a woman," said Silas, speaking low, and half-breathlessly,
just as Godfrey came up. "She's dead, I think--dead in the snow
at the Stone-pits--not far from my door."
Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that
moment: it was, that the woman might _not_ be dead. That was an
evil terror--an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in
Godfrey's kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from
evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.
"Hush, hush!" said Mr. Crackenthorp. "Go out into the hall
there. I'll fetch the doctor to you. Found a woman in the snow--
and thinks she's dead," he added, speaking low to the Squire.
"Better say as little about it as possible: it will shock the
ladies. Just tell them a poor woman is ill from cold and hunger.
I'll go and fetch Kimble."
By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, curious to
know what could have brought the solitary linen-weaver there under
such strange circumstances, and interested in the pretty child, who,
half alarmed and half attracted by the brightness and the numerous
company, now frowned and hid her face, now lifted up her head again
and looked round placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought
back the frown, and made her bury her face with new determination.
"What child is it?" said several ladies at once, and, among the
rest, Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey.
"I don't know--some poor woman's who has been found in the snow,
I believe," was the answer Godfrey wrung from himself with a
terrible effort. ("After all, _am_ I certain?" he hastened to
add, silently, in anticipation of his own conscience.)
"Why, you'd better leave the child here, then, Master Marner,"
said good-natured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating, however, to take those
dingy clothes into contact with her own ornamented satin bodice.
"I'll tell one o' the girls to fetch it."
"No--no--I can't part with it, I can't let it go," said Silas,
abruptly. "It's come to me--I've a right to keep it."
The proposition to take the child from him had come to Silas quite
unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered under a strong sudden impulse,
was almost like a revelation to himself: a minute before, he had no
distinct intention about the child.
"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, in mild surprise,
to her neighbour.
"Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside," said Mr. Kimble,
coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the interruption,
but drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to
unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly sober.
"It's a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?" said the
Squire. "He might ha' gone for your young fellow--the 'prentice,
there--what's his name?"
"Might? aye--what's the use of talking about might?" growled
uncle Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and followed by
Mr. Crackenthorp and Godfrey. "Get me a pair of thick boots,
Godfrey, will you? And stay, let somebody run to Winthrop's and
fetch Dolly--she's the best woman to get. Ben was here himself
before supper; is he gone?"
"Yes, sir, I met him," said Marner; "but I couldn't stop to tell
him anything, only I said I was going for the doctor, and he said
the doctor was at the Squire's. And I made haste and ran, and there
was nobody to be seen at the back o' the house, and so I went in to
where the company was."
The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the smiling
women's faces, began to cry and call for "mammy", though always
clinging to Marner, who had apparently won her thorough confidence.
Godfrey had come back with the boots, and felt the cry as if some
fibre were drawn tight within him.
"I'll go," he said, hastily, eager for some movement; "I'll go
and fetch the woman--Mrs. Winthrop."
"Oh, pooh--send somebody else," said uncle Kimble, hurrying away
with Marner.
"You'll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble," said
Mr. Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of hearing.
Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his hat and
coat, having just reflection enough to remember that he must not
look like a madman; but he rushed out of the house into the snow
without heeding his thin shoes.
In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits by the
side of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely in her
place in encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much
concerned at a young gentleman's getting his feet wet under a like
impulse.
"You'd a deal better go back, sir," said Dolly, with respectful
compassion. "You've no call to catch cold; and I'd ask you if
you'd be so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back--
he's at the Rainbow, I doubt--if you found him anyway sober enough
to be o' use. Or else, there's Mrs. Snell 'ud happen send the boy
up to fetch and carry, for there may be things wanted from the
doctor's."
"No, I'll stay, now I'm once out--I'll stay outside here," said
Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner's cottage. "You can come
and tell me if I can do anything."
"Well, sir, you're very good: you've a tender heart," said Dolly,
going to the door.
Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of
self-reproach at this undeserved praise. He walked up and down,
unconscious that he was plunging ankle-deep in snow, unconscious of
everything but trembling suspense about what was going on in the
cottage, and the effect of each alternative on his future lot. No,
not quite unconscious of everything else. Deeper down, and
half-smothered by passionate desire and dread, there was the sense
that he ought not to be waiting on these alternatives; that he ought
to accept the consequences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and
fulfil the claims of the helpless child. But he had not moral
courage enough to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as
possible for him: he had only conscience and heart enough to make
him for ever uneasy under the weakness that forbade the
renunciation. And at this moment his mind leaped away from all
restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from his long
bondage.
"Is she dead?" said the voice that predominated over every other
within him. "If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then I shall be a
good fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the child--shall
be taken care of somehow." But across that vision came the other
possibility--"She may live, and then it's all up with me."
Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage
opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward to meet his uncle,
prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he
was to hear.
"I waited for you, as I'd come so far," he said, speaking first.
"Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn't you send one
of the men? There's nothing to be done. She's dead--has been
dead for hours, I should say."
"What sort of woman is she?" said Godfrey, feeling the blood rush
to his face.
"A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some vagrant--
quite in rags. She's got a wedding-ring on, however. They must
fetch her away to the workhouse to-morrow. Come, come along."
"I want to look at her," said Godfrey. "I think I saw such a
woman yesterday. I'll overtake you in a minute or two."
Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast
only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had
smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his
unhappy hated wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every
line in the worn face was present to him when he told the full story
of this night.
He turned immediately towards the hearth, where Silas Marner sat
lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep--
only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm
which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a
certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel
before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky--before a
steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending
trees over a silent pathway. The wide-open blue eyes looked up at
Godfrey's without any uneasiness or sign of recognition: the child
could make no visible audible claim on its father; and the father
felt a strange mixture of feelings, a conflict of regret and joy,
that the pulse of that little heart had no response for the
half-jealous yearning in his own, when the blue eyes turned away
from him slowly, and fixed themselves on the weaver's queer face,
which was bent low down to look at them, while the small hand began
to pull Marner's withered cheek with loving disfiguration.
"You'll take the child to the parish to-morrow?" asked Godfrey,
speaking as indifferently as he could.
"Who says so?" said Marner, sharply. "Will they make me take
her?"
"Why, you wouldn't like to keep her, should you--an old bachelor
like you?"
"Till anybody shows they've a right to take her away from me,"
said Marner. "The mother's dead, and I reckon it's got no father:
it's a lone thing--and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone, I don't
know where--and this is come from I don't know where. I know
nothing--I'm partly mazed."
"Poor little thing!" said Godfrey. "Let me give something
towards finding it clothes."
He had put his hand in his pocket and found half-a-guinea, and,
thrusting it into Silas's hand, he hurried out of the cottage to
overtake Mr. Kimble.
"Ah, I see it's not the same woman I saw," he said, as he came up.
"It's a pretty little child: the old fellow seems to want to keep
it; that's strange for a miser like him. But I gave him a trifle to
help him out: the parish isn't likely to quarrel with him for the
right to keep the child."
"No; but I've seen the time when I might have quarrelled with him
for it myself. It's too late now, though. If the child ran into
the fire, your aunt's too fat to overtake it: she could only sit and
grunt like an alarmed sow. But what a fool you are, Godfrey, to
come out in your dancing shoes and stockings in this way--and you
one of the beaux of the evening, and at your own house! What do you
mean by such freaks, young fellow? Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and
do you want to spite her by spoiling your pumps?"
"Oh, everything has been disagreeable to-night. I was tired to
death of jigging and gallanting, and that bother about the
hornpipes. And I'd got to dance with the other Miss Gunn," said
Godfrey, glad of the subterfuge his uncle had suggested to him.
The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself
ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the
false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly
as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.
Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since
the truth must be told, with a sense of relief and gladness that was
too strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could he not
venture now, whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest
things to Nancy Lammeter--to promise her and himself that he would
always be just what she would desire to see him? There was no
danger that his dead wife would be recognized: those were not days
of active inquiry and wide report; and as for the registry of their
marriage, that was a long way off, buried in unturned pages, away
from every one's interest but his own. Dunsey might betray him if
he came back; but Dunsey might be won to silence.
And when events turn out so much better for a man than he has had
reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has been less
foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When
we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not
altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat
ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. Where, after all,
would be the use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and
throwing away his happiness?--nay, hers? for he felt some
confidence that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that
it was cared for: he would never forsake it; he would do everything
but own it. Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being
owned by its father, seeing that nobody could tell how things would
turn out, and that--is there any other reason wanted?--well,
then, that the father would be much happier without owning the
child.
CHAPTER XIV
There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard
at Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair
child, who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again.
That was all the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from
the eyes of men. But the unwept death which, to the general lot,
seemed as trivial as the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the
force of destiny to certain human lives that we know of, shaping
their joys and sorrows even to the end.
Silas Marner's determination to keep the "tramp's child" was
matter of hardly less surprise and iterated talk in the village than
the robbery of his money. That softening of feeling towards him
which dated from his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and
dislike in a rather contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was
now accompanied with a more active sympathy, especially amongst the
women. Notable mothers, who knew what it was to keep children
"whole and sweet"; lazy mothers, who knew what it was to be
interrupted in folding their arms and scratching their elbows by the
mischievous propensities of children just firm on their legs, were
equally interested in conjecturing how a lone man would manage with
a two-year-old child on his hands, and were equally ready with their
suggestions: the notable chiefly telling him what he had better do,
and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling him what he would never
be able to do.
Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one whose
neighbourly offices were the most acceptable to Marner, for they
were rendered without any show of bustling instruction. Silas had
shown her the half-guinea given to him by Godfrey, and had asked her
what he should do about getting some clothes for the child.
"Eh, Master Marner," said Dolly, "there's no call to buy, no more
nor a pair o' shoes; for I've got the little petticoats as Aaron
wore five years ago, and it's ill spending the money on them
baby-clothes, for the child 'ull grow like grass i' May, bless it--
that it will."
And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed to Marner,
one by one, the tiny garments in their due order of succession, most
of them patched and darned, but clean and neat as fresh-sprung
herbs. This was the introduction to a great ceremony with soap and
water, from which Baby came out in new beauty, and sat on Dolly's
knee, handling her toes and chuckling and patting her palms together
with an air of having made several discoveries about herself, which
she communicated by alternate sounds of "gug-gug-gug", and
"mammy". The "mammy" was not a cry of need or uneasiness: Baby
had been used to utter it without expecting either tender sound or
touch to follow.
"Anybody 'ud think the angils in heaven couldn't be prettier,"
said Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing them. "And to
think of its being covered wi' them dirty rags--and the poor
mother--froze to death; but there's Them as took care of it, and
brought it to your door, Master Marner. The door was open, and it
walked in over the snow, like as if it had been a little starved
robin. Didn't you say the door was open?"
"Yes," said Silas, meditatively. "Yes--the door was open. The
money's gone I don't know where, and this is come from I don't know
where."
He had not mentioned to any one his unconsciousness of the child's
entrance, shrinking from questions which might lead to the fact he
himself suspected--namely, that he had been in one of his trances.
"Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and
the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the
harvest--one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor
where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do
arter all--the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n--
they do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep
the little un, Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you,
though there's folks as thinks different. You'll happen be a bit
moithered with it while it's so little; but I'll come, and welcome,
and see to it for you: I've a bit o' time to spare most days, for
when one gets up betimes i' the morning, the clock seems to stan'
still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go about the victual. So, as I
say, I'll come and see to the child for you, and welcome."
"Thank you... kindly," said Silas, hesitating a little. "I'll be
glad if you'll tell me things. But," he added, uneasily, leaning
forward to look at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting her
head backward against Dolly's arm, and eyeing him contentedly from a
distance--"But I want to do things for it myself, else it may get
fond o' somebody else, and not fond o' me. I've been used to
fending for myself in the house--I can learn, I can learn."
"Eh, to be sure," said Dolly, gently. "I've seen men as are
wonderful handy wi' children. The men are awk'ard and contrairy
mostly, God help 'em--but when the drink's out of 'em, they aren't
unsensible, though they're bad for leeching and bandaging--so
fiery and unpatient. You see this goes first, next the skin,"
proceeded Dolly, taking up the little shirt, and putting it on.
"Yes," said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes very close, that
they might be initiated in the mysteries; whereupon Baby seized his
head with both her small arms, and put her lips against his face
with purring noises.
"See there," said Dolly, with a woman's tender tact, "she's
fondest o' you. She wants to go o' your lap, I'll be bound. Go,
then: take her, Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then
you can say as you've done for her from the first of her coming to
you."
Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to
himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and
feeling were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give
them utterance, he could only have said that the child was come
instead of the gold--that the gold had turned into the child. He
took the garments from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching;
interrupted, of course, by Baby's gymnastics.
"There, then! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Marner,"
said Dolly; "but what shall you do when you're forced to sit in
your loom? For she'll get busier and mischievouser every day--she
will, bless her. It's lucky as you've got that high hearth i'stead
of a grate, for that keeps the fire more out of her reach: but if
you've got anything as can be spilt or broke, or as is fit to cut
her fingers off, she'll be at it--and it is but right you should
know."
Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. "I'll tie her
to the leg o' the loom," he said at last--"tie her with a good
long strip o' something."
"Well, mayhap that'll do, as it's a little gell, for they're easier
persuaded to sit i' one place nor the lads. I know what the lads
are; for I've had four--four I've had, God knows--and if you was
to take and tie 'em up, they'd make a fighting and a crying as if
you was ringing the pigs. But I'll bring you my little chair, and
some bits o' red rag and things for her to play wi'; an' she'll sit
and chatter to 'em as if they was alive. Eh, if it wasn't a sin to
the lads to wish 'em made different, bless 'em, I should ha' been
glad for one of 'em to be a little gell; and to think as I could ha'
taught her to scour, and mend, and the knitting, and everything.
But I can teach 'em this little un, Master Marner, when she gets old
enough."
"But she'll be _my_ little un," said Marner, rather hastily.
"She'll be nobody else's."
"No, to be sure; you'll have a right to her, if you're a father to
her, and bring her up according. But," added Dolly, coming to a
point which she had determined beforehand to touch upon, "you must
bring her up like christened folks's children, and take her to
church, and let her learn her catechise, as my little Aaron can say
off--the "I believe", and everything, and "hurt nobody by word or
deed",--as well as if he was the clerk. That's what you must do,
Master Marner, if you'd do the right thing by the orphin child."
Marner's pale face flushed suddenly under a new anxiety. His mind
was too busy trying to give some definite bearing to Dolly's words
for him to think of answering her.
"And it's my belief," she went on, "as the poor little creatur
has never been christened, and it's nothing but right as the parson
should be spoke to; and if you was noways unwilling, I'd talk to
Mr. Macey about it this very day. For if the child ever went
anyways wrong, and you hadn't done your part by it, Master Marner--
'noculation, and everything to save it from harm--it 'ud be a
thorn i' your bed for ever o' this side the grave; and I can't think
as it 'ud be easy lying down for anybody when they'd got to another
world, if they hadn't done their part by the helpless children as
come wi'out their own asking."
Dolly herself was disposed to be silent for some time now, for she
had spoken from the depths of her own simple belief, and was much
concerned to know whether her words would produce the desired effect
on Silas. He was puzzled and anxious, for Dolly's word
"christened" conveyed no distinct meaning to him. He had only
heard of baptism, and had only seen the baptism of grown-up men and
women.
"What is it as you mean by "christened"?" he said at last,
timidly. "Won't folks be good to her without it?"
"Dear, dear! Master Marner," said Dolly, with gentle distress and
compassion. "Had you never no father nor mother as taught you to
say your prayers, and as there's good words and good things to keep
us from harm?"
"Yes," said Silas, in a low voice; "I know a deal about that--
used to, used to. But your ways are different: my country was a
good way off." He paused a few moments, and then added, more
decidedly, "But I want to do everything as can be done for the
child. And whatever's right for it i' this country, and you think
'ull do it good, I'll act according, if you'll tell me."
"Well, then, Master Marner," said Dolly, inwardly rejoiced, "I'll
ask Mr. Macey to speak to the parson about it; and you must fix on a
name for it, because it must have a name giv' it when it's
christened."
"My mother's name was Hephzibah," said Silas, "and my little
sister was named after her."
"Eh, that's a hard name," said Dolly. "I partly think it isn't a
christened name."
"It's a Bible name," said Silas, old ideas recurring.
"Then I've no call to speak again' it," said Dolly, rather
startled by Silas's knowledge on this head; "but you see I'm no
scholard, and I'm slow at catching the words. My husband says I'm
allays like as if I was putting the haft for the handle--that's
what he says--for he's very sharp, God help him. But it was
awk'ard calling your little sister by such a hard name, when you'd
got nothing big to say, like--wasn't it, Master Marner?"
"We called her Eppie," said Silas.
"Well, if it was noways wrong to shorten the name, it 'ud be a deal
handier. And so I'll go now, Master Marner, and I'll speak about
the christening afore dark; and I wish you the best o' luck, and
it's my belief as it'll come to you, if you do what's right by the
orphin child;--and there's the 'noculation to be seen to; and as
to washing its bits o' things, you need look to nobody but me, for I
can do 'em wi' one hand when I've got my suds about. Eh, the
blessed angil! You'll let me bring my Aaron one o' these days, and
he'll show her his little cart as his father's made for him, and the
black-and-white pup as he's got a-rearing."
Baby _was_ christened, the rector deciding that a double baptism was
the lesser risk to incur; and on this occasion Silas, making himself
as clean and tidy as he could, appeared for the first time within
the church, and shared in the observances held sacred by his
neighbours. He was quite unable, by means of anything he heard or
saw, to identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith; if he
could at any time in his previous life have done so, it must have
been by the aid of a strong feeling ready to vibrate with sympathy,
rather than by a comparison of phrases and ideas: and now for long
years that feeling had been dormant. He had no distinct idea about
the baptism and the church-going, except that Dolly had said it was
for the good of the child; and in this way, as the weeks grew to
months, the child created fresh and fresh links between his life and
the lives from which he had hitherto shrunk continually into
narrower isolation. Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must
be worshipped in close-locked solitude--which was hidden away from
the daylight, was deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human
tones--Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever-growing
desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living
movements; making trial of everything, with trust in new joy, and
stirring the human kindness in all eyes that looked on her. The
gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to
nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes
and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away
from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit--carried
them away to the new things that would come with the coming years,
when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas
cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties
and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours.
The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer,
deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony
of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away
from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday,
reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old
winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine,
and warming him into joy because _she_ had joy.
And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the
buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the
sunny midday, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were
lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head
to carry Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till
they reached some favourite bank where he could sit down, while
Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers, and make remarks to the winged
things that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling
"Dad-dad's" attention continually by bringing him the flowers.
Then she would turn her ear to some sudden bird-note, and Silas
learned to please her by making signs of hushed stillness, that they
might listen for the note to come again: so that when it came, she
set up her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph. Sitting on
the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once familiar
herbs again; and as the leaves, with their unchanged outline and
markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding
remembrances from which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in
Eppie's little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.
As the child's mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing
into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a
cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into
full consciousness.
It was an influence which must gather force with every new year: the
tones that stirred Silas's heart grew articulate, and called for
more distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew clearer for Eppie's
eyes and ears, and there was more that "Dad-dad" was imperatively
required to notice and account for. Also, by the time Eppie was
three years old, she developed a fine capacity for mischief, and for
devising ingenious ways of being troublesome, which found much
exercise, not only for Silas's patience, but for his watchfulness
and penetration. Sorely was poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by
the incompatible demands of love. Dolly Winthrop told him that
punishment was good for Eppie, and that, as for rearing a child
without making it tingle a little in soft and safe places now and
then, it was not to be done.
"To be sure, there's another thing you might do, Master Marner,"
added Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut her up once i' the
coal-hole. That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi'
the youngest lad, as I could never bear to smack him. Not as I
could find i' my heart to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a
minute, but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he must be
new washed and dressed, and it was as good as a rod to him--that
was. But I put it upo' your conscience, Master Marner, as there's
one of 'em you must choose--ayther smacking or the coal-hole--
else she'll get so masterful, there'll be no holding her."
Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth of this last remark;
but his force of mind failed before the only two penal methods open
to him, not only because it was painful to him to hurt Eppie, but
because he trembled at a moment's contention with her, lest she
should love him the less for it. Let even an affectionate Goliath
get himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by
pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, and which of the
two, pray, will be master? It was clear that Eppie, with her short
toddling steps, must lead father Silas a pretty dance on any fine
morning when circumstances favoured mischief.
For example. He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen as a means
of fastening her to his loom when he was busy: it made a broad belt
round her waist, and was long enough to allow of her reaching the
truckle-bed and sitting down on it, but not long enough for her to
attempt any dangerous climbing. One bright summer's morning Silas
had been more engrossed than usual in "setting up" a new piece of
work, an occasion on which his scissors were in requisition. These
scissors, owing to an especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept
carefully out of Eppie's reach; but the click of them had had a
peculiar attraction for her ear, and watching the results of that
click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same cause
would produce the same effect. Silas had seated himself in his
loom, and the noise of weaving had begun; but he had left his
scissors on a ledge which Eppie's arm was long enough to reach; and
now, like a small mouse, watching her opportunity, she stole quietly
from her corner, secured the scissors, and toddled to the bed again,
setting up her back as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a
distinct intention as to the use of the scissors; and having cut the
linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had
run out at the open door where the sunshine was inviting her, while
poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. It was not
until he happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst
upon him: Eppie had run out by herself--had perhaps fallen into
the Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have
befallen him, rushed out, calling "Eppie!" and ran eagerly about
the unenclosed space, exploring the dry cavities into which she
might have fallen, and then gazing with questioning dread at the
smooth red surface of the water. The cold drops stood on his brow.
How long had she been out? There was one hope--that she had crept
through the stile and got into the fields, where he habitually took
her to stroll. But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was
no descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search that
would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop. Still, that misdemeanour
must be committed; and poor Silas, after peering all round the
hedgerows, traversed the grass, beginning with perturbed vision to
see Eppie behind every group of red sorrel, and to see her moving
always farther off as he approached. The meadow was searched in
vain; and he got over the stile into the next field, looking with
dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer
shallowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud.
Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own small
boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a
deep hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was planted comfortably
on a cushion of olive-green mud. A red-headed calf was observing
her with alarmed doubt through the opposite hedge.
Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christened child which
demanded severe treatment; but Silas, overcome with convulsive joy
at finding his treasure again, could do nothing but snatch her up,
and cover her with half-sobbing kisses. It was not until he had
carried her home, and had begun to think of the necessary washing,
that he recollected the need that he should punish Eppie, and "make
her remember". The idea that she might run away again and come to
harm, gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time he
determined to try the coal-hole--a small closet near the hearth.
"Naughty, naughty Eppie," he suddenly began, holding her on his
knee, and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes--"naughty to cut
with the scissors and run away. Eppie must go into the coal-hole
for being naughty. Daddy must put her in the coal-hole."
He half-expected that this would be shock enough, and that Eppie
would begin to cry. But instead of that, she began to shake herself
on his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty.
Seeing that he must proceed to extremities, he put her into the
coal-hole, and held the door closed, with a trembling sense that he
was using a strong measure. For a moment there was silence, but
then came a little cry, "Opy, opy!" and Silas let her out again,
saying, "Now Eppie 'ull never be naughty again, else she must go in
the coal-hole--a black naughty place."
The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now
Eppie must be washed, and have clean clothes on; but it was to be
hoped that this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save
time in future--though, perhaps, it would have been better if
Eppie had cried more.
In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas having turned his
back to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it down
again, with the reflection that Eppie would be good without
fastening for the rest of the morning. He turned round again, and
was going to place her in her little chair near the loom, when she
peeped out at him with black face and hands again, and said, "Eppie
in de toal-hole!"
This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief
in the efficacy of punishment. "She'd take it all for fun," he
observed to Dolly, "if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do,
Mrs. Winthrop. If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I can bear it.
And she's got no tricks but what she'll grow out of."
"Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly,
sympathetically; "and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her
off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her
way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays
a-rearing. They _will_ worry and gnaw--worry and gnaw they will,
if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag
it. They know no difference, God help 'em: it's the pushing o' the
teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is."
So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds
being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone hut was made a
soft nest for her, lined with downy patience: and also in the world
that lay beyond the stone hut she knew nothing of frowns and
denials.
Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn or linen
at the same time, Silas took her with him in most of his journeys to
the farmhouses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's,
who was always ready to take care of her; and little curly-headed
Eppie, the weaver's child, became an object of interest at several
outlying homesteads, as well as in the village. Hitherto he had
been treated very much as if he had been a useful gnome or brownie--
a queer and unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be
looked at with wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one
would be glad to make all greetings and bargains as brief as
possible, but who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way, and
occasionally have a present of pork or garden stuff to carry home
with him, seeing that without him there was no getting the yarn
woven. But now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful
questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and difficulties could
be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little and talk about the
child, and words of interest were always ready for him: "Ah, Master
Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy!"--
or, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take
up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you
handier than men as do out-door work--you're partly as handy as a
woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." Elderly masters and
mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen arm-chairs, shook
their heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing children,
felt Eppie's round arms and legs, and pronounced them remarkably
firm, and told Silas that, if she turned out well (which, however,
there was no telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a
steady lass to do for him when he got helpless. Servant maidens
were fond of carrying her out to look at the hens and chickens, or
to see if any cherries could be shaken down in the orchard; and the
small boys and girls approached her slowly, with cautious movement
and steady gaze, like little dogs face to face with one of their own
kind, till attraction had reached the point at which the soft lips
were put out for a kiss. No child was afraid of approaching Silas
when Eppie was near him: there was no repulsion around him now,
either for young or old; for the little child had come to link him
once more with the whole world. There was love between him and the
child that blent them into one, and there was love between the child
and the world--from men and women with parental looks and tones,
to the red lady-birds and the round pebbles.
Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to
Eppie: she must have everything that was a good in Raveloe; and he
listened docilely, that he might come to understand better what this
life was, from which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from
a strange thing, with which he could have no communion: as some man
who has a precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in
a new soil, thinks of the rain, and the sunshine, and all
influences, in relation to his nursling, and asks industriously for
all knowledge that will help him to satisfy the wants of the
searching roots, or to guard leaf and bud from invading harm. The
disposition to hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by
the loss of his long-stored gold: the coins he earned afterwards
seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly
buried by an earthquake; the sense of bereavement was too heavy upon
him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again at the touch
of the newly-earned coin. And now something had come to replace his
hoard which gave a growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope
and joy continually onward beyond the money.
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and
led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged
angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction:
a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a
calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the
hand may be a little child's.
CHAPTER XV
There was one person, as you will believe, who watched with keener
though more hidden interest than any other, the prosperous growth of
Eppie under the weaver's care. He dared not do anything that would
imply a stronger interest in a poor man's adopted child than could
be expected from the kindliness of the young Squire, when a chance
meeting suggested a little present to a simple old fellow whom
others noticed with goodwill; but he told himself that the time
would come when he might do something towards furthering the welfare
of his daughter without incurring suspicion. Was he very uneasy in
the meantime at his inability to give his daughter her birthright?
I cannot say that he was. The child was being taken care of, and
would very likely be happy, as people in humble stations often were--
happier, perhaps, than those brought up in luxury.
That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and
followed desire--I wonder if it pricked very hard when he set out
on the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only
pierced to the quick when the chase had long been ended, and hope,
folding her wings, looked backward and became regret?
Godfrey Cass's cheek and eye were brighter than ever now. He was so
undivided in his aims, that he seemed like a man of firmness. No
Dunsey had come back: people had made up their minds that he was
gone for a soldier, or gone "out of the country", and no one cared
to be specific in their inquiries on a subject delicate to a
respectable family. Godfrey had ceased to see the shadow of Dunsey
across his path; and the path now lay straight forward to the
accomplishment of his best, longest-cherished wishes. Everybody
said Mr. Godfrey had taken the right turn; and it was pretty clear
what would be the end of things, for there were not many days in the
week that he was not seen riding to the Warrens. Godfrey himself,
when he was asked jocosely if the day had been fixed, smiled with
the pleasant consciousness of a lover who could say "yes", if he
liked. He felt a reformed man, delivered from temptation; and the
vision of his future life seemed to him as a promised land for which
he had no cause to fight. He saw himself with all his happiness
centred on his own hearth, while Nancy would smile on him as he
played with the children.
And that other child--not on the hearth--he would not forget it;
he would see that it was well provided for. That was a father's
duty.
PART TWO
CHAPTER XVI
It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years after Silas Marner had
found his new treasure on the hearth. The bells of the old Raveloe
church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning
service was ended; and out of the arched doorway in the tower came
slowly, retarded by friendly greetings and questions, the richer
parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible
for church-going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the
more important members of the congregation to depart first, while
their humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent
heads or dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned
to notice them.
Foremost among these advancing groups of well-clad people, there are
some whom we shall recognize, in spite of Time, who has laid his
hand on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed
in feature from the Godfrey Cass of six-and-twenty: he is only
fuller in flesh, and has only lost the indefinable look of youth--
a loss which is marked even when the eye is undulled and the
wrinkles are not yet come. Perhaps the pretty woman, not much
younger than he, who is leaning on his arm, is more changed than her
husband: the lovely bloom that used to be always on her cheek now
comes but fitfully, with the fresh morning air or with some strong
surprise; yet to all who love human faces best for what they tell of
human experience, Nancy's beauty has a heightened interest. Often
the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an
ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of
the fruit. But the years have not been so cruel to Nancy. The firm
yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance of the brown eyes,
speak now of a nature that has been tested and has kept its highest
qualities; and even the costume, with its dainty neatness and
purity, has more significance now the coquetries of youth can have
nothing to do with it.
Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away from
Raveloe lips since the old Squire was gathered to his fathers and
his inheritance was divided) have turned round to look for the tall
aged man and the plainly dressed woman who are a little behind--
Nancy having observed that they must wait for "father and
Priscilla"--and now they all turn into a narrower path leading
across the churchyard to a small gate opposite the Red House. We
will not follow them now; for may there not be some others in this
departing congregation whom we should like to see again--some of
those who are not likely to be handsomely clad, and whom we may not
recognize so easily as the master and mistress of the Red House?
But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes
seem to have gathered a longer vision, as is the way with eyes that
have been short-sighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a
more answering gaze; but in everything else one sees signs of a
frame much enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The
weaver's bent shoulders and white hair give him almost the look of
advanced age, though he is not more than five-and-fifty; but there
is the freshest blossom of youth close by his side--a blonde
dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly
auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples
as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little
ringlets burst away from the restraining comb behind and show
themselves below the bonnet-crown. Eppie cannot help being rather
vexed about her hair, for there is no other girl in Raveloe who has
hair at all like it, and she thinks hair ought to be smooth. She
does not like to be blameworthy even in small things: you see how
neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted handkerchief.
That good-looking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who walks
behind her, is not quite sure upon the question of hair in the
abstract, when Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that perhaps
straight hair is the best in general, but he doesn't want Eppie's
hair to be different. She surely divines that there is some one
behind her who is thinking about her very particularly, and
mustering courage to come to her side as soon as they are out in the
lane, else why should she look rather shy, and take care not to turn
away her head from her father Silas, to whom she keeps murmuring
little sentences as to who was at church and who was not at church,
and how pretty the red mountain-ash is over the Rectory wall?
"I wish _we_ had a little garden, father, with double daisies in,
like Mrs. Winthrop's," said Eppie, when they were out in the lane;
"only they say it 'ud take a deal of digging and bringing fresh
soil--and you couldn't do that, could you, father? Anyhow, I
shouldn't like you to do it, for it 'ud be too hard work for you."
"Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o' garden: these long
evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o' the waste, just
enough for a root or two o' flowers for you; and again, i' the
morning, I could have a turn wi' the spade before I sat down to the
loom. Why didn't you tell me before as you wanted a bit o'
garden?"
"_I_ can dig it for you, Master Marner," said the young man in
fustian, who was now by Eppie's side, entering into the conversation
without the trouble of formalities. "It'll be play to me after
I've done my day's work, or any odd bits o' time when the work's
slack. And I'll bring you some soil from Mr. Cass's garden--he'll
let me, and willing."
"Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?" said Silas; "I wasn't aware
of you; for when Eppie's talking o' things, I see nothing but what
she's a-saying. Well, if you could help me with the digging, we
might get her a bit o' garden all the sooner."
"Then, if you think well and good," said Aaron, "I'll come to the
Stone-pits this afternoon, and we'll settle what land's to be taken
in, and I'll get up an hour earlier i' the morning, and begin on
it."
"But not if you don't promise me not to work at the hard digging,
father," said Eppie. "For I shouldn't ha' said anything about
it," she added, half-bashfully, half-roguishly, "only
Mrs. Winthrop said as Aaron 'ud be so good, and --"
"And you might ha' known it without mother telling you," said
Aaron. "And Master Marner knows too, I hope, as I'm able and
willing to do a turn o' work for him, and he won't do me the
unkindness to anyways take it out o' my hands."
"There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy,"
said Eppie, "and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes
and plant the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits
when we've got some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see
us and know what we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o'
rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so
sweet-smelling; but there's no lavender only in the gentlefolks'
gardens, I think."
"That's no reason why you shouldn't have some," said Aaron, "for
I can bring you slips of anything; I'm forced to cut no end of 'em
when I'm gardening, and throw 'em away mostly. There's a big bed o'
lavender at the Red House: the missis is very fond of it."
"Well," said Silas, gravely, "so as you don't make free for us,
or ask for anything as is worth much at the Red House: for
Mr. Cass's been so good to us, and built us up the new end o' the
cottage, and given us beds and things, as I couldn't abide to be
imposin' for garden-stuff or anything else."
"No, no, there's no imposin'," said Aaron; "there's never a
garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for
want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to
myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the
land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what
could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that--
gardening does. But I must go back now, else mother 'ull be in
trouble as I aren't there."
"Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron," said Eppie; "I
shouldn't like to fix about the garden, and her not know everything
from the first--should _you_, father?"
"Aye, bring her if you can, Aaron," said Silas; "she's sure to
have a word to say as'll help us to set things on their right end."
Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up
the lonely sheltered lane.
"O daddy!" she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and
squeezing Silas's arm, and skipping round to give him an energetic
kiss. "My little old daddy! I'm so glad. I don't think I shall
want anything else when we've got a little garden; and I knew Aaron
would dig it for us," she went on with roguish triumph--"I knew
that very well."
"You're a deep little puss, you are," said Silas, with the mild
passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face; "but you'll make
yourself fine and beholden to Aaron."
"Oh, no, I shan't," said Eppie, laughing and frisking; "he likes
it."
"Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you'll be dropping
it, jumping i' that way."
Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it
was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log
fastened to his foot--a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of
human trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by
getting his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him
with her usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience
of his following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.
But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the
door, modified the donkey's views, and he limped away again without
bidding. The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was
awaiting them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at
their legs in a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a
tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a
sharp bark again, as much as to say, "I have done my duty by this
feeble creature, you perceive"; while the lady-mother of the kitten
sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a
sleepy air of expecting caresses, though she was not going to take
any trouble for them.
The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which
had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed
now in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with
decent furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly
Winthrop's eye. The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were
hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had
come, with the beds and other things, from the Red House; for
Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every one said in the village, did very kindly
by the weaver; and it was nothing but right a man should be looked
on and helped by those who could afford it, when he had brought up
an orphan child, and been father and mother to her--and had lost
his money too, so as he had nothing but what he worked for week by
week, and when the weaving was going down too--for there was less
and less flax spun--and Master Marner was none so young. Nobody
was jealous of the weaver, for he was regarded as an exceptional
person, whose claims on neighbourly help were not to be matched in
Raveloe. Any superstition that remained concerning him had taken an
entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a very feeble old man of
fourscore and six, never seen except in his chimney-corner or
sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of opinion that when a
man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, it was a sign
that his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the
robber would be made to answer for it--for, as Mr. Macey observed
of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever.
Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she
spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up
slowly in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a
slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas
would not consent to have a grate and oven added to his
conveniences: he loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his
brown pot--and was it not there when he had found Eppie? The gods
of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant
of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots.
Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his
knife and fork, and watching half-abstractedly Eppie's play with
Snap and the cat, by which her own dining was made rather a lengthy
business. Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wandering
thoughts: Eppie, with the rippling radiance of her hair and the
whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-blue
cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four
claws to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on
the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a
morsel which she held out of the reach of both--Snap occasionally
desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying
growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie
relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel between them.
But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and
said, "O daddy, you're wanting to go into the sunshine to smoke
your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy
when godmother comes. I'll make haste--I won't be long."
Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years,
having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Raveloe, as a
practice "good for the fits"; and this advice was sanctioned by
Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well to try what could do
no harm--a principle which was made to answer for a great deal of
work in that gentleman's medical practice. Silas did not highly
enjoy smoking, and often wondered how his neighbours could be so
fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be
good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been
developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been
the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this
young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which
his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by
sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself
come to appropriate the forms of custom and belief which were the
mould of Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities,
memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of
his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he
recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present.
The sense of presiding goodness and the human trust which come with
all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression that there
had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that dark shadow
over the days of his best years; and as it grew more and more easy
to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually communicated
to her all he could describe of his early life. The communication
was necessarily a slow and difficult process, for Silas's meagre
power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of
interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward experience gave her no
key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder
that arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by
fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to revolve what
she had heard till it acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas
at last arrived at the climax of the sad story--the drawing of
lots, and its false testimony concerning him; and this had to be
repeated in several interviews, under new questions on her part as
to the nature of this plan for detecting the guilty and clearing the
innocent.
"And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner--
the Bible as you brought wi' you from that country--it's the same
as what they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning to read
in?"
"Yes," said Silas, "every bit the same; and there's drawing o'
lots in the Bible, mind you," he added in a lower tone.
"Oh, dear, dear," said Dolly in a grieved voice, as if she were
hearing an unfavourable report of a sick man's case. She was silent
for some minutes; at last she said--
"There's wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the parson
knows, I'll be bound; but it takes big words to tell them things,
and such as poor folks can't make much out on. I can never rightly
know the meaning o' what I hear at church, only a bit here and
there, but I know it's good words--I do. But what lies upo' your
mind--it's this, Master Marner: as, if Them above had done the
right thing by you, They'd never ha' let you be turned out for a
wicked thief when you was innicent."
"Ah!" said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly's
phraseology, "that was what fell on me like as if it had been
red-hot iron; because, you see, there was nobody as cared for me or
clave to me above nor below. And him as I'd gone out and in wi' for
ten year and more, since when we was lads and went halves--mine
own familiar friend in whom I trusted, had lifted up his heel again'
me, and worked to ruin me."
"Eh, but he was a bad un--I can't think as there's another
such," said Dolly. "But I'm o'ercome, Master Marner; I'm like as
if I'd waked and didn't know whether it was night or morning.
I feel somehow as sure as I do when I've laid something up though I
can't justly put my hand on it, as there was a rights in what
happened to you, if one could but make it out; and you'd no call to
lose heart as you did. But we'll talk on it again; for sometimes
things come into my head when I'm leeching or poulticing, or such,
as I could never think on when I was sitting still."
Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of
illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was not long before
she recurred to the subject.
"Master Marner," she said, one day that she came to bring home
Eppie's washing, "I've been sore puzzled for a good bit wi' that
trouble o' yourn and the drawing o' lots; and it got twisted
back'ards and for'ards, as I didn't know which end to lay hold on.
But it come to me all clear like, that night when I was sitting up
wi' poor Bessy Fawkes, as is dead and left her children behind, God
help 'em--it come to me as clear as daylight; but whether I've got
hold on it now, or can anyways bring it to my tongue's end, that I
don't know. For I've often a deal inside me as'll never come out;
and for what you talk o' your folks in your old country niver saying
prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a book, they must be
wonderful cliver; for if I didn't know "Our Father", and little bits
o' good words as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I might down o'
my knees every night, but nothing could I say."
"But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on,
Mrs. Winthrop," said Silas.
"Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can
make nothing o' the drawing o' lots and the answer coming wrong; it
'ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us
i' big words. But what come to me as clear as the daylight, it was
when I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes
into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a
power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the middle o' the night--
it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart
nor what I've got--for I can't be anyways better nor Them as made
me; and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I
don't know on; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o'
things I don't know on, for it's little as I know--that it is.
And so, while I was thinking o' that, you come into my mind, Master
Marner, and it all come pouring in:--if _I_ felt i' my inside what
was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed and drawed
the lots, all but that wicked un, if _they_'d ha' done the right
thing by you if they could, isn't there Them as was at the making on
us, and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever
I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I
think on it. For there was the fever come and took off them as were
full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there's the
breaking o' limbs; and them as 'ud do right and be sober have to
suffer by them as are contrairy--eh, there's trouble i' this
world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on.
And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the
right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows
so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as
there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know--I feel it
i' my own inside as it must be so. And if you could but ha' gone on
trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run away from your
fellow-creaturs and been so lone."
"Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard," said Silas, in an under-tone;
"it 'ud ha' been hard to trusten then."
"And so it would," said Dolly, almost with compunction; "them
things are easier said nor done; and I'm partly ashamed o'
talking."
"Nay, nay," said Silas, "you're i' the right, Mrs. Winthrop--
you're i' the right. There's good i' this world--I've a feeling
o' that now; and it makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he
can see, i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness. That drawing
o' the lots is dark; but the child was sent to me: there's dealings
with us--there's dealings."
This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier years, when Silas had to
part with her for two hours every day, that she might learn to read
at the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her
in that first step to learning. Now that she was grown up, Silas
had often been led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which come
to people who live together in perfect love, to talk with _her_ too
of the past, and how and why he had lived a lonely man until she had
been sent to him. For it would have been impossible for him to hide
from Eppie that she was not his own child: even if the most delicate
reticence on the point could have been expected from Raveloe gossips
in her presence, her own questions about her mother could not have
been parried, as she grew up, without that complete shrouding of the
past which would have made a painful barrier between their minds.
So Eppie had long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground,
and how she herself had been found on the hearth by father Silas,
who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas brought back to
him. The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her
in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the
seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering
influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in
that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an
invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of
poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human
beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time
when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's
hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her
delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but
had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other
teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She was
too childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions
about her unknown father; for a long while it did not even occur to
her that she must have had a father; and the first time that the
idea of her mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was
when Silas showed her the wedding-ring which had been taken from the
wasted finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a little
lackered box shaped like a shoe. He delivered this box into Eppie's
charge when she had grown up, and she often opened it to look at the
ring: but still she thought hardly at all about the father of whom
it was the symbol. Had she not a father very close to her, who
loved her better than any real fathers in the village seemed to love
their daughters? On the contrary, who her mother was, and how she
came to die in that forlornness, were questions that often pressed
on Eppie's mind. Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her
nearest friend next to Silas, made her feel that a mother must be
very precious; and she had again and again asked Silas to tell her
how her mother looked, whom she was like, and how he had found her
against the furze bush, led towards it by the little footsteps and
the outstretched arms. The furze bush was there still; and this
afternoon, when Eppie came out with Silas into the sunshine, it was
the first object that arrested her eyes and thoughts.
"Father," she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which sometimes
came like a sadder, slower cadence across her playfulness, "we
shall take the furze bush into the garden; it'll come into the
corner, and just against it I'll put snowdrops and crocuses, 'cause
Aaron says they won't die out, but'll always get more and more."
"Ah, child," said Silas, always ready to talk when he had his pipe
in his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses more than the puffs,
"it wouldn't do to leave out the furze bush; and there's nothing
prettier, to my thinking, when it's yallow with flowers. But it's
just come into my head what we're to do for a fence--mayhap Aaron
can help us to a thought; but a fence we must have, else the donkeys
and things 'ull come and trample everything down. And fencing's
hard to be got at, by what I can make out."
"Oh, I'll tell you, daddy," said Eppie, clasping her hands
suddenly, after a minute's thought. "There's lots o' loose stones
about, some of 'em not big, and we might lay 'em atop of one
another, and make a wall. You and me could carry the smallest, and
Aaron 'ud carry the rest--I know he would."
"Eh, my precious un," said Silas, "there isn't enough stones to
go all round; and as for you carrying, why, wi' your little arms you
couldn't carry a stone no bigger than a turnip. You're dillicate
made, my dear," he added, with a tender intonation--"that's what
Mrs. Winthrop says."
"Oh, I'm stronger than you think, daddy," said Eppie; "and if
there wasn't stones enough to go all round, why they'll go part o'
the way, and then it'll be easier to get sticks and things for the
rest. See here, round the big pit, what a many stones!"
She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to lift one of the stones
and exhibit her strength, but she started back in surprise.
"Oh, father, just come and look here," she exclaimed--"come and
see how the water's gone down since yesterday. Why, yesterday the
pit was ever so full!"
"Well, to be sure," said Silas, coming to her side. "Why, that's
the draining they've begun on, since harvest, i' Mr. Osgood's
fields, I reckon. The foreman said to me the other day, when I
passed by 'em, "Master Marner," he said, "I shouldn't wonder if we
lay your bit o' waste as dry as a bone." It was Mr. Godfrey Cass,
he said, had gone into the draining: he'd been taking these fields
o' Mr. Osgood."
"How odd it'll seem to have the old pit dried up!" said Eppie,
turning away, and stooping to lift rather a large stone. "See,
daddy, I can carry this quite well," she said, going along with
much energy for a few steps, but presently letting it fall.
"Ah, you're fine and strong, aren't you?" said Silas, while Eppie
shook her aching arms and laughed. "Come, come, let us go and sit
down on the bank against the stile there, and have no more lifting.
You might hurt yourself, child. You'd need have somebody to work
for you--and my arm isn't over strong."
Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it implied more than
met the ear; and Eppie, when they sat down on the bank, nestled
close to his side, and, taking hold caressingly of the arm that was
not over strong, held it on her lap, while Silas puffed again
dutifully at the pipe, which occupied his other arm. An ash in the
hedgerow behind made a fretted screen from the sun, and threw happy
playful shadows all about them.
"Father," said Eppie, very gently, after they had been sitting in
silence a little while, "if I was to be married, ought I to be
married with my mother's ring?"
Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though the question fell
in with the under-current of thought in his own mind, and then said,
in a subdued tone, "Why, Eppie, have you been a-thinking on it?"
"Only this last week, father," said Eppie, ingenuously, "since
Aaron talked to me about it."
"And what did he say?" said Silas, still in the same subdued way,
as if he were anxious lest he should fall into the slightest tone
that was not for Eppie's good.
"He said he should like to be married, because he was a-going in
four-and-twenty, and had got a deal of gardening work, now
Mr. Mott's given up; and he goes twice a-week regular to Mr. Cass's,
and once to Mr. Osgood's, and they're going to take him on at the
Rectory."
"And who is it as he's wanting to marry?" said Silas, with rather
a sad smile.
"Why, me, to be sure, daddy," said Eppie, with dimpling laughter,
kissing her father's cheek; "as if he'd want to marry anybody
else!"
"And you mean to have him, do you?" said Silas.
"Yes, some time," said Eppie, "I don't know when. Everybody's
married some time, Aaron says. But I told him that wasn't true:
for, I said, look at father--he's never been married."
"No, child," said Silas, "your father was a lone man till you was
sent to him."
"But you'll never be lone again, father," said Eppie, tenderly.
"That was what Aaron said--"I could never think o' taking you
away from Master Marner, Eppie." And I said, "It 'ud be no use if
you did, Aaron." And he wants us all to live together, so as you
needn't work a bit, father, only what's for your own pleasure; and
he'd be as good as a son to you--that was what he said."
"And should you like that, Eppie?" said Silas, looking at her.
"I shouldn't mind it, father," said Eppie, quite simply. "And I
should like things to be so as you needn't work much. But if it
wasn't for that, I'd sooner things didn't change. I'm very happy: I
like Aaron to be fond of me, and come and see us often, and behave
pretty to you--he always _does_ behave pretty to you, doesn't he,
father?"
"Yes, child, nobody could behave better," said Silas,
emphatically. "He's his mother's lad."
"But I don't want any change," said Eppie. "I should like to go
on a long, long while, just as we are. Only Aaron does want a
change; and he made me cry a bit--only a bit--because he said I
didn't care for him, for if I cared for him I should want us to be
married, as he did."
"Eh, my blessed child," said Silas, laying down his pipe as if it
were useless to pretend to smoke any longer, "you're o'er young to
be married. We'll ask Mrs. Winthrop--we'll ask Aaron's mother
what _she_ thinks: if there's a right thing to do, she'll come at
it. But there's this to be thought on, Eppie: things _will_ change,
whether we like it or no; things won't go on for a long while just
as they are and no difference. I shall get older and helplesser,
and be a burden on you, belike, if I don't go away from you
altogether. Not as I mean you'd think me a burden--I know you
wouldn't--but it 'ud be hard upon you; and when I look for'ard to
that, I like to think as you'd have somebody else besides me--
somebody young and strong, as'll outlast your own life, and take
care on you to the end." Silas paused, and, resting his wrists on
his knees, lifted his hands up and down meditatively as he looked on
the ground.
"Then, would you like me to be married, father?" said Eppie, with
a little trembling in her voice.
"I'll not be the man to say no, Eppie," said Silas, emphatically;
"but we'll ask your godmother. She'll wish the right thing by you
and her son too."
"There they come, then," said Eppie. "Let us go and meet 'em.
Oh, the pipe! won't you have it lit again, father?" said Eppie,
lifting that medicinal appliance from the ground.
"Nay, child," said Silas, "I've done enough for to-day. I think,
mayhap, a little of it does me more good than so much at once."
CHAPTER XVII
While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing in the
fleckered shade of the ash tree, Miss Priscilla Lammeter was
resisting her sister's arguments, that it would be better to take
tea at the Red House, and let her father have a long nap, than drive
home to the Warrens so soon after dinner. The family party (of four
only) were seated round the table in the dark wainscoted parlour,
with the Sunday dessert before them, of fresh filberts, apples, and
pears, duly ornamented with leaves by Nancy's own hand before the
bells had rung for church.
A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlour since we
saw it in Godfrey's bachelor days, and under the wifeless reign of
the old Squire. Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is
ever allowed to rest, from the yard's width of oaken boards round
the carpet, to the old Squire's gun and whips and walking-sticks,
ranged on the stag's antlers above the mantelpiece. All other signs
of sporting and outdoor occupation Nancy has removed to another
room; but she has brought into the Red House the habit of filial
reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of honour these relics
of her husband's departed father. The tankards are on the
side-table still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and
there are no dregs to send forth unpleasant suggestions: the only
prevailing scent is of the lavender and rose-leaves that fill the
vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this once
dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by a new
presiding spirit.
"Now, father," said Nancy, "_is_ there any call for you to go
home to tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with us?--such a
beautiful evening as it's likely to be."
The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing
poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue
between his daughters.
"My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm
voice, now become rather broken. "She manages me and the farm
too."
"And reason good as I should manage you, father," said Priscilla,
"else you'd be giving yourself your death with rheumatism. And as
for the farm, if anything turns out wrong, as it can't but do in
these times, there's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to
find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being
master, to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming
in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke, _I_ believe."
"Well, well, my dear," said her father, with a quiet laugh, "I
didn't say you don't manage for everybody's good."
"Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla," said Nancy,
putting her hand on her sister's arm affectionately. "Come now;
and we'll go round the garden while father has his nap."
"My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I shall
drive. And as for staying tea, I can't hear of it; for there's this
dairymaid, now she knows she's to be married, turned Michaelmas,
she'd as lief pour the new milk into the pig-trough as into the
pans. That's the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the
world 'ud be new-made because they're to be married. So come and
let me put my bonnet on, and there'll be time for us to walk round
the garden while the horse is being put in."
When the sisters were treading the neatly-swept garden-walks,
between the bright turf that contrasted pleasantly with the dark
cones and arches and wall-like hedges of yew, Priscilla said--
"I'm as glad as anything at your husband's making that exchange o'
land with cousin Osgood, and beginning the dairying. It's a
thousand pities you didn't do it before; for it'll give you
something to fill your mind. There's nothing like a dairy if folks
want a bit o' worrit to make the days pass. For as for rubbing
furniture, when you can once see your face in a table there's
nothing else to look for; but there's always something fresh with
the dairy; for even in the depths o' winter there's some pleasure in
conquering the butter, and making it come whether or no. My dear,"
added Priscilla, pressing her sister's hand affectionately as they
walked side by side, "you'll never be low when you've got a
dairy."
"Ah, Priscilla," said Nancy, returning the pressure with a
grateful glance of her clear eyes, "but it won't make up to
Godfrey: a dairy's not so much to a man. And it's only what he
cares for that ever makes me low. I'm contented with the blessings
we have, if he could be contented."
"It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, impetuously, "that
way o' the men--always wanting and wanting, and never easy with
what they've got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when
they've neither ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in
their mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be
swallowing something strong, though they're forced to make haste
before the next meal comes in. But joyful be it spoken, our father
was never that sort o' man. And if it had pleased God to make you
ugly, like me, so as the men wouldn't ha' run after you, we might
have kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks as
have got uneasy blood in their veins."
"Oh, don't say so, Priscilla," said Nancy, repenting that she had
called forth this outburst; "nobody has any occasion to find fault
with Godfrey. It's natural he should be disappointed at not having
any children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay
by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with 'em when they
were little. There's many another man 'ud hanker more than he does.
He's the best of husbands."
"Oh, I know," said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, "I know the
way o' wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they
turn round on one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell 'em. But
father'll be waiting for me; we must turn now."
The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and
Mr. Lammeter was already on the stone steps, passing the time in
recalling to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his
master used to ride him.
"I always _would_ have a good horse, you know," said the old
gentleman, not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced from
the memory of his juniors.
"Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week's out,
Mr. Cass," was Priscilla's parting injunction, as she took the
reins, and shook them gently, by way of friendly incitement to
Speckle.
"I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits,
Nancy, and look at the draining," said Godfrey.
"You'll be in again by tea-time, dear?"
"Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour."
It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little
contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied
him; for the women of her generation--unless, like Priscilla, they
took to outdoor management--were not given to much walking beyond
their own house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic
duties. So, when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with
Mant's Bible before her, and after following the text with her eyes
for a little while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her
thoughts had already insisted on wandering.
But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with
the devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open
before her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern
very clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past
which she opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life;
but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the
effect of her conduct on others, which were strong elements in
Nancy's character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her
past feelings and actions with self-questioning solicitude. Her
mind not being courted by a great variety of subjects, she filled
the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and again, through all
her remembered experience, especially through the fifteen years of
her married time, in which her life and its significance had been
doubled. She recalled the small details, the words, tones, and
looks, in the critical scenes which had opened a new epoch for her
by giving her a deeper insight into the relations and trials of
life, or which had called on her for some little effort of
forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or real duty--
asking herself continually whether she had been in any respect
blamable. This excessive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps
a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when
shut out from its due share of outward activity and of practical
claims on its affections--inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless
woman, when her lot is narrow. "I can do so little--have I done
it all well?" is the perpetually recurring thought; and there are
no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory
demands to divert energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple.
There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy's married
life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the
oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla
in the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that
frequent direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first
wandering of her thought from the text, which she still attempted
dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent lips, was into an
imaginary enlargement of the defence she had set up for her husband
against Priscilla's implied blame. The vindication of the loved
object is the best balm affection can find for its wounds:--"A
man must have so much on his mind," is the belief by which a wife
often supports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling
words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come from the perception
that the absence of children from their hearth was dwelt on in her
husband's mind as a privation to which he could not reconcile
himself.
Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly
the denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all
the varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily
trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to
become a mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work
of her hands, all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it
there fourteen years ago--just, but for one little dress, which
had been made the burial-dress? But under this immediate personal
trial Nancy was so firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had
suddenly renounced the habit of visiting this drawer, lest she
should in this way be cherishing a longing for what was not given.
Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she
held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from
applying her own standard to her husband. "It is very different--
it is much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman
can always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a
man wants something that will make him look forward more--and
sitting by the fire is so much duller to him than to a woman." And
always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditations--trying,
with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it--
there came a renewal of self-questioning. _Had_ she done everything
in her power to lighten Godfrey's privation? Had she really been
right in the resistance which had cost her so much pain six years
ago, and again four years ago--the resistance to her husband's
wish that they should adopt a child? Adoption was more remote from
the ideas and habits of that time than of our own; still Nancy had
her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her mind to have an
opinion on all topics, not exclusively masculine, that had come
under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place for
every article of her personal property: and her opinions were always
principles to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not because
of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity
inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and
proprieties of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangements of
the evening toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was
three-and-twenty, had her unalterable little code, and had formed
every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She
carried these decided judgments within her in the most unobtrusive
way: they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly
as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like
Priscilla, because "it was right for sisters to dress alike", and
because "she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with
cheese-colouring". That was a trivial but typical instance of the
mode in which Nancy's life was regulated.
It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling,
which had been the ground of Nancy's difficult resistance to her
husband's wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had
been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of
Providence: the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn
out well, and would be a curse to those who had wilfully and
rebelliously sought what it was clear that, for some high reason,
they were better without. When you saw a thing was not meant to be,
said Nancy, it was a bounden duty to leave off so much as wishing
for it. And so far, perhaps, the wisest of men could scarcely make
more than a verbal improvement in her principle. But the conditions
under which she held it apparent that a thing was not meant to be,
depended on a more peculiar mode of thinking. She would have given
up making a purchase at a particular place if, on three successive
times, rain, or some other cause of Heaven's sending, had formed an
obstacle; and she would have anticipated a broken limb or other
heavy misfortune to any one who persisted in spite of such
indications.
"But why should you think the child would turn out ill?" said
Godfrey, in his remonstrances. "She has thriven as well as child
can do with the weaver; and _he_ adopted her. There isn't such a
pretty little girl anywhere else in the parish, or one fitter for
the station we could give her. Where can be the likelihood of her
being a curse to anybody?"
"Yes, my dear Godfrey," said Nancy, who was sitting with her hands
tightly clasped together, and with yearning, regretful affection in
her eyes. "The child may not turn out ill with the weaver. But,
then, he didn't go to seek her, as we should be doing. It will be
wrong: I feel sure it will. Don't you remember what that lady we
met at the Royston Baths told us about the child her sister adopted?
That was the only adopting I ever heard of: and the child was
transported when it was twenty-three. Dear Godfrey, don't ask me to
do what I know is wrong: I should never be happy again. I know it's
very hard for _you_--it's easier for me--but it's the will of
Providence."
It might seem singular that Nancy--with her religious theory
pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church
doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small
experience--should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so
nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in
the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge--singular,
if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural
growths, elude the barriers of system.
Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years
old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred
to him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie.
Surely the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so
much trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should
happen to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he
would be well provided for to the end of his life--provided for as
the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an
appropriate thing for people in a higher station to take a charge
off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently
appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to
himself; and by a common fallacy, he imagined the measure would be
easy because he had private motives for desiring it. This was
rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's relation to Eppie; but we
must remember that many of the impressions which Godfrey was likely
to gather concerning the labouring people around him would favour
the idea that deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms
and scant means; and he had not had the opportunity, even if he had
had the power, of entering intimately into all that was exceptional
in the weaver's experience. It was only the want of adequate
knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey deliberately
to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness had outlived
that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of him as a
husband was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion.
"I was right," she said to herself, when she had recalled all
their scenes of discussion--"I feel I was right to say him nay,
though it hurt me more than anything; but how good Godfrey has been
about it! Many men would have been very angry with me for standing
out against their wishes; and they might have thrown out that they'd
had ill-luck in marrying me; but Godfrey has never been the man to
say me an unkind word. It's only what he can't hide: everything
seems so blank to him, I know; and the land--what a difference it
'ud make to him, when he goes to see after things, if he'd children
growing up that he was doing it all for! But I won't murmur; and
perhaps if he'd married a woman who'd have had children, she'd have
vexed him in other ways."
This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort; and to give it greater
strength, she laboured to make it impossible that any other wife
should have had more perfect tenderness. She had been _forced_ to
vex him by that one denial. Godfrey was not insensible to her
loving effort, and did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her
obstinacy. It was impossible to have lived with her fifteen years
and not be aware that an unselfish clinging to the right, and a
sincerity clear as the flower-born dew, were her main
characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt this so strongly, that his own
more wavering nature, too averse to facing difficulty to be
unvaryingly simple and truthful, was kept in a certain awe of this
gentle wife who watched his looks with a yearning to obey them. It
seemed to him impossible that he should ever confess to her the
truth about Eppie: she would never recover from the repulsion the
story of his earlier marriage would create, told to her now, after
that long concealment. And the child, too, he thought, must become
an object of repulsion: the very sight of her would be painful. The
shock to Nancy's mingled pride and ignorance of the world's evil
might even be too much for her delicate frame. Since he had married
her with that secret on his heart, he must keep it there to the
last. Whatever else he did, he could not make an irreparable breach
between himself and this long-loved wife.
Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of
children from a hearth brightened by such a wife? Why did his mind
fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life
was not thoroughly joyous to him? I suppose it is the way with all
men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that
life never _can_ be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of
the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds
it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction seated
musingly on a childless hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose
return is greeted by young voices--seated at the meal where the
little heads rise one above another like nursery plants, it sees a
black care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the
impulses by which men abandon freedom, and seek for ties, are surely
nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey's case there were further
reasons why his thoughts should be continually solicited by this one
point in his lot: his conscience, never thoroughly easy about Eppie,
now gave his childless home the aspect of a retribution; and as the
time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to adopt her, any retrieval of
his error became more and more difficult.
On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since there had
been any allusion to the subject between them, and Nancy supposed
that it was for ever buried.
"I wonder if he'll mind it less or more as he gets older," she
thought; "I'm afraid more. Aged people feel the miss of children:
what would father do without Priscilla? And if I die, Godfrey will
be very lonely--not holding together with his brothers much. But
I won't be over-anxious, and trying to make things out beforehand: I
must do my best for the present."
With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her reverie, and
turned her eyes again towards the forsaken page. It had been
forsaken longer than she imagined, for she was presently surprised
by the appearance of the servant with the tea-things. It was, in
fact, a little before the usual time for tea; but Jane had her
reasons.
"Is your master come into the yard, Jane?"
"No 'm, he isn't," said Jane, with a slight emphasis, of which,
however, her mistress took no notice.
"I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm," continued Jane, after
a pause, "but there's folks making haste all one way, afore the
front window. I doubt something's happened. There's niver a man to
be seen i' the yard, else I'd send and see. I've been up into the
top attic, but there's no seeing anything for trees. I hope
nobody's hurt, that's all."
"Oh, no, I daresay there's nothing much the matter," said Nancy.
"It's perhaps Mr. Snell's bull got out again, as he did before."
"I wish he mayn't gore anybody then, that's all," said Jane, not
altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a few imaginary
calamities.
"That girl is always terrifying me," thought Nancy; "I wish
Godfrey would come in."
She went to the front window and looked as far as she could see
along the road, with an uneasiness which she felt to be childish,
for there were now no such signs of excitement as Jane had spoken
of, and Godfrey would not be likely to return by the village road,
but by the fields. She continued to stand, however, looking at the
placid churchyard with the long shadows of the gravestones across
the bright green hillocks, and at the glowing autumn colours of the
Rectory trees beyond. Before such calm external beauty the presence
of a vague fear is more distinctly felt--like a raven flapping its
slow wing across the sunny air. Nancy wished more and more that
Godfrey would come in.
CHAPTER XVIII
Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy
felt that it was her husband. She turned from the window with
gladness in her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was stilled.
"Dear, I'm so thankful you're come," she said, going towards him.
"I began to get --"
She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat with
trembling hands, and turned towards her with a pale face and a
strange unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as
part of a scene invisible to herself. She laid her hand on his arm,
not daring to speak again; but he left the touch unnoticed, and
threw himself into his chair.
Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to
keep away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when the door was closed
again he exerted himself to speak more distinctly.
"Sit down, Nancy--there," he said, pointing to a chair opposite
him. "I came back as soon as I could, to hinder anybody's telling
you but me. I've had a great shock--but I care most about the
shock it'll be to you."
"It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips,
clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.
"No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate
skill with which he would have wished to make his revelation.
"It's Dunstan--my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen
years ago. We've found him--found his body--his skeleton."
The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in Nancy made her feel
these words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness to hear what
else he had to tell. He went on:
"The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly--from the draining, I
suppose; and there he lies--has lain for sixteen years, wedged
between two great stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's
my gold-handled hunting-whip, with my name on: he took it away,
without my knowing, the day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last
time he was seen."
Godfrey paused: it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you
think he drowned himself?" said Nancy, almost wondering that her
husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those
years ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been
augured.
"No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if
he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added:
"Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner."
The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and
shame, for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship
with crime as a dishonour.
"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had
immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more
keenly by her husband.
"There was the money in the pit," he continued--"all the
weaver's money. Everything's been gathered up, and they're taking
the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was
no hindering it; you must know."
He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy
would have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she
refrained, from an instinctive sense that there was something behind--
that Godfrey had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted
his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as he said--
"Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God
Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. I've lived with a
secret on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't
have you know it by somebody else, and not by me--I wouldn't have
you find it out after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been "I
will" and "I won't" with me all my life--I'll make sure of myself
now."
Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife
met with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.
"Nancy," said Godfrey, slowly, "when I married you, I hid
something from you--something I ought to have told you. That
woman Marner found dead in the snow--Eppie's mother--that
wretched woman--was my wife: Eppie is my child."
He paused, dreading the effect of his confession. But Nancy sat
quite still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She
was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her
lap.
"You'll never think the same of me again," said Godfrey, after a
little while, with some tremor in his voice.
She was silent.
"I oughtn't to have left the child unowned: I oughtn't to have kept
it from you. But I couldn't bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led
away into marrying her--I suffered for it."
Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost expected that
she would presently get up and say she would go to her father's.
How could she have any mercy for faults that must seem so black to
her, with her simple, severe notions?
But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. There
was no indignation in her voice--only deep regret.
"Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have
done some of our duty by the child. Do you think I'd have refused
to take her in, if I'd known she was yours?"
At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was
not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not
measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke
again, with more agitation.
"And--Oh, Godfrey--if we'd had her from the first, if you'd
taken to her as you ought, she'd have loved me for her mother--and
you'd have been happier with me: I could better have bore my little
baby dying, and our life might have been more like what we used to
think it 'ud be."
The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak.
"But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, if I'd told you,"
said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to
prove to himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. "You
may think you would now, but you wouldn't then. With your pride and
your father's, you'd have hated having anything to do with me after
the talk there'd have been."
"I can't say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should
never have married anybody else. But I wasn't worth doing wrong for--
nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems
beforehand--not even our marrying wasn't, you see." There was a
faint sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last words.
"I'm a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy," said Godfrey,
rather tremulously. "Can you forgive me ever?"
"The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey: you've made it up to me--
you've been good to me for fifteen years. It's another you did the
wrong to; and I doubt it can never be all made up for."
"But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. "I won't mind the
world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my
life."
"It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy,
shaking her head sadly. "But it's your duty to acknowledge her and
provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God
Almighty to make her love me."
"Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon
as everything's quiet at the Stone-pits."
CHAPTER XIX
Between eight and nine o'clock that evening, Eppie and Silas were
seated alone in the cottage. After the great excitement the weaver
had undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a
longing for this quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and
Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave
him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it
had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility
makes external stimulus intolerable--when there is no sense of
weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep
is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other
men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange
definiteness that comes over coarse features from that transient
influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual
voices had sent wonder-working vibrations through the heavy mortal
frame--as if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had passed into
the face of the listener.
Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in his
arm-chair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn her own chair towards
his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she
looked up at him. On the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the
recovered gold--the old long-loved gold, ranged in orderly heaps,
as Silas used to range it in the days when it was his only joy. He
had been telling her how he used to count it every night, and how
his soul was utterly desolate till she was sent to him.
"At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he
was saying in a subdued tone, "as if you might be changed into the
gold again; for sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I seemed
to see the gold; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it,
and find it was come back. But that didn't last long. After a bit,
I should have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you
from me, for I'd got to feel the need o' your looks and your voice
and the touch o' your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie,
when you were such a little un--you didn't know what your old
father Silas felt for you."
"But I know now, father," said Eppie. "If it hadn't been for
you, they'd have taken me to the workhouse, and there'd have been
nobody to love me."
"Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you hadn't been
sent to save me, I should ha' gone to the grave in my misery. The
money was taken away from me in time; and you see it's been kept--
kept till it was wanted for you. It's wonderful--our life is
wonderful."
Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. "It
takes no hold of me now," he said, ponderingly--"the money
doesn't. I wonder if it ever could again--I doubt it might, if I
lost you, Eppie. I might come to think I was forsaken again, and
lose the feeling that God was good to me."
At that moment there was a knocking at the door; and Eppie was
obliged to rise without answering Silas. Beautiful she looked, with
the tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes and a slight flush on
her cheeks, as she stepped to open the door. The flush deepened
when she saw Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her little rustic
curtsy, and held the door wide for them to enter.
"We're disturbing you very late, my dear," said Mrs. Cass, taking
Eppie's hand, and looking in her face with an expression of anxious
interest and admiration. Nancy herself was pale and tremulous.
Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to stand
against Silas, opposite to them.
"Well, Marner," said Godfrey, trying to speak with perfect
firmness, "it's a great comfort to me to see you with your money
again, that you've been deprived of so many years. It was one of my
family did you the wrong--the more grief to me--and I feel bound
to make up to you for it in every way. Whatever I can do for you
will be nothing but paying a debt, even if I looked no further than
the robbery. But there are other things I'm beholden--shall be
beholden to you for, Marner."
Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed between him and his
wife that the subject of his fatherhood should be approached very
carefully, and that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved
for the future, so that it might be made to Eppie gradually. Nancy
had urged this, because she felt strongly the painful light in which
Eppie must inevitably see the relation between her father and
mother.
Silas, always ill at ease when he was being spoken to by
"betters", such as Mr. Cass--tall, powerful, florid men, seen
chiefly on horseback--answered with some constraint--
"Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As for the robbery, I
count it no loss to me. And if I did, you couldn't help it: you
aren't answerable for it."
"You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can; and I
hope you'll let me act according to my own feeling of what's just.
I know you're easily contented: you've been a hard-working man all
your life."
"Yes, sir, yes," said Marner, meditatively. "I should ha' been
bad off without my work: it was what I held by when everything else
was gone from me."
"Ah," said Godfrey, applying Marner's words simply to his bodily
wants, "it was a good trade for you in this country, because
there's been a great deal of linen-weaving to be done. But you're
getting rather past such close work, Marner: it's time you laid by
and had some rest. You look a good deal pulled down, though you're
not an old man, _are_ you?"
"Fifty-five, as near as I can say, sir," said Silas.
"Oh, why, you may live thirty years longer--look at old Macey!
And that money on the table, after all, is but little. It won't go
far either way--whether it's put out to interest, or you were to
live on it as long as it would last: it wouldn't go far if you'd
nobody to keep but yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good
many years now."
"Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying,
"I'm in no fear o' want. We shall do very well--Eppie and me
'ull do well enough. There's few working-folks have got so much
laid by as that. I don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look
upon it as a deal--almost too much. And as for us, it's little we
want."
"Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the
moment after.
"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that
this turn in the point of view might help her husband. "We should
agree in that: I give a deal of time to the garden."
"Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey,
surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition
which had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a
good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great
comfort to you to see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks
blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't
look like a strapping girl come of working parents. You'd like to
see her taken care of by those who can leave her well off, and make
a lady of her; she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as
she might come to have in a few years' time."
A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a
passing gleam. Eppie was simply wondering Mr. Cass should talk so
about things that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but
Silas was hurt and uneasy.
"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at
command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard
Mr. Cass's words.
"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to
come to the point. "Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children--
nobody to benefit by our good home and everything else we have--
more than enough for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody
in the place of a daughter to us--we should like to have Eppie,
and treat her in every way as our own child. It 'ud be a great
comfort to you in your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made in
that way, after you've been at the trouble of bringing her up so
well. And it's right you should have every reward for that. And
Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and be grateful to you: she'd
come and see you very often, and we should all be on the look-out to
do everything we could towards making you comfortable."
A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment,
necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions,
and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings.
While he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind
Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt
him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when
Mr. Cass had ended--powerless under the conflict of emotions, all
alike painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her
father was in distress; and she was just going to lean down and
speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery
over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly--
"Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr. and
Mrs. Cass."
Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step.
Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the sense
that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of
self-consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass
and then to Mr. Cass, and said--
"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir. But I can't leave my father,
nor own anybody nearer than him. And I don't want to be a lady--
thank you all the same" (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). "I
couldn't give up the folks I've been used to."
Eppie's lips began to tremble a little at the last words. She
retreated to her father's chair again, and held him round the neck:
while Silas, with a subdued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers.
The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was,
naturally, divided with distress on her husband's account. She
dared not speak, wondering what was going on in her husband's mind.
Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we
encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had been full of his own
penitence and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time
was left to him; he was possessed with all-important feelings, that
were to lead to a predetermined course of action which he had fixed
on as the right, and he was not prepared to enter with lively
appreciation into other people's feelings counteracting his virtuous
resolves. The agitation with which he spoke again was not quite
unmixed with anger.
"But I've a claim on you, Eppie--the strongest of all claims.
It's my duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child, and provide for her.
She is my own child--her mother was my wife. I've a natural claim
on her that must stand before every other."
Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. Silas, on
the contrary, who had been relieved, by Eppie's answer, from the
dread lest his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit
of resistance in him set free, not without a touch of parental
fierceness. "Then, sir," he answered, with an accent of
bitterness that had been silent in him since the memorable day when
his youthful hope had perished--"then, sir, why didn't you say so
sixteen year ago, and claim her before I'd come to love her, i'stead
o' coming to take her from me now, when you might as well take the
heart out o' my body? God gave her to me because you turned your
back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you've no right to
her! When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as
take it in."
"I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I've repented of my conduct in
that matter," said Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of
Silas's words.
"I'm glad to hear it, sir," said Marner, with gathering
excitement; "but repentance doesn't alter what's been going on for
sixteen year. Your coming now and saying "I'm her father" doesn't
alter the feelings inside us. It's me she's been calling her father
ever since she could say the word."
"But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, Marner,"
said Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the weaver's direct
truth-speaking. "It isn't as if she was to be taken quite away
from you, so that you'd never see her again. She'll be very near
you, and come to see you very often. She'll feel just the same
towards you."
"Just the same?" said Marner, more bitterly than ever. "How'll
she feel just the same for me as she does now, when we eat o' the
same bit, and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same things
from one day's end to another? Just the same? that's idle talk.
You'd cut us i' two."
Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy of
Marner's simple words, felt rather angry again. It seemed to him
that the weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily passed by those
who have never tested their own power of sacrifice) to oppose what
was undoubtedly for Eppie's welfare; and he felt himself called
upon, for her sake, to assert his authority.
"I should have thought, Marner," he said, severely--"I should
have thought your affection for Eppie would make you rejoice in what
was for her good, even if it did call upon you to give up something.
You ought to remember your own life's uncertain, and she's at an age
now when her lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what
it would be in her father's home: she may marry some low
working-man, and then, whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make
her well-off. You're putting yourself in the way of her welfare;
and though I'm sorry to hurt you after what you've done, and what
I've left undone, I feel now it's my duty to insist on taking care
of my own daughter. I want to do my duty."
It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was
more deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey's. Thought had
been very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her
old long-loved father and this new unfamiliar father who had
suddenly come to fill the place of that black featureless shadow
which had held the ring and placed it on her mother's finger. Her
imagination had darted backward in conjectures, and forward in
previsions, of what this revealed fatherhood implied; and there were
words in Godfrey's last speech which helped to make the previsions
especially definite. Not that these thoughts, either of past or
future, determined her resolution--_that_ was determined by the
feelings which vibrated to every word Silas had uttered; but they
raised, even apart from these feelings, a repulsion towards the
offered lot and the newly-revealed father.
Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and
alarmed lest Godfrey's accusation should be true--lest he should
be raising his own will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many
moments he was mute, struggling for the self-conquest necessary to
the uttering of the difficult words. They came out tremulously.
"I'll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child.
I'll hinder nothing."
Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections,
shared her husband's view, that Marner was not justifiable in his
wish to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She
felt that it was a very hard trial for the poor weaver, but her code
allowed no question that a father by blood must have a claim above
that of any foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to
plenteous circumstances and the privileges of "respectability",
could not enter into the pleasures which early nurture and habit
connect with all the little aims and efforts of the poor who are
born poor: to her mind, Eppie, in being restored to her birthright,
was entering on a too long withheld but unquestionable good. Hence
she heard Silas's last words with relief, and thought, as Godfrey
did, that their wish was achieved.
"Eppie, my dear," said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, not
without some embarrassment, under the sense that she was old enough
to judge him, "it'll always be our wish that you should show your
love and gratitude to one who's been a father to you so many years,
and we shall want to help you to make him comfortable in every way.
But we hope you'll come to love us as well; and though I haven't
been what a father should ha' been to you all these years, I wish to
do the utmost in my power for you for the rest of my life, and
provide for you as my only child. And you'll have the best of
mothers in my wife--that'll be a blessing you haven't known since
you were old enough to know it."
"My dear, you'll be a treasure to me," said Nancy, in her gentle
voice. "We shall want for nothing when we have our daughter."
Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she had done before. She
held Silas's hand in hers, and grasped it firmly--it was a
weaver's hand, with a palm and finger-tips that were sensitive to
such pressure--while she spoke with colder decision than before.
"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir, for your offers--they're
very great, and far above my wish. For I should have no delight i'
life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he
was sitting at home, a-thinking of me and feeling lone. We've been
used to be happy together every day, and I can't think o' no
happiness without him. And he says he'd nobody i' the world till I
was sent to him, and he'd have nothing when I was gone. And he's
took care of me and loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him
as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him and
me."
"But you must make sure, Eppie," said Silas, in a low voice--
"you must make sure as you won't ever be sorry, because you've made
your choice to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes and
things, when you might ha' had everything o' the best."
His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened to
Eppie's words of faithful affection.
"I can never be sorry, father," said Eppie. "I shouldn't know
what to think on or to wish for with fine things about me, as I
haven't been used to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on
things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at church, as 'ud make
them as I'm fond of think me unfitting company for 'em. What could
_I_ care for then?"
Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. But his
eyes were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the end of his
stick, as if he were pondering on something absently. She thought
there was a word which might perhaps come better from her lips than
from his.
"What you say is natural, my dear child--it's natural you should
cling to those who've brought you up," she said, mildly; "but
there's a duty you owe to your lawful father. There's perhaps
something to be given up on more sides than one. When your father
opens his home to you, I think it's right you shouldn't turn your
back on it."
"I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie,
impetuously, while the tears gathered. "I've always thought of a
little home where he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do
everything for him: I can't think o' no other home. I wasn't
brought up to be a lady, and I can't turn my mind to it. I like the
working-folks, and their victuals, and their ways. And," she ended
passionately, while the tears fell, "I'm promised to marry a
working-man, as'll live with father, and help me to take care of
him."
Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and smarting dilated
eyes. This frustration of a purpose towards which he had set out
under the exalted consciousness that he was about to compensate in
some degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the
air of the room stifling.
"Let us go," he said, in an under-tone.
"We won't talk of this any longer now," said Nancy, rising.
"We're your well-wishers, my dear--and yours too, Marner. We
shall come and see you again. It's getting late now."
In this way she covered her husband's abrupt departure, for Godfrey
had gone straight to the door, unable to say more.
CHAPTER XX
Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in silence. When
they entered the oaken parlour, Godfrey threw himself into his
chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the
hearth near her husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few
minutes, and yet fearing to utter any word lest it might jar on his
feeling. At last Godfrey turned his head towards her, and their
eyes met, dwelling in that meeting without any movement on either
side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like
the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great
danger--not to be interfered with by speech or action which would
distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.
But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers within
it, he drew her towards him, and said--
"That's ended!"
She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his side,
"Yes, I'm afraid we must give up the hope of having her for a
daughter. It wouldn't be right to want to force her to come to us
against her will. We can't alter her bringing up and what's come of
it."
"No," said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast
with his usually careless and unemphatic speech--"there's debts
we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that
have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting off, the
trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the
right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his
door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless
once, Nancy--I shall pass for childless now against my wish."
Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while she asked--
"You won't make it known, then, about Eppie's being your daughter?"
"No: where would be the good to anybody?--only harm. I must do
what I can for her in the state of life she chooses. I must see who
it is she's thinking of marrying."
"If it won't do any good to make the thing known," said Nancy, who
thought she might now allow herself the relief of entertaining a
feeling which she had tried to silence before, "I should be very
thankful for father and Priscilla never to be troubled with knowing
what was done in the past, more than about Dunsey: it can't be
helped, their knowing that."
"I shall put it in my will--I think I shall put it in my will.
I shouldn't like to leave anything to be found out, like this of
Dunsey," said Godfrey, meditatively. "But I can't see anything
but difficulties that 'ud come from telling it now. I must do what
I can to make her happy in her own way. I've a notion," he added,
after a moment's pause, "it's Aaron Winthrop she meant she was
engaged to. I remember seeing him with her and Marner going away
from church."
"Well, he's very sober and industrious," said Nancy, trying to
view the matter as cheerfully as possible.
Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he looked up at
Nancy sorrowfully, and said--
"She's a very pretty, nice girl, isn't she, Nancy?"
"Yes, dear; and with just your hair and eyes: I wondered it had
never struck me before."
"I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her
father: I could see a change in her manner after that."
"She couldn't bear to think of not looking on Marner as her
father," said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her husband's painful
impression.
"She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She
thinks me worse than I am. But she _must_ think it: she can never
know all. It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to
dislike me. I should never have got into that trouble if I'd been
true to you--if I hadn't been a fool. I'd no right to expect
anything but evil could come of that marriage--and when I shirked
doing a father's part too."
Nancy was silent: her spirit of rectitude would not let her try to
soften the edge of what she felt to be a just compunction. He spoke
again after a little while, but the tone was rather changed: there
was tenderness mingled with the previous self-reproach.
"And I got _you_, Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I've been
grumbling and uneasy because I hadn't something else--as if I
deserved it."
"You've never been wanting to me, Godfrey," said Nancy, with quiet
sincerity. "My only trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself
to the lot that's been given us."
"Well, perhaps it isn't too late to mend a bit there. Though it
_is_ too late to mend some things, say what they will."
CHAPTER XXI
The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were seated at their
breakfast, he said to her--
"Eppie, there's a thing I've had on my mind to do this two year,
and now the money's been brought back to us, we can do it. I've
been turning it over and over in the night, and I think we'll set
out to-morrow, while the fine days last. We'll leave the house and
everything for your godmother to take care on, and we'll make a
little bundle o' things and set out."
"Where to go, daddy?" said Eppie, in much surprise.
"To my old country--to the town where I was born--up Lantern
Yard. I want to see Mr. Paston, the minister: something may ha'
come out to make 'em know I was innicent o' the robbery. And
Mr. Paston was a man with a deal o' light--I want to speak to him
about the drawing o' the lots. And I should like to talk to him
about the religion o' this country-side, for I partly think he
doesn't know on it."
Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only of wonder
and delight at seeing a strange country, but also of coming back to
tell Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much wiser than she was about
most things--it would be rather pleasant to have this little
advantage over him. Mrs. Winthrop, though possessed with a dim fear
of dangers attendant on so long a journey, and requiring many
assurances that it would not take them out of the region of
carriers' carts and slow waggons, was nevertheless well pleased that
Silas should revisit his own country, and find out if he had been
cleared from that false accusation.
"You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o' your life, Master
Marner," said Dolly--"that you would. And if there's any light
to be got up the yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this
world, and I'd be glad on it myself, if you could bring it back."
So on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Eppie, in their
Sunday clothes, with a small bundle tied in a blue linen
handkerchief, were making their way through the streets of a great
manufacturing town. Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years
had brought over his native place, had stopped several persons in
succession to ask them the name of this town, that he might be sure
he was not under a mistake about it.
"Ask for Lantern Yard, father--ask this gentleman with the
tassels on his shoulders a-standing at the shop door; he isn't in a
hurry like the rest," said Eppie, in some distress at her father's
bewilderment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise, the
movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent faces.
"Eh, my child, he won't know anything about it," said Silas;
"gentlefolks didn't ever go up the Yard. But happen somebody can
tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is.
I know the way out o' that as if I'd seen it yesterday."
With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they
reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of the jail, the first
object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him
with the certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had
hitherto given him, that he was in his native place.
"Ah," he said, drawing a long breath, "there's the jail, Eppie;
that's just the same: I aren't afraid now. It's the third turning
on the left hand from the jail doors--that's the way we must go."
"Oh, what a dark ugly place!" said Eppie. "How it hides the
sky! It's worse than the Workhouse. I'm glad you don't live in
this town now, father. Is Lantern Yard like this street?"
"My precious child," said Silas, smiling, "it isn't a big street
like this. I never was easy i' this street myself, but I was fond
o' Lantern Yard. The shops here are all altered, I think--I can't
make 'em out; but I shall know the turning, because it's the
third."
"Here it is," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came to
a narrow alley. "And then we must go to the left again, and then
straight for'ard for a bit, up Shoe Lane: and then we shall be at
the entry next to the o'erhanging window, where there's the nick in
the road for the water to run. Eh, I can see it all."
"O father, I'm like as if I was stifled," said Eppie. "I
couldn't ha' thought as any folks lived i' this way, so close
together. How pretty the Stone-pits 'ull look when we get back!"
"It looks comical to _me_, child, now--and smells bad. I can't
think as it usened to smell so."
Here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked out from a gloomy
doorway at the strangers, and increased Eppie's uneasiness, so that
it was a longed-for relief when they issued from the alleys into
Shoe Lane, where there was a broader strip of sky.
"Dear heart!" said Silas, "why, there's people coming out o' the
Yard as if they'd been to chapel at this time o' day--a weekday
noon!"
Suddenly he started and stood still with a look of distressed
amazement, that alarmed Eppie. They were before an opening in front
of a large factory, from which men and women were streaming for
their midday meal.
"Father," said Eppie, clasping his arm, "what's the matter?"
But she had to speak again and again before Silas could answer her.
"It's gone, child," he said, at last, in strong agitation--
"Lantern Yard's gone. It must ha' been here, because here's the
house with the o'erhanging window--I know that--it's just the
same; but they've made this new opening; and see that big factory!
It's all gone--chapel and all."
"Come into that little brush-shop and sit down, father--they'll
let you sit down," said Eppie, always on the watch lest one of her
father's strange attacks should come on. "Perhaps the people can
tell you all about it."
But neither from the brush-maker, who had come to Shoe Lane only ten
years ago, when the factory was already built, nor from any other
source within his reach, could Silas learn anything of the old
Lantern Yard friends, or of Mr. Paston the minister.
"The old place is all swep' away," Silas said to Dolly Winthrop on
the night of his return--"the little graveyard and everything.
The old home's gone; I've no home but this now. I shall never know
whether they got at the truth o' the robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston
could ha' given me any light about the drawing o' the lots. It's
dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is; I doubt it'll be dark to the
last."
"Well, yes, Master Marner," said Dolly, who sat with a placid
listening face, now bordered by grey hairs; "I doubt it may. It's
the will o' Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but
there's some things as I've never felt i' the dark about, and
they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by
that once, Master Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the
rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there _being_ a rights, Master
Marner, for all it's dark to you and me."
"No," said Silas, "no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the
child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had
light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me,
I think I shall trusten till I die."
CONCLUSION.
There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe to be
especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great lilacs and
laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and
purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were
calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk.
People were not so busy then as they must become when the full
cheese-making and the mowing had set in; and besides, it was a time
when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to
advantage.
Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts
the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light
one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation,
that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with
the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey
Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should
be, previous meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at
once.
Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and
down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her
hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her
husband's arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father
Silas.
"You won't be giving me away, father," she had said before they
went to church; "you'll only be taking Aaron to be a son to you."
Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the
little bridal procession.
There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Priscilla Lammeter was
glad that she and her father had happened to drive up to the door of
the Red House just in time to see this pretty sight. They had come
to keep Nancy company to-day, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to
Lytherley, for special reasons. That seemed to be a pity, for
otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood
certainly would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had
ordered at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the
weaver who had been wronged by one of his own family.
"I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like
that and bring her up," said Priscilla to her father, as they sat
in the gig; "I should ha' had something young to think of then,
besides the lambs and the calves."
"Yes, my dear, yes," said Mr. Lammeter; "one feels that as one
gets older. Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some
young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it
used to be."
Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister; and the wedding
group had passed on beyond the Red House to the humbler part of the
village.
Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. Macey, who had
been set in his arm-chair outside his own door, would expect some
special notice as they passed, since he was too old to be at the
wedding-feast.
"Mr. Macey's looking for a word from us," said Dolly; "he'll be
hurt if we pass him and say nothing--and him so racked with
rheumatiz."
So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. He had looked
forward to the occasion, and had his premeditated speech.
"Well, Master Marner," he said, in a voice that quavered a good
deal, "I've lived to see my words come true. I was the first to
say there was no harm in you, though your looks might be again' you;
and I was the first to say you'd get your money back. And it's
nothing but rightful as you should. And I'd ha' said the "Amens",
and willing, at the holy matrimony; but Tookey's done it a good
while now, and I hope you'll have none the worse luck."
In the open yard before the Rainbow the party of guests were already
assembled, though it was still nearly an hour before the appointed
feast time. But by this means they could not only enjoy the slow
advent of their pleasure; they had also ample leisure to talk of
Silas Marner's strange history, and arrive by due degrees at the
conclusion that he had brought a blessing on himself by acting like
a father to a lone motherless child. Even the farrier did not
negative this sentiment: on the contrary, he took it up as
peculiarly his own, and invited any hardy person present to
contradict him. But he met with no contradiction; and all
differences among the company were merged in a general agreement
with Mr. Snell's sentiment, that when a man had deserved his good
luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.
As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised in the
Rainbow yard; and Ben Winthrop, whose jokes had retained their
acceptable flavour, found it agreeable to turn in there and receive
congratulations; not requiring the proposed interval of quiet at the
Stone-pits before joining the company.
Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever expected there now; and
in other ways there had been alterations at the expense of Mr. Cass,
the landlord, to suit Silas's larger family. For he and Eppie had
declared that they would rather stay at the Stone-pits than go to
any new home. The garden was fenced with stones on two sides, but
in front there was an open fence, through which the flowers shone
with answering gladness, as the four united people came within sight
of them.
"O father," said Eppie, "what a pretty home ours is! I think
nobody could be happier than we are."