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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 ***-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 ***-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 ***'s-feather stick in Mrs. Crackenthorp's yead?
Is there a little hole for it, like in my shuttle-***?"
"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.
End of Chapter XI 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 *** 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 ***; 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 ***. 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 ***,
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 ***; 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 ***
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 *** 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. End of Chapter XII
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 *** 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 *** 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. End of Chapter XIII
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 "***'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 *** 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 *** 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. End of Chapter XIV
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.
End of Chapter XV
CHAPTER XVI PART TWO
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 ***, 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 *** 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 *** 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." End of Chapter XVI
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.
End of Chapter XVII 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."
End of Chapter XVIII 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
Read by Tadhg Hynes