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