--- /dev/null
+SILAS MARNER\r
+\r
+The Weaver of Raveloe\r
+\r
+\r
+by\r
+\r
+George Eliot\r
+\r
+(Mary Anne Evans)\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+1861\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+ "A child, more than all other gifts\r
+ That earth can offer to declining man,\r
+ Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."\r
+ --WORDSWORTH.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+PART ONE\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER I\r
+\r
+In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the\r
+farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had\r
+their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in\r
+districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills,\r
+certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny\r
+country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The\r
+shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men\r
+appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what\r
+dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely\r
+stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself,\r
+though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but\r
+flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that\r
+thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable\r
+though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the\r
+Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every\r
+person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and\r
+occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder.\r
+No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and\r
+how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who\r
+knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world\r
+outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and\r
+mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a\r
+conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back\r
+with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts,\r
+hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would\r
+have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on\r
+his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had\r
+any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All\r
+cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the\r
+tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself\r
+suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly\r
+not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing\r
+the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and\r
+dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they\r
+partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that\r
+those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the\r
+country--were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic\r
+neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to\r
+a state of loneliness.\r
+\r
+In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas\r
+Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the\r
+nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge\r
+of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so\r
+unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the\r
+simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the\r
+Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting\r
+to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a\r
+certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense\r
+of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating\r
+noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But\r
+sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in\r
+his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of\r
+his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from\r
+his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was\r
+always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was\r
+it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas\r
+Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not\r
+close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart\r
+cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the\r
+rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that\r
+Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add,\r
+still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough,\r
+he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering\r
+echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the\r
+diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind\r
+with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy\r
+conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain\r
+from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of\r
+the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by\r
+primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been\r
+illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and\r
+mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and\r
+enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed\r
+desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a\r
+perpetual pasture to fear. "Is there anything you can fancy that you\r
+would like to eat?" I once said to an old labouring man, who was in\r
+his last illness, and who had refused all the food his wife had offered\r
+him. "No," he answered, "I've never been used to nothing but common\r
+victual, and I can't eat that." Experience had bred no fancies in him\r
+that could raise the phantasm of appetite.\r
+\r
+And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered,\r
+undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one of those barren parishes\r
+lying on the outskirts of civilization--inhabited by meagre sheep and\r
+thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central\r
+plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England, and held farms\r
+which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable\r
+tithes. But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an\r
+hour's journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never\r
+reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It\r
+was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large\r
+churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone\r
+homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks,\r
+standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the\r
+rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the\r
+churchyard:--a village which showed at once the summits of its social\r
+life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park and\r
+manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs in\r
+Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money\r
+from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a rollicking\r
+fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.\r
+\r
+It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he\r
+was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent short-sighted brown\r
+eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of\r
+average culture and experience, but for the villagers near whom he had\r
+come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with\r
+the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an\r
+unknown region called "North'ard". So had his way of life:--he invited\r
+no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the\r
+village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the\r
+wheelwright's: he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his\r
+calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was\r
+soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them\r
+to accept him against her will--quite as if he had heard them declare\r
+that they would never marry a dead man come to life again. This view\r
+of Marner's personality was not without another ground than his pale\r
+face and unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred\r
+that one evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner\r
+leaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of\r
+resting the bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done;\r
+and that, on coming up to him, he saw that Marner's eyes were set like\r
+a dead man's, and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs were\r
+stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they'd been made of iron;\r
+but just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came\r
+all right again, like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and\r
+said "Good-night", and walked off. All this Jem swore he had seen,\r
+more by token that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on\r
+Squire Cass's land, down by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner must\r
+have been in a "fit", a word which seemed to explain things otherwise\r
+incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook\r
+his head, and asked if anybody was ever known to go off in a fit and\r
+not fall down. A fit was a stroke, wasn't it? and it was in the\r
+nature of a stroke to partly take away the use of a man's limbs and\r
+throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children to look to. No, no;\r
+it was no stroke that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horse\r
+between the shafts, and then walk off as soon as you can say "Gee!"\r
+But there might be such a thing as a man's soul being loose from his\r
+body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back; and\r
+that was how folks got over-wise, for they went to school in this\r
+shell-less state to those who could teach them more than their\r
+neighbours could learn with their five senses and the parson. And\r
+where did Master Marner get his knowledge of herbs from--and charms\r
+too, if he liked to give them away? Jem Rodney's story was no more\r
+than what might have been expected by anybody who had seen how Marner\r
+had cured Sally Oates, and made her sleep like a baby, when her heart\r
+had been beating enough to burst her body, for two months and more,\r
+while she had been under the doctor's care. He might cure more folks\r
+if he would; but he was worth speaking fair, if it was only to keep him\r
+from doing you a mischief.\r
+\r
+It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for\r
+protecting him from the persecution that his singularities might have\r
+drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the old linen-weaver\r
+in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his handicraft made\r
+him a highly welcome settler to the richer housewives of the district,\r
+and even to the more provident cottagers, who had their little stock of\r
+yarn at the year's end. Their sense of his usefulness would have\r
+counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a\r
+deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for them.\r
+And the years had rolled on without producing any change in the\r
+impressions of the neighbours concerning Marner, except the change from\r
+novelty to habit. At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said\r
+just the same things about Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did\r
+not say them quite so often, but they believed them much more strongly\r
+when they did say them. There was only one important addition which\r
+the years had brought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine\r
+sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men" than\r
+himself.\r
+\r
+But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and\r
+his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner's\r
+inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every\r
+fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude.\r
+His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement,\r
+the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in\r
+this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow\r
+religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of\r
+distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least,\r
+the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community.\r
+Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to\r
+itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be\r
+a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest\r
+had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting,\r
+into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which,\r
+lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have\r
+sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held\r
+by Silas himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a\r
+wilful self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie\r
+therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar\r
+discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was\r
+discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during\r
+his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its\r
+effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful\r
+man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a\r
+vision in the form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have\r
+believed in such a creation; but Silas was both sane and honest,\r
+though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined\r
+any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the\r
+proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his\r
+mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation--a\r
+little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn\r
+bequest--but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of\r
+applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy\r
+without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that\r
+the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of\r
+foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the\r
+character of a temptation.\r
+\r
+Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older\r
+than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that\r
+it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and\r
+Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too,\r
+was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat\r
+given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by\r
+his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever\r
+blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was\r
+faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting\r
+natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean\r
+on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's\r
+face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that\r
+defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was\r
+strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward\r
+triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of\r
+William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between\r
+the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he\r
+could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and\r
+listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had\r
+possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his\r
+conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words "calling and election\r
+sure" standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible. Such\r
+colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose\r
+unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering\r
+forsaken in the twilight.\r
+\r
+It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had\r
+suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a\r
+closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young\r
+servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual\r
+savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him\r
+that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in their\r
+Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas's\r
+cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the\r
+various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his\r
+fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with the general\r
+sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He\r
+observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of\r
+Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his friend to see\r
+that he hid no accursed thing within his soul. Silas, feeling bound to\r
+accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resentment,\r
+but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this was\r
+soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards\r
+him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an\r
+increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking\r
+and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement;\r
+but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had\r
+been recognized in the prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off\r
+without strict investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that\r
+would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the\r
+senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless\r
+widower, he was tended night and day by some of the younger brethren or\r
+sisters. Silas frequently took his turn in the night-watching with\r
+William, the one relieving the other at two in the morning. The old\r
+man, contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery, when\r
+one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual\r
+audible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had\r
+to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly. Examination convinced\r
+him that the deacon was dead--had been dead some time, for the limbs\r
+were rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, and looked at\r
+the clock: it was already four in the morning. How was it that William\r
+had not come? In much anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there\r
+were several friends assembled in the house, the minister among them,\r
+while Silas went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to\r
+know the reason of his non-appearance. But at six o'clock, as he was\r
+thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the\r
+minister. They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church\r
+members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons\r
+the only reply was, "You will hear." Nothing further was said until\r
+Silas was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes\r
+of those who to him represented God's people fixed solemnly upon him.\r
+Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas, and\r
+asked him if he knew where he had left that knife? Silas said, he did\r
+not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket--but he was\r
+trembling at this strange interrogation. He was then exhorted not to\r
+hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife had been found in\r
+the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside--found in the place where\r
+the little bag of church money had lain, which the minister himself had\r
+seen the day before. Some hand had removed that bag; and whose hand\r
+could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For\r
+some time Silas was mute with astonishment: then he said, "God will\r
+clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money\r
+being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three\r
+pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these\r
+six months." At this William groaned, but the minister said, "The\r
+proof is heavy against you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the\r
+night last past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for\r
+William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness\r
+from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he\r
+had not come; and, moreover, you neglected the dead body."\r
+\r
+"I must have slept," said Silas. Then, after a pause, he added, "Or I\r
+must have had another visitation like that which you have all seen me\r
+under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the\r
+body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search me and my\r
+dwelling, for I have been nowhere else."\r
+\r
+The search was made, and it ended--in William Dane's finding the\r
+well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas's\r
+chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to\r
+hide his sin any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach on him,\r
+and said, "William, for nine years that we have gone in and out\r
+together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear me."\r
+\r
+"Brother," said William, "how do I know what you may have done in the\r
+secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over you?"\r
+\r
+Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over\r
+his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed checked\r
+again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made him\r
+tremble. But at last he spoke feebly, looking at William.\r
+\r
+"I remember now--the knife wasn't in my pocket."\r
+\r
+William said, "I know nothing of what you mean." The other persons\r
+present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to say that the\r
+knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he only said, "I\r
+am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear me."\r
+\r
+On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any\r
+resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to\r
+the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which\r
+prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less\r
+scandal to the community. But the members were bound to take other\r
+measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and\r
+drawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to\r
+those who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which has\r
+gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren,\r
+relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate divine\r
+interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and mourning behind for\r
+him even then--that his trust in man had been cruelly bruised. _The\r
+lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty._ He was solemnly suspended\r
+from church-membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money:\r
+only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received\r
+once more within the folds of the church. Marner listened in silence.\r
+At last, when everyone rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and\r
+said, in a voice shaken by agitation--\r
+\r
+"The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to cut\r
+a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket again.\r
+_You_ stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my\r
+door. But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that\r
+governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness\r
+against the innocent."\r
+\r
+There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.\r
+\r
+William said meekly, "I leave our brethren to judge whether this is the\r
+voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas."\r
+\r
+Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul--that shaken trust\r
+in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving nature.\r
+In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, "_She_\r
+will cast me off too." And he reflected that, if she did not believe\r
+the testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset as his was.\r
+To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious\r
+feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that\r
+simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have\r
+never been severed by an act of reflection. We are apt to think it\r
+inevitable that a man in Marner's position should have begun to\r
+question the validity of an appeal to the divine judgment by drawing\r
+lots; but to him this would have been an effort of independent thought\r
+such as he had never known; and he must have made the effort at a\r
+moment when all his energies were turned into the anguish of\r
+disappointed faith. If there is an angel who records the sorrows of\r
+men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows\r
+that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.\r
+\r
+Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair,\r
+without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in his\r
+innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief, by\r
+getting into his loom and working away as usual; and before many hours\r
+were past, the minister and one of the deacons came to him with the\r
+message from Sarah, that she held her engagement to him at an end.\r
+Silas received the message mutely, and then turned away from the\r
+messengers to work at his loom again. In little more than a month from\r
+that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; and not long afterwards\r
+it was known to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had\r
+departed from the town.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER II\r
+\r
+Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes\r
+find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on\r
+their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys\r
+and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported\r
+to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their\r
+history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows\r
+another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their\r
+souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their\r
+old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of\r
+exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all\r
+vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no\r
+memories. But even _their_ experience may hardly enable them\r
+thoroughly to imagine what was the effect on a simple weaver like Silas\r
+Marner, when he left his own country and people and came to settle in\r
+Raveloe. Nothing could be more unlike his native town, set within\r
+sight of the widespread hillsides, than this low, wooded region, where\r
+he felt hidden even from the heavens by the screening trees and\r
+hedgerows. There was nothing here, when he rose in the deep morning\r
+quiet and looked out on the dewy brambles and rank tufted grass, that\r
+seemed to have any relation with that life centring in Lantern Yard,\r
+which had once been to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The\r
+whitewashed walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered\r
+with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then\r
+another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once\r
+occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit\r
+where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and\r
+fro, and handled the book in a long accustomed manner; the very pauses\r
+between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the\r
+recurrent swell of voices in song: these things had been the channel of\r
+divine influences to Marner--they were the fostering home of his\r
+religious emotions--they were Christianity and God's kingdom upon\r
+earth. A weaver who finds hard words in his hymn-book knows nothing of\r
+abstractions; as the little child knows nothing of parental love, but\r
+only knows one face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for\r
+refuge and nurture.\r
+\r
+And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world in\r
+Raveloe?--orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church\r
+in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own doors\r
+in service-time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or\r
+turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men supped heavily and\r
+slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women seemed to be\r
+laying up a stock of linen for the life to come. There were no lips in\r
+Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's\r
+benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early ages of the world, we\r
+know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by\r
+its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and\r
+be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to\r
+the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from\r
+his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not\r
+unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in\r
+sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him\r
+that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the\r
+prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken\r
+refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing\r
+nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness.\r
+The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that\r
+frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the\r
+blackness of night.\r
+\r
+His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he\r
+went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he was\r
+come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of\r
+Mrs. Osgood's table-linen sooner than she expected--without\r
+contemplating beforehand the money she would put into his hand for the\r
+work. He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without\r
+reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to\r
+become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of\r
+his life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and\r
+his eye with seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves\r
+under his effort. Then there were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in\r
+his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to\r
+fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire;\r
+and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the weaving, to\r
+reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He\r
+hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his\r
+love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the\r
+future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.\r
+Thought was arrested by utter bewilderment, now its old narrow pathway\r
+was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the bruise that had\r
+fallen on its keenest nerves.\r
+\r
+But at last Mrs. Osgood's table-linen was finished, and Silas was paid\r
+in gold. His earnings in his native town, where he worked for a\r
+wholesale dealer, had been after a lower rate; he had been paid weekly,\r
+and of his weekly earnings a large proportion had gone to objects of\r
+piety and charity. Now, for the first time in his life, he had five\r
+bright guineas put into his hand; no man expected a share of them, and\r
+he loved no man that he should offer him a share. But what were the\r
+guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless days of weaving? It\r
+was needless for him to ask that, for it was pleasant to him to feel\r
+them in his palm, and look at their bright faces, which were all his\r
+own: it was another element of life, like the weaving and the\r
+satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from the life of belief\r
+and love from which he had been cut off. The weaver's hand had known\r
+the touch of hard-won money even before the palm had grown to its full\r
+breadth; for twenty years, mysterious money had stood to him as the\r
+symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had\r
+seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose\r
+for him; for he loved the _purpose_ then. But now, when all purpose\r
+was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with\r
+a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the\r
+seeds of desire; and as Silas walked homeward across the fields in the\r
+twilight, he drew out the money and thought it was brighter in the\r
+gathering gloom.\r
+\r
+About this time an incident happened which seemed to open a possibility\r
+of some fellowship with his neighbours. One day, taking a pair of\r
+shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife seated by the fire,\r
+suffering from the terrible symptoms of heart-disease and dropsy, which\r
+he had witnessed as the precursors of his mother's death. He felt a\r
+rush of pity at the mingled sight and remembrance, and, recalling the\r
+relief his mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove, he\r
+promised Sally Oates to bring her something that would ease her, since\r
+the doctor did her no good. In this office of charity, Silas felt, for\r
+the first time since he had come to Raveloe, a sense of unity between\r
+his past and present life, which might have been the beginning of his\r
+rescue from the insect-like existence into which his nature had shrunk.\r
+But Sally Oates's disease had raised her into a personage of much\r
+interest and importance among the neighbours, and the fact of her\r
+having found relief from drinking Silas Marner's "stuff" became a\r
+matter of general discourse. When Doctor Kimble gave physic, it was\r
+natural that it should have an effect; but when a weaver, who came from\r
+nobody knew where, worked wonders with a bottle of brown waters, the\r
+occult character of the process was evident. Such a sort of thing had\r
+not been known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had charms\r
+as well as "stuff": everybody went to her when their children had fits.\r
+Silas Marner must be a person of the same sort, for how did he know\r
+what would bring back Sally Oates's breath, if he didn't know a fine\r
+sight more than that? The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to\r
+herself, so that you couldn't hear what they were, and if she tied a\r
+bit of red thread round the child's toe the while, it would keep off\r
+the water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that present\r
+time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman's little bags round their\r
+necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann\r
+Coulter had. Silas Marner could very likely do as much, and more; and\r
+now it was all clear how he should have come from unknown parts, and be\r
+so "comical-looking". But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the\r
+doctor, for he would be sure to set his face against Marner: he was\r
+always angry about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten those who went\r
+to her that they should have none of his help any more.\r
+\r
+Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by mothers who\r
+wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough, or bring back the milk,\r
+and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the knots in the\r
+hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the applicants\r
+brought silver in their palms. Silas might have driven a profitable\r
+trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on\r
+this condition was no temptation to him: he had never known an impulse\r
+towards falsity, and he drove one after another away with growing\r
+irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had spread even to\r
+Tarley, and it was long before people ceased to take long walks for the\r
+sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was at length\r
+changed into dread, for no one believed him when he said he knew no\r
+charms and could work no cures, and every man and woman who had an\r
+accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfortune down\r
+to Master Marner's ill-will and irritated glances. Thus it came to\r
+pass that his movement of pity towards Sally Oates, which had given him\r
+a transient sense of brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him\r
+and his neighbours, and made his isolation more complete.\r
+\r
+Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns grew to a heap,\r
+and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to solve the\r
+problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours a-day on\r
+as small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary\r
+imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight\r
+strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of\r
+straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering\r
+purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by\r
+repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred\r
+a want, which is incipient habit? That will help us to understand how\r
+the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose\r
+imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no\r
+purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a\r
+square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it\r
+was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world,\r
+made a hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense\r
+nature, have sat weaving, weaving--looking towards the end of his\r
+pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and\r
+everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had come to\r
+mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only grew, but it\r
+remained with him. He began to think it was conscious of him, as his\r
+loom was, and he would on no account have exchanged those coins, which\r
+had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He\r
+handled them, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the\r
+satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his\r
+work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He\r
+had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he\r
+had made a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas\r
+and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced\r
+them. Not that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or\r
+strongly to his mind: hoarding was common in country districts in those\r
+days; there were old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known\r
+to have their savings by them, probably inside their flock-beds; but\r
+their rustic neighbours, though not all of them as honest as their\r
+ancestors in the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough\r
+to lay a plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in\r
+their own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged\r
+to "run away"--a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.\r
+\r
+So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his\r
+guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening\r
+itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction\r
+that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself\r
+to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of\r
+an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process\r
+has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off\r
+from faith and love--only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas,\r
+they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some\r
+well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent\r
+themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his\r
+life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a\r
+crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes\r
+that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been\r
+made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny\r
+grain, for which they hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and\r
+yellow, that, though he was not yet forty, the children always called\r
+him "Old Master Marner".\r
+\r
+Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which\r
+showed that the sap of affection was not all gone. It was one of his\r
+daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple of fields off, and\r
+for this purpose, ever since he came to Raveloe, he had had a brown\r
+earthenware pot, which he held as his most precious utensil among the\r
+very few conveniences he had granted himself. It had been his\r
+companion for twelve years, always standing on the same spot, always\r
+lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that its form had an\r
+expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its\r
+handle on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that of having the\r
+fresh clear water. One day as he was returning from the well, he\r
+stumbled against the step of the stile, and his brown pot, falling with\r
+force against the stones that overarched the ditch below him, was\r
+broken in three pieces. Silas picked up the pieces and carried them\r
+home with grief in his heart. The brown pot could never be of use to\r
+him any more, but he stuck the bits together and propped the ruin in\r
+its old place for a memorial.\r
+\r
+This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after he\r
+came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled\r
+with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of\r
+sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even\r
+repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the\r
+holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at night he\r
+closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold.\r
+Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to\r
+hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which\r
+wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to\r
+every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the\r
+dark leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to\r
+the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work\r
+were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied\r
+his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to\r
+spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he would not change\r
+the silver--the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings,\r
+begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps\r
+and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in\r
+regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and\r
+fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned\r
+by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children--thought\r
+of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years,\r
+through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite\r
+hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts were still\r
+with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the\r
+fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his\r
+steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of\r
+the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his\r
+life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the\r
+grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that\r
+cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand.\r
+\r
+But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change\r
+came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular\r
+manner with the life of his neighbours.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER III\r
+\r
+The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large red\r
+house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the high\r
+stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one among\r
+several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title\r
+of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was also understood to be of\r
+timeless origin--the Raveloe imagination having never ventured back to\r
+that fearful blank when there were no Osgoods--still, he merely owned\r
+the farm he occupied; whereas Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who\r
+complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord.\r
+\r
+It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar\r
+favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of\r
+prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen\r
+down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry\r
+were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking now in relation\r
+to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for our old-fashioned\r
+country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it\r
+is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by\r
+multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of\r
+men, which are for ever moving and crossing each other with\r
+incalculable results. Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the\r
+rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan\r
+earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy\r
+as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor\r
+thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly\r
+life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which\r
+were the heirlooms of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of\r
+Squire Cass's hams, but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor\r
+in which they were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great\r
+merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for the\r
+poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and the\r
+barrels of ale--they were on a large scale, and lasted a good while,\r
+especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up their best\r
+gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the risk of fording\r
+streams on pillions with the precious burden in rainy or snowy weather,\r
+when there was no knowing how high the water would rise, it was not to\r
+be supposed that they looked forward to a brief pleasure. On this\r
+ground it was always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was\r
+little work to be done, and the hours were long, that several\r
+neighbours should keep open house in succession. So soon as Squire\r
+Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests\r
+had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr.\r
+Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut,\r
+pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its\r
+freshness--everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire,\r
+in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at\r
+Squire Cass's.\r
+\r
+For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was without\r
+that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain of wholesome\r
+love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped to account not\r
+only for there being more profusion than finished excellence in the\r
+holiday provisions, but also for the frequency with which the proud\r
+Squire condescended to preside in the parlour of the Rainbow rather\r
+than under the shadow of his own dark wainscot; perhaps, also, for the\r
+fact that his sons had turned out rather ill. Raveloe was not a place\r
+where moral censure was severe, but it was thought a weakness in the\r
+Squire that he had kept all his sons at home in idleness; and though\r
+some licence was to be allowed to young men whose fathers could afford\r
+it, people shook their heads at the courses of the second son, Dunstan,\r
+commonly called Dunsey Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting might\r
+turn out to be a sowing of something worse than wild oats. To be sure,\r
+the neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunsey--a spiteful\r
+jeering fellow, who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when other\r
+people went dry--always provided that his doings did not bring trouble\r
+on a family like Squire Cass's, with a monument in the church, and\r
+tankards older than King George. But it would be a thousand pities if\r
+Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine open-faced good-natured young man who\r
+was to come into the land some day, should take to going along the same\r
+road with his brother, as he had seemed to do of late. If he went on\r
+in that way, he would lose Miss Nancy Lammeter; for it was well known\r
+that she had looked very shyly on him ever since last Whitsuntide\r
+twelvemonth, when there was so much talk about his being away from home\r
+days and days together. There was something wrong, more than\r
+common--that was quite clear; for Mr. Godfrey didn't look half so\r
+fresh-coloured and open as he used to do. At one time everybody was\r
+saying, What a handsome couple he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make!\r
+and if she could come to be mistress at the Red House, there would be a\r
+fine change, for the Lammeters had been brought up in that way, that\r
+they never suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in\r
+their household had of the best, according to his place. Such a\r
+daughter-in-law would be a saving to the old Squire, if she never\r
+brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be feared that,\r
+notwithstanding his incomings, there were more holes in his pocket than\r
+the one where he put his own hand in. But if Mr. Godfrey didn't turn\r
+over a new leaf, he might say "Good-bye" to Miss Nancy Lammeter.\r
+\r
+It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with his hands in his\r
+side-pockets and his back to the fire, in the dark wainscoted parlour,\r
+one late November afternoon in that fifteenth year of Silas Marner's\r
+life at Raveloe. The fading grey light fell dimly on the walls\r
+decorated with guns, whips, and foxes' brushes, on coats and hats flung\r
+on the chairs, on tankards sending forth a scent of flat ale, and on a\r
+half-choked fire, with pipes propped up in the chimney-corners: signs\r
+of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing charm, with which the\r
+look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey's blond face was in sad accordance.\r
+He seemed to be waiting and listening for some one's approach, and\r
+presently the sound of a heavy step, with an accompanying whistle, was\r
+heard across the large empty entrance-hall.\r
+\r
+The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking young man entered, with\r
+the flushed face and the gratuitously elated bearing which mark the\r
+first stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the sight of him\r
+Godfrey's face parted with some of its gloom to take on the more active\r
+expression of hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that lay on the\r
+hearth retreated under the chair in the chimney-corner.\r
+\r
+"Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?" said Dunsey, in a\r
+mocking tone. "You're my elders and betters, you know; I was obliged\r
+to come when you sent for me."\r
+\r
+"Why, this is what I want--and just shake yourself sober and listen,\r
+will you?" said Godfrey, savagely. He had himself been drinking more\r
+than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom into uncalculating\r
+anger. "I want to tell you, I must hand over that rent of Fowler's to\r
+the Squire, or else tell him I gave it you; for he's threatening to\r
+distrain for it, and it'll all be out soon, whether I tell him or not.\r
+He said, just now, before he went out, he should send word to Cox to\r
+distrain, if Fowler didn't come and pay up his arrears this week. The\r
+Squire's short o' cash, and in no humour to stand any nonsense; and you\r
+know what he threatened, if ever he found you making away with his\r
+money again. So, see and get the money, and pretty quickly, will you?"\r
+\r
+"Oh!" said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his brother and\r
+looking in his face. "Suppose, now, you get the money yourself, and\r
+save me the trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it over to\r
+me, you'll not refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me: it was\r
+your brotherly love made you do it, you know."\r
+\r
+Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. "Don't come near me with\r
+that look, else I'll knock you down."\r
+\r
+"Oh no, you won't," said Dunsey, turning away on his heel, however.\r
+"Because I'm such a good-natured brother, you know. I might get you\r
+turned out of house and home, and cut off with a shilling any day. I\r
+might tell the Squire how his handsome son was married to that nice\r
+young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy because he couldn't\r
+live with his drunken wife, and I should slip into your place as\r
+comfortable as could be. But you see, I don't do it--I'm so easy and\r
+good-natured. You'll take any trouble for me. You'll get the hundred\r
+pounds for me--I know you will."\r
+\r
+"How can I get the money?" said Godfrey, quivering. "I haven't a\r
+shilling to bless myself with. And it's a lie that you'd slip into my\r
+place: you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all. For if you begin\r
+telling tales, I'll follow. Bob's my father's favourite--you know that\r
+very well. He'd only think himself well rid of you."\r
+\r
+"Never mind," said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as he looked out\r
+of the window. "It 'ud be very pleasant to me to go in your\r
+company--you're such a handsome brother, and we've always been so fond\r
+of quarrelling with one another, I shouldn't know what to do without\r
+you. But you'd like better for us both to stay at home together; I\r
+know you would. So you'll manage to get that little sum o' money, and\r
+I'll bid you good-bye, though I'm sorry to part."\r
+\r
+Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and seized him by\r
+the arm, saying, with an oath--\r
+\r
+"I tell you, I have no money: I can get no money."\r
+\r
+"Borrow of old Kimble."\r
+\r
+"I tell you, he won't lend me any more, and I shan't ask him."\r
+\r
+"Well, then, sell Wildfire."\r
+\r
+"Yes, that's easy talking. I must have the money directly."\r
+\r
+"Well, you've only got to ride him to the hunt to-morrow. There'll be\r
+Bryce and Keating there, for sure. You'll get more bids than one."\r
+\r
+"I daresay, and get back home at eight o'clock, splashed up to the\r
+chin. I'm going to Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance."\r
+\r
+"Oho!" said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and trying to speak\r
+in a small mincing treble. "And there's sweet Miss Nancy coming; and\r
+we shall dance with her, and promise never to be naughty again, and be\r
+taken into favour, and--"\r
+\r
+"Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool," said Godfrey, turning\r
+red, "else I'll throttle you."\r
+\r
+"What for?" said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but taking a\r
+whip from the table and beating the butt-end of it on his palm. "You've\r
+a very good chance. I'd advise you to creep up her sleeve again: it\r
+'ud be saving time, if Molly should happen to take a drop too much\r
+laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Miss Nancy wouldn't mind\r
+being a second, if she didn't know it. And you've got a good-natured\r
+brother, who'll keep your secret well, because you'll be so very\r
+obliging to him."\r
+\r
+"I'll tell you what it is," said Godfrey, quivering, and pale again,\r
+"my patience is pretty near at an end. If you'd a little more\r
+sharpness in you, you might know that you may urge a man a bit too far,\r
+and make one leap as easy as another. I don't know but what it is so\r
+now: I may as well tell the Squire everything myself--I should get you\r
+off my back, if I got nothing else. And, after all, he'll know some\r
+time. She's been threatening to come herself and tell him. So, don't\r
+flatter yourself that your secrecy's worth any price you choose to ask.\r
+You drain me of money till I have got nothing to pacify _her_ with, and\r
+she'll do as she threatens some day. It's all one. I'll tell my\r
+father everything myself, and you may go to the devil."\r
+\r
+Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that there was a\r
+point at which even the hesitating Godfrey might be driven into\r
+decision. But he said, with an air of unconcern--\r
+\r
+"As you please; but I'll have a draught of ale first." And ringing the\r
+bell, he threw himself across two chairs, and began to rap the\r
+window-seat with the handle of his whip.\r
+\r
+Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his\r
+fingers among the contents of his side-pockets, and looking at the\r
+floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage,\r
+but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such\r
+as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. His natural\r
+irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a position in\r
+which dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on all sides, and\r
+his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy Dunstan and\r
+anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he must bring on\r
+himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him than the present\r
+evil. The results of confession were not contingent, they were\r
+certain; whereas betrayal was not certain. From the near vision of that\r
+certainty he fell back on suspense and vacillation with a sense of\r
+repose. The disinherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined to\r
+dig and to beg, was almost as helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by\r
+the favour of earth and sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot\r
+where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would have been possible to\r
+think of digging with some cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be\r
+won on those terms; but, since he must irrevocably lose _her_ as well\r
+as the inheritance, and must break every tie but the one that degraded\r
+him and left him without motive for trying to recover his better self,\r
+he could imagine no future for himself on the other side of confession\r
+but that of "'listing for a soldier"--the most desperate step, short of\r
+suicide, in the eyes of respectable families. No! he would rather\r
+trust to casualties than to his own resolve--rather go on sitting at\r
+the feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though with the sword hanging\r
+over him and terror in his heart, than rush away into the cold darkness\r
+where there was no pleasure left. The utmost concession to Dunstan\r
+about the horse began to seem easy, compared with the fulfilment of his\r
+own threat. But his pride would not let him recommence the\r
+conversation otherwise than by continuing the quarrel. Dunstan was\r
+waiting for this, and took his ale in shorter draughts than usual.\r
+\r
+"It's just like you," Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, "to talk\r
+about my selling Wildfire in that cool way--the last thing I've got to\r
+call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had in my life.\r
+And if you'd got a spark of pride in you, you'd be ashamed to see the\r
+stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it. But it's my belief\r
+you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the pleasure of making somebody\r
+feel he'd got a bad bargain."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, very placably, "you do me justice, I see.\r
+You know I'm a jewel for 'ticing people into bargains. For which\r
+reason I advise you to let _me_ sell Wildfire. I'd ride him to the\r
+hunt to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I shouldn't look so handsome as\r
+you in the saddle, but it's the horse they'll bid for, and not the\r
+rider."\r
+\r
+"Yes, I daresay--trust my horse to you!"\r
+\r
+"As you please," said Dunstan, rapping the window-seat again with an\r
+air of great unconcern. "It's _you_ have got to pay Fowler's money;\r
+it's none of my business. You received the money from him when you\r
+went to Bramcote, and _you_ told the Squire it wasn't paid. I'd nothing\r
+to do with that; you chose to be so obliging as to give it me, that was\r
+all. If you don't want to pay the money, let it alone; it's all one to\r
+me. But I was willing to accommodate you by undertaking to sell the\r
+horse, seeing it's not convenient to you to go so far to-morrow."\r
+\r
+Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have liked to spring on\r
+Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, and flog him to within an inch\r
+of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he was\r
+mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger\r
+even than his resentment. When he spoke again, it was in a\r
+half-conciliatory tone.\r
+\r
+"Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You'll sell him all\r
+fair, and hand over the money? If you don't, you know, everything 'ull\r
+go to smash, for I've got nothing else to trust to. And you'll have\r
+less pleasure in pulling the house over my head, when your own skull's\r
+to be broken too."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, rising; "all right. I thought you'd come\r
+round. I'm the fellow to bring old Bryce up to the scratch. I'll get\r
+you a hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny."\r
+\r
+"But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did yesterday,\r
+and then you can't go," said Godfrey, hardly knowing whether he wished\r
+for that obstacle or not.\r
+\r
+"Not _it_," said Dunstan. "I'm always lucky in my weather. It might\r
+rain if you wanted to go yourself. You never hold trumps, you know--I\r
+always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got the luck, so\r
+you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence; you'll _ne_-ver get\r
+along without me."\r
+\r
+"Confound you, hold your tongue!" said Godfrey, impetuously. "And take\r
+care to keep sober to-morrow, else you'll get pitched on your head\r
+coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it."\r
+\r
+"Make your tender heart easy," said Dunstan, opening the door. "You\r
+never knew me see double when I'd got a bargain to make; it 'ud spoil\r
+the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm warranted to fall on my legs."\r
+\r
+With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to\r
+that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now\r
+unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting, drinking,\r
+card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss\r
+Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher\r
+sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable\r
+than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which\r
+leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own\r
+griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom we\r
+are apt to think very prosaic figures--men whose only work was to ride\r
+round their land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who\r
+passed the rest of their days in the half-listless gratification of\r
+senses dulled by monotony--had a certain pathos in them nevertheless.\r
+Calamities came to _them_ too, and their early errors carried hard\r
+consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of\r
+purity, order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the vision of a life\r
+in which the days would not seem too long, even without rioting; but\r
+the maiden was lost, and the vision passed away, and then what was left\r
+to them, especially when they had become too heavy for the hunt, or for\r
+carrying a gun over the furrows, but to drink and get merry, or to\r
+drink and get angry, so that they might be independent of variety, and\r
+say over again with eager emphasis the things they had said already any\r
+time that twelvemonth? Assuredly, among these flushed and dull-eyed men\r
+there were some whom--thanks to their native human-kindness--even riot\r
+could never drive into brutality; men who, when their cheeks were\r
+fresh, had felt the keen point of sorrow or remorse, had been pierced\r
+by the reeds they leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters\r
+from which no struggle could loose them; and under these sad\r
+circumstances, common to us all, their thoughts could find no\r
+resting-place outside the ever-trodden round of their own petty history.\r
+\r
+That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this\r
+six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction, helped\r
+by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation\r
+exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which\r
+was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of low passion,\r
+delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to be dragged from\r
+the privacy of Godfrey's bitter memory. He had long known that the\r
+delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan, who saw in\r
+his brother's degrading marriage the means of gratifying at once his\r
+jealous hate and his cupidity. And if Godfrey could have felt himself\r
+simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put into his mouth would\r
+have chafed him less intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud\r
+when he was alone had had no other object than Dunstan's diabolical\r
+cunning, he might have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal.\r
+But he had something else to curse--his own vicious folly, which now\r
+seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and\r
+vices do when their promptings have long passed away. For four years\r
+he had thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient\r
+worship, as the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she\r
+would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his father's\r
+home had never been; and it would be easy, when she was always near, to\r
+shake off those foolish habits that were no pleasures, but only a\r
+feverish way of annulling vacancy. Godfrey's was an essentially\r
+domestic nature, bred up in a home where the hearth had no smiles, and\r
+where the daily habits were not chastised by the presence of household\r
+order. His easy disposition made him fall in unresistingly with the\r
+family courses, but the need of some tender permanent affection, the\r
+longing for some influence that would make the good he preferred easy\r
+to pursue, caused the neatness, purity, and liberal orderliness of the\r
+Lammeter household, sunned by the smile of Nancy, to seem like those\r
+fresh bright hours of the morning when temptations go to sleep and\r
+leave the ear open to the voice of the good angel, inviting to\r
+industry, sobriety, and peace. And yet the hope of this paradise had\r
+not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it for\r
+ever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which\r
+Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to\r
+step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into mud and slime, in\r
+which it was useless to struggle. He had made ties for himself which\r
+robbed him of all wholesome motive, and were a constant exasperation.\r
+\r
+Still, there was one position worse than the present: it was the\r
+position he would be in when the ugly secret was disclosed; and the\r
+desire that continually triumphed over every other was that of warding\r
+off the evil day, when he would have to bear the consequences of his\r
+father's violent resentment for the wound inflicted on his family\r
+pride--would have, perhaps, to turn his back on that hereditary ease\r
+and dignity which, after all, was a sort of reason for living, and\r
+would carry with him the certainty that he was banished for ever from\r
+the sight and esteem of Nancy Lammeter. The longer the interval, the\r
+more chance there was of deliverance from some, at least, of the\r
+hateful consequences to which he had sold himself; the more\r
+opportunities remained for him to snatch the strange gratification of\r
+seeing Nancy, and gathering some faint indications of her lingering\r
+regard. Towards this gratification he was impelled, fitfully, every\r
+now and then, after having passed weeks in which he had avoided her as\r
+the far-off bright-winged prize that only made him spring forward and\r
+find his chain all the more galling. One of those fits of yearning was\r
+on him now, and it would have been strong enough to have persuaded him\r
+to trust Wildfire to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning, even\r
+if he had not had another reason for his disinclination towards the\r
+morrow's hunt. That other reason was the fact that the morning's meet\r
+was near Batherley, the market-town where the unhappy woman lived,\r
+whose image became more odious to him every day; and to his thought the\r
+whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a man creates for himself\r
+by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the\r
+good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a\r
+bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart,\r
+and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished\r
+home.\r
+\r
+What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go\r
+to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting: everybody\r
+was there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own\r
+part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown\r
+spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him, and had been watching\r
+him for some time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress.\r
+But Godfrey thrust her away without looking at her, and left the room,\r
+followed humbly by the unresenting Snuff--perhaps because she saw no\r
+other career open to her.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER IV\r
+\r
+Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously quiet\r
+pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on his hunter, had to\r
+take his way along the lane which, at its farther extremity, passed by\r
+the piece of unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where stood the\r
+cottage, once a stone-cutter's shed, now for fifteen years inhabited by\r
+Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this season, with the\r
+moist trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy water high up in the\r
+deserted quarry. That was Dunstan's first thought as he approached it;\r
+the second was, that the old fool of a weaver, whose loom he heard\r
+rattling already, had a great deal of money hidden somewhere. How was\r
+it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had often heard talk of Marner's\r
+miserliness, had never thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should\r
+frighten or persuade the old fellow into lending the money on the\r
+excellent security of the young Squire's prospects? The resource\r
+occurred to him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as Marner's\r
+hoard was likely to be large enough to leave Godfrey a handsome surplus\r
+beyond his immediate needs, and enable him to accommodate his faithful\r
+brother, that he had almost turned the horse's head towards home again.\r
+Godfrey would be ready enough to accept the suggestion: he would snatch\r
+eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with Wildfire. But\r
+when Dunstan's meditation reached this point, the inclination to go on\r
+grew strong and prevailed. He didn't want to give Godfrey that\r
+pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed. Moreover,\r
+Dunstan enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having a horse to\r
+sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain, swaggering, and\r
+possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the satisfaction\r
+attendant on selling his brother's horse, and not the less have the\r
+further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow Marner's money. So\r
+he rode on to cover.\r
+\r
+Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would\r
+be--he was such a lucky fellow.\r
+\r
+"Heyday!" said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire, "you're on\r
+your brother's horse to-day: how's that?"\r
+\r
+"Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose delight in lying,\r
+grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the\r
+likelihood that his hearer would not believe him--"Wildfire's mine now."\r
+\r
+"What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack of yours?" said\r
+Bryce, quite aware that he should get another lie in answer.\r
+\r
+"Oh, there was a little account between us," said Dunsey, carelessly,\r
+"and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by taking the horse,\r
+though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch for a mare o'\r
+Jortin's--as rare a bit o' blood as ever you threw your leg across.\r
+But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him, though I'd a bid of a\r
+hundred and fifty for him the other day, from a man over at\r
+Flitton--he's buying for Lord Cromleck--a fellow with a cast in his\r
+eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire: I shan't\r
+get a better at a fence in a hurry. The mare's got more blood, but\r
+she's a bit too weak in the hind-quarters."\r
+\r
+Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and\r
+Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many\r
+human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they both\r
+considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied\r
+ironically--\r
+\r
+"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never heard\r
+of a man who didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of half as\r
+much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you get a\r
+hundred."\r
+\r
+Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated. It\r
+ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and twenty,\r
+to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the\r
+Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for\r
+him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and,\r
+having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home with\r
+the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by\r
+confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his\r
+pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to\r
+overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences\r
+to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too\r
+many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own\r
+ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without\r
+injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his\r
+flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short\r
+time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had\r
+muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him\r
+in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this\r
+exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have\r
+been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and\r
+hence he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves\r
+about what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as\r
+likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which\r
+Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for\r
+immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered\r
+his legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a\r
+satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position which no\r
+swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake,\r
+with a little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could\r
+to a coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred to him that\r
+he could make his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any\r
+member of the hunt. His first intention was to hire a horse there and\r
+ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand,\r
+and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as\r
+to other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about\r
+taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same\r
+time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he\r
+always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he himself\r
+got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long:\r
+Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The idea of\r
+Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it had become\r
+immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy\r
+boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning\r
+queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience\r
+to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual\r
+visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his\r
+memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his forefinger\r
+encountered there were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt,\r
+without payment of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never\r
+do any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the\r
+direction in which the run had brought him, he was not so very much\r
+farther from home than he was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being\r
+remarkable for clearness of head, was only led to this conclusion by\r
+the gradual perception that there were other reasons for choosing the\r
+unprecedented course of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock,\r
+and a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better.\r
+He remembered having crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a\r
+little while before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat,\r
+twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and\r
+rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to\r
+assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off\r
+with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily\r
+exertion, which somehow and at some time he should be able to dress up\r
+and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. When\r
+a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of\r
+locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to\r
+a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and\r
+Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering mist, was always\r
+rapping his whip somewhere. It was Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen\r
+to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one\r
+could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut\r
+in deep letters on that gold handle--they could only see that it was a\r
+very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some\r
+acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is\r
+no screen when people get close to each other; but when he at last\r
+found himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a\r
+soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck.\r
+But now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen\r
+than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable to\r
+slip--hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps by dragging his\r
+whip along the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he\r
+thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he should find\r
+it out by the break in the hedgerow. He found it out, however, by\r
+another circumstance which he had not expected--namely, by certain\r
+gleams of light, which he presently guessed to proceed from Silas\r
+Marner's cottage. That cottage and the money hidden within it had been\r
+in his mind continually during his walk, and he had been imagining ways\r
+of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the immediate\r
+possession of his money for the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan\r
+felt as if there must be a little frightening added to the cajolery,\r
+for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough to afford\r
+him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as\r
+for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by\r
+making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on\r
+the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over to\r
+his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to\r
+that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of\r
+Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had become so\r
+familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a natural thing to\r
+make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be several conveniences\r
+attending this course: the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and\r
+Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly\r
+three-quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was becoming\r
+unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up\r
+the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right way, since\r
+he was not certain whether the light were in front or on the side of\r
+the cottage. But he felt the ground before him cautiously with his\r
+whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked\r
+loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be\r
+frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was\r
+silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why\r
+had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser.\r
+Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply,\r
+pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door\r
+and pull the latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was\r
+fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened,\r
+and he found himself in front of a bright fire which lit up every\r
+corner of the cottage--the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the\r
+table--and showed him that Marner was not there.\r
+\r
+Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to Dunsey than the\r
+bright fire on the brick hearth: he walked in and seated himself by it\r
+at once. There was something in front of the fire, too, that would\r
+have been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a different stage\r
+of cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended from the\r
+kettle-hanger by a string passed through a large door-key, in a way\r
+known to primitive housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But the pork had\r
+been hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger, apparently to\r
+prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly during the owner's\r
+absence. The old staring simpleton had hot meat for his supper, then?\r
+thought Dunstan. People had always said he lived on mouldy bread, on\r
+purpose to check his appetite. But where could he be at this time, and\r
+on such an evening, leaving his supper in this stage of preparation,\r
+and his door unfastened? Dunstan's own recent difficulty in making his\r
+way suggested to him that the weaver had perhaps gone outside his\r
+cottage to fetch in fuel, or for some such brief purpose, and had\r
+slipped into the Stone-pit. That was an interesting idea to Dunstan,\r
+carrying consequences of entire novelty. If the weaver was dead, who\r
+had a right to his money? Who would know where his money was hidden?\r
+_Who would know that anybody had come to take it away?_ He went no\r
+farther into the subtleties of evidence: the pressing question, "Where\r
+_is_ the money?" now took such entire possession of him as to make him\r
+quite forget that the weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind,\r
+once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to\r
+retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started\r
+was purely problematic. And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind of\r
+a possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding-places where\r
+he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the\r
+bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage had no thatch; and\r
+Dunstan's first act, after a train of thought made rapid by the\r
+stimulus of cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he did so, his\r
+eyes travelled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks, distinct in\r
+the fire-light, were discernible under the sprinkling of sand. But not\r
+everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only, which was quite\r
+covered with sand, and sand showing the marks of fingers, which had\r
+apparently been careful to spread it over a given space. It was near\r
+the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan darted to that spot,\r
+swept away the sand with his whip, and, inserting the thin end of the\r
+hook between the bricks, found that they were loose. In haste he\r
+lifted up two bricks, and saw what he had no doubt was the object of\r
+his search; for what could there be but money in those two leathern\r
+bags? And, from their weight, they must be filled with guineas.\r
+Dunstan felt round the hole, to be certain that it held no more; then\r
+hastily replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over them. Hardly\r
+more than five minutes had passed since he entered the cottage, but it\r
+seemed to Dunstan like a long while; and though he was without any\r
+distinct recognition of the possibility that Marner might be alive, and\r
+might re-enter the cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread\r
+laying hold on him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his hand.\r
+He would hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what he should\r
+do with the bags. He closed the door behind him immediately, that he\r
+might shut in the stream of light: a few steps would be enough to carry\r
+him beyond betrayal by the gleams from the shutter-chinks and the\r
+latch-hole. The rain and darkness had got thicker, and he was glad of\r
+it; though it was awkward walking with both hands filled, so that it\r
+was as much as he could do to grasp his whip along with one of the\r
+bags. But when he had gone a yard or two, he might take his time. So\r
+he stepped forward into the darkness.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER V\r
+\r
+When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner was not\r
+more than a hundred yards away from it, plodding along from the village\r
+with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, and with a horn\r
+lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease,\r
+free from the presentiment of change. The sense of security more\r
+frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason\r
+it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have\r
+been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given\r
+event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged\r
+as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of\r
+time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent.\r
+A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt\r
+by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though\r
+the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the\r
+older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing\r
+conception of his own death. This influence of habit was necessarily\r
+strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner's--who saw no\r
+new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of\r
+the unexpected and the changeful; and it explains simply enough, why\r
+his mind could be at ease, though he had left his house and his\r
+treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with double\r
+complacency of his supper: first, because it would be hot and savoury;\r
+and secondly, because it would cost him nothing. For the little bit of\r
+pork was a present from that excellent housewife, Miss Priscilla\r
+Lammeter, to whom he had this day carried home a handsome piece of\r
+linen; and it was only on occasion of a present like this, that Silas\r
+indulged himself with roast-meat. Supper was his favourite meal,\r
+because it came at his time of revelry, when his heart warmed over his\r
+gold; whenever he had roast-meat, he always chose to have it for\r
+supper. But this evening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted his\r
+string fast round his bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule\r
+over his door-key, passed it through the handle, and made it fast on\r
+the hanger, than he remembered that a piece of very fine twine was\r
+indispensable to his "setting up" a new piece of work in his loom early\r
+in the morning. It had slipped his memory, because, in coming from Mr.\r
+Lammeter's, he had not had to pass through the village; but to lose\r
+time by going on errands in the morning was out of the question. It\r
+was a nasty fog to turn out into, but there were things Silas loved\r
+better than his own comfort; so, drawing his pork to the extremity of\r
+the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he\r
+set out on what, in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes'\r
+errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his\r
+well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his\r
+while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the\r
+Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this\r
+particular night, when he had never come through all the fifteen years\r
+before? These questions were not distinctly present in Silas's mind;\r
+they merely serve to represent the vaguely-felt foundation of his\r
+freedom from anxiety.\r
+\r
+He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done: he\r
+opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he had\r
+left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat. He\r
+trod about the floor while putting by his lantern and throwing aside\r
+his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks of Dunstan's feet on the\r
+sand in the marks of his own nailed boots. Then he moved his pork\r
+nearer to the fire, and sat down to the agreeable business of tending\r
+the meat and warming himself at the same time.\r
+\r
+Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale\r
+face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have\r
+understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with\r
+which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men could\r
+be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simple soul, not\r
+even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice\r
+directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put out,\r
+and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the force of\r
+his nature to his work and his money; and like all objects to which a\r
+man devotes himself, they had fashioned him into correspondence with\r
+themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its\r
+turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving\r
+for its monotonous response. His gold, as he hung over it and saw it\r
+grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like\r
+its own.\r
+\r
+As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to\r
+wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would be\r
+pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his unwonted\r
+feast. For joy is the best of wine, and Silas's guineas were a golden\r
+wine of that sort.\r
+\r
+He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his\r
+loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed the\r
+bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but\r
+the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once--only terror,\r
+and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his\r
+trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his\r
+eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined\r
+it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook so violently\r
+that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying\r
+to steady himself, that he might think. Had he put his gold somewhere\r
+else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man\r
+falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding\r
+stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded\r
+off the moment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his\r
+bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven\r
+where he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to be\r
+searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole.\r
+There was no untried refuge left for a moment's shelter from the\r
+terrible truth.\r
+\r
+Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration\r
+of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of\r
+impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still\r
+distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the\r
+external fact. Silas got up from his knees trembling, and looked round\r
+at the table: didn't the gold lie there after all? The table was bare.\r
+Then he turned and looked behind him--looked all round his dwelling,\r
+seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible appearance of the\r
+bags where he had already sought them in vain. He could see every\r
+object in his cottage--and his gold was not there.\r
+\r
+Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing\r
+scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he stood\r
+motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening\r
+pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and\r
+got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking this as the\r
+strongest assurance of reality.\r
+\r
+And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock of\r
+certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he\r
+entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to\r
+restore the gold. The thought brought some new strength with it, and\r
+he started from his loom to the door. As he opened it the rain beat in\r
+upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily. There were no\r
+footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps? When had the thief\r
+come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the door had been locked,\r
+and there had been no marks of any inroad on his return by daylight.\r
+And in the evening, too, he said to himself, everything was the same as\r
+when he had left it. The sand and bricks looked as if they had not\r
+been moved. _Was_ it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a\r
+cruel power that no hands could reach, which had delighted in making\r
+him a second time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and\r
+fixed his mind with struggling effort on the robber with hands, who\r
+could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced at all the neighbours\r
+who had made any remarks, or asked any questions which he might now\r
+regard as a ground of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known\r
+poacher, and otherwise disreputable: he had often met Marner in his\r
+journeys across the fields, and had said something jestingly about the\r
+weaver's money; nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the\r
+fire when he called to light his pipe, instead of going about his\r
+business. Jem Rodney was the man--there was ease in the thought. Jem\r
+could be found and made to restore the money: Marner did not want to\r
+punish him, but only to get back his gold which had gone from him, and\r
+left his soul like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert. The\r
+robber must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal authority were\r
+confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and the\r
+great people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, and Squire\r
+Cass--would make Jem Rodney, or somebody else, deliver up the stolen\r
+money. He rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus of this hope,\r
+forgetting to cover his head, not caring to fasten his door; for he\r
+felt as if he had nothing left to lose. He ran swiftly, till want of\r
+breath compelled him to slacken his pace as he was entering the village\r
+at the turning close to the Rainbow.\r
+\r
+The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich\r
+and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of linen; it was\r
+the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of\r
+Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss public. He\r
+lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or kitchen on the\r
+right hand, where the less lofty customers of the house were in the\r
+habit of assembling, the parlour on the left being reserved for the\r
+more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the double\r
+pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But the parlour was dark\r
+to-night, the chief personages who ornamented its circle being all at\r
+Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was. And in consequence\r
+of this, the party on the high-screened seats in the kitchen was more\r
+numerous than usual; several personages, who would otherwise have been\r
+admitted into the parlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and\r
+condescension for their betters, being content this evening to vary\r
+their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they could\r
+themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER VI\r
+\r
+The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas\r
+approached the door of the Rainbow, had, as usual, been slow and\r
+intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be\r
+puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important\r
+customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each\r
+other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the\r
+beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept\r
+their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if\r
+their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing\r
+sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral\r
+disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those\r
+of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence, by\r
+saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher--\r
+\r
+"Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?"\r
+\r
+The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to\r
+answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat and replied, "And\r
+they wouldn't be fur wrong, John."\r
+\r
+After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as\r
+before.\r
+\r
+"Was it a red Durham?" said the farrier, taking up the thread of\r
+discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.\r
+\r
+The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the\r
+butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.\r
+\r
+"Red it was," said the butcher, in his good-humoured husky treble--"and\r
+a Durham it was."\r
+\r
+"Then you needn't tell _me_ who you bought it of," said the farrier,\r
+looking round with some triumph; "I know who it is has got the red\r
+Durhams o' this country-side. And she'd a white star on her brow, I'll\r
+bet a penny?" The farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees\r
+as he put this question, and his eyes twinkled knowingly.\r
+\r
+"Well; yes--she might," said the butcher, slowly, considering that he\r
+was giving a decided affirmative. "I don't say contrairy."\r
+\r
+"I knew that very well," said the farrier, throwing himself backward\r
+again, and speaking defiantly; "if _I_ don't know Mr. Lammeter's cows,\r
+I should like to know who does--that's all. And as for the cow you've\r
+bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been at the drenching of\r
+her--contradick me who will."\r
+\r
+The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit\r
+was roused a little.\r
+\r
+"I'm not for contradicking no man," he said; "I'm for peace and\r
+quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs--I'm for cutting 'em short\r
+myself; but _I_ don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's a lovely\r
+carkiss--and anybody as was reasonable, it 'ud bring tears into their\r
+eyes to look at it."\r
+\r
+"Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is," pursued the\r
+farrier, angrily; "and it was Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told a lie\r
+when you said it was a red Durham."\r
+\r
+"I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as\r
+before, "and I contradick none--not if a man was to swear himself\r
+black: he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bargains. All I say is,\r
+it's a lovely carkiss. And what I say, I'll stick to; but I'll quarrel\r
+wi' no man."\r
+\r
+"No," said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company\r
+generally; "and p'rhaps you aren't pig-headed; and p'rhaps you didn't\r
+say the cow was a red Durham; and p'rhaps you didn't say she'd got a\r
+star on her brow--stick to that, now you're at it."\r
+\r
+"Come, come," said the landlord; "let the cow alone. The truth lies\r
+atween you: you're both right and both wrong, as I allays say. And as\r
+for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say nothing to that; but this I\r
+say, as the Rainbow's the Rainbow. And for the matter o' that, if the\r
+talk is to be o' the Lammeters, _you_ know the most upo' that head, eh,\r
+Mr. Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into\r
+these parts, and took the Warrens?"\r
+\r
+Mr. Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter of which functions\r
+rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-featured young\r
+man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and twirled\r
+his thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned with\r
+criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord's appeal,\r
+and said--\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid by\r
+now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at\r
+Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since my day."\r
+\r
+"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with an\r
+air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out of my place.\r
+As the psalm says--\r
+\r
+ "I know what's right, nor only so,\r
+ But also practise what I know."\r
+\r
+\r
+"Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune, when it's set for you;\r
+if you're for prac_tis_ing, I wish you'd prac_tise_ that," said a large\r
+jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity,\r
+but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of\r
+the company, who were known officially as the "bassoon" and the\r
+"key-bugle", in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the\r
+musical profession in Raveloe.\r
+\r
+Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to\r
+deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation--"Mr.\r
+Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm in the wrong, I'm not the\r
+man to say I won't alter. But there's people set up their own ears for\r
+a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow 'em. There may be two\r
+opinions, I hope."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with this\r
+attack on youthful presumption; "you're right there, Tookey: there's\r
+allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and\r
+there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions\r
+about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself."\r
+\r
+"Well, Mr. Macey," said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general\r
+laughter, "I undertook to partially fill up the office of parish-clerk\r
+by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities should make you\r
+unfitting; and it's one of the rights thereof to sing in the\r
+choir--else why have you done the same yourself?"\r
+\r
+"Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks," said Ben Winthrop.\r
+"The old gentleman's got a gift. Why, the Squire used to invite him to\r
+take a glass, only to hear him sing the "Red Rovier"; didn't he, Mr.\r
+Macey? It's a nat'ral gift. There's my little lad Aaron, he's got a\r
+gift--he can sing a tune off straight, like a throstle. But as for\r
+you, Master Tookey, you'd better stick to your "Amens": your voice is\r
+well enough when you keep it up in your nose. It's your inside as\r
+isn't right made for music: it's no better nor a hollow stalk."\r
+\r
+This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke to\r
+the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by\r
+everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's epigram.\r
+\r
+"I see what it is plain enough," said Mr. Tookey, unable to keep cool\r
+any longer. "There's a consperacy to turn me out o' the choir, as I\r
+shouldn't share the Christmas money--that's where it is. But I shall\r
+speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I'll not be put upon by no man."\r
+\r
+"Nay, nay, Tookey," said Ben Winthrop. "We'll pay you your share to\r
+keep out of it--that's what we'll do. There's things folks 'ud pay to\r
+be rid on, besides varmin."\r
+\r
+"Come, come," said the landlord, who felt that paying people for their\r
+absence was a principle dangerous to society; "a joke's a joke. We're\r
+all good friends here, I hope. We must give and take. You're both\r
+right and you're both wrong, as I say. I agree wi' Mr. Macey here, as\r
+there's two opinions; and if mine was asked, I should say they're both\r
+right. Tookey's right and Winthrop's right, and they've only got to\r
+split the difference and make themselves even."\r
+\r
+The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt at\r
+this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself, and never\r
+went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely to be in\r
+requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher, having music in his\r
+soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey's defeat and for\r
+the preservation of the peace.\r
+\r
+"To be sure," he said, following up the landlord's conciliatory view,\r
+"we're fond of our old clerk; it's nat'ral, and him used to be such a\r
+singer, and got a brother as is known for the first fiddler in this\r
+country-side. Eh, it's a pity but what Solomon lived in our village,\r
+and could give us a tune when we liked; eh, Mr. Macey? I'd keep him in\r
+liver and lights for nothing--that I would."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency; "our family's\r
+been known for musicianers as far back as anybody can tell. But them\r
+things are dying out, as I tell Solomon every time he comes round;\r
+there's no voices like what there used to be, and there's nobody\r
+remembers what we remember, if it isn't the old crows."\r
+\r
+"Aye, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these\r
+parts, don't you, Mr. Macey?" said the landlord.\r
+\r
+"I should think I did," said the old man, who had now gone through that\r
+complimentary process necessary to bring him up to the point of\r
+narration; "and a fine old gentleman he was--as fine, and finer nor the\r
+Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from a bit north'ard, so far as I\r
+could ever make out. But there's nobody rightly knows about those\r
+parts: only it couldn't be far north'ard, nor much different from this\r
+country, for he brought a fine breed o' sheep with him, so there must\r
+be pastures there, and everything reasonable. We heared tell as he'd\r
+sold his own land to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for\r
+a man as had land of his own, to come and rent a farm in a strange\r
+place. But they said it was along of his wife's dying; though there's\r
+reasons in things as nobody knows on--that's pretty much what I've made\r
+out; yet some folks are so wise, they'll find you fifty reasons\r
+straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the\r
+corner, and they niver see't. Howsomever, it was soon seen as we'd got\r
+a new parish'ner as know'd the rights and customs o' things, and kep a\r
+good house, and was well looked on by everybody. And the young\r
+man--that's the Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver a sister--soon\r
+begun to court Miss Osgood, that's the sister o' the Mr. Osgood as now\r
+is, and a fine handsome lass she was--eh, you can't think--they pretend\r
+this young lass is like her, but that's the way wi' people as don't\r
+know what come before 'em. _I_ should know, for I helped the old\r
+rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I helped him marry 'em."\r
+\r
+Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in instalments,\r
+expecting to be questioned according to precedent.\r
+\r
+"Aye, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't it, Mr. Macey, so as you\r
+were likely to remember that marriage?" said the landlord, in a\r
+congratulatory tone.\r
+\r
+"I should think there did--a _very_ partic'lar thing," said Mr. Macey,\r
+nodding sideways. "For Mr. Drumlow--poor old gentleman, I was fond on\r
+him, though he'd got a bit confused in his head, what wi' age and wi'\r
+taking a drop o' summat warm when the service come of a cold morning.\r
+And young Mr. Lammeter, he'd have no way but he must be married in\r
+Janiwary, which, to be sure, 's a unreasonable time to be married in,\r
+for it isn't like a christening or a burying, as you can't help; and so\r
+Mr. Drumlow--poor old gentleman, I was fond on him--but when he come to\r
+put the questions, he put 'em by the rule o' contrairy, like, and he\r
+says, "Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded wife?" says he, and then\r
+he says, "Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded husband?" says he.\r
+But the partic'larest thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it\r
+but me, and they answered straight off "yes", like as if it had been me\r
+saying "Amen" i' the right place, without listening to what went\r
+before."\r
+\r
+"But _you_ knew what was going on well enough, didn't you, Mr. Macey?\r
+You were live enough, eh?" said the butcher.\r
+\r
+"Lor bless you!" said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the\r
+impotence of his hearer's imagination--"why, I was all of a tremble: it\r
+was as if I'd been a coat pulled by the two tails, like; for I couldn't\r
+stop the parson, I couldn't take upon me to do that; and yet I said to\r
+myself, I says, "Suppose they shouldn't be fast married, 'cause the\r
+words are contrairy?" and my head went working like a mill, for I was\r
+allays uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round 'em; and I\r
+says to myself, "Is't the meanin' or the words as makes folks fast i'\r
+wedlock?" For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom\r
+meant right. But then, when I come to think on it, meanin' goes but a\r
+little way i' most things, for you may mean to stick things together\r
+and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? And so I says to\r
+mysen, "It isn't the meanin', it's the glue." And I was worreted as if\r
+I'd got three bells to pull at once, when we went into the vestry, and\r
+they begun to sign their names. But where's the use o' talking?--you\r
+can't think what goes on in a 'cute man's inside."\r
+\r
+"But you held in for all that, didn't you, Mr. Macey?" said the\r
+landlord.\r
+\r
+"Aye, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi' Mr. Drumlow, and then I\r
+out wi' everything, but respectful, as I allays did. And he made light\r
+on it, and he says, "Pooh, pooh, Macey, make yourself easy," he says;\r
+"it's neither the meaning nor the words--it's the re_ges_ter does\r
+it--that's the glue." So you see he settled it easy; for parsons and\r
+doctors know everything by heart, like, so as they aren't worreted wi'\r
+thinking what's the rights and wrongs o' things, as I'n been many and\r
+many's the time. And sure enough the wedding turned out all right,\r
+on'y poor Mrs. Lammeter--that's Miss Osgood as was--died afore the\r
+lasses was growed up; but for prosperity and everything respectable,\r
+there's no family more looked on."\r
+\r
+Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard this story many times, but\r
+it was listened to as if it had been a favourite tune, and at certain\r
+points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily suspended, that the\r
+listeners might give their whole minds to the expected words. But\r
+there was more to come; and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly put the\r
+leading question.\r
+\r
+"Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn't they say, when he\r
+come into these parts?"\r
+\r
+"Well, yes," said Mr. Macey; "but I daresay it's as much as this Mr.\r
+Lammeter's done to keep it whole. For there was allays a talk as\r
+nobody could get rich on the Warrens: though he holds it cheap, for\r
+it's what they call Charity Land."\r
+\r
+"Aye, and there's few folks know so well as you how it come to be\r
+Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the butcher.\r
+\r
+"How should they?" said the old clerk, with some contempt. "Why, my\r
+grandfather made the grooms' livery for that Mr. Cliff as came and\r
+built the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they're stables four times\r
+as big as Squire Cass's, for he thought o' nothing but hosses and\r
+hunting, Cliff didn't--a Lunnon tailor, some folks said, as had gone\r
+mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't ride; lor bless you! they said he'd\r
+got no more grip o' the hoss than if his legs had been cross-sticks: my\r
+grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so many and many a time. But\r
+ride he would, as if Old Harry had been a-driving him; and he'd a son,\r
+a lad o' sixteen; and nothing would his father have him do, but he must\r
+ride and ride--though the lad was frighted, they said. And it was a\r
+common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out o' the lad,\r
+and make a gentleman on him--not but what I'm a tailor myself, but in\r
+respect as God made me such, I'm proud on it, for "Macey, tailor", 's\r
+been wrote up over our door since afore the Queen's heads went out on\r
+the shillings. But Cliff, he was ashamed o' being called a tailor, and\r
+he was sore vexed as his riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the\r
+gentlefolks hereabout could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got\r
+sickly and died, and the father didn't live long after him, for he got\r
+queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the\r
+night, wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o'\r
+lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand,\r
+cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a\r
+mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs\r
+in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all\r
+his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that's how the\r
+Warrens come to be Charity Land; though, as for the stables, Mr.\r
+Lammeter never uses 'em--they're out o' all charicter--lor bless you!\r
+if you was to set the doors a-banging in 'em, it 'ud sound like thunder\r
+half o'er the parish."\r
+\r
+"Aye, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks see by\r
+daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the landlord.\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that's all," said Mr. Macey,\r
+winking mysteriously, "and then make believe, if you like, as you\r
+didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping o' the hosses,\r
+nor the cracking o' the whips, and howling, too, if it's tow'rt\r
+daybreak. "Cliff's Holiday" has been the name of it ever sin' I were a\r
+boy; that's to say, some said as it was the holiday Old Harry gev him\r
+from roasting, like. That's what my father told me, and he was a\r
+reasonable man, though there's folks nowadays know what happened afore\r
+they were born better nor they know their own business."\r
+\r
+"What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?" said the landlord, turning to\r
+the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his cue. "There's a\r
+nut for _you_ to crack."\r
+\r
+Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was proud of his\r
+position.\r
+\r
+"Say? I say what a man _should_ say as doesn't shut his eyes to look\r
+at a finger-post. I say, as I'm ready to wager any man ten pound, if\r
+he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the pasture before the Warren\r
+stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn't\r
+the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and I've said it many\r
+a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es\r
+as they make so sure of."\r
+\r
+"Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is," said Ben Winthrop. "You\r
+might as well bet a man as he wouldn't catch the rheumatise if he stood\r
+up to 's neck in the pool of a frosty night. It 'ud be fine fun for a\r
+man to win his bet as he'd catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in\r
+Cliff's Holiday aren't agoing to ventur near it for a matter o' ten\r
+pound."\r
+\r
+"If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it," said Mr. Macey, with\r
+a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs together, "he's no call to lay\r
+any bet--let him go and stan' by himself--there's nobody 'ull hinder\r
+him; and then he can let the parish'ners know if they're wrong."\r
+\r
+"Thank you! I'm obliged to you," said the farrier, with a snort of\r
+scorn. "If folks are fools, it's no business o' mine. _I_ don't want\r
+to make out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not\r
+against a bet--everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound\r
+as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself. I\r
+want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd fill this pipe."\r
+\r
+"Ah, but who's to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? That's no fair\r
+bet," said the butcher.\r
+\r
+"No fair bet?" replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. "I should like to hear\r
+any man stand up and say I want to bet unfair. Come now, Master Lundy,\r
+I should like to hear you say it."\r
+\r
+"Very like you would," said the butcher. "But it's no business o'\r
+mine. You're none o' my bargains, and I aren't a-going to try and\r
+'bate your price. If anybody 'll bid for you at your own vallying, let\r
+him. I'm for peace and quietness, I am."\r
+\r
+"Yes, that's what every yapping cur is, when you hold a stick up at\r
+him," said the farrier. "But I'm afraid o' neither man nor ghost, and\r
+I'm ready to lay a fair bet. _I_ aren't a turn-tail cur."\r
+\r
+"Aye, but there's this in it, Dowlas," said the landlord, speaking in a\r
+tone of much candour and tolerance. "There's folks, i' my opinion,\r
+they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a pike-staff\r
+before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my wife, now,\r
+can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under her nose. I\r
+never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself, "Very like I\r
+haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a ghost for a smell,\r
+or else contrairiways. And so, I'm for holding with both sides; for,\r
+as I say, the truth lies between 'em. And if Dowlas was to go and\r
+stand, and say he'd never seen a wink o' Cliff's Holiday all the night\r
+through, I'd back him; and if anybody said as Cliff's Holiday was\r
+certain sure, for all that, I'd back _him_ too. For the smell's what I\r
+go by."\r
+\r
+The landlord's analogical argument was not well received by the\r
+farrier--a man intensely opposed to compromise.\r
+\r
+"Tut, tut," he said, setting down his glass with refreshed irritation;\r
+"what's the smell got to do with it? Did ever a ghost give a man a\r
+black eye? That's what I should like to know. If ghos'es want me to\r
+believe in 'em, let 'em leave off skulking i' the dark and i' lone\r
+places--let 'em come where there's company and candles."\r
+\r
+"As if ghos'es 'ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!" said\r
+Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence to\r
+apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER VII\r
+\r
+Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had a\r
+more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them; for\r
+the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing in the\r
+warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his\r
+strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement,\r
+like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not\r
+excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw,\r
+not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which\r
+Silas had entered was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one had\r
+noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost,\r
+might be supposed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would\r
+tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always\r
+said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul\r
+went loose from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on\r
+the whole, he would have been as well contented without it. For a few\r
+moments there was a dead silence, Marner's want of breath and agitation\r
+not allowing him to speak. The landlord, under the habitual sense that\r
+he was bound to keep his house open to all company, and confident in\r
+the protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took on himself the\r
+task of adjuring the ghost.\r
+\r
+"Master Marner," he said, in a conciliatory tone, "what's lacking to\r
+you? What's your business here?"\r
+\r
+"Robbed!" said Silas, gaspingly. "I've been robbed! I want the\r
+constable--and the Justice--and Squire Cass--and Mr. Crackenthorp."\r
+\r
+"Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney," said the landlord, the idea of a ghost\r
+subsiding; "he's off his head, I doubt. He's wet through."\r
+\r
+Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently near Marner's\r
+standing-place; but he declined to give his services.\r
+\r
+"Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you've a mind," said\r
+Jem, rather sullenly. "He's been robbed, and murdered too, for what I\r
+know," he added, in a muttering tone.\r
+\r
+"Jem Rodney!" said Silas, turning and fixing his strange eyes on the\r
+suspected man.\r
+\r
+"Aye, Master Marner, what do you want wi' me?" said Jem, trembling a\r
+little, and seizing his drinking-can as a defensive weapon.\r
+\r
+"If it was you stole my money," said Silas, clasping his hands\r
+entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry, "give it me back--and I\r
+won't meddle with you. I won't set the constable on you. Give it me\r
+back, and I'll let you--I'll let you have a guinea."\r
+\r
+"Me stole your money!" said Jem, angrily. "I'll pitch this can at\r
+your eye if you talk o' _my_ stealing your money."\r
+\r
+"Come, come, Master Marner," said the landlord, now rising resolutely,\r
+and seizing Marner by the shoulder, "if you've got any information to\r
+lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you're in your right mind, if\r
+you expect anybody to listen to you. You're as wet as a drownded rat.\r
+Sit down and dry yourself, and speak straight forrard."\r
+\r
+"Ah, to be sure, man," said the farrier, who began to feel that he had\r
+not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion. "Let's have no\r
+more staring and screaming, else we'll have you strapped for a madman.\r
+That was why I didn't speak at the first--thinks I, the man's run mad."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye, make him sit down," said several voices at once, well\r
+pleased that the reality of ghosts remained still an open question.\r
+\r
+The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to sit down\r
+on a chair aloof from every one else, in the centre of the circle and\r
+in the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble to have any\r
+distinct purpose beyond that of getting help to recover his money,\r
+submitted unresistingly. The transient fears of the company were now\r
+forgotten in their strong curiosity, and all faces were turned towards\r
+Silas, when the landlord, having seated himself again, said--\r
+\r
+"Now then, Master Marner, what's this you've got to say--as you've been\r
+robbed? Speak out."\r
+\r
+"He'd better not say again as it was me robbed him," cried Jem Rodney,\r
+hastily. "What could I ha' done with his money? I could as easy steal\r
+the parson's surplice, and wear it."\r
+\r
+"Hold your tongue, Jem, and let's hear what he's got to say," said the\r
+landlord. "Now then, Master Marner."\r
+\r
+Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the mysterious\r
+character of the robbery became evident.\r
+\r
+This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe\r
+neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and\r
+feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise\r
+of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his\r
+passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness rarely\r
+registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us:\r
+there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the\r
+smallest sign of the bud.\r
+\r
+The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to him,\r
+gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity of his distress:\r
+it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner was telling\r
+the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at once from the\r
+nature of his statements to the absence of any motive for making them\r
+falsely, but because, as Mr. Macey observed, "Folks as had the devil to\r
+back 'em were not likely to be so mushed" as poor Silas was. Rather,\r
+from the strange fact that the robber had left no traces, and had\r
+happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by mortal\r
+agents, when Silas would go away from home without locking his door,\r
+the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that his disreputable\r
+intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed, had been broken up, and\r
+that, in consequence, this ill turn had been done to Marner by somebody\r
+it was quite in vain to set the constable after. Why this\r
+preternatural felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left\r
+unlocked, was a question which did not present itself.\r
+\r
+"It isn't Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner," said the\r
+landlord. "You mustn't be a-casting your eye at poor Jem. There may be\r
+a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a hare or so, if\r
+anybody was bound to keep their eyes staring open, and niver to wink;\r
+but Jem's been a-sitting here drinking his can, like the decentest man\r
+i' the parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by your\r
+own account."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey; "let's have no accusing o' the innicent.\r
+That isn't the law. There must be folks to swear again' a man before\r
+he can be ta'en up. Let's have no accusing o' the innicent, Master\r
+Marner."\r
+\r
+Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be awakened\r
+by these words. With a movement of compunction as new and strange to\r
+him as everything else within the last hour, he started from his chair\r
+and went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he wanted to assure\r
+himself of the expression in his face.\r
+\r
+"I was wrong," he said--"yes, yes--I ought to have thought. There's\r
+nothing to witness against you, Jem. Only you'd been into my house\r
+oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head. I don't accuse\r
+you--I won't accuse anybody--only," he added, lifting up his hands to\r
+his head, and turning away with bewildered misery, "I try--I try to\r
+think where my guineas can be."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye, they're gone where it's hot enough to melt 'em, I doubt,"\r
+said Mr. Macey.\r
+\r
+"Tchuh!" said the farrier. And then he asked, with a cross-examining\r
+air, "How much money might there be in the bags, Master Marner?"\r
+\r
+"Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve and sixpence, last night\r
+when I counted it," said Silas, seating himself again, with a groan.\r
+\r
+"Pooh! why, they'd be none so heavy to carry. Some tramp's been in,\r
+that's all; and as for the no footmarks, and the bricks and the sand\r
+being all right--why, your eyes are pretty much like a insect's, Master\r
+Marner; they're obliged to look so close, you can't see much at a time.\r
+It's my opinion as, if I'd been you, or you'd been me--for it comes to\r
+the same thing--you wouldn't have thought you'd found everything as you\r
+left it. But what I vote is, as two of the sensiblest o' the company\r
+should go with you to Master Kench, the constable's--he's ill i' bed, I\r
+know that much--and get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for\r
+that's the law, and I don't think anybody 'ull take upon him to\r
+contradick me there. It isn't much of a walk to Kench's; and then, if\r
+it's me as is deppity, I'll go back with you, Master Marner, and\r
+examine your premises; and if anybody's got any fault to find with\r
+that, I'll thank him to stand up and say it out like a man."\r
+\r
+By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his\r
+self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as\r
+one of the superlatively sensible men.\r
+\r
+"Let us see how the night is, though," said the landlord, who also\r
+considered himself personally concerned in this proposition. "Why, it\r
+rains heavy still," he said, returning from the door.\r
+\r
+"Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain," said the farrier.\r
+"For it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us\r
+had a information laid before 'em and took no steps."\r
+\r
+The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the\r
+company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high\r
+ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take on\r
+himself the chill dignity of going to Kench's. But to the farrier's\r
+strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his proposing\r
+himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman,\r
+claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his\r
+father, that no doctor could be a constable.\r
+\r
+"And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cow-doctor--for a\r
+fly's a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly," concluded Mr. Macey,\r
+wondering a little at his own "'cuteness".\r
+\r
+There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course\r
+indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a\r
+doctor could be a constable if he liked--the law meant, he needn't be\r
+one if he didn't like. Mr. Macey thought this was nonsense, since the\r
+law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other folks.\r
+Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of other men not\r
+to like being constables, how came Mr. Dowlas to be so eager to act in\r
+that capacity?\r
+\r
+"_I_ don't want to act the constable," said the farrier, driven into a\r
+corner by this merciless reasoning; "and there's no man can say it of\r
+me, if he'd tell the truth. But if there's to be any jealousy and\r
+en_vy_ing about going to Kench's in the rain, let them go as like\r
+it--you won't get me to go, I can tell you."\r
+\r
+By the landlord's intervention, however, the dispute was accommodated.\r
+Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a second person disinclined to act\r
+officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with some old coverings,\r
+turned out with his two companions into the rain again, thinking of the\r
+long night-hours before him, not as those do who long to rest, but as\r
+those who expect to "watch for the morning".\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER VIII\r
+\r
+When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood's party at midnight, he was\r
+not much surprised to learn that Dunsey had not come home. Perhaps he\r
+had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for another chance--perhaps, on\r
+that foggy afternoon, he had preferred housing himself at the Red Lion\r
+at Batherley for the night, if the run had kept him in that\r
+neighbourhood; for he was not likely to feel much concern about leaving\r
+his brother in suspense. Godfrey's mind was too full of Nancy\r
+Lammeter's looks and behaviour, too full of the exasperation against\r
+himself and his lot, which the sight of her always produced in him, for\r
+him to give much thought to Wildfire, or to the probabilities of\r
+Dunstan's conduct.\r
+\r
+The next morning the whole village was excited by the story of the\r
+robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else, was occupied in gathering\r
+and discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stone-pits. The rain\r
+had washed away all possibility of distinguishing foot-marks, but a\r
+close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the direction\r
+opposite to the village, a tinder-box, with a flint and steel, half\r
+sunk in the mud. It was not Silas's tinder-box, for the only one he\r
+had ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the inference\r
+generally accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow\r
+connected with the robbery. A small minority shook their heads, and\r
+intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light\r
+thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master Marner's tale had a queer\r
+look with it, and that such things had been known as a man's doing\r
+himself a mischief, and then setting the justice to look for the doer.\r
+But when questioned closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and\r
+what Master Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only shook\r
+their heads as before, and observed that there was no knowing what some\r
+folks counted gain; moreover, that everybody had a right to their own\r
+opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody\r
+knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, though he joined in the defence of\r
+Marner against all suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the\r
+tinder-box; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion,\r
+tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands, and that\r
+there was no power which could make away with the guineas without\r
+moving the bricks. Nevertheless, he turned round rather sharply on Mr.\r
+Tookey, when the zealous deputy, feeling that this was a view of the\r
+case peculiarly suited to a parish-clerk, carried it still farther, and\r
+doubted whether it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when the\r
+circumstances were so mysterious.\r
+\r
+"As if," concluded Mr. Tookey--"as if there was nothing but what could\r
+be made out by justices and constables."\r
+\r
+"Now, don't you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey," said Mr. Macey,\r
+nodding his head aside admonishingly. "That's what you're allays at;\r
+if I throw a stone and hit, you think there's summat better than\r
+hitting, and you try to throw a stone beyond. What I said was against\r
+the tinder-box: I said nothing against justices and constables, for\r
+they're o' King George's making, and it 'ud be ill-becoming a man in a\r
+parish office to fly out again' King George."\r
+\r
+While these discussions were going on amongst the group outside the\r
+Rainbow, a higher consultation was being carried on within, under the\r
+presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector, assisted by Squire Cass and\r
+other substantial parishioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell, the\r
+landlord--he being, as he observed, a man accustomed to put two and two\r
+together--to connect with the tinder-box, which, as deputy-constable,\r
+he himself had had the honourable distinction of finding, certain\r
+recollections of a pedlar who had called to drink at the house about a\r
+month before, and had actually stated that he carried a tinder-box\r
+about with him to light his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be\r
+followed out. And as memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained\r
+facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered\r
+a vivid impression of the effect produced on him by the pedlar's\r
+countenance and conversation. He had a "look with his eye" which fell\r
+unpleasantly on Mr. Snell's sensitive organism. To be sure, he didn't\r
+say anything particular--no, except that about the tinder-box--but it\r
+isn't what a man says, it's the way he says it. Moreover, he had a\r
+swarthy foreignness of complexion which boded little honesty.\r
+\r
+"Did he wear ear-rings?" Mr. Crackenthorp wished to know, having some\r
+acquaintance with foreign customs.\r
+\r
+"Well--stay--let me see," said Mr. Snell, like a docile clairvoyante,\r
+who would really not make a mistake if she could help it. After\r
+stretching the corners of his mouth and contracting his eyes, as if he\r
+were trying to see the ear-rings, he appeared to give up the effort,\r
+and said, "Well, he'd got ear-rings in his box to sell, so it's nat'ral\r
+to suppose he might wear 'em. But he called at every house, a'most, in\r
+the village; there's somebody else, mayhap, saw 'em in his ears, though\r
+I can't take upon me rightly to say."\r
+\r
+Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else would remember\r
+the pedlar's ear-rings. For on the spread of inquiry among the\r
+villagers it was stated with gathering emphasis, that the parson had\r
+wanted to know whether the pedlar wore ear-rings in his ears, and an\r
+impression was created that a great deal depended on the eliciting of\r
+this fact. Of course, every one who heard the question, not having any\r
+distinct image of the pedlar as _without_ ear-rings, immediately had an\r
+image of him _with_ ear-rings, larger or smaller, as the case might be;\r
+and the image was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so that the\r
+glazier's wife, a well-intentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose\r
+house was among the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as\r
+sure as ever she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas\r
+that was ever coming, that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape of\r
+the young moon, in the pedlar's two ears; while Jinny Oates, the\r
+cobbler's daughter, being a more imaginative person, stated not only\r
+that she had seen them too, but that they had made her blood creep, as\r
+it did at that very moment while there she stood.\r
+\r
+Also, by way of throwing further light on this clue of the tinder-box,\r
+a collection was made of all the articles purchased from the pedlar at\r
+various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be exhibited there. In\r
+fact, there was a general feeling in the village, that for the\r
+clearing-up of this robbery there must be a great deal done at the\r
+Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife an excuse for going there\r
+while it was the scene of severe public duties.\r
+\r
+Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indignation also,\r
+when it became known that Silas Marner, on being questioned by the\r
+Squire and the parson, had retained no other recollection of the pedlar\r
+than that he had called at his door, but had not entered his house,\r
+having turned away at once when Silas, holding the door ajar, had said\r
+that he wanted nothing. This had been Silas's testimony, though he\r
+clutched strongly at the idea of the pedlar's being the culprit, if\r
+only because it gave him a definite image of a whereabout for his gold\r
+after it had been taken away from its hiding-place: he could see it now\r
+in the pedlar's box. But it was observed with some irritation in the\r
+village, that anybody but a "blind creatur" like Marner would have seen\r
+the man prowling about, for how came he to leave his tinder-box in the\r
+ditch close by, if he hadn't been lingering there? Doubtless, he had\r
+made his observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might\r
+know--and only look at him--that the weaver was a half-crazy miser. It\r
+was a wonder the pedlar hadn't murdered him; men of that sort, with\r
+rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;\r
+there had been one tried at the 'sizes, not so long ago but what there\r
+were people living who remembered it.\r
+\r
+Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell's\r
+frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it lightly,\r
+stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the pedlar, and\r
+thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all nonsense, he\r
+said, about the man's evil looks. But this was spoken of in the\r
+village as the random talk of youth, "as if it was only Mr. Snell who\r
+had seen something odd about the pedlar!" On the contrary, there were\r
+at least half-a-dozen who were ready to go before Justice Malam, and\r
+give in much more striking testimony than any the landlord could\r
+furnish. It was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey would not go to Tarley and\r
+throw cold water on what Mr. Snell said there, and so prevent the\r
+justice from drawing up a warrant. He was suspected of intending this,\r
+when, after mid-day, he was seen setting off on horseback in the\r
+direction of Tarley.\r
+\r
+But by this time Godfrey's interest in the robbery had faded before his\r
+growing anxiety about Dunstan and Wildfire, and he was going, not to\r
+Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in uncertainty about them any\r
+longer. The possibility that Dunstan had played him the ugly trick of\r
+riding away with Wildfire, to return at the end of a month, when he had\r
+gambled away or otherwise squandered the price of the horse, was a fear\r
+that urged itself upon him more, even, than the thought of an\r
+accidental injury; and now that the dance at Mrs. Osgood's was past, he\r
+was irritated with himself that he had trusted his horse to Dunstan.\r
+Instead of trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that\r
+superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil\r
+very strongly it is the less likely to come; and when he heard a horse\r
+approaching at a trot, and saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond an\r
+angle of the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeeded. But no\r
+sooner did the horse come within sight, than his heart sank again. It\r
+was not Wildfire; and in a few moments more he discerned that the rider\r
+was not Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled up to speak, with a face that\r
+implied something disagreeable.\r
+\r
+"Well, Mr. Godfrey, that's a lucky brother of yours, that Master\r
+Dunsey, isn't he?"\r
+\r
+"What do you mean?" said Godfrey, hastily.\r
+\r
+"Why, hasn't he been home yet?" said Bryce.\r
+\r
+"Home? no. What has happened? Be quick. What has he done with my\r
+horse?"\r
+\r
+"Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had parted with it\r
+to him."\r
+\r
+"Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?" said Godfrey, flushed\r
+with exasperation.\r
+\r
+"Worse than that," said Bryce. "You see, I'd made a bargain with him\r
+to buy the horse for a hundred and twenty--a swinging price, but I\r
+always liked the horse. And what does he do but go and stake him--fly\r
+at a hedge with stakes in it, atop of a bank with a ditch before it.\r
+The horse had been dead a pretty good while when he was found. So he\r
+hasn't been home since, has he?"\r
+\r
+"Home? no," said Godfrey, "and he'd better keep away. Confound me for\r
+a fool! I might have known this would be the end of it."\r
+\r
+"Well, to tell you the truth," said Bryce, "after I'd bargained for the\r
+horse, it did come into my head that he might be riding and selling the\r
+horse without your knowledge, for I didn't believe it was his own. I\r
+knew Master Dunsey was up to his tricks sometimes. But where can he be\r
+gone? He's never been seen at Batherley. He couldn't have been hurt,\r
+for he must have walked off."\r
+\r
+"Hurt?" said Godfrey, bitterly. "He'll never be hurt--he's made to\r
+hurt other people."\r
+\r
+"And so you _did_ give him leave to sell the horse, eh?" said Bryce.\r
+\r
+"Yes; I wanted to part with the horse--he was always a little too hard\r
+in the mouth for me," said Godfrey; his pride making him wince under\r
+the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a matter of necessity. "I\r
+was going to see after him--I thought some mischief had happened. I'll\r
+go back now," he added, turning the horse's head, and wishing he could\r
+get rid of Bryce; for he felt that the long-dreaded crisis in his life\r
+was close upon him. "You're coming on to Raveloe, aren't you?"\r
+\r
+"Well, no, not now," said Bryce. "I _was_ coming round there, for I\r
+had to go to Flitton, and I thought I might as well take you in my way,\r
+and just let you know all I knew myself about the horse. I suppose\r
+Master Dunsey didn't like to show himself till the ill news had blown\r
+over a bit. He's perhaps gone to pay a visit at the Three Crowns, by\r
+Whitbridge--I know he's fond of the house."\r
+\r
+"Perhaps he is," said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing himself,\r
+he said, with an effort at carelessness, "We shall hear of him soon\r
+enough, I'll be bound."\r
+\r
+"Well, here's my turning," said Bryce, not surprised to perceive that\r
+Godfrey was rather "down"; "so I'll bid you good-day, and wish I may\r
+bring you better news another time."\r
+\r
+Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of\r
+confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no\r
+longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the\r
+very next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be sure\r
+to come back shortly, and, finding that he must bear the brunt of his\r
+father's anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even though he\r
+had nothing to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by which he\r
+might still win Dunstan's silence and put off the evil day: he might\r
+tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to him by\r
+Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an offence before, the\r
+affair would blow over after a little storming. But Godfrey could not\r
+bend himself to this. He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money,\r
+he had already been guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable\r
+than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet\r
+there was a distinction between the two acts which made him feel that\r
+the one was so much more blackening than the other as to be intolerable\r
+to him.\r
+\r
+"I don't pretend to be a good fellow," he said to himself; "but I'm not\r
+a scoundrel--at least, I'll stop short somewhere. I'll bear the\r
+consequences of what I _have_ done sooner than make believe I've done\r
+what I never would have done. I'd never have spent the money for my\r
+own pleasure--I was tortured into it."\r
+\r
+Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional\r
+fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a complete avowal\r
+to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire's loss till the\r
+next morning, that it might serve him as an introduction to heavier\r
+matter. The old Squire was accustomed to his son's frequent absence\r
+from home, and thought neither Dunstan's nor Wildfire's non-appearance\r
+a matter calling for remark. Godfrey said to himself again and again,\r
+that if he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he might never\r
+have another; the revelation might be made even in a more odious way\r
+than by Dunstan's malignity: _she_ might come as she had threatened to\r
+do. And then he tried to make the scene easier to himself by\r
+rehearsal: he made up his mind how he would pass from the admission of\r
+his weakness in letting Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan\r
+had a hold on him which he had been unable to shake off, and how he\r
+would work up his father to expect something very bad before he told\r
+him the fact. The old Squire was an implacable man: he made\r
+resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them\r
+after his anger had subsided--as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden\r
+into rock. Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to\r
+grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him\r
+with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity\r
+and became unrelentingly hard. This was his system with his tenants:\r
+he allowed them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their\r
+stock, sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,--and then,\r
+when he became short of money in consequence of this indulgence, he\r
+took the hardest measures and would listen to no appeal. Godfrey knew\r
+all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly\r
+suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of\r
+unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him\r
+of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which\r
+preceded these fits; _that_ seemed to him natural enough.) Still there\r
+was just the chance, Godfrey thought, that his father's pride might see\r
+this marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up, rather\r
+than turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for\r
+ten miles round.\r
+\r
+This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him\r
+pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he had\r
+done with inward debating. But when he awoke in the still morning\r
+darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it\r
+was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further\r
+work. Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the\r
+presence of nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of\r
+disgrace came back--the old shrinking from the thought of raising a\r
+hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy--the old disposition to rely\r
+on chances which might be favourable to him, and save him from\r
+betrayal. Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by his\r
+own act? He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday. He had\r
+been in a rage with Dunstan, and had thought of nothing but a thorough\r
+break-up of their mutual understanding; but what it would be really\r
+wisest for him to do, was to try and soften his father's anger against\r
+Dunsey, and keep things as nearly as possible in their old condition.\r
+If Dunsey did not come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know\r
+but that the rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to\r
+keep away still longer), everything might blow over.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER IX\r
+\r
+Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but\r
+lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had\r
+finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always took\r
+a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one breakfasted\r
+at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was always the\r
+latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before\r
+he tried it. The table had been spread with substantial eatables\r
+nearly two hours before he presented himself--a tall, stout man of\r
+sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed\r
+contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His person showed marks of\r
+habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something\r
+in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the\r
+ordinary farmers in the parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined\r
+as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness\r
+of being in the vicinity of their "betters", wanted that\r
+self-possession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which\r
+belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with\r
+whom he had personally little more to do than with America or the\r
+stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to\r
+the presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that\r
+was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with any\r
+gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison.\r
+\r
+He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, "What, sir!\r
+haven't _you_ had your breakfast yet?" but there was no pleasant\r
+morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but\r
+because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as\r
+the Red House.\r
+\r
+"Yes, sir," said Godfrey, "I've had my breakfast, but I was waiting to\r
+speak to you."\r
+\r
+"Ah! well," said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his\r
+chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in\r
+Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of\r
+beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him.\r
+"Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters' business is your\r
+own pleasure, mostly. There's no hurry about it for anybody but\r
+yourselves."\r
+\r
+The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a fiction\r
+kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was\r
+exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was\r
+constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey\r
+waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the\r
+door closed--an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had\r
+consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man's holiday dinner.\r
+\r
+"There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire," he began;\r
+"happened the day before yesterday."\r
+\r
+"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught of\r
+ale. "I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never\r
+threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha' whistled for\r
+another, for _my_ father wasn't quite so ready to unstring as some\r
+other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new leaf--_they_\r
+must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as short o' cash as a\r
+roadside pauper. And that fool Kimble says the newspaper's talking\r
+about peace. Why, the country wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Prices\r
+'ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I\r
+sold all the fellows up. And there's that damned Fowler, I won't put\r
+up with him any longer; I've told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day.\r
+The lying scoundrel told me he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last\r
+month. He takes advantage because he's on that outlying farm, and\r
+thinks I shall forget him."\r
+\r
+The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted\r
+manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext\r
+for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward\r
+off any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with\r
+Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his\r
+shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of\r
+mind the utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on,\r
+now he had begun.\r
+\r
+"It's worse than breaking the horse's knees--he's been staked and\r
+killed," he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun to\r
+cut his meat. "But I wasn't thinking of asking you to buy me another\r
+horse; I was only thinking I'd lost the means of paying you with the\r
+price of Wildfire, as I'd meant to do. Dunsey took him to the hunt to\r
+sell him for me the other day, and after he'd made a bargain for a\r
+hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some\r
+fool's leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it hadn't been\r
+for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds this morning."\r
+\r
+The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son\r
+in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable\r
+guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the\r
+paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him\r
+a hundred pounds.\r
+\r
+"The truth is, sir--I'm very sorry--I was quite to blame," said\r
+Godfrey. "Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He paid it to me, when\r
+I was over there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered me for the\r
+money, and I let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay\r
+it you before this."\r
+\r
+The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and\r
+found utterance difficult. "You let Dunsey have it, sir? And how long\r
+have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must _collogue_ with him to\r
+embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won't\r
+have it. I'll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together,\r
+and marry again. I'd have you to remember, sir, my property's got no\r
+entail on it;--since my grandfather's time the Casses can do as they\r
+like with their land. Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the money!\r
+Why should you let Dunsey have the money? There's some lie at the\r
+bottom of it."\r
+\r
+"There's no lie, sir," said Godfrey. "I wouldn't have spent the money\r
+myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him have it.\r
+But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's the whole story.\r
+I never meant to embezzle money, and I'm not the man to do it. You\r
+never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir."\r
+\r
+"Where's Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and\r
+fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted\r
+the money for, and what he's done with it. He shall repent it. I'll\r
+turn him out. I said I would, and I'll do it. He shan't brave me. Go\r
+and fetch him."\r
+\r
+"Dunsey isn't come back, sir."\r
+\r
+"What! did he break his own neck, then?" said the Squire, with some\r
+disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.\r
+\r
+"No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and\r
+Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again\r
+by-and-by. I don't know where he is."\r
+\r
+"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that,"\r
+said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within\r
+reach.\r
+\r
+"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a\r
+feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being\r
+sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without\r
+the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented\r
+motives.\r
+\r
+"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to some\r
+trick, and you've been bribing him not to tell," said the Squire, with\r
+a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat\r
+violently at the nearness of his father's guess. The sudden alarm\r
+pushed him on to take the next step--a very slight impulse suffices for\r
+that on a downward road.\r
+\r
+"Why, sir," he said, trying to speak with careless ease, "it was a\r
+little affair between me and Dunsey; it's no matter to anybody else.\r
+It's hardly worth while to pry into young men's fooleries: it wouldn't\r
+have made any difference to you, sir, if I'd not had the bad luck to\r
+lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money."\r
+\r
+"Fooleries! Pshaw! it's time you'd done with fooleries. And I'd have\r
+you know, sir, you _must_ ha' done with 'em," said the Squire, frowning\r
+and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goings-on are not what I\r
+shall find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his\r
+stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times,\r
+by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four\r
+good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I've been\r
+too good a father to you all--that's what it is. But I shall pull up,\r
+sir."\r
+\r
+Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his\r
+judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father's indulgence\r
+had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline\r
+that would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better\r
+will. The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught\r
+of ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.\r
+\r
+"It'll be all the worse for you, you know--you'd need try and help me\r
+keep things together."\r
+\r
+"Well, sir, I've often offered to take the management of things, but\r
+you know you've taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted to\r
+push you out of your place."\r
+\r
+"I know nothing o' your offering or o' my taking it ill," said the\r
+Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified\r
+by detail; "but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o'\r
+marrying, and I didn't offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some\r
+fathers would. I'd as lieve you married Lammeter's daughter as\r
+anybody. I suppose, if I'd said you nay, you'd ha' kept on with it;\r
+but, for want o' contradiction, you've changed your mind. You're a\r
+shilly-shally fellow: you take after your poor mother. She never had a\r
+will of her own; a woman has no call for one, if she's got a proper man\r
+for her husband. But _your_ wife had need have one, for you hardly\r
+know your own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. The\r
+lass hasn't said downright she won't have you, has she?"\r
+\r
+"No," said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; "but I don't\r
+think she will."\r
+\r
+"Think! why haven't you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to it,\r
+you want to have _her_--that's the thing?"\r
+\r
+"There's no other woman I want to marry," said Godfrey, evasively.\r
+\r
+"Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that's all, if you haven't\r
+the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn't likely to be loath for his\r
+daughter to marry into _my_ family, I should think. And as for the\r
+pretty lass, she wouldn't have her cousin--and there's nobody else, as\r
+I see, could ha' stood in your way."\r
+\r
+"I'd rather let it be, please sir, at present," said Godfrey, in alarm.\r
+"I think she's a little offended with me just now, and I should like to\r
+speak for myself. A man must manage these things for himself."\r
+\r
+"Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can't turn over a new\r
+leaf. That's what a man must do when he thinks o' marrying."\r
+\r
+"I don't see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn't like\r
+to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don't think she'd\r
+come to live in this house with all my brothers. It's a different sort\r
+of life to what she's been used to."\r
+\r
+"Not come to live in this house? Don't tell me. You ask her, that's\r
+all," said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh.\r
+\r
+"I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir," said Godfrey. "I hope\r
+you won't try to hurry it on by saying anything."\r
+\r
+"I shall do what I choose," said the Squire, "and I shall let you know\r
+I'm master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop into\r
+somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox's, but wait\r
+for me. And tell 'em to get my horse saddled. And stop: look out and\r
+get that hack o' Dunsey's sold, and hand me the money, will you? He'll\r
+keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he's\r
+sneaking--I daresay you do--you may tell him to spare himself the\r
+journey o' coming back home. Let him turn ostler, and keep himself.\r
+He shan't hang on me any more."\r
+\r
+"I don't know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn't my place to tell\r
+him to keep away," said Godfrey, moving towards the door.\r
+\r
+"Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go and order my horse," said\r
+the Squire, taking up a pipe.\r
+\r
+Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved by\r
+the sense that the interview was ended without having made any change\r
+in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself still\r
+further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about his\r
+proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some after-dinner\r
+words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the\r
+embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she\r
+seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual refuge, that of\r
+hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance\r
+which would save him from unpleasant consequences--perhaps even justify\r
+his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this point of\r
+trusting to some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called\r
+specially old-fashioned. Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all\r
+men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe\r
+in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is\r
+ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues\r
+that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let\r
+him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that\r
+brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible\r
+benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his\r
+interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet\r
+forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he\r
+will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone\r
+may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his\r
+friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity\r
+called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never\r
+know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the\r
+gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his\r
+religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he\r
+will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle\r
+deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed\r
+brings forth a crop after its kind.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER X\r
+\r
+Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man of\r
+capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions\r
+without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were not\r
+on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect\r
+the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot concerning a\r
+pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a foreign complexion,\r
+carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and wearing large rings in his\r
+ears. But either because inquiry was too slow-footed to overtake him,\r
+or because the description applied to so many pedlars that inquiry did\r
+not know how to choose among them, weeks passed away, and there was no\r
+other result concerning the robbery than a gradual cessation of the\r
+excitement it had caused in Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly\r
+a subject of remark: he had once before had a quarrel with his father,\r
+and had gone off, nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six\r
+weeks, take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His\r
+own family, who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference\r
+that the Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old\r
+quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr.\r
+Osgood noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and\r
+committed some offence against his father, was enough to prevent\r
+surprise. To connect the fact of Dunsey's disappearance with that of\r
+the robbery occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of\r
+every one's thought--even Godfrey's, who had better reason than any one\r
+else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no mention\r
+of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago, when it\r
+was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his imagination\r
+constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him continually in\r
+some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on leaving\r
+Wildfire--saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating a\r
+return home to the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even\r
+if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts together, I doubt\r
+whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive respectability\r
+of a family with a mural monument and venerable tankards, would not\r
+have been suppressed as of unsound tendency. But Christmas puddings,\r
+brawn, and abundance of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental\r
+originality into the channel of nightmare, are great preservatives\r
+against a dangerous spontaneity of waking thought.\r
+\r
+When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good\r
+company, the balance continued to waver between the rational\r
+explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an\r
+impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of the\r
+tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a muddle-headed\r
+and credulous set, who, because they themselves were wall-eyed,\r
+supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook; and the\r
+adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their antagonists\r
+were animals inclined to crow before they had found any corn--mere\r
+skimming-dishes in point of depth--whose clear-sightedness consisted in\r
+supposing there was nothing behind a barn-door because they couldn't\r
+see through it; so that, though their controversy did not serve to\r
+elicit the fact concerning the robbery, it elicited some true opinions\r
+of collateral importance.\r
+\r
+But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush the slow current of\r
+Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering\r
+desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were arguing\r
+at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he lost his\r
+gold, it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a life as his\r
+could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any\r
+subtraction but such as would put an end to it altogether. But in\r
+reality it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which\r
+fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging\r
+life; and though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead\r
+disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging. But now the fence\r
+was broken down--the support was snatched away. Marner's thoughts\r
+could no longer move in their old round, and were baffled by a blank\r
+like that which meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on\r
+its homeward path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the\r
+growing pattern in the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under\r
+his feet was gone; the prospect of handling and counting it was gone:\r
+the evening had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul's\r
+craving. The thought of the money he would get by his actual work\r
+could bring no joy, for its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of\r
+his loss; and hope was too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his\r
+imagination to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that small\r
+beginning.\r
+\r
+He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and\r
+then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his thoughts\r
+had come round again to the sudden chasm--to the empty evening-time.\r
+And all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he\r
+leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his head with his hands,\r
+and moaned very low--not as one who seeks to be heard.\r
+\r
+And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion\r
+Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by\r
+the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a man\r
+who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what was\r
+worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a neighbourly\r
+way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to keep his\r
+own. He was generally spoken of as a "poor mushed creatur"; and that\r
+avoidance of his neighbours, which had before been referred to his\r
+ill-will and to a probable addiction to worse company, was now\r
+considered mere craziness.\r
+\r
+This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The odour\r
+of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when\r
+superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in\r
+well-to-do families; and Silas's misfortune had brought him uppermost\r
+in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too,\r
+while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from\r
+him because he thought too much of it and never came to church,\r
+enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs' pettitoes, well calculated\r
+to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character.\r
+Neighbours who had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a\r
+disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his misfortune at some\r
+length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the\r
+trouble of calling at his cottage and getting him to repeat all the\r
+details on the very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by\r
+saying, "Well, Master Marner, you're no worse off nor other poor folks,\r
+after all; and if you was to be crippled, the parish 'ud give you a\r
+'lowance."\r
+\r
+I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours\r
+with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of\r
+ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and\r
+pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language\r
+is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was\r
+a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery\r
+and bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary\r
+and hypocritical.\r
+\r
+Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas know\r
+that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more\r
+favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed\r
+lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated\r
+himself and adjusted his thumbs--\r
+\r
+"Come, Master Marner, why, you've no call to sit a-moaning. You're a\r
+deal better off to ha' lost your money, nor to ha' kep it by foul\r
+means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as you\r
+were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than what you\r
+are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced creatur, partly\r
+like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there's no knowing: it isn't\r
+every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry's had the making of--I mean,\r
+speaking o' toads and such; for they're often harmless, like, and\r
+useful against varmin. And it's pretty much the same wi' you, as fur\r
+as I can see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing,\r
+if you brought that sort o' knowledge from distant parts, you might ha'\r
+been a bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn't well come by, why,\r
+you might ha' made up for it by coming to church reg'lar; for, as for\r
+the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I've been at the christening of\r
+'em again and again, and they took the water just as well. And that's\r
+reasonable; for if Old Harry's a mind to do a bit o' kindness for a\r
+holiday, like, who's got anything against it? That's my thinking; and\r
+I've been clerk o' this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson\r
+and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there's no cussing o' folks\r
+as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he\r
+will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying--for there's windings i'\r
+things as they may carry you to the fur end o' the prayer-book afore\r
+you get back to 'em--my advice is, as you keep up your sperrits; for as\r
+for thinking you're a deep un, and ha' got more inside you nor 'ull\r
+bear daylight, I'm not o' that opinion at all, and so I tell the\r
+neighbours. For, says I, you talk o' Master Marner making out a\r
+tale--why, it's nonsense, that is: it 'ud take a 'cute man to make a\r
+tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a rabbit."\r
+\r
+During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his\r
+previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his\r
+hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been\r
+listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply, but\r
+Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant to be\r
+good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine\r
+falls on the wretched--he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it\r
+was very far off him.\r
+\r
+"Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?" said Mr.\r
+Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.\r
+\r
+"Oh," said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, "I thank\r
+you--thank you--kindly."\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would," said Mr. Macey; "and my\r
+advice is--have you got a Sunday suit?"\r
+\r
+"No," said Marner.\r
+\r
+"I doubted it was so," said Mr. Macey. "Now, let me advise you to get\r
+a Sunday suit: there's Tookey, he's a poor creatur, but he's got my\r
+tailoring business, and some o' my money in it, and he shall make a\r
+suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can come to\r
+church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you've never heared me say\r
+"Amen" since you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no\r
+time, for it'll be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself, for I\r
+mayn't be equil to stand i' the desk at all, come another winter."\r
+Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his\r
+hearer; but not observing any, he went on. "And as for the money for\r
+the suit o' clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound a-week at your\r
+weaving, Master Marner, and you're a young man, eh, for all you look so\r
+mushed. Why, you couldn't ha' been five-and-twenty when you come into\r
+these parts, eh?"\r
+\r
+Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and\r
+answered mildly, "I don't know; I can't rightly say--it's a long while\r
+since."\r
+\r
+After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr.\r
+Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner's\r
+head was "all of a muddle", and that it was to be doubted if he ever\r
+knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many\r
+a dog.\r
+\r
+Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a\r
+mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the\r
+wheelwright's wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely\r
+regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in\r
+the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in\r
+the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with\r
+Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours--a wish to be\r
+better than the "common run", that would have implied a reflection on\r
+those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and\r
+had an equal right to the burying-service. At the same time, it was\r
+understood to be requisite for all who were not household servants, or\r
+young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire\r
+Cass himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be\r
+"good livers" went to church with greater, though still with moderate,\r
+frequency.\r
+\r
+Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of\r
+scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer\r
+them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw\r
+a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which\r
+it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the\r
+vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition\r
+of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was\r
+to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and\r
+pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always first thought of\r
+in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when leeches\r
+were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly\r
+nurse. She was a "comfortable woman"--good-looking,\r
+fresh-complexioned, having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she\r
+felt herself in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present.\r
+But she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was\r
+simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost\r
+imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It\r
+seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his\r
+joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes\r
+and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men\r
+_would_ be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals\r
+whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls\r
+and turkey-cocks.\r
+\r
+This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn\r
+strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a\r
+sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with\r
+her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small\r
+lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron,\r
+an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which\r
+looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous\r
+curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed\r
+weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much\r
+increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the\r
+mysterious sound of the loom.\r
+\r
+"Ah, it is as I thought," said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.\r
+\r
+They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come\r
+to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have done, at a\r
+visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his heart had\r
+been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket\r
+was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his\r
+prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and\r
+half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from\r
+without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of\r
+his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.\r
+He opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning\r
+her greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that\r
+she was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed\r
+the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest\r
+way--\r
+\r
+"I'd a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out\r
+better nor common, and I'd ha' asked you to accept some, if you'd\r
+thought well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o' bread's\r
+what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's stomichs are\r
+made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know, God help 'em."\r
+\r
+Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her\r
+kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to\r
+look so at everything he took into his hand--eyed all the while by the\r
+wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of\r
+his mother's chair, and was peeping round from behind it.\r
+\r
+"There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em\r
+myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what\r
+they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on\r
+the pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?"\r
+\r
+Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.\r
+\r
+"Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly. "Well, whativer the\r
+letters are, they've a good meaning; and it's a stamp as has been in\r
+our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used\r
+to put it on the cakes, and I've allays put it on too; for if there's\r
+any good, we've need of it i' this world."\r
+\r
+"It's I. H. S.," said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped\r
+round the chair again.\r
+\r
+"Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off," said Dolly. "Ben's read 'em\r
+to me many and many a time, but they slip out o' my mind again; the\r
+more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they wouldn't be in the\r
+church; and so I prick 'em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though\r
+sometimes they won't hold, because o' the rising--for, as I said, if\r
+there's any good to be got we've need of it i' this world--that we\r
+have; and I hope they'll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it's wi'\r
+that will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held\r
+better nor common."\r
+\r
+Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no\r
+possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made\r
+itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than\r
+before--"Thank you--thank you kindly." But he laid down the cakes and\r
+seated himself absently--drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit\r
+towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly's kindness,\r
+could tend for him.\r
+\r
+"Ah, if there's good anywhere, we've need of it," repeated Dolly, who\r
+did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at Silas\r
+pityingly as she went on. "But you didn't hear the church-bells this\r
+morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn't know it was Sunday. Living\r
+so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and then, when your loom\r
+makes a noise, you can't hear the bells, more partic'lar now the frost\r
+kills the sound."\r
+\r
+"Yes, I did; I heard 'em," said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere\r
+accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had been no\r
+bells in Lantern Yard.\r
+\r
+"Dear heart!" said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. "But what a\r
+pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself--if you\r
+_didn't_ go to church; for if you'd a roasting bit, it might be as you\r
+couldn't leave it, being a lone man. But there's the bakehus, if you\r
+could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and\r
+then,--not every week, in course--I shouldn't like to do that\r
+myself,--you might carry your bit o' dinner there, for it's nothing but\r
+right to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as\r
+you can't know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day,\r
+this blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your\r
+dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew,\r
+and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the\r
+better, and you'd know which end you stood on, and you could put your\r
+trust i' Them as knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it\r
+lies on us all to do."\r
+\r
+Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for\r
+her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would\r
+have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of\r
+gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before been\r
+closely urged on the point of his absence from church, which had only\r
+been thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too\r
+direct and simple to evade Dolly's appeal.\r
+\r
+"Nay, nay," he said, "I know nothing o' church. I've never been to\r
+church."\r
+\r
+"No!" said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking\r
+herself of Silas's advent from an unknown country, she said, "Could it\r
+ha' been as they'd no church where you was born?"\r
+\r
+"Oh, yes," said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of\r
+leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. "There was churches--a\r
+many--it was a big town. But I knew nothing of 'em--I went to chapel."\r
+\r
+Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of\r
+inquiring further, lest "chapel" might mean some haunt of wickedness.\r
+After a little thought, she said--\r
+\r
+"Well, Master Marner, it's niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and\r
+if you've niver had no church, there's no telling the good it'll do\r
+you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I've been\r
+and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o' God,\r
+as Mr. Macey gives out--and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and\r
+more partic'lar on Sacramen' Day; and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel\r
+as I can put up wi' it, for I've looked for help i' the right quarter,\r
+and gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the\r
+last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to be believed as Them as are\r
+above us 'ull be worse nor we are, and come short o' Their'n."\r
+\r
+Poor Dolly's exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather\r
+unmeaningly on Silas's ears, for there was no word in it that could\r
+rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension\r
+was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of\r
+Dolly's, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He\r
+remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly's\r
+speech which he fully understood--her recommendation that he should go\r
+to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief\r
+questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple\r
+business, that words did not easily come to him without the urgency of\r
+a distinct purpose.\r
+\r
+But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver's awful\r
+presence, had advanced to his mother's side, and Silas, seeming to\r
+notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's signs of\r
+good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a\r
+little, and rubbed his head against his mother's shoulder, but still\r
+thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for it.\r
+\r
+"Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on her lap,\r
+however; "why, you don't want cake again yet awhile. He's wonderful\r
+hearty," she went on, with a little sigh--"that he is, God knows. He's\r
+my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must\r
+allays hev him in our sight--that we must."\r
+\r
+She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner\r
+good to see such a "pictur of a child". But Marner, on the other side\r
+of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round,\r
+with two dark spots in it.\r
+\r
+"And he's got a voice like a bird--you wouldn't think," Dolly went on;\r
+"he can sing a Christmas carril as his father's taught him; and I take\r
+it for a token as he'll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so\r
+quick. Come, Aaron, stan' up and sing the carril to Master Marner,\r
+come."\r
+\r
+Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother's shoulder.\r
+\r
+"Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly, gently. "Stan' up, when mother tells\r
+you, and let me hold the cake till you've done."\r
+\r
+Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under\r
+protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness,\r
+consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and\r
+then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious\r
+for the "carril", he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted,\r
+and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as\r
+far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head\r
+untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody\r
+that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer\r
+\r
+ "God rest you, merry gentlemen,\r
+ Let nothing you dismay,\r
+ For Jesus Christ our Savior\r
+ Was born on Christmas-day."\r
+\r
+\r
+Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some\r
+confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.\r
+\r
+"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had ended, and had\r
+secured his piece of cake again. "There's no other music equil to the\r
+Christmas music--"Hark the erol angils sing." And you may judge what\r
+it is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you\r
+can't help thinking you've got to a better place a'ready--for I\r
+wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows\r
+best--but what wi' the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad\r
+illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen times and times, one's\r
+thankful to hear of a better. The boy sings pretty, don't he, Master\r
+Marner?"\r
+\r
+"Yes," said Silas, absently, "very pretty."\r
+\r
+The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his\r
+ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of the\r
+effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was\r
+grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a\r
+bit more cake.\r
+\r
+"Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner," said Dolly, holding down Aaron's\r
+willing hands. "We must be going home now. And so I wish you\r
+good-bye, Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in your\r
+inside, as you can't fend for yourself, I'll come and clean up for you,\r
+and get you a bit o' victual, and willing. But I beg and pray of you\r
+to leave off weaving of a Sunday, for it's bad for soul and body--and\r
+the money as comes i' that way 'ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the\r
+last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody knows where, like the white frost.\r
+And you'll excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I\r
+wish you well--I do. Make your bow, Aaron."\r
+\r
+Silas said "Good-bye, and thank you kindly," as he opened the door for\r
+Dolly, but he couldn't help feeling relieved when she was\r
+gone--relieved that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her\r
+simple view of life and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer\r
+him, was only like a report of unknown objects, which his imagination\r
+could not fashion. The fountains of human love and of faith in a\r
+divine love had not yet been unlocked, and his soul was still the\r
+shrunken rivulet, with only this difference, that its little groove of\r
+sand was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly against dark\r
+obstruction.\r
+\r
+And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and Dolly\r
+Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating his meat\r
+in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a neighbourly\r
+present. In the morning he looked out on the black frost that seemed\r
+to press cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half-icy red pool\r
+shivered under the bitter wind; but towards evening the snow began to\r
+fall, and curtained from him even that dreary outlook, shutting him\r
+close up with his narrow grief. And he sat in his robbed home through\r
+the livelong evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock his\r
+door, pressing his head between his hands and moaning, till the cold\r
+grasped him and told him that his fire was grey.\r
+\r
+Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas Marner\r
+who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted in an\r
+unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.\r
+\r
+But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was\r
+fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among the\r
+abundant dark-green boughs--faces prepared for a longer service than\r
+usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those green boughs,\r
+the hymn and anthem never heard but at Christmas--even the Athanasian\r
+Creed, which was discriminated from the others only as being longer and\r
+of exceptional virtue, since it was only read on rare\r
+occasions--brought a vague exulting sense, for which the grown men\r
+could as little have found words as the children, that something great\r
+and mysterious had been done for them in heaven above and in earth\r
+below, which they were appropriating by their presence. And then the\r
+red faces made their way through the black biting frost to their own\r
+homes, feeling themselves free for the rest of the day to eat, drink,\r
+and be merry, and using that Christian freedom without diffidence.\r
+\r
+At Squire Cass's family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan--nobody\r
+was sorry for his absence, or feared it would be too long. The doctor\r
+and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the annual\r
+Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions, rising to the\r
+climax of Mr. Kimble's experience when he walked the London hospitals\r
+thirty years back, together with striking professional anecdotes then\r
+gathered. Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble's annual failure\r
+to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's irascibility concerning the odd\r
+trick which was rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his side,\r
+without a general visitation of tricks to see that they were formed on\r
+sound principles: the whole being accompanied by a strong steaming\r
+odour of spirits-and-water.\r
+\r
+But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly family party, was not\r
+the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the season at the Red House.\r
+It was the great dance on New Year's Eve that made the glory of Squire\r
+Cass's hospitality, as of his forefathers', time out of mind. This was\r
+the occasion when all the society of Raveloe and Tarley, whether old\r
+acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled\r
+acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves,\r
+or acquaintances founded on intermittent condescension, counted on\r
+meeting and on comporting themselves with mutual appropriateness. This\r
+was the occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions sent their\r
+bandboxes before them, supplied with more than their evening costume;\r
+for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town\r
+entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table\r
+at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if\r
+for a siege; and as for the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on\r
+floors, they were as plentiful as might naturally be expected in a\r
+family that had killed its own geese for many generations.\r
+\r
+Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year's Eve with a foolish\r
+reckless longing, that made him half deaf to his importunate companion,\r
+Anxiety.\r
+\r
+"Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blow-up, and\r
+how will you bribe his spite to silence?" said Anxiety.\r
+\r
+"Oh, he won't come home before New Year's Eve, perhaps," said Godfrey;\r
+"and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with her, and get a kind look\r
+from her in spite of herself."\r
+\r
+"But money is wanted in another quarter," said Anxiety, in a louder\r
+voice, "and how will you get it without selling your mother's diamond\r
+pin? And if you don't get it...?"\r
+\r
+"Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any rate,\r
+there's one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy is coming."\r
+\r
+"Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that will\r
+oblige you to decline marrying her--and to give your reasons?"\r
+\r
+"Hold your tongue, and don't worry me. I can see Nancy's eyes, just as\r
+they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already."\r
+\r
+But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to be\r
+utterly quieted even by much drinking.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XI\r
+\r
+Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a pillion,\r
+and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with a crown\r
+resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a coachman's\r
+greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of\r
+miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal deficiencies of\r
+contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow cheeks into lively\r
+contrast. It was all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy Lammeter's\r
+beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in that costume, as,\r
+seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one arm\r
+round him, and looked down, with open-eyed anxiety, at the treacherous\r
+snow-covered pools and puddles, which sent up formidable splashings of\r
+mud under the stamp of Dobbin's foot. A painter would, perhaps, have\r
+preferred her in those moments when she was free from\r
+self-consciousness; but certainly the bloom on her cheeks was at its\r
+highest point of contrast with the surrounding drab when she arrived at\r
+the door of the Red House, and saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift her\r
+from the pillion. She wished her sister Priscilla had come up at the\r
+same time behind the servant, for then she would have contrived that\r
+Mr. Godfrey should have lifted off Priscilla first, and, in the\r
+meantime, she would have persuaded her father to go round to the\r
+horse-block instead of alighting at the door-steps. It was very\r
+painful, when you had made it quite clear to a young man that you were\r
+determined not to marry him, however much he might wish it, that he\r
+would still continue to pay you marked attentions; besides, why didn't\r
+he always show the same attentions, if he meant them sincerely, instead\r
+of being so strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if\r
+he didn't want to speak to her, and taking no notice of her for weeks\r
+and weeks, and then, all on a sudden, almost making love again?\r
+Moreover, it was quite plain he had no real love for her, else he would\r
+not let people have _that_ to say of him which they did say. Did he\r
+suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire or no\r
+squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had been used to see\r
+in her own father, who was the soberest and best man in that\r
+country-side, only a little hot and hasty now and then, if things were\r
+not done to the minute.\r
+\r
+All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy's mind, in their habitual\r
+succession, in the moments between her first sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass\r
+standing at the door and her own arrival there. Happily, the Squire\r
+came out too and gave a loud greeting to her father, so that, somehow,\r
+under cover of this noise she seemed to find concealment for her\r
+confusion and neglect of any suitably formal behaviour, while she was\r
+being lifted from the pillion by strong arms which seemed to find her\r
+ridiculously small and light. And there was the best reason for\r
+hastening into the house at once, since the snow was beginning to fall\r
+again, threatening an unpleasant journey for such guests as were still\r
+on the road. These were a small minority; for already the afternoon\r
+was beginning to decline, and there would not be too much time for the\r
+ladies who came from a distance to attire themselves in readiness for\r
+the early tea which was to inspirit them for the dance.\r
+\r
+There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered,\r
+mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but the\r
+Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so\r
+much that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble,\r
+who did the honours at the Red House on these great occasions, came\r
+forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her up-stairs.\r
+Mrs. Kimble was the Squire's sister, as well as the doctor's wife--a\r
+double dignity, with which her diameter was in direct proportion; so\r
+that, a journey up-stairs being rather fatiguing to her, she did not\r
+oppose Miss Nancy's request to be allowed to find her way alone to the\r
+Blue Room, where the Miss Lammeters' bandboxes had been deposited on\r
+their arrival in the morning.\r
+\r
+There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine compliments were\r
+not passing and feminine toilettes going forward, in various stages, in\r
+space made scanty by extra beds spread upon the floor; and Miss Nancy,\r
+as she entered the Blue Room, had to make her little formal curtsy to a\r
+group of six. On the one hand, there were ladies no less important\r
+than the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant's daughters from Lytherly,\r
+dressed in the height of fashion, with the tightest skirts and the\r
+shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures)\r
+with a shyness not unsustained by inward criticism. Partly, Miss\r
+Ladbrook felt that her own skirt must be regarded as unduly lax by the\r
+Miss Gunns, and partly, that it was a pity the Miss Gunns did not show\r
+that judgment which she herself would show if she were in their place,\r
+by stopping a little on this side of the fashion. On the other hand,\r
+Mrs. Ladbrook was standing in skull-cap and front, with her turban in\r
+her hand, curtsying and smiling blandly and saying, "After you, ma'am,"\r
+to another lady in similar circumstances, who had politely offered the\r
+precedence at the looking-glass.\r
+\r
+But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her curtsy than an elderly lady came\r
+forward, whose full white muslin kerchief, and mob-cap round her curls\r
+of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast with the puffed yellow\r
+satins and top-knotted caps of her neighbours. She approached Miss\r
+Nancy with much primness, and said, with a slow, treble suavity--\r
+\r
+"Niece, I hope I see you well in health." Miss Nancy kissed her aunt's\r
+cheek dutifully, and answered, with the same sort of amiable primness,\r
+"Quite well, I thank you, aunt; and I hope I see you the same."\r
+\r
+"Thank you, niece; I keep my health for the present. And how is my\r
+brother-in-law?"\r
+\r
+These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it was\r
+ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were all as well as usual, and\r
+the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must certainly arrive\r
+shortly, and that travelling on pillions in snowy weather was\r
+unpleasant, though a joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy was\r
+formally introduced to her aunt's visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being\r
+the daughters of a mother known to _their_ mother, though now for the\r
+first time induced to make a journey into these parts; and these ladies\r
+were so taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and figure in\r
+an out-of-the-way country place, that they began to feel some curiosity\r
+about the dress she would put on when she took off her joseph. Miss\r
+Nancy, whose thoughts were always conducted with the propriety and\r
+moderation conspicuous in her manners, remarked to herself that the\r
+Miss Gunns were rather hard-featured than otherwise, and that such very\r
+low dresses as they wore might have been attributed to vanity if their\r
+shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they were, it was not\r
+reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks from a love of\r
+display, but rather from some obligation not inconsistent with sense\r
+and modesty. She felt convinced, as she opened her box, that this must\r
+be her aunt Osgood's opinion, for Miss Nancy's mind resembled her\r
+aunt's to a degree that everybody said was surprising, considering the\r
+kinship was on Mr. Osgood's side; and though you might not have\r
+supposed it from the formality of their greeting, there was a devoted\r
+attachment and mutual admiration between aunt and niece. Even Miss\r
+Nancy's refusal of her cousin Gilbert Osgood (on the ground solely that\r
+he was her cousin), though it had grieved her aunt greatly, had not in\r
+the least cooled the preference which had determined her to leave Nancy\r
+several of her hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert's future wife be whom\r
+she might.\r
+\r
+Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the Miss Gunns were quite\r
+content that Mrs. Osgood's inclination to remain with her niece gave\r
+them also a reason for staying to see the rustic beauty's toilette. And\r
+it was really a pleasure--from the first opening of the bandbox, where\r
+everything smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, to the clasping of the\r
+small coral necklace that fitted closely round her little white neck.\r
+Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and\r
+nattiness: not a crease was where it had no business to be, not a bit\r
+of her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; the\r
+very pins on her pincushion were stuck in after a pattern from which\r
+she was careful to allow no aberration; and as for her own person, it\r
+gave the same idea of perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a\r
+little bird. It is true that her light-brown hair was cropped behind\r
+like a boy's, and was dressed in front in a number of flat rings, that\r
+lay quite away from her face; but there was no sort of coiffure that\r
+could make Miss Nancy's cheek and neck look otherwise than pretty; and\r
+when at last she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her lace\r
+tucker, her coral necklace, and coral ear-drops, the Miss Gunns could\r
+see nothing to criticise except her hands, which bore the traces of\r
+butter-making, cheese-crushing, and even still coarser work. But Miss\r
+Nancy was not ashamed of that, for even while she was dressing she\r
+narrated to her aunt how she and Priscilla had packed their boxes\r
+yesterday, because this morning was baking morning, and since they were\r
+leaving home, it was desirable to make a good supply of meat-pies for\r
+the kitchen; and as she concluded this judicious remark, she turned to\r
+the Miss Gunns that she might not commit the rudeness of not including\r
+them in the conversation. The Miss Gunns smiled stiffly, and thought\r
+what a pity it was that these rich country people, who could afford to\r
+buy such good clothes (really Miss Nancy's lace and silk were very\r
+costly), should be brought up in utter ignorance and vulgarity. She\r
+actually said "mate" for "meat", "'appen" for "perhaps", and "oss" for\r
+"horse", which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly society, who\r
+habitually said 'orse, even in domestic privacy, and only said 'appen\r
+on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed,\r
+had never been to any school higher than Dame Tedman's: her\r
+acquaintance with profane literature hardly went beyond the rhymes she\r
+had worked in her large sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess; and\r
+in order to balance an account, she was obliged to effect her\r
+subtraction by removing visible metallic shillings and sixpences from a\r
+visible metallic total. There is hardly a servant-maid in these days\r
+who is not better informed than Miss Nancy; yet she had the essential\r
+attributes of a lady--high veracity, delicate honour in her dealings,\r
+deference to others, and refined personal habits,--and lest these\r
+should not suffice to convince grammatical fair ones that her feelings\r
+can at all resemble theirs, I will add that she was slightly proud and\r
+exacting, and as constant in her affection towards a baseless opinion\r
+as towards an erring lover.\r
+\r
+The anxiety about sister Priscilla, which had grown rather active by\r
+the time the coral necklace was clasped, was happily ended by the\r
+entrance of that cheerful-looking lady herself, with a face made blowsy\r
+by cold and damp. After the first questions and greetings, she turned\r
+to Nancy, and surveyed her from head to foot--then wheeled her round,\r
+to ascertain that the back view was equally faultless.\r
+\r
+"What do you think o' _these_ gowns, aunt Osgood?" said Priscilla,\r
+while Nancy helped her to unrobe.\r
+\r
+"Very handsome indeed, niece," said Mrs. Osgood, with a slight increase\r
+of formality. She always thought niece Priscilla too rough.\r
+\r
+"I'm obliged to have the same as Nancy, you know, for all I'm five\r
+years older, and it makes me look yallow; for she never _will_ have\r
+anything without I have mine just like it, because she wants us to look\r
+like sisters. And I tell her, folks 'ull think it's my weakness makes\r
+me fancy as I shall look pretty in what she looks pretty in. For I\r
+_am_ ugly--there's no denying that: I feature my father's family. But,\r
+law! I don't mind, do you?" Priscilla here turned to the Miss Gunns,\r
+rattling on in too much preoccupation with the delight of talking, to\r
+notice that her candour was not appreciated. "The pretty uns do for\r
+fly-catchers--they keep the men off us. I've no opinion o' the men,\r
+Miss Gunn--I don't know what _you_ have. And as for fretting and\r
+stewing about what _they_'ll think of you from morning till night, and\r
+making your life uneasy about what they're doing when they're out o'\r
+your sight--as I tell Nancy, it's a folly no woman need be guilty of,\r
+if she's got a good father and a good home: let her leave it to them as\r
+have got no fortin, and can't help themselves. As I say, Mr.\r
+Have-your-own-way is the best husband, and the only one I'd ever\r
+promise to obey. I know it isn't pleasant, when you've been used to\r
+living in a big way, and managing hogsheads and all that, to go and put\r
+your nose in by somebody else's fireside, or to sit down by yourself to\r
+a scrag or a knuckle; but, thank God! my father's a sober man and\r
+likely to live; and if you've got a man by the chimney-corner, it\r
+doesn't matter if he's childish--the business needn't be broke up."\r
+\r
+The delicate process of getting her narrow gown over her head without\r
+injury to her smooth curls, obliged Miss Priscilla to pause in this\r
+rapid survey of life, and Mrs. Osgood seized the opportunity of rising\r
+and saying--\r
+\r
+"Well, niece, you'll follow us. The Miss Gunns will like to go down."\r
+\r
+"Sister," said Nancy, when they were alone, "you've offended the Miss\r
+Gunns, I'm sure."\r
+\r
+"What have I done, child?" said Priscilla, in some alarm.\r
+\r
+"Why, you asked them if they minded about being ugly--you're so very\r
+blunt."\r
+\r
+"Law, did I? Well, it popped out: it's a mercy I said no more, for I'm\r
+a bad un to live with folks when they don't like the truth. But as for\r
+being ugly, look at me, child, in this silver-coloured silk--I told you\r
+how it 'ud be--I look as yallow as a daffadil. Anybody 'ud say you\r
+wanted to make a mawkin of me."\r
+\r
+"No, Priscy, don't say so. I begged and prayed of you not to let us\r
+have this silk if you'd like another better. I was willing to have\r
+_your_ choice, you know I was," said Nancy, in anxious self-vindication.\r
+\r
+"Nonsense, child! you know you'd set your heart on this; and reason\r
+good, for you're the colour o' cream. It 'ud be fine doings for you to\r
+dress yourself to suit _my_ skin. What I find fault with, is that\r
+notion o' yours as I must dress myself just like you. But you do as you\r
+like with me--you always did, from when first you begun to walk. If\r
+you wanted to go the field's length, the field's length you'd go; and\r
+there was no whipping you, for you looked as prim and innicent as a\r
+daisy all the while."\r
+\r
+"Priscy," said Nancy, gently, as she fastened a coral necklace, exactly\r
+like her own, round Priscilla's neck, which was very far from being\r
+like her own, "I'm sure I'm willing to give way as far as is right, but\r
+who shouldn't dress alike if it isn't sisters? Would you have us go\r
+about looking as if we were no kin to one another--us that have got no\r
+mother and not another sister in the world? I'd do what was right, if\r
+I dressed in a gown dyed with cheese-colouring; and I'd rather you'd\r
+choose, and let me wear what pleases you."\r
+\r
+"There you go again! You'd come round to the same thing if one talked\r
+to you from Saturday night till Saturday morning. It'll be fine fun to\r
+see how you'll master your husband and never raise your voice above the\r
+singing o' the kettle all the while. I like to see the men mastered!"\r
+\r
+"Don't talk _so_, Priscy," said Nancy, blushing. "You know I don't\r
+mean ever to be married."\r
+\r
+"Oh, you never mean a fiddlestick's end!" said Priscilla, as she\r
+arranged her discarded dress, and closed her bandbox. "Who shall _I_\r
+have to work for when father's gone, if you are to go and take notions\r
+in your head and be an old maid, because some folks are no better than\r
+they should be? I haven't a bit o' patience with you--sitting on an\r
+addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh un in the world.\r
+One old maid's enough out o' two sisters; and I shall do credit to a\r
+single life, for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come, we can go down\r
+now. I'm as ready as a mawkin _can_ be--there's nothing awanting to\r
+frighten the crows, now I've got my ear-droppers in."\r
+\r
+As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlour together, any\r
+one who did not know the character of both might certainly have\r
+supposed that the reason why the square-shouldered, clumsy,\r
+high-featured Priscilla wore a dress the facsimile of her pretty\r
+sister's, was either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the malicious\r
+contrivance of the other in order to set off her own rare beauty. But\r
+the good-natured self-forgetful cheeriness and common-sense of\r
+Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one suspicion; and the modest\r
+calm of Nancy's speech and manners told clearly of a mind free from all\r
+disavowed devices.\r
+\r
+Places of honour had been kept for the Miss Lammeters near the head of\r
+the principal tea-table in the wainscoted parlour, now looking fresh\r
+and pleasant with handsome branches of holly, yew, and laurel, from the\r
+abundant growths of the old garden; and Nancy felt an inward flutter,\r
+that no firmness of purpose could prevent, when she saw Mr. Godfrey\r
+Cass advancing to lead her to a seat between himself and Mr.\r
+Crackenthorp, while Priscilla was called to the opposite side between\r
+her father and the Squire. It certainly did make some difference to\r
+Nancy that the lover she had given up was the young man of quite the\r
+highest consequence in the parish--at home in a venerable and unique\r
+parlour, which was the extremity of grandeur in her experience, a\r
+parlour where _she_ might one day have been mistress, with the\r
+consciousness that she was spoken of as "Madam Cass", the Squire's\r
+wife. These circumstances exalted her inward drama in her own eyes,\r
+and deepened the emphasis with which she declared to herself that not\r
+the most dazzling rank should induce her to marry a man whose conduct\r
+showed him careless of his character, but that, "love once, love\r
+always", was the motto of a true and pure woman, and no man should ever\r
+have any right over her which would be a call on her to destroy the\r
+dried flowers that she treasured, and always would treasure, for\r
+Godfrey Cass's sake. And Nancy was capable of keeping her word to\r
+herself under very trying conditions. Nothing but a becoming blush\r
+betrayed the moving thoughts that urged themselves upon her as she\r
+accepted the seat next to Mr. Crackenthorp; for she was so\r
+instinctively neat and adroit in all her actions, and her pretty lips\r
+met each other with such quiet firmness, that it would have been\r
+difficult for her to appear agitated.\r
+\r
+It was not the rector's practice to let a charming blush pass without\r
+an appropriate compliment. He was not in the least lofty or\r
+aristocratic, but simply a merry-eyed, small-featured, grey-haired man,\r
+with his chin propped by an ample, many-creased white neckcloth which\r
+seemed to predominate over every other point in his person, and somehow\r
+to impress its peculiar character on his remarks; so that to have\r
+considered his amenities apart from his cravat would have been a\r
+severe, and perhaps a dangerous, effort of abstraction.\r
+\r
+"Ha, Miss Nancy," he said, turning his head within his cravat and\r
+smiling down pleasantly upon her, "when anybody pretends this has been\r
+a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw the roses blooming on New\r
+Year's Eve--eh, Godfrey, what do _you_ say?"\r
+\r
+Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking at Nancy very markedly; for\r
+though these complimentary personalities were held to be in excellent\r
+taste in old-fashioned Raveloe society, reverent love has a politeness\r
+of its own which it teaches to men otherwise of small schooling. But\r
+the Squire was rather impatient at Godfrey's showing himself a dull\r
+spark in this way. By this advanced hour of the day, the Squire was\r
+always in higher spirits than we have seen him in at the\r
+breakfast-table, and felt it quite pleasant to fulfil the hereditary\r
+duty of being noisily jovial and patronizing: the large silver\r
+snuff-box was in active service and was offered without fail to all\r
+neighbours from time to time, however often they might have declined\r
+the favour. At present, the Squire had only given an express welcome\r
+to the heads of families as they appeared; but always as the evening\r
+deepened, his hospitality rayed out more widely, till he had tapped the\r
+youngest guests on the back and shown a peculiar fondness for their\r
+presence, in the full belief that they must feel their lives made happy\r
+by their belonging to a parish where there was such a hearty man as\r
+Squire Cass to invite them and wish them well. Even in this early\r
+stage of the jovial mood, it was natural that he should wish to supply\r
+his son's deficiencies by looking and speaking for him.\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye," he began, offering his snuff-box to Mr. Lammeter, who for\r
+the second time bowed his head and waved his hand in stiff rejection of\r
+the offer, "us old fellows may wish ourselves young to-night, when we\r
+see the mistletoe-bough in the White Parlour. It's true, most things\r
+are gone back'ard in these last thirty years--the country's going down\r
+since the old king fell ill. But when I look at Miss Nancy here, I\r
+begin to think the lasses keep up their quality;--ding me if I remember\r
+a sample to match her, not when I was a fine young fellow, and thought\r
+a deal about my pigtail. No offence to you, madam," he added, bending\r
+to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who sat by him, "I didn't know _you_ when you\r
+were as young as Miss Nancy here."\r
+\r
+Mrs. Crackenthorp--a small blinking woman, who fidgeted incessantly\r
+with her lace, ribbons, and gold chain, turning her head about and\r
+making subdued noises, very much like a guinea-pig that twitches its\r
+nose and soliloquizes in all company indiscriminately--now blinked and\r
+fidgeted towards the Squire, and said, "Oh, no--no offence."\r
+\r
+This emphatic compliment of the Squire's to Nancy was felt by others\r
+besides Godfrey to have a diplomatic significance; and her father gave\r
+a slight additional erectness to his back, as he looked across the\r
+table at her with complacent gravity. That grave and orderly senior\r
+was not going to bate a jot of his dignity by seeming elated at the\r
+notion of a match between his family and the Squire's: he was gratified\r
+by any honour paid to his daughter; but he must see an alteration in\r
+several ways before his consent would be vouchsafed. His spare but\r
+healthy person, and high-featured firm face, that looked as if it had\r
+never been flushed by excess, was in strong contrast, not only with the\r
+Squire's, but with the appearance of the Raveloe farmers generally--in\r
+accordance with a favourite saying of his own, that "breed was stronger\r
+than pasture".\r
+\r
+"Miss Nancy's wonderful like what her mother was, though; isn't she,\r
+Kimble?" said the stout lady of that name, looking round for her\r
+husband.\r
+\r
+But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that title\r
+without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile man, was flitting\r
+about the room with his hands in his pockets, making himself agreeable\r
+to his feminine patients, with medical impartiality, and being welcomed\r
+everywhere as a doctor by hereditary right--not one of those miserable\r
+apothecaries who canvass for practice in strange neighbourhoods, and\r
+spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man of\r
+substance, able to keep an extravagant table like the best of his\r
+patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble;\r
+Kimble was inherently a doctor's name; and it was difficult to\r
+contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no\r
+son, so that his practice might one day be handed over to a successor\r
+with the incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the\r
+wiser people in Raveloe would employ Dr. Blick of Flitton--as less\r
+unnatural.\r
+\r
+"Did you speak to me, my dear?" said the authentic doctor, coming\r
+quickly to his wife's side; but, as if foreseeing that she would be too\r
+much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went on immediately--"Ha,\r
+Miss Priscilla, the sight of you revives the taste of that\r
+super-excellent pork-pie. I hope the batch isn't near an end."\r
+\r
+"Yes, indeed, it is, doctor," said Priscilla; "but I'll answer for it\r
+the next shall be as good. My pork-pies don't turn out well by chance."\r
+\r
+"Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?--because folks forget to take\r
+your physic, eh?" said the Squire, who regarded physic and doctors as\r
+many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy--tasting a joke\r
+against them when he was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid\r
+when anything was the matter with him. He tapped his box, and looked\r
+round with a triumphant laugh.\r
+\r
+"Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has," said the doctor,\r
+choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather than allow a\r
+brother-in-law that advantage over him. "She saves a little pepper to\r
+sprinkle over her talk--that's the reason why she never puts too much\r
+into her pies. There's my wife now, she never has an answer at her\r
+tongue's end; but if I offend her, she's sure to scarify my throat with\r
+black pepper the next day, or else give me the colic with watery\r
+greens. That's an awful tit-for-tat." Here the vivacious doctor made\r
+a pathetic grimace.\r
+\r
+"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, laughing above her\r
+double chin with much good-humour, aside to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who\r
+blinked and nodded, and seemed to intend a smile, which, by the\r
+correlation of forces, went off in small twitchings and noises.\r
+\r
+"I suppose that's the sort of tit-for-tat adopted in your profession,\r
+Kimble, if you've a grudge against a patient," said the rector.\r
+\r
+"Never do have a grudge against our patients," said Mr. Kimble, "except\r
+when they leave us: and then, you see, we haven't the chance of\r
+prescribing for 'em. Ha, Miss Nancy," he continued, suddenly skipping\r
+to Nancy's side, "you won't forget your promise? You're to save a dance\r
+for me, you know."\r
+\r
+"Come, come, Kimble, don't you be too for'ard," said the Squire. "Give\r
+the young uns fair-play. There's my son Godfrey'll be wanting to have\r
+a round with you if you run off with Miss Nancy. He's bespoke her for\r
+the first dance, I'll be bound. Eh, sir! what do you say?" he\r
+continued, throwing himself backward, and looking at Godfrey. "Haven't\r
+you asked Miss Nancy to open the dance with you?"\r
+\r
+Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this significant insistence about\r
+Nancy, and afraid to think where it would end by the time his father\r
+had set his usual hospitable example of drinking before and after\r
+supper, saw no course open but to turn to Nancy and say, with as little\r
+awkwardness as possible--\r
+\r
+"No; I've not asked her yet, but I hope she'll consent--if somebody\r
+else hasn't been before me."\r
+\r
+"No, I've not engaged myself," said Nancy, quietly, though blushingly.\r
+(If Mr. Godfrey founded any hopes on her consenting to dance with him,\r
+he would soon be undeceived; but there was no need for her to be\r
+uncivil.)\r
+\r
+"Then I hope you've no objections to dancing with me," said Godfrey,\r
+beginning to lose the sense that there was anything uncomfortable in\r
+this arrangement.\r
+\r
+"No, no objections," said Nancy, in a cold tone.\r
+\r
+"Ah, well, you're a lucky fellow, Godfrey," said uncle Kimble; "but\r
+you're my godson, so I won't stand in your way. Else I'm not so very\r
+old, eh, my dear?" he went on, skipping to his wife's side again.\r
+"You wouldn't mind my having a second after you were gone--not if I\r
+cried a good deal first?"\r
+\r
+"Come, come, take a cup o' tea and stop your tongue, do," said\r
+good-humoured Mrs. Kimble, feeling some pride in a husband who must be\r
+regarded as so clever and amusing by the company generally. If he had\r
+only not been irritable at cards!\r
+\r
+While safe, well-tested personalities were enlivening the tea in this\r
+way, the sound of the fiddle approaching within a distance at which it\r
+could be heard distinctly, made the young people look at each other\r
+with sympathetic impatience for the end of the meal.\r
+\r
+"Why, there's Solomon in the hall," said the Squire, "and playing my\r
+fav'rite tune, _I_ believe--"The flaxen-headed ploughboy"--he's for\r
+giving us a hint as we aren't enough in a hurry to hear him play.\r
+Bob," he called out to his third long-legged son, who was at the other\r
+end of the room, "open the door, and tell Solomon to come in. He shall\r
+give us a tune here."\r
+\r
+Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling as he walked, for he would\r
+on no account break off in the middle of a tune.\r
+\r
+"Here, Solomon," said the Squire, with loud patronage. "Round here, my\r
+man. Ah, I knew it was "The flaxen-headed ploughboy": there's no finer\r
+tune."\r
+\r
+Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an abundant crop of long white\r
+hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, advanced to the indicated spot,\r
+bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as to say that he respected\r
+the company, though he respected the key-note more. As soon as he had\r
+repeated the tune and lowered his fiddle, he bowed again to the Squire\r
+and the rector, and said, "I hope I see your honour and your reverence\r
+well, and wishing you health and long life and a happy New Year. And\r
+wishing the same to you, Mr. Lammeter, sir; and to the other gentlemen,\r
+and the madams, and the young lasses."\r
+\r
+As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed in all directions\r
+solicitously, lest he should be wanting in due respect. But thereupon\r
+he immediately began to prelude, and fell into the tune which he knew\r
+would be taken as a special compliment by Mr. Lammeter.\r
+\r
+"Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye," said Mr. Lammeter when the fiddle paused\r
+again. "That's "Over the hills and far away", that is. My father used\r
+to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, "Ah, lad, _I_ come from over\r
+the hills and far away." There's a many tunes I don't make head or\r
+tail of; but that speaks to me like the blackbird's whistle. I suppose\r
+it's the name: there's a deal in the name of a tune."\r
+\r
+But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and presently broke\r
+with much spirit into "Sir Roger de Coverley", at which there was a\r
+sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing voices.\r
+\r
+"Aye, aye, Solomon, we know what that means," said the Squire, rising.\r
+"It's time to begin the dance, eh? Lead the way, then, and we'll all\r
+follow you."\r
+\r
+So Solomon, holding his white head on one side, and playing vigorously,\r
+marched forward at the head of the gay procession into the White\r
+Parlour, where the mistletoe-bough was hung, and multitudinous tallow\r
+candles made rather a brilliant effect, gleaming from among the berried\r
+holly-boughs, and reflected in the old-fashioned oval mirrors fastened\r
+in the panels of the white wainscot. A quaint procession! Old\r
+Solomon, in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed to be luring\r
+that decent company by the magic scream of his fiddle--luring discreet\r
+matrons in turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp herself, the\r
+summit of whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire's\r
+shoulder--luring fair lasses complacently conscious of very short\r
+waists and skirts blameless of front-folds--luring burly fathers in\r
+large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and\r
+sheepish, in short nether garments and very long coat-tails.\r
+\r
+Already Mr. Macey and a few other privileged villagers, who were\r
+allowed to be spectators on these great occasions, were seated on\r
+benches placed for them near the door; and great was the admiration and\r
+satisfaction in that quarter when the couples had formed themselves for\r
+the dance, and the Squire led off with Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands\r
+with the rector and Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should be--that was\r
+what everybody had been used to--and the charter of Raveloe seemed to\r
+be renewed by the ceremony. It was not thought of as an unbecoming\r
+levity for the old and middle-aged people to dance a little before\r
+sitting down to cards, but rather as part of their social duties. For\r
+what were these if not to be merry at appropriate times, interchanging\r
+visits and poultry with due frequency, paying each other\r
+old-established compliments in sound traditional phrases, passing\r
+well-tried personal jokes, urging your guests to eat and drink too much\r
+out of hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in your\r
+neighbour's house to show that you liked your cheer? And the parson\r
+naturally set an example in these social duties. For it would not have\r
+been possible for the Raveloe mind, without a peculiar revelation, to\r
+know that a clergyman should be a pale-faced memento of solemnities,\r
+instead of a reasonably faulty man whose exclusive authority to read\r
+prayers and preach, to christen, marry, and bury you, necessarily\r
+coexisted with the right to sell you the ground to be buried in and to\r
+take tithe in kind; on which last point, of course, there was a little\r
+grumbling, but not to the extent of irreligion--not of deeper\r
+significance than the grumbling at the rain, which was by no means\r
+accompanied with a spirit of impious defiance, but with a desire that\r
+the prayer for fine weather might be read forthwith.\r
+\r
+There was no reason, then, why the rector's dancing should not be\r
+received as part of the fitness of things quite as much as the\r
+Squire's, or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey's official respect\r
+should restrain him from subjecting the parson's performance to that\r
+criticism with which minds of extraordinary acuteness must necessarily\r
+contemplate the doings of their fallible fellow-men.\r
+\r
+"The Squire's pretty springe, considering his weight," said Mr. Macey,\r
+"and he stamps uncommon well. But Mr. Lammeter beats 'em all for\r
+shapes: you see he holds his head like a sodger, and he isn't so\r
+cushiony as most o' the oldish gentlefolks--they run fat in general;\r
+and he's got a fine leg. The parson's nimble enough, but he hasn't got\r
+much of a leg: it's a bit too thick down'ard, and his knees might be a\r
+bit nearer wi'out damage; but he might do worse, he might do worse.\r
+Though he hasn't that grand way o' waving his hand as the Squire has."\r
+\r
+"Talk o' nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood," said Ben Winthrop, who was\r
+holding his son Aaron between his knees. "She trips along with her\r
+little steps, so as nobody can see how she goes--it's like as if she\r
+had little wheels to her feet. She doesn't look a day older nor last\r
+year: she's the finest-made woman as is, let the next be where she\r
+will."\r
+\r
+"I don't heed how the women are made," said Mr. Macey, with some\r
+contempt. "They wear nayther coat nor breeches: you can't make much\r
+out o' their shapes."\r
+\r
+"Fayder," said Aaron, whose feet were busy beating out the tune, "how\r
+does that big cock's-feather stick in Mrs. Crackenthorp's yead? Is\r
+there a little hole for it, like in my shuttle-cock?"\r
+\r
+"Hush, lad, hush; that's the way the ladies dress theirselves, that\r
+is," said the father, adding, however, in an undertone to Mr. Macey,\r
+"It does make her look funny, though--partly like a short-necked bottle\r
+wi' a long quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there's the young Squire\r
+leading off now, wi' Miss Nancy for partners! There's a lass for\r
+you!--like a pink-and-white posy--there's nobody 'ud think as anybody\r
+could be so pritty. I shouldn't wonder if she's Madam Cass some day,\r
+arter all--and nobody more rightfuller, for they'd make a fine match.\r
+You can find nothing against Master Godfrey's shapes, Macey, _I_'ll bet\r
+a penny."\r
+\r
+Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his head further on one side,\r
+and twirled his thumbs with a presto movement as his eyes followed\r
+Godfrey up the dance. At last he summed up his opinion.\r
+\r
+"Pretty well down'ard, but a bit too round i' the shoulder-blades. And\r
+as for them coats as he gets from the Flitton tailor, they're a poor\r
+cut to pay double money for."\r
+\r
+"Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks," said Ben, slightly indignant\r
+at this carping. "When I've got a pot o' good ale, I like to swaller\r
+it, and do my inside good, i'stead o' smelling and staring at it to see\r
+if I can't find faut wi' the brewing. I should like you to pick me out\r
+a finer-limbed young fellow nor Master Godfrey--one as 'ud knock you\r
+down easier, or 's more pleasanter-looksed when he's piert and merry."\r
+\r
+"Tchuh!" said Mr. Macey, provoked to increased severity, "he isn't\r
+come to his right colour yet: he's partly like a slack-baked pie. And\r
+I doubt he's got a soft place in his head, else why should he be turned\r
+round the finger by that offal Dunsey as nobody's seen o' late, and let\r
+him kill that fine hunting hoss as was the talk o' the country? And\r
+one while he was allays after Miss Nancy, and then it all went off\r
+again, like a smell o' hot porridge, as I may say. That wasn't my way\r
+when _I_ went a-coorting."\r
+\r
+"Ah, but mayhap Miss Nancy hung off, like, and your lass didn't," said\r
+Ben.\r
+\r
+"I should say she didn't," said Mr. Macey, significantly. "Before I\r
+said "sniff", I took care to know as she'd say "snaff", and pretty\r
+quick too. I wasn't a-going to open _my_ mouth, like a dog at a fly,\r
+and snap it to again, wi' nothing to swaller."\r
+\r
+"Well, I think Miss Nancy's a-coming round again," said Ben, "for\r
+Master Godfrey doesn't look so down-hearted to-night. And I see he's\r
+for taking her away to sit down, now they're at the end o' the dance:\r
+that looks like sweethearting, that does."\r
+\r
+The reason why Godfrey and Nancy had left the dance was not so tender\r
+as Ben imagined. In the close press of couples a slight accident had\r
+happened to Nancy's dress, which, while it was short enough to show her\r
+neat ankle in front, was long enough behind to be caught under the\r
+stately stamp of the Squire's foot, so as to rend certain stitches at\r
+the waist, and cause much sisterly agitation in Priscilla's mind, as\r
+well as serious concern in Nancy's. One's thoughts may be much\r
+occupied with love-struggles, but hardly so as to be insensible to a\r
+disorder in the general framework of things. Nancy had no sooner\r
+completed her duty in the figure they were dancing than she said to\r
+Godfrey, with a deep blush, that she must go and sit down till\r
+Priscilla could come to her; for the sisters had already exchanged a\r
+short whisper and an open-eyed glance full of meaning. No reason less\r
+urgent than this could have prevailed on Nancy to give Godfrey this\r
+opportunity of sitting apart with her. As for Godfrey, he was feeling\r
+so happy and oblivious under the long charm of the country-dance with\r
+Nancy, that he got rather bold on the strength of her confusion, and\r
+was capable of leading her straight away, without leave asked, into the\r
+adjoining small parlour, where the card-tables were set.\r
+\r
+"Oh no, thank you," said Nancy, coldly, as soon as she perceived where\r
+he was going, "not in there. I'll wait here till Priscilla's ready to\r
+come to me. I'm sorry to bring you out of the dance and make myself\r
+troublesome."\r
+\r
+"Why, you'll be more comfortable here by yourself," said the artful\r
+Godfrey: "I'll leave you here till your sister can come." He spoke in\r
+an indifferent tone.\r
+\r
+That was an agreeable proposition, and just what Nancy desired; why,\r
+then, was she a little hurt that Mr. Godfrey should make it? They\r
+entered, and she seated herself on a chair against one of the\r
+card-tables, as the stiffest and most unapproachable position she could\r
+choose.\r
+\r
+"Thank you, sir," she said immediately. "I needn't give you any more\r
+trouble. I'm sorry you've had such an unlucky partner."\r
+\r
+"That's very ill-natured of you," said Godfrey, standing by her without\r
+any sign of intended departure, "to be sorry you've danced with me."\r
+\r
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't mean to say what's ill-natured at all," said\r
+Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty. "When gentlemen have so\r
+many pleasures, one dance can matter but very little."\r
+\r
+"You know that isn't true. You know one dance with you matters more to\r
+me than all the other pleasures in the world."\r
+\r
+It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything so direct as\r
+that, and Nancy was startled. But her instinctive dignity and\r
+repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and\r
+only throw a little more decision into her voice, as she said--\r
+\r
+"No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that's not known to me, and I have very good\r
+reasons for thinking different. But if it's true, I don't wish to hear\r
+it."\r
+\r
+"Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy--never think well of me, let\r
+what would happen--would you never think the present made amends for\r
+the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up everything you\r
+didn't like?"\r
+\r
+Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking to\r
+Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had got\r
+the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by the\r
+possibility Godfrey's words suggested, but this very pressure of\r
+emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for her roused all\r
+her power of self-command.\r
+\r
+"I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey," she\r
+answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone, "but it\r
+'ud be better if no change was wanted."\r
+\r
+"You're very hard-hearted, Nancy," said Godfrey, pettishly. "You might\r
+encourage me to be a better fellow. I'm very miserable--but you've no\r
+feeling."\r
+\r
+"I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with,"\r
+said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself. Godfrey was\r
+delighted with that little flash, and would have liked to go on and\r
+make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so exasperatingly quiet and firm.\r
+But she was not indifferent to him _yet_, though--\r
+\r
+The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, "Dear heart\r
+alive, child, let us look at this gown," cut off Godfrey's hopes of a\r
+quarrel.\r
+\r
+"I suppose I must go now," he said to Priscilla.\r
+\r
+"It's no matter to me whether you go or stay," said that frank lady,\r
+searching for something in her pocket, with a preoccupied brow.\r
+\r
+"Do _you_ want me to go?" said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was now\r
+standing up by Priscilla's order.\r
+\r
+"As you like," said Nancy, trying to recover all her former coldness,\r
+and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown.\r
+\r
+"Then I like to stay," said Godfrey, with a reckless determination to\r
+get as much of this joy as he could to-night, and think nothing of the\r
+morrow.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XII\r
+\r
+While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the sweet\r
+presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of that hidden bond which\r
+at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle irritation with\r
+the very sunshine, Godfrey's wife was walking with slow uncertain steps\r
+through the snow-covered Raveloe lanes, carrying her child in her arms.\r
+\r
+This journey on New Year's Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance\r
+which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of\r
+passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his\r
+wife. There would be a great party at the Red House on New Year's Eve,\r
+she knew: her husband would be smiling and smiled upon, hiding _her_\r
+existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his\r
+pleasure: she would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as\r
+handsome as the best, with her little child that had its father's hair\r
+and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire as his eldest son's wife.\r
+It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a\r
+wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable. Molly knew that the\r
+cause of her dingy rags was not her husband's neglect, but the demon\r
+Opium to whom she was enslaved, body and soul, except in the lingering\r
+mother's tenderness that refused to give him her hungry child. She\r
+knew this well; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed\r
+consciousness, the sense of her want and degradation transformed itself\r
+continually into bitterness towards Godfrey. _He_ was well off; and if\r
+she had her rights she would be well off too. The belief that he\r
+repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only aggravated her\r
+vindictiveness. Just and self-reproving thoughts do not come to us too\r
+thickly, even in the purest air, and with the best lessons of heaven\r
+and earth; how should those white-winged delicate messengers make their\r
+way to Molly's poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher memories than\r
+those of a barmaid's paradise of pink ribbons and gentlemen's jokes?\r
+\r
+She had set out at an early hour, but had lingered on the road,\r
+inclined by her indolence to believe that if she waited under a warm\r
+shed the snow would cease to fall. She had waited longer than she\r
+knew, and now that she found herself belated in the snow-hidden\r
+ruggedness of the long lanes, even the animation of a vindictive\r
+purpose could not keep her spirit from failing. It was seven o'clock,\r
+and by this time she was not very far from Raveloe, but she was not\r
+familiar enough with those monotonous lanes to know how near she was to\r
+her journey's end. She needed comfort, and she knew but one\r
+comforter--the familiar demon in her bosom; but she hesitated a moment,\r
+after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it to her lips.\r
+In that moment the mother's love pleaded for painful consciousness\r
+rather than oblivion--pleaded to be left in aching weariness, rather\r
+than to have the encircling arms benumbed so that they could not feel\r
+the dear burden. In another moment Molly had flung something away, but\r
+it was not the black remnant--it was an empty phial. And she walked on\r
+again under the breaking cloud, from which there came now and then the\r
+light of a quickly veiled star, for a freezing wind had sprung up since\r
+the snowing had ceased. But she walked always more and more drowsily,\r
+and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her\r
+bosom.\r
+\r
+Slowly the demon was working his will, and cold and weariness were his\r
+helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme immediate longing that\r
+curtained off all futurity--the longing to lie down and sleep. She had\r
+arrived at a spot where her footsteps were no longer checked by a\r
+hedgerow, and she had wandered vaguely, unable to distinguish any\r
+objects, notwithstanding the wide whiteness around her, and the growing\r
+starlight. She sank down against a straggling furze bush, an easy\r
+pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. She did not feel\r
+that the bed was cold, and did not heed whether the child would wake\r
+and cry for her. But her arms had not yet relaxed their instinctive\r
+clutch; and the little one slumbered on as gently as if it had been\r
+rocked in a lace-trimmed cradle.\r
+\r
+But the complete torpor came at last: the fingers lost their tension,\r
+the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the\r
+blue eyes opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a\r
+little peevish cry of "mammy", and an effort to regain the pillowing\r
+arm and bosom; but mammy's ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to be\r
+slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its\r
+mother's knees, all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright\r
+glancing light on the white ground, and, with the ready transition of\r
+infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living\r
+thing running towards it, yet never arriving. That bright living thing\r
+must be caught; and in an instant the child had slipped on all-fours,\r
+and held out one little hand to catch the gleam. But the gleam would\r
+not be caught in that way, and now the head was held up to see where\r
+the cunning gleam came from. It came from a very bright place; and the\r
+little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy\r
+shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind it, and the queer little\r
+bonnet dangling at its back--toddled on to the open door of Silas\r
+Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where there was a\r
+bright fire of logs and sticks, which had thoroughly warmed the old\r
+sack (Silas's greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry. The little\r
+one, accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without notice from\r
+its mother, squatted down on the sack, and spread its tiny hands\r
+towards the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling and making many\r
+inarticulate communications to the cheerful fire, like a new-hatched\r
+gosling beginning to find itself comfortable. But presently the warmth\r
+had a lulling effect, and the little golden head sank down on the old\r
+sack, and the blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-transparent\r
+lids.\r
+\r
+But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to his\r
+hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child. During\r
+the last few weeks, since he had lost his money, he had contracted the\r
+habit of opening his door and looking out from time to time, as if he\r
+thought that his money might be somehow coming back to him, or that\r
+some trace, some news of it, might be mysteriously on the road, and be\r
+caught by the listening ear or the straining eye. It was chiefly at\r
+night, when he was not occupied in his loom, that he fell into this\r
+repetition of an act for which he could have assigned no definite\r
+purpose, and which can hardly be understood except by those who have\r
+undergone a bewildering separation from a supremely loved object. In\r
+the evening twilight, and later whenever the night was not dark, Silas\r
+looked out on that narrow prospect round the Stone-pits, listening and\r
+gazing, not with hope, but with mere yearning and unrest.\r
+\r
+This morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was New\r
+Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung out and\r
+the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money\r
+back again. This was only a friendly Raveloe-way of jesting with the\r
+half-crazy oddities of a miser, but it had perhaps helped to throw\r
+Silas into a more than usually excited state. Since the on-coming of\r
+twilight he had opened his door again and again, though only to shut it\r
+immediately at seeing all distance veiled by the falling snow. But the\r
+last time he opened it the snow had ceased, and the clouds were parting\r
+here and there. He stood and listened, and gazed for a long\r
+while--there was really something on the road coming towards him then,\r
+but he caught no sign of it; and the stillness and the wide trackless\r
+snow seemed to narrow his solitude, and touched his yearning with the\r
+chill of despair. He went in again, and put his right hand on the\r
+latch of the door to close it--but he did not close it: he was\r
+arrested, as he had been already since his loss, by the invisible wand\r
+of catalepsy, and stood like a graven image, with wide but sightless\r
+eyes, holding open his door, powerless to resist either the good or the\r
+evil that might enter there.\r
+\r
+When Marner's sensibility returned, he continued the action which had\r
+been arrested, and closed his door, unaware of the chasm in his\r
+consciousness, unaware of any intermediate change, except that the\r
+light had grown dim, and that he was chilled and faint. He thought he\r
+had been too long standing at the door and looking out. Turning\r
+towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth\r
+only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair,\r
+and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred\r
+vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the\r
+hearth. Gold!--his own gold--brought back to him as mysteriously as it\r
+had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and\r
+for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the\r
+restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger\r
+beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched\r
+forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar\r
+resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter\r
+amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the\r
+marvel: it was a sleeping child--a round, fair thing, with soft yellow\r
+rings all over its head. Could this be his little sister come back to\r
+him in a dream--his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms\r
+for a year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or\r
+stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas's blank\r
+wonderment. _Was_ it a dream? He rose to his feet again, pushed his\r
+logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and sticks, raised a\r
+flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision--it only lit up more\r
+distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing.\r
+It was very much like his little sister. Silas sank into his chair\r
+powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a\r
+hurrying influx of memories. How and when had the child come in\r
+without his knowledge? He had never been beyond the door. But along\r
+with that question, and almost thrusting it away, there was a vision of\r
+the old home and the old streets leading to Lantern Yard--and within\r
+that vision another, of the thoughts which had been present with him in\r
+those far-off scenes. The thoughts were strange to him now, like old\r
+friendships impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that\r
+this child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life: it\r
+stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloe--old quiverings of\r
+tenderness--old impressions of awe at the presentiment of some Power\r
+presiding over his life; for his imagination had not yet extricated\r
+itself from the sense of mystery in the child's sudden presence, and\r
+had formed no conjectures of ordinary natural means by which the event\r
+could have been brought about.\r
+\r
+But there was a cry on the hearth: the child had awaked, and Marner\r
+stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung round his neck, and burst\r
+louder and louder into that mingling of inarticulate cries with "mammy"\r
+by which little children express the bewilderment of waking. Silas\r
+pressed it to him, and almost unconsciously uttered sounds of hushing\r
+tenderness, while he bethought himself that some of his porridge, which\r
+had got cool by the dying fire, would do to feed the child with if it\r
+were only warmed up a little.\r
+\r
+He had plenty to do through the next hour. The porridge, sweetened\r
+with some dry brown sugar from an old store which he had refrained from\r
+using for himself, stopped the cries of the little one, and made her\r
+lift her blue eyes with a wide quiet gaze at Silas, as he put the spoon\r
+into her mouth. Presently she slipped from his knee and began to\r
+toddle about, but with a pretty stagger that made Silas jump up and\r
+follow her lest she should fall against anything that would hurt her.\r
+But she only fell in a sitting posture on the ground, and began to pull\r
+at her boots, looking up at him with a crying face as if the boots hurt\r
+her. He took her on his knee again, but it was some time before it\r
+occurred to Silas's dull bachelor mind that the wet boots were the\r
+grievance, pressing on her warm ankles. He got them off with\r
+difficulty, and baby was at once happily occupied with the primary\r
+mystery of her own toes, inviting Silas, with much chuckling, to\r
+consider the mystery too. But the wet boots had at last suggested to\r
+Silas that the child had been walking on the snow, and this roused him\r
+from his entire oblivion of any ordinary means by which it could have\r
+entered or been brought into his house. Under the prompting of this\r
+new idea, and without waiting to form conjectures, he raised the child\r
+in his arms, and went to the door. As soon as he had opened it, there\r
+was the cry of "mammy" again, which Silas had not heard since the\r
+child's first hungry waking. Bending forward, he could just discern\r
+the marks made by the little feet on the virgin snow, and he followed\r
+their track to the furze bushes. "Mammy!" the little one cried again\r
+and again, stretching itself forward so as almost to escape from\r
+Silas's arms, before he himself was aware that there was something more\r
+than the bush before him--that there was a human body, with the head\r
+sunk low in the furze, and half-covered with the shaken snow.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XIII\r
+\r
+It was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and the\r
+entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself had passed into\r
+easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual accomplishments,\r
+could at length be prevailed on to dance a hornpipe, and when the\r
+Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering snuff, and patting his\r
+visitors' backs, to sitting longer at the whist-table--a choice\r
+exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being always volatile in sober\r
+business hours, became intense and bitter over cards and brandy,\r
+shuffled before his adversary's deal with a glare of suspicion, and\r
+turned up a mean trump-card with an air of inexpressible disgust, as if\r
+in a world where such things could happen one might as well enter on a\r
+course of reckless profligacy. When the evening had advanced to this\r
+pitch of freedom and enjoyment, it was usual for the servants, the\r
+heavy duties of supper being well over, to get their share of amusement\r
+by coming to look on at the dancing; so that the back regions of the\r
+house were left in solitude.\r
+\r
+There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from the\r
+hall, and they were both standing open for the sake of air; but the\r
+lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only the\r
+upper doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe, and\r
+his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he repeatedly declared\r
+to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that implied this\r
+to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the centre of a\r
+group who had placed themselves opposite the performer, not far from\r
+the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, not to admire\r
+his brother's dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who was seated in\r
+the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because he wished to avoid\r
+suggesting himself as a subject for the Squire's fatherly jokes in\r
+connection with matrimony and Miss Nancy Lammeter's beauty, which were\r
+likely to become more and more explicit. But he had the prospect of\r
+dancing with her again when the hornpipe was concluded, and in the\r
+meanwhile it was very pleasant to get long glances at her quite\r
+unobserved.\r
+\r
+But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those long glances,\r
+they encountered an object as startling to him at that moment as if it\r
+had been an apparition from the dead. It _was_ an apparition from that\r
+hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street, behind the goodly\r
+ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable\r
+admirers. It was his own child, carried in Silas Marner's arms. That\r
+was his instantaneous impression, unaccompanied by doubt, though he had\r
+not seen the child for months past; and when the hope was rising that\r
+he might possibly be mistaken, Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Lammeter had\r
+already advanced to Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent.\r
+Godfrey joined them immediately, unable to rest without hearing every\r
+word--trying to control himself, but conscious that if any one noticed\r
+him, they must see that he was white-lipped and trembling.\r
+\r
+But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas Marner; the\r
+Squire himself had risen, and asked angrily, "How's this?--what's\r
+this?--what do you do coming in here in this way?"\r
+\r
+"I'm come for the doctor--I want the doctor," Silas had said, in the\r
+first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp.\r
+\r
+"Why, what's the matter, Marner?" said the rector. "The doctor's\r
+here; but say quietly what you want him for."\r
+\r
+"It's a woman," said Silas, speaking low, and half-breathlessly, just\r
+as Godfrey came up. "She's dead, I think--dead in the snow at the\r
+Stone-pits--not far from my door."\r
+\r
+Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that\r
+moment: it was, that the woman might _not_ be dead. That was an evil\r
+terror--an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in Godfrey's\r
+kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes\r
+to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.\r
+\r
+"Hush, hush!" said Mr. Crackenthorp. "Go out into the hall there.\r
+I'll fetch the doctor to you. Found a woman in the snow--and thinks\r
+she's dead," he added, speaking low to the Squire. "Better say as\r
+little about it as possible: it will shock the ladies. Just tell them\r
+a poor woman is ill from cold and hunger. I'll go and fetch Kimble."\r
+\r
+By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, curious to know\r
+what could have brought the solitary linen-weaver there under such\r
+strange circumstances, and interested in the pretty child, who, half\r
+alarmed and half attracted by the brightness and the numerous company,\r
+now frowned and hid her face, now lifted up her head again and looked\r
+round placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought back the frown,\r
+and made her bury her face with new determination.\r
+\r
+"What child is it?" said several ladies at once, and, among the rest,\r
+Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey.\r
+\r
+"I don't know--some poor woman's who has been found in the snow, I\r
+believe," was the answer Godfrey wrung from himself with a terrible\r
+effort. ("After all, _am_ I certain?" he hastened to add, silently,\r
+in anticipation of his own conscience.)\r
+\r
+"Why, you'd better leave the child here, then, Master Marner," said\r
+good-natured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating, however, to take those dingy\r
+clothes into contact with her own ornamented satin bodice. "I'll tell\r
+one o' the girls to fetch it."\r
+\r
+"No--no--I can't part with it, I can't let it go," said Silas,\r
+abruptly. "It's come to me--I've a right to keep it."\r
+\r
+The proposition to take the child from him had come to Silas quite\r
+unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered under a strong sudden impulse,\r
+was almost like a revelation to himself: a minute before, he had no\r
+distinct intention about the child.\r
+\r
+"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, in mild surprise, to\r
+her neighbour.\r
+\r
+"Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside," said Mr. Kimble,\r
+coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the interruption, but\r
+drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to\r
+unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly sober.\r
+\r
+"It's a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?" said the Squire.\r
+"He might ha' gone for your young fellow--the 'prentice, there--what's\r
+his name?"\r
+\r
+"Might? aye--what's the use of talking about might?" growled uncle\r
+Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and followed by Mr. Crackenthorp and\r
+Godfrey. "Get me a pair of thick boots, Godfrey, will you? And stay,\r
+let somebody run to Winthrop's and fetch Dolly--she's the best woman to\r
+get. Ben was here himself before supper; is he gone?"\r
+\r
+"Yes, sir, I met him," said Marner; "but I couldn't stop to tell him\r
+anything, only I said I was going for the doctor, and he said the\r
+doctor was at the Squire's. And I made haste and ran, and there was\r
+nobody to be seen at the back o' the house, and so I went in to where\r
+the company was."\r
+\r
+The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the smiling\r
+women's faces, began to cry and call for "mammy", though always\r
+clinging to Marner, who had apparently won her thorough confidence.\r
+Godfrey had come back with the boots, and felt the cry as if some fibre\r
+were drawn tight within him.\r
+\r
+"I'll go," he said, hastily, eager for some movement; "I'll go and\r
+fetch the woman--Mrs. Winthrop."\r
+\r
+"Oh, pooh--send somebody else," said uncle Kimble, hurrying away with\r
+Marner.\r
+\r
+"You'll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble," said Mr.\r
+Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of hearing.\r
+\r
+Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his hat and coat,\r
+having just reflection enough to remember that he must not look like a\r
+madman; but he rushed out of the house into the snow without heeding\r
+his thin shoes.\r
+\r
+In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits by the side\r
+of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely in her place in\r
+encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much concerned at\r
+a young gentleman's getting his feet wet under a like impulse.\r
+\r
+"You'd a deal better go back, sir," said Dolly, with respectful\r
+compassion. "You've no call to catch cold; and I'd ask you if you'd be\r
+so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back--he's at the\r
+Rainbow, I doubt--if you found him anyway sober enough to be o' use.\r
+Or else, there's Mrs. Snell 'ud happen send the boy up to fetch and\r
+carry, for there may be things wanted from the doctor's."\r
+\r
+"No, I'll stay, now I'm once out--I'll stay outside here," said\r
+Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner's cottage. "You can come and\r
+tell me if I can do anything."\r
+\r
+"Well, sir, you're very good: you've a tender heart," said Dolly, going\r
+to the door.\r
+\r
+Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of self-reproach\r
+at this undeserved praise. He walked up and down, unconscious that he\r
+was plunging ankle-deep in snow, unconscious of everything but\r
+trembling suspense about what was going on in the cottage, and the\r
+effect of each alternative on his future lot. No, not quite\r
+unconscious of everything else. Deeper down, and half-smothered by\r
+passionate desire and dread, there was the sense that he ought not to\r
+be waiting on these alternatives; that he ought to accept the\r
+consequences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and fulfil the\r
+claims of the helpless child. But he had not moral courage enough to\r
+contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as possible for him: he\r
+had only conscience and heart enough to make him for ever uneasy under\r
+the weakness that forbade the renunciation. And at this moment his\r
+mind leaped away from all restraint toward the sudden prospect of\r
+deliverance from his long bondage.\r
+\r
+"Is she dead?" said the voice that predominated over every other\r
+within him. "If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then I shall be a good\r
+fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the child--shall be taken\r
+care of somehow." But across that vision came the other\r
+possibility--"She may live, and then it's all up with me."\r
+\r
+Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage\r
+opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward to meet his uncle,\r
+prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he was\r
+to hear.\r
+\r
+"I waited for you, as I'd come so far," he said, speaking first.\r
+\r
+"Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn't you send one of\r
+the men? There's nothing to be done. She's dead--has been dead for\r
+hours, I should say."\r
+\r
+"What sort of woman is she?" said Godfrey, feeling the blood rush to\r
+his face.\r
+\r
+"A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some\r
+vagrant--quite in rags. She's got a wedding-ring on, however. They\r
+must fetch her away to the workhouse to-morrow. Come, come along."\r
+\r
+"I want to look at her," said Godfrey. "I think I saw such a woman\r
+yesterday. I'll overtake you in a minute or two."\r
+\r
+Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast\r
+only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had\r
+smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his\r
+unhappy hated wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every line\r
+in the worn face was present to him when he told the full story of this\r
+night.\r
+\r
+He turned immediately towards the hearth, where Silas Marner sat\r
+lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep--only\r
+soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which\r
+makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain\r
+awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some\r
+quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky--before a steady glowing\r
+planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a\r
+silent pathway. The wide-open blue eyes looked up at Godfrey's without\r
+any uneasiness or sign of recognition: the child could make no visible\r
+audible claim on its father; and the father felt a strange mixture of\r
+feelings, a conflict of regret and joy, that the pulse of that little\r
+heart had no response for the half-jealous yearning in his own, when\r
+the blue eyes turned away from him slowly, and fixed themselves on the\r
+weaver's queer face, which was bent low down to look at them, while the\r
+small hand began to pull Marner's withered cheek with loving\r
+disfiguration.\r
+\r
+"You'll take the child to the parish to-morrow?" asked Godfrey,\r
+speaking as indifferently as he could.\r
+\r
+"Who says so?" said Marner, sharply. "Will they make me take her?"\r
+\r
+"Why, you wouldn't like to keep her, should you--an old bachelor like\r
+you?"\r
+\r
+"Till anybody shows they've a right to take her away from me," said\r
+Marner. "The mother's dead, and I reckon it's got no father: it's a\r
+lone thing--and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone, I don't know\r
+where--and this is come from I don't know where. I know nothing--I'm\r
+partly mazed."\r
+\r
+"Poor little thing!" said Godfrey. "Let me give something towards\r
+finding it clothes."\r
+\r
+He had put his hand in his pocket and found half-a-guinea, and,\r
+thrusting it into Silas's hand, he hurried out of the cottage to\r
+overtake Mr. Kimble.\r
+\r
+"Ah, I see it's not the same woman I saw," he said, as he came up.\r
+"It's a pretty little child: the old fellow seems to want to keep it;\r
+that's strange for a miser like him. But I gave him a trifle to help\r
+him out: the parish isn't likely to quarrel with him for the right to\r
+keep the child."\r
+\r
+"No; but I've seen the time when I might have quarrelled with him for\r
+it myself. It's too late now, though. If the child ran into the fire,\r
+your aunt's too fat to overtake it: she could only sit and grunt like\r
+an alarmed sow. But what a fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your\r
+dancing shoes and stockings in this way--and you one of the beaux of\r
+the evening, and at your own house! What do you mean by such freaks,\r
+young fellow? Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do you want to spite her\r
+by spoiling your pumps?"\r
+\r
+"Oh, everything has been disagreeable to-night. I was tired to death\r
+of jigging and gallanting, and that bother about the hornpipes. And\r
+I'd got to dance with the other Miss Gunn," said Godfrey, glad of the\r
+subterfuge his uncle had suggested to him.\r
+\r
+The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself\r
+ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false\r
+touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere\r
+trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.\r
+\r
+Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since the\r
+truth must be told, with a sense of relief and gladness that was too\r
+strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could he not venture\r
+now, whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest things to Nancy\r
+Lammeter--to promise her and himself that he would always be just what\r
+she would desire to see him? There was no danger that his dead wife\r
+would be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry and wide\r
+report; and as for the registry of their marriage, that was a long way\r
+off, buried in unturned pages, away from every one's interest but his\r
+own. Dunsey might betray him if he came back; but Dunsey might be won\r
+to silence.\r
+\r
+And when events turn out so much better for a man than he has had\r
+reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has been less\r
+foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When we\r
+are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not\r
+altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat\r
+ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. Where, after all,\r
+would be the use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and\r
+throwing away his happiness?--nay, hers? for he felt some confidence\r
+that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that it was cared\r
+for: he would never forsake it; he would do everything but own it.\r
+Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being owned by its\r
+father, seeing that nobody could tell how things would turn out, and\r
+that--is there any other reason wanted?--well, then, that the father\r
+would be much happier without owning the child.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XIV\r
+\r
+There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at\r
+Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair child,\r
+who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was all\r
+the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men.\r
+But the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial as\r
+the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to certain\r
+human lives that we know of, shaping their joys and sorrows even to the\r
+end.\r
+\r
+Silas Marner's determination to keep the "tramp's child" was matter of\r
+hardly less surprise and iterated talk in the village than the robbery\r
+of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which dated from\r
+his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather\r
+contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was now accompanied with a\r
+more active sympathy, especially amongst the women. Notable mothers,\r
+who knew what it was to keep children "whole and sweet"; lazy mothers,\r
+who knew what it was to be interrupted in folding their arms and\r
+scratching their elbows by the mischievous propensities of children\r
+just firm on their legs, were equally interested in conjecturing how a\r
+lone man would manage with a two-year-old child on his hands, and were\r
+equally ready with their suggestions: the notable chiefly telling him\r
+what he had better do, and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling him\r
+what he would never be able to do.\r
+\r
+Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one whose neighbourly\r
+offices were the most acceptable to Marner, for they were rendered\r
+without any show of bustling instruction. Silas had shown her the\r
+half-guinea given to him by Godfrey, and had asked her what he should\r
+do about getting some clothes for the child.\r
+\r
+"Eh, Master Marner," said Dolly, "there's no call to buy, no more nor a\r
+pair o' shoes; for I've got the little petticoats as Aaron wore five\r
+years ago, and it's ill spending the money on them baby-clothes, for\r
+the child 'ull grow like grass i' May, bless it--that it will."\r
+\r
+And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed to Marner, one\r
+by one, the tiny garments in their due order of succession, most of\r
+them patched and darned, but clean and neat as fresh-sprung herbs.\r
+This was the introduction to a great ceremony with soap and water, from\r
+which Baby came out in new beauty, and sat on Dolly's knee, handling\r
+her toes and chuckling and patting her palms together with an air of\r
+having made several discoveries about herself, which she communicated\r
+by alternate sounds of "gug-gug-gug", and "mammy". The "mammy" was not\r
+a cry of need or uneasiness: Baby had been used to utter it without\r
+expecting either tender sound or touch to follow.\r
+\r
+"Anybody 'ud think the angils in heaven couldn't be prettier," said\r
+Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing them. "And to think of its\r
+being covered wi' them dirty rags--and the poor mother--froze to death;\r
+but there's Them as took care of it, and brought it to your door,\r
+Master Marner. The door was open, and it walked in over the snow, like\r
+as if it had been a little starved robin. Didn't you say the door was\r
+open?"\r
+\r
+"Yes," said Silas, meditatively. "Yes--the door was open. The money's\r
+gone I don't know where, and this is come from I don't know where."\r
+\r
+He had not mentioned to any one his unconsciousness of the child's\r
+entrance, shrinking from questions which might lead to the fact he\r
+himself suspected--namely, that he had been in one of his trances.\r
+\r
+"Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the\r
+morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the\r
+harvest--one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor\r
+where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do\r
+arter all--the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n--they\r
+do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the\r
+little un, Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though\r
+there's folks as thinks different. You'll happen be a bit moithered\r
+with it while it's so little; but I'll come, and welcome, and see to it\r
+for you: I've a bit o' time to spare most days, for when one gets up\r
+betimes i' the morning, the clock seems to stan' still tow'rt ten,\r
+afore it's time to go about the victual. So, as I say, I'll come and\r
+see to the child for you, and welcome."\r
+\r
+"Thank you... kindly," said Silas, hesitating a little. "I'll be glad\r
+if you'll tell me things. But," he added, uneasily, leaning forward to\r
+look at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting her head backward\r
+against Dolly's arm, and eyeing him contentedly from a distance--"But I\r
+want to do things for it myself, else it may get fond o' somebody else,\r
+and not fond o' me. I've been used to fending for myself in the\r
+house--I can learn, I can learn."\r
+\r
+"Eh, to be sure," said Dolly, gently. "I've seen men as are wonderful\r
+handy wi' children. The men are awk'ard and contrairy mostly, God help\r
+'em--but when the drink's out of 'em, they aren't unsensible, though\r
+they're bad for leeching and bandaging--so fiery and unpatient. You\r
+see this goes first, next the skin," proceeded Dolly, taking up the\r
+little shirt, and putting it on.\r
+\r
+"Yes," said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes very close, that they\r
+might be initiated in the mysteries; whereupon Baby seized his head\r
+with both her small arms, and put her lips against his face with\r
+purring noises.\r
+\r
+"See there," said Dolly, with a woman's tender tact, "she's fondest o'\r
+you. She wants to go o' your lap, I'll be bound. Go, then: take her,\r
+Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then you can say as\r
+you've done for her from the first of her coming to you."\r
+\r
+Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to\r
+himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling\r
+were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give them\r
+utterance, he could only have said that the child was come instead of\r
+the gold--that the gold had turned into the child. He took the\r
+garments from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching; interrupted,\r
+of course, by Baby's gymnastics.\r
+\r
+"There, then! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Marner," said\r
+Dolly; "but what shall you do when you're forced to sit in your loom?\r
+For she'll get busier and mischievouser every day--she will, bless her.\r
+It's lucky as you've got that high hearth i'stead of a grate, for that\r
+keeps the fire more out of her reach: but if you've got anything as can\r
+be spilt or broke, or as is fit to cut her fingers off, she'll be at\r
+it--and it is but right you should know."\r
+\r
+Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. "I'll tie her to\r
+the leg o' the loom," he said at last--"tie her with a good long strip\r
+o' something."\r
+\r
+"Well, mayhap that'll do, as it's a little gell, for they're easier\r
+persuaded to sit i' one place nor the lads. I know what the lads are;\r
+for I've had four--four I've had, God knows--and if you was to take and\r
+tie 'em up, they'd make a fighting and a crying as if you was ringing\r
+the pigs. But I'll bring you my little chair, and some bits o' red rag\r
+and things for her to play wi'; an' she'll sit and chatter to 'em as if\r
+they was alive. Eh, if it wasn't a sin to the lads to wish 'em made\r
+different, bless 'em, I should ha' been glad for one of 'em to be a\r
+little gell; and to think as I could ha' taught her to scour, and mend,\r
+and the knitting, and everything. But I can teach 'em this little un,\r
+Master Marner, when she gets old enough."\r
+\r
+"But she'll be _my_ little un," said Marner, rather hastily. "She'll be\r
+nobody else's."\r
+\r
+"No, to be sure; you'll have a right to her, if you're a father to her,\r
+and bring her up according. But," added Dolly, coming to a point which\r
+she had determined beforehand to touch upon, "you must bring her up\r
+like christened folks's children, and take her to church, and let her\r
+learn her catechise, as my little Aaron can say off--the "I believe",\r
+and everything, and "hurt nobody by word or deed",--as well as if he\r
+was the clerk. That's what you must do, Master Marner, if you'd do the\r
+right thing by the orphin child."\r
+\r
+Marner's pale face flushed suddenly under a new anxiety. His mind was\r
+too busy trying to give some definite bearing to Dolly's words for him\r
+to think of answering her.\r
+\r
+"And it's my belief," she went on, "as the poor little creatur has\r
+never been christened, and it's nothing but right as the parson should\r
+be spoke to; and if you was noways unwilling, I'd talk to Mr. Macey\r
+about it this very day. For if the child ever went anyways wrong, and\r
+you hadn't done your part by it, Master Marner--'noculation, and\r
+everything to save it from harm--it 'ud be a thorn i' your bed for ever\r
+o' this side the grave; and I can't think as it 'ud be easy lying down\r
+for anybody when they'd got to another world, if they hadn't done their\r
+part by the helpless children as come wi'out their own asking."\r
+\r
+Dolly herself was disposed to be silent for some time now, for she had\r
+spoken from the depths of her own simple belief, and was much concerned\r
+to know whether her words would produce the desired effect on Silas.\r
+He was puzzled and anxious, for Dolly's word "christened" conveyed no\r
+distinct meaning to him. He had only heard of baptism, and had only\r
+seen the baptism of grown-up men and women.\r
+\r
+"What is it as you mean by "christened"?" he said at last, timidly.\r
+"Won't folks be good to her without it?"\r
+\r
+"Dear, dear! Master Marner," said Dolly, with gentle distress and\r
+compassion. "Had you never no father nor mother as taught you to say\r
+your prayers, and as there's good words and good things to keep us from\r
+harm?"\r
+\r
+"Yes," said Silas, in a low voice; "I know a deal about that--used to,\r
+used to. But your ways are different: my country was a good way off."\r
+He paused a few moments, and then added, more decidedly, "But I want to\r
+do everything as can be done for the child. And whatever's right for\r
+it i' this country, and you think 'ull do it good, I'll act according,\r
+if you'll tell me."\r
+\r
+"Well, then, Master Marner," said Dolly, inwardly rejoiced, "I'll ask\r
+Mr. Macey to speak to the parson about it; and you must fix on a name\r
+for it, because it must have a name giv' it when it's christened."\r
+\r
+"My mother's name was Hephzibah," said Silas, "and my little sister was\r
+named after her."\r
+\r
+"Eh, that's a hard name," said Dolly. "I partly think it isn't a\r
+christened name."\r
+\r
+"It's a Bible name," said Silas, old ideas recurring.\r
+\r
+"Then I've no call to speak again' it," said Dolly, rather startled by\r
+Silas's knowledge on this head; "but you see I'm no scholard, and I'm\r
+slow at catching the words. My husband says I'm allays like as if I\r
+was putting the haft for the handle--that's what he says--for he's very\r
+sharp, God help him. But it was awk'ard calling your little sister by\r
+such a hard name, when you'd got nothing big to say, like--wasn't it,\r
+Master Marner?"\r
+\r
+"We called her Eppie," said Silas.\r
+\r
+"Well, if it was noways wrong to shorten the name, it 'ud be a deal\r
+handier. And so I'll go now, Master Marner, and I'll speak about the\r
+christening afore dark; and I wish you the best o' luck, and it's my\r
+belief as it'll come to you, if you do what's right by the orphin\r
+child;--and there's the 'noculation to be seen to; and as to washing\r
+its bits o' things, you need look to nobody but me, for I can do 'em\r
+wi' one hand when I've got my suds about. Eh, the blessed angil!\r
+You'll let me bring my Aaron one o' these days, and he'll show her his\r
+little cart as his father's made for him, and the black-and-white pup\r
+as he's got a-rearing."\r
+\r
+Baby _was_ christened, the rector deciding that a double baptism was\r
+the lesser risk to incur; and on this occasion Silas, making himself as\r
+clean and tidy as he could, appeared for the first time within the\r
+church, and shared in the observances held sacred by his neighbours.\r
+He was quite unable, by means of anything he heard or saw, to identify\r
+the Raveloe religion with his old faith; if he could at any time in his\r
+previous life have done so, it must have been by the aid of a strong\r
+feeling ready to vibrate with sympathy, rather than by a comparison of\r
+phrases and ideas: and now for long years that feeling had been\r
+dormant. He had no distinct idea about the baptism and the\r
+church-going, except that Dolly had said it was for the good of the\r
+child; and in this way, as the weeks grew to months, the child created\r
+fresh and fresh links between his life and the lives from which he had\r
+hitherto shrunk continually into narrower isolation. Unlike the gold\r
+which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked\r
+solitude--which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the song\r
+of birds, and started to no human tones--Eppie was a creature of\r
+endless claims and ever-growing desires, seeking and loving sunshine,\r
+and living sounds, and living movements; making trial of everything,\r
+with trust in new joy, and stirring the human kindness in all eyes that\r
+looked on her. The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated\r
+circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object\r
+compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and\r
+carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same\r
+blank limit--carried them away to the new things that would come with\r
+the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her\r
+father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time\r
+in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his\r
+neighbours. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and\r
+longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the\r
+monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called\r
+him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday,\r
+reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old\r
+winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and\r
+warming him into joy because _she_ had joy.\r
+\r
+And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the buttercups\r
+were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny midday, or\r
+in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening under the\r
+hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the\r
+Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till they reached some favourite\r
+bank where he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers,\r
+and make remarks to the winged things that murmured happily above the\r
+bright petals, calling "Dad-dad's" attention continually by bringing\r
+him the flowers. Then she would turn her ear to some sudden bird-note,\r
+and Silas learned to please her by making signs of hushed stillness,\r
+that they might listen for the note to come again: so that when it\r
+came, she set up her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph.\r
+Sitting on the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once\r
+familiar herbs again; and as the leaves, with their unchanged outline\r
+and markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding\r
+remembrances from which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in\r
+Eppie's little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.\r
+\r
+As the child's mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing\r
+into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold\r
+narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full\r
+consciousness.\r
+\r
+It was an influence which must gather force with every new year: the\r
+tones that stirred Silas's heart grew articulate, and called for more\r
+distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew clearer for Eppie's eyes and\r
+ears, and there was more that "Dad-dad" was imperatively required to\r
+notice and account for. Also, by the time Eppie was three years old,\r
+she developed a fine capacity for mischief, and for devising ingenious\r
+ways of being troublesome, which found much exercise, not only for\r
+Silas's patience, but for his watchfulness and penetration. Sorely was\r
+poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by the incompatible demands of\r
+love. Dolly Winthrop told him that punishment was good for Eppie, and\r
+that, as for rearing a child without making it tingle a little in soft\r
+and safe places now and then, it was not to be done.\r
+\r
+"To be sure, there's another thing you might do, Master Marner," added\r
+Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut her up once i' the coal-hole.\r
+That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi' the youngest\r
+lad, as I could never bear to smack him. Not as I could find i' my\r
+heart to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a minute, but it was\r
+enough to colly him all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed,\r
+and it was as good as a rod to him--that was. But I put it upo' your\r
+conscience, Master Marner, as there's one of 'em you must\r
+choose--ayther smacking or the coal-hole--else she'll get so masterful,\r
+there'll be no holding her."\r
+\r
+Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth of this last remark; but\r
+his force of mind failed before the only two penal methods open to him,\r
+not only because it was painful to him to hurt Eppie, but because he\r
+trembled at a moment's contention with her, lest she should love him\r
+the less for it. Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to\r
+a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading\r
+still more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be\r
+master? It was clear that Eppie, with her short toddling steps, must\r
+lead father Silas a pretty dance on any fine morning when circumstances\r
+favoured mischief.\r
+\r
+For example. He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen as a means of\r
+fastening her to his loom when he was busy: it made a broad belt round\r
+her waist, and was long enough to allow of her reaching the truckle-bed\r
+and sitting down on it, but not long enough for her to attempt any\r
+dangerous climbing. One bright summer's morning Silas had been more\r
+engrossed than usual in "setting up" a new piece of work, an occasion\r
+on which his scissors were in requisition. These scissors, owing to an\r
+especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept carefully out of Eppie's\r
+reach; but the click of them had had a peculiar attraction for her ear,\r
+and watching the results of that click, she had derived the philosophic\r
+lesson that the same cause would produce the same effect. Silas had\r
+seated himself in his loom, and the noise of weaving had begun; but he\r
+had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie's arm was long enough to\r
+reach; and now, like a small mouse, watching her opportunity, she stole\r
+quietly from her corner, secured the scissors, and toddled to the bed\r
+again, setting up her back as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a\r
+distinct intention as to the use of the scissors; and having cut the\r
+linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had\r
+run out at the open door where the sunshine was inviting her, while\r
+poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. It was not\r
+until he happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst\r
+upon him: Eppie had run out by herself--had perhaps fallen into the\r
+Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen\r
+him, rushed out, calling "Eppie!" and ran eagerly about the unenclosed\r
+space, exploring the dry cavities into which she might have fallen, and\r
+then gazing with questioning dread at the smooth red surface of the\r
+water. The cold drops stood on his brow. How long had she been out?\r
+There was one hope--that she had crept through the stile and got into\r
+the fields, where he habitually took her to stroll. But the grass was\r
+high in the meadow, and there was no descrying her, if she were there,\r
+except by a close search that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop.\r
+Still, that misdemeanour must be committed; and poor Silas, after\r
+peering all round the hedgerows, traversed the grass, beginning with\r
+perturbed vision to see Eppie behind every group of red sorrel, and to\r
+see her moving always farther off as he approached. The meadow was\r
+searched in vain; and he got over the stile into the next field,\r
+looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to\r
+its summer shallowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive\r
+mud. Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own small\r
+boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a deep\r
+hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was planted comfortably on a\r
+cushion of olive-green mud. A red-headed calf was observing her with\r
+alarmed doubt through the opposite hedge.\r
+\r
+Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christened child which\r
+demanded severe treatment; but Silas, overcome with convulsive joy at\r
+finding his treasure again, could do nothing but snatch her up, and\r
+cover her with half-sobbing kisses. It was not until he had carried\r
+her home, and had begun to think of the necessary washing, that he\r
+recollected the need that he should punish Eppie, and "make her\r
+remember". The idea that she might run away again and come to harm,\r
+gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time he determined to\r
+try the coal-hole--a small closet near the hearth.\r
+\r
+"Naughty, naughty Eppie," he suddenly began, holding her on his knee,\r
+and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes--"naughty to cut with the\r
+scissors and run away. Eppie must go into the coal-hole for being\r
+naughty. Daddy must put her in the coal-hole."\r
+\r
+He half-expected that this would be shock enough, and that Eppie would\r
+begin to cry. But instead of that, she began to shake herself on his\r
+knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty. Seeing that he\r
+must proceed to extremities, he put her into the coal-hole, and held\r
+the door closed, with a trembling sense that he was using a strong\r
+measure. For a moment there was silence, but then came a little cry,\r
+"Opy, opy!" and Silas let her out again, saying, "Now Eppie 'ull never\r
+be naughty again, else she must go in the coal-hole--a black naughty\r
+place."\r
+\r
+The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now Eppie\r
+must be washed, and have clean clothes on; but it was to be hoped that\r
+this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save time in\r
+future--though, perhaps, it would have been better if Eppie had cried\r
+more.\r
+\r
+In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas having turned his back\r
+to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it down again, with\r
+the reflection that Eppie would be good without fastening for the rest\r
+of the morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her in\r
+her little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at him with black\r
+face and hands again, and said, "Eppie in de toal-hole!"\r
+\r
+This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief in\r
+the efficacy of punishment. "She'd take it all for fun," he observed\r
+to Dolly, "if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs. Winthrop.\r
+If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I can bear it. And she's got no\r
+tricks but what she'll grow out of."\r
+\r
+"Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly, sympathetically;\r
+"and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her off touching things,\r
+you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do\r
+wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They _will_ worry and\r
+gnaw--worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung\r
+anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help\r
+'em: it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is."\r
+\r
+So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds\r
+being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone hut was made a soft\r
+nest for her, lined with downy patience: and also in the world that lay\r
+beyond the stone hut she knew nothing of frowns and denials.\r
+\r
+Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn or linen at\r
+the same time, Silas took her with him in most of his journeys to the\r
+farmhouses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's, who was\r
+always ready to take care of her; and little curly-headed Eppie, the\r
+weaver's child, became an object of interest at several outlying\r
+homesteads, as well as in the village. Hitherto he had been treated\r
+very much as if he had been a useful gnome or brownie--a queer and\r
+unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be looked at with\r
+wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would be glad to\r
+make all greetings and bargains as brief as possible, but who must be\r
+dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occasionally have a present of\r
+pork or garden stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without him\r
+there was no getting the yarn woven. But now Silas met with open\r
+smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions\r
+and difficulties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little\r
+and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for\r
+him: "Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon\r
+and easy!"--or, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to\r
+take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you\r
+handier than men as do out-door work--you're partly as handy as a\r
+woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." Elderly masters and\r
+mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen arm-chairs, shook their\r
+heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing children, felt Eppie's\r
+round arms and legs, and pronounced them remarkably firm, and told\r
+Silas that, if she turned out well (which, however, there was no\r
+telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a steady lass to do\r
+for him when he got helpless. Servant maidens were fond of carrying\r
+her out to look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries\r
+could be shaken down in the orchard; and the small boys and girls\r
+approached her slowly, with cautious movement and steady gaze, like\r
+little dogs face to face with one of their own kind, till attraction\r
+had reached the point at which the soft lips were put out for a kiss.\r
+No child was afraid of approaching Silas when Eppie was near him: there\r
+was no repulsion around him now, either for young or old; for the\r
+little child had come to link him once more with the whole world.\r
+There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and\r
+there was love between the child and the world--from men and women with\r
+parental looks and tones, to the red lady-birds and the round pebbles.\r
+\r
+Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie:\r
+she must have everything that was a good in Raveloe; and he listened\r
+docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was,\r
+from which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange\r
+thing, with which he could have no communion: as some man who has a\r
+precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil,\r
+thinks of the rain, and the sunshine, and all influences, in relation\r
+to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will\r
+help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf\r
+and bud from invading harm. The disposition to hoard had been utterly\r
+crushed at the very first by the loss of his long-stored gold: the\r
+coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to\r
+complete a house suddenly buried by an earthquake; the sense of\r
+bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction\r
+to arise again at the touch of the newly-earned coin. And now\r
+something had come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to\r
+the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the\r
+money.\r
+\r
+In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led\r
+them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels\r
+now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is\r
+put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and\r
+bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a\r
+little child's.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XV\r
+\r
+There was one person, as you will believe, who watched with keener\r
+though more hidden interest than any other, the prosperous growth of\r
+Eppie under the weaver's care. He dared not do anything that would\r
+imply a stronger interest in a poor man's adopted child than could be\r
+expected from the kindliness of the young Squire, when a chance meeting\r
+suggested a little present to a simple old fellow whom others noticed\r
+with goodwill; but he told himself that the time would come when he\r
+might do something towards furthering the welfare of his daughter\r
+without incurring suspicion. Was he very uneasy in the meantime at his\r
+inability to give his daughter her birthright? I cannot say that he\r
+was. The child was being taken care of, and would very likely be\r
+happy, as people in humble stations often were--happier, perhaps, than\r
+those brought up in luxury.\r
+\r
+That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and\r
+followed desire--I wonder if it pricked very hard when he set out on\r
+the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to\r
+the quick when the chase had long been ended, and hope, folding her\r
+wings, looked backward and became regret?\r
+\r
+Godfrey Cass's cheek and eye were brighter than ever now. He was so\r
+undivided in his aims, that he seemed like a man of firmness. No\r
+Dunsey had come back: people had made up their minds that he was gone\r
+for a soldier, or gone "out of the country", and no one cared to be\r
+specific in their inquiries on a subject delicate to a respectable\r
+family. Godfrey had ceased to see the shadow of Dunsey across his\r
+path; and the path now lay straight forward to the accomplishment of\r
+his best, longest-cherished wishes. Everybody said Mr. Godfrey had\r
+taken the right turn; and it was pretty clear what would be the end of\r
+things, for there were not many days in the week that he was not seen\r
+riding to the Warrens. Godfrey himself, when he was asked jocosely if\r
+the day had been fixed, smiled with the pleasant consciousness of a\r
+lover who could say "yes", if he liked. He felt a reformed man,\r
+delivered from temptation; and the vision of his future life seemed to\r
+him as a promised land for which he had no cause to fight. He saw\r
+himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth, while Nancy\r
+would smile on him as he played with the children.\r
+\r
+And that other child--not on the hearth--he would not forget it; he\r
+would see that it was well provided for. That was a father's duty.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+PART TWO\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XVI\r
+\r
+It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years after Silas Marner had\r
+found his new treasure on the hearth. The bells of the old Raveloe\r
+church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning\r
+service was ended; and out of the arched doorway in the tower came\r
+slowly, retarded by friendly greetings and questions, the richer\r
+parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for\r
+church-going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the more\r
+important members of the congregation to depart first, while their\r
+humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads or\r
+dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned to notice\r
+them.\r
+\r
+Foremost among these advancing groups of well-clad people, there are\r
+some whom we shall recognize, in spite of Time, who has laid his hand\r
+on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed in\r
+feature from the Godfrey Cass of six-and-twenty: he is only fuller in\r
+flesh, and has only lost the indefinable look of youth--a loss which is\r
+marked even when the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not yet come.\r
+Perhaps the pretty woman, not much younger than he, who is leaning on\r
+his arm, is more changed than her husband: the lovely bloom that used\r
+to be always on her cheek now comes but fitfully, with the fresh\r
+morning air or with some strong surprise; yet to all who love human\r
+faces best for what they tell of human experience, Nancy's beauty has a\r
+heightened interest. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness\r
+while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never\r
+divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the years have not been so\r
+cruel to Nancy. The firm yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance\r
+of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature that has been tested and has\r
+kept its highest qualities; and even the costume, with its dainty\r
+neatness and purity, has more significance now the coquetries of youth\r
+can have nothing to do with it.\r
+\r
+Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away from Raveloe\r
+lips since the old Squire was gathered to his fathers and his\r
+inheritance was divided) have turned round to look for the tall aged\r
+man and the plainly dressed woman who are a little behind--Nancy having\r
+observed that they must wait for "father and Priscilla"--and now they\r
+all turn into a narrower path leading across the churchyard to a small\r
+gate opposite the Red House. We will not follow them now; for may\r
+there not be some others in this departing congregation whom we should\r
+like to see again--some of those who are not likely to be handsomely\r
+clad, and whom we may not recognize so easily as the master and\r
+mistress of the Red House?\r
+\r
+But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes\r
+seem to have gathered a longer vision, as is the way with eyes that\r
+have been short-sighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a\r
+more answering gaze; but in everything else one sees signs of a frame\r
+much enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The weaver's bent\r
+shoulders and white hair give him almost the look of advanced age,\r
+though he is not more than five-and-fifty; but there is the freshest\r
+blossom of youth close by his side--a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen,\r
+who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness\r
+under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet\r
+under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the\r
+restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown.\r
+Eppie cannot help being rather vexed about her hair, for there is no\r
+other girl in Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair\r
+ought to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy even in small\r
+things: you see how neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted\r
+handkerchief.\r
+\r
+That good-looking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who walks behind\r
+her, is not quite sure upon the question of hair in the abstract, when\r
+Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that perhaps straight hair is the best\r
+in general, but he doesn't want Eppie's hair to be different. She\r
+surely divines that there is some one behind her who is thinking about\r
+her very particularly, and mustering courage to come to her side as\r
+soon as they are out in the lane, else why should she look rather shy,\r
+and take care not to turn away her head from her father Silas, to whom\r
+she keeps murmuring little sentences as to who was at church and who\r
+was not at church, and how pretty the red mountain-ash is over the\r
+Rectory wall?\r
+\r
+"I wish _we_ had a little garden, father, with double daisies in, like\r
+Mrs. Winthrop's," said Eppie, when they were out in the lane; "only\r
+they say it 'ud take a deal of digging and bringing fresh soil--and you\r
+couldn't do that, could you, father? Anyhow, I shouldn't like you to\r
+do it, for it 'ud be too hard work for you."\r
+\r
+"Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o' garden: these long\r
+evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o' the waste, just\r
+enough for a root or two o' flowers for you; and again, i' the morning,\r
+I could have a turn wi' the spade before I sat down to the loom. Why\r
+didn't you tell me before as you wanted a bit o' garden?"\r
+\r
+"_I_ can dig it for you, Master Marner," said the young man in fustian,\r
+who was now by Eppie's side, entering into the conversation without the\r
+trouble of formalities. "It'll be play to me after I've done my day's\r
+work, or any odd bits o' time when the work's slack. And I'll bring\r
+you some soil from Mr. Cass's garden--he'll let me, and willing."\r
+\r
+"Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?" said Silas; "I wasn't aware of\r
+you; for when Eppie's talking o' things, I see nothing but what she's\r
+a-saying. Well, if you could help me with the digging, we might get\r
+her a bit o' garden all the sooner."\r
+\r
+"Then, if you think well and good," said Aaron, "I'll come to the\r
+Stone-pits this afternoon, and we'll settle what land's to be taken in,\r
+and I'll get up an hour earlier i' the morning, and begin on it."\r
+\r
+"But not if you don't promise me not to work at the hard digging,\r
+father," said Eppie. "For I shouldn't ha' said anything about it," she\r
+added, half-bashfully, half-roguishly, "only Mrs. Winthrop said as\r
+Aaron 'ud be so good, and--"\r
+\r
+"And you might ha' known it without mother telling you," said Aaron.\r
+"And Master Marner knows too, I hope, as I'm able and willing to do a\r
+turn o' work for him, and he won't do me the unkindness to anyways take\r
+it out o' my hands."\r
+\r
+"There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy," said\r
+Eppie, "and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes and plant\r
+the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits when we've got\r
+some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what\r
+we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o' rosemary, and bergamot,\r
+and thyme, because they're so sweet-smelling; but there's no lavender\r
+only in the gentlefolks' gardens, I think."\r
+\r
+"That's no reason why you shouldn't have some," said Aaron, "for I can\r
+bring you slips of anything; I'm forced to cut no end of 'em when I'm\r
+gardening, and throw 'em away mostly. There's a big bed o' lavender at\r
+the Red House: the missis is very fond of it."\r
+\r
+"Well," said Silas, gravely, "so as you don't make free for us, or ask\r
+for anything as is worth much at the Red House: for Mr. Cass's been so\r
+good to us, and built us up the new end o' the cottage, and given us\r
+beds and things, as I couldn't abide to be imposin' for garden-stuff or\r
+anything else."\r
+\r
+"No, no, there's no imposin'," said Aaron; "there's never a garden in\r
+all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o'\r
+somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself\r
+sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was\r
+made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its\r
+way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that--gardening does. But I\r
+must go back now, else mother 'ull be in trouble as I aren't there."\r
+\r
+"Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron," said Eppie; "I shouldn't\r
+like to fix about the garden, and her not know everything from the\r
+first--should _you_, father?"\r
+\r
+"Aye, bring her if you can, Aaron," said Silas; "she's sure to have a\r
+word to say as'll help us to set things on their right end."\r
+\r
+Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up the\r
+lonely sheltered lane.\r
+\r
+"O daddy!" she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and\r
+squeezing Silas's arm, and skipping round to give him an energetic\r
+kiss. "My little old daddy! I'm so glad. I don't think I shall want\r
+anything else when we've got a little garden; and I knew Aaron would\r
+dig it for us," she went on with roguish triumph--"I knew that very\r
+well."\r
+\r
+"You're a deep little puss, you are," said Silas, with the mild passive\r
+happiness of love-crowned age in his face; "but you'll make yourself\r
+fine and beholden to Aaron."\r
+\r
+"Oh, no, I shan't," said Eppie, laughing and frisking; "he likes it."\r
+\r
+"Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you'll be dropping it,\r
+jumping i' that way."\r
+\r
+Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it\r
+was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log\r
+fastened to his foot--a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human\r
+trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting\r
+his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her\r
+usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his\r
+following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.\r
+\r
+But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door,\r
+modified the donkey's views, and he limped away again without bidding.\r
+The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting\r
+them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in\r
+a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell\r
+kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as\r
+much as to say, "I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you\r
+perceive"; while the lady-mother of the kitten sat sunning her white\r
+bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting\r
+caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them.\r
+\r
+The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which\r
+had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now\r
+in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with decent\r
+furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye.\r
+The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was\r
+likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds\r
+and other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every\r
+one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; and it was\r
+nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who\r
+could afford it, when he had brought up an orphan child, and been\r
+father and mother to her--and had lost his money too, so as he had\r
+nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was\r
+going down too--for there was less and less flax spun--and Master\r
+Marner was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he was\r
+regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help\r
+were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any superstition that remained\r
+concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a\r
+very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his\r
+chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of\r
+opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan\r
+child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or\r
+leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it--for, as Mr.\r
+Macey observed of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever.\r
+\r
+Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she\r
+spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly\r
+in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a\r
+slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would\r
+not consent to have a grate and oven added to his conveniences: he\r
+loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown pot--and was it\r
+not there when he had found Eppie? The gods of the hearth exist for us\r
+still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it\r
+bruise its own roots.\r
+\r
+Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his\r
+knife and fork, and watching half-abstractedly Eppie's play with Snap\r
+and the cat, by which her own dining was made rather a lengthy\r
+business. Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wandering\r
+thoughts: Eppie, with the rippling radiance of her hair and the\r
+whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-blue\r
+cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws\r
+to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the\r
+right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel\r
+which she held out of the reach of both--Snap occasionally desisting in\r
+order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the\r
+greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed\r
+them both, and divided the morsel between them.\r
+\r
+But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and said,\r
+"O daddy, you're wanting to go into the sunshine to smoke your pipe.\r
+But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when godmother\r
+comes. I'll make haste--I won't be long."\r
+\r
+Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years,\r
+having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Raveloe, as a practice\r
+"good for the fits"; and this advice was sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on\r
+the ground that it was as well to try what could do no harm--a\r
+principle which was made to answer for a great deal of work in that\r
+gentleman's medical practice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and\r
+often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble\r
+sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong\r
+habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had\r
+found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered\r
+mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to\r
+him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking\r
+what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything\r
+produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of custom\r
+and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with\r
+reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to\r
+ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new\r
+impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his\r
+past and present. The sense of presiding goodness and the human trust\r
+which come with all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression\r
+that there had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that\r
+dark shadow over the days of his best years; and as it grew more and\r
+more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually\r
+communicated to her all he could describe of his early life. The\r
+communication was necessarily a slow and difficult process, for Silas's\r
+meagre power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of\r
+interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward experience gave her no\r
+key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder that\r
+arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by\r
+fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to revolve what she\r
+had heard till it acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas at last\r
+arrived at the climax of the sad story--the drawing of lots, and its\r
+false testimony concerning him; and this had to be repeated in several\r
+interviews, under new questions on her part as to the nature of this\r
+plan for detecting the guilty and clearing the innocent.\r
+\r
+"And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner--the\r
+Bible as you brought wi' you from that country--it's the same as what\r
+they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning to read in?"\r
+\r
+"Yes," said Silas, "every bit the same; and there's drawing o' lots in\r
+the Bible, mind you," he added in a lower tone.\r
+\r
+"Oh, dear, dear," said Dolly in a grieved voice, as if she were hearing\r
+an unfavourable report of a sick man's case. She was silent for some\r
+minutes; at last she said--\r
+\r
+"There's wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the parson knows,\r
+I'll be bound; but it takes big words to tell them things, and such as\r
+poor folks can't make much out on. I can never rightly know the\r
+meaning o' what I hear at church, only a bit here and there, but I know\r
+it's good words--I do. But what lies upo' your mind--it's this, Master\r
+Marner: as, if Them above had done the right thing by you, They'd never\r
+ha' let you be turned out for a wicked thief when you was innicent."\r
+\r
+"Ah!" said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly's phraseology,\r
+"that was what fell on me like as if it had been red-hot iron; because,\r
+you see, there was nobody as cared for me or clave to me above nor\r
+below. And him as I'd gone out and in wi' for ten year and more, since\r
+when we was lads and went halves--mine own familiar friend in whom I\r
+trusted, had lifted up his heel again' me, and worked to ruin me."\r
+\r
+"Eh, but he was a bad un--I can't think as there's another such," said\r
+Dolly. "But I'm o'ercome, Master Marner; I'm like as if I'd waked and\r
+didn't know whether it was night or morning. I feel somehow as sure as\r
+I do when I've laid something up though I can't justly put my hand on\r
+it, as there was a rights in what happened to you, if one could but\r
+make it out; and you'd no call to lose heart as you did. But we'll\r
+talk on it again; for sometimes things come into my head when I'm\r
+leeching or poulticing, or such, as I could never think on when I was\r
+sitting still."\r
+\r
+Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of\r
+illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was not long before\r
+she recurred to the subject.\r
+\r
+"Master Marner," she said, one day that she came to bring home Eppie's\r
+washing, "I've been sore puzzled for a good bit wi' that trouble o'\r
+yourn and the drawing o' lots; and it got twisted back'ards and\r
+for'ards, as I didn't know which end to lay hold on. But it come to me\r
+all clear like, that night when I was sitting up wi' poor Bessy Fawkes,\r
+as is dead and left her children behind, God help 'em--it come to me as\r
+clear as daylight; but whether I've got hold on it now, or can anyways\r
+bring it to my tongue's end, that I don't know. For I've often a deal\r
+inside me as'll never come out; and for what you talk o' your folks in\r
+your old country niver saying prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a\r
+book, they must be wonderful cliver; for if I didn't know "Our Father",\r
+and little bits o' good words as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I\r
+might down o' my knees every night, but nothing could I say."\r
+\r
+"But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on, Mrs.\r
+Winthrop," said Silas.\r
+\r
+"Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can make\r
+nothing o' the drawing o' lots and the answer coming wrong; it 'ud\r
+mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i' big\r
+words. But what come to me as clear as the daylight, it was when I was\r
+troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes into my head when\r
+I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a power to help 'em, not if\r
+I was to get up i' the middle o' the night--it comes into my head as\r
+Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I've got--for I can't\r
+be anyways better nor Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to\r
+me, it's because there's things I don't know on; and for the matter o'\r
+that, there may be plenty o' things I don't know on, for it's little as\r
+I know--that it is. And so, while I was thinking o' that, you come into\r
+my mind, Master Marner, and it all come pouring in:--if _I_ felt i' my\r
+inside what was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed and\r
+drawed the lots, all but that wicked un, if _they_'d ha' done the right\r
+thing by you if they could, isn't there Them as was at the making on\r
+us, and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever I\r
+can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think\r
+on it. For there was the fever come and took off them as were\r
+full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there's the breaking\r
+o' limbs; and them as 'ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them\r
+as are contrairy--eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things\r
+as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we've got to do is\r
+to trusten, Master Marner--to do the right thing as fur as we know, and\r
+to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and\r
+rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what\r
+we can know--I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so. And if you\r
+could but ha' gone on trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run\r
+away from your fellow-creaturs and been so lone."\r
+\r
+"Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard," said Silas, in an under-tone; "it 'ud\r
+ha' been hard to trusten then."\r
+\r
+"And so it would," said Dolly, almost with compunction; "them things\r
+are easier said nor done; and I'm partly ashamed o' talking."\r
+\r
+"Nay, nay," said Silas, "you're i' the right, Mrs. Winthrop--you're i'\r
+the right. There's good i' this world--I've a feeling o' that now; and\r
+it makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he can see, i' spite o'\r
+the trouble and the wickedness. That drawing o' the lots is dark; but\r
+the child was sent to me: there's dealings with us--there's dealings."\r
+\r
+This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier years, when Silas had to\r
+part with her for two hours every day, that she might learn to read at\r
+the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her in that\r
+first step to learning. Now that she was grown up, Silas had often\r
+been led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which come to people who\r
+live together in perfect love, to talk with _her_ too of the past, and\r
+how and why he had lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him.\r
+For it would have been impossible for him to hide from Eppie that she\r
+was not his own child: even if the most delicate reticence on the point\r
+could have been expected from Raveloe gossips in her presence, her own\r
+questions about her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up,\r
+without that complete shrouding of the past which would have made a\r
+painful barrier between their minds. So Eppie had long known how her\r
+mother had died on the snowy ground, and how she herself had been found\r
+on the hearth by father Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his\r
+lost guineas brought back to him. The tender and peculiar love with\r
+which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with\r
+himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her\r
+from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had\r
+kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to\r
+be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of\r
+poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human\r
+beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time\r
+when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's\r
+hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her\r
+delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had\r
+a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching\r
+than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She was too\r
+childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about\r
+her unknown father; for a long while it did not even occur to her that\r
+she must have had a father; and the first time that the idea of her\r
+mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas\r
+showed her the wedding-ring which had been taken from the wasted\r
+finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a little lackered\r
+box shaped like a shoe. He delivered this box into Eppie's charge when\r
+she had grown up, and she often opened it to look at the ring: but\r
+still she thought hardly at all about the father of whom it was the\r
+symbol. Had she not a father very close to her, who loved her better\r
+than any real fathers in the village seemed to love their daughters?\r
+On the contrary, who her mother was, and how she came to die in that\r
+forlornness, were questions that often pressed on Eppie's mind. Her\r
+knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her nearest friend next to Silas,\r
+made her feel that a mother must be very precious; and she had again\r
+and again asked Silas to tell her how her mother looked, whom she was\r
+like, and how he had found her against the furze bush, led towards it\r
+by the little footsteps and the outstretched arms. The furze bush was\r
+there still; and this afternoon, when Eppie came out with Silas into\r
+the sunshine, it was the first object that arrested her eyes and\r
+thoughts.\r
+\r
+"Father," she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which sometimes came\r
+like a sadder, slower cadence across her playfulness, "we shall take\r
+the furze bush into the garden; it'll come into the corner, and just\r
+against it I'll put snowdrops and crocuses, 'cause Aaron says they\r
+won't die out, but'll always get more and more."\r
+\r
+"Ah, child," said Silas, always ready to talk when he had his pipe in\r
+his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses more than the puffs, "it\r
+wouldn't do to leave out the furze bush; and there's nothing prettier,\r
+to my thinking, when it's yallow with flowers. But it's just come into\r
+my head what we're to do for a fence--mayhap Aaron can help us to a\r
+thought; but a fence we must have, else the donkeys and things 'ull\r
+come and trample everything down. And fencing's hard to be got at, by\r
+what I can make out."\r
+\r
+"Oh, I'll tell you, daddy," said Eppie, clasping her hands suddenly,\r
+after a minute's thought. "There's lots o' loose stones about, some of\r
+'em not big, and we might lay 'em atop of one another, and make a wall.\r
+You and me could carry the smallest, and Aaron 'ud carry the rest--I\r
+know he would."\r
+\r
+"Eh, my precious un," said Silas, "there isn't enough stones to go all\r
+round; and as for you carrying, why, wi' your little arms you couldn't\r
+carry a stone no bigger than a turnip. You're dillicate made, my\r
+dear," he added, with a tender intonation--"that's what Mrs. Winthrop\r
+says."\r
+\r
+"Oh, I'm stronger than you think, daddy," said Eppie; "and if there\r
+wasn't stones enough to go all round, why they'll go part o' the way,\r
+and then it'll be easier to get sticks and things for the rest. See\r
+here, round the big pit, what a many stones!"\r
+\r
+She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to lift one of the stones and\r
+exhibit her strength, but she started back in surprise.\r
+\r
+"Oh, father, just come and look here," she exclaimed--"come and see how\r
+the water's gone down since yesterday. Why, yesterday the pit was ever\r
+so full!"\r
+\r
+"Well, to be sure," said Silas, coming to her side. "Why, that's the\r
+draining they've begun on, since harvest, i' Mr. Osgood's fields, I\r
+reckon. The foreman said to me the other day, when I passed by 'em,\r
+"Master Marner," he said, "I shouldn't wonder if we lay your bit o'\r
+waste as dry as a bone." It was Mr. Godfrey Cass, he said, had gone\r
+into the draining: he'd been taking these fields o' Mr. Osgood."\r
+\r
+"How odd it'll seem to have the old pit dried up!" said Eppie, turning\r
+away, and stooping to lift rather a large stone. "See, daddy, I can\r
+carry this quite well," she said, going along with much energy for a\r
+few steps, but presently letting it fall.\r
+\r
+"Ah, you're fine and strong, aren't you?" said Silas, while Eppie\r
+shook her aching arms and laughed. "Come, come, let us go and sit down\r
+on the bank against the stile there, and have no more lifting. You\r
+might hurt yourself, child. You'd need have somebody to work for\r
+you--and my arm isn't over strong."\r
+\r
+Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it implied more than met\r
+the ear; and Eppie, when they sat down on the bank, nestled close to\r
+his side, and, taking hold caressingly of the arm that was not over\r
+strong, held it on her lap, while Silas puffed again dutifully at the\r
+pipe, which occupied his other arm. An ash in the hedgerow behind made\r
+a fretted screen from the sun, and threw happy playful shadows all\r
+about them.\r
+\r
+"Father," said Eppie, very gently, after they had been sitting in\r
+silence a little while, "if I was to be married, ought I to be married\r
+with my mother's ring?"\r
+\r
+Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though the question fell in\r
+with the under-current of thought in his own mind, and then said, in a\r
+subdued tone, "Why, Eppie, have you been a-thinking on it?"\r
+\r
+"Only this last week, father," said Eppie, ingenuously, "since Aaron\r
+talked to me about it."\r
+\r
+"And what did he say?" said Silas, still in the same subdued way, as\r
+if he were anxious lest he should fall into the slightest tone that was\r
+not for Eppie's good.\r
+\r
+"He said he should like to be married, because he was a-going in\r
+four-and-twenty, and had got a deal of gardening work, now Mr. Mott's\r
+given up; and he goes twice a-week regular to Mr. Cass's, and once to\r
+Mr. Osgood's, and they're going to take him on at the Rectory."\r
+\r
+"And who is it as he's wanting to marry?" said Silas, with rather a\r
+sad smile.\r
+\r
+"Why, me, to be sure, daddy," said Eppie, with dimpling laughter,\r
+kissing her father's cheek; "as if he'd want to marry anybody else!"\r
+\r
+"And you mean to have him, do you?" said Silas.\r
+\r
+"Yes, some time," said Eppie, "I don't know when. Everybody's married\r
+some time, Aaron says. But I told him that wasn't true: for, I said,\r
+look at father--he's never been married."\r
+\r
+"No, child," said Silas, "your father was a lone man till you was sent\r
+to him."\r
+\r
+"But you'll never be lone again, father," said Eppie, tenderly. "That\r
+was what Aaron said--"I could never think o' taking you away from\r
+Master Marner, Eppie." And I said, "It 'ud be no use if you did,\r
+Aaron." And he wants us all to live together, so as you needn't work a\r
+bit, father, only what's for your own pleasure; and he'd be as good as\r
+a son to you--that was what he said."\r
+\r
+"And should you like that, Eppie?" said Silas, looking at her.\r
+\r
+"I shouldn't mind it, father," said Eppie, quite simply. "And I should\r
+like things to be so as you needn't work much. But if it wasn't for\r
+that, I'd sooner things didn't change. I'm very happy: I like Aaron to\r
+be fond of me, and come and see us often, and behave pretty to you--he\r
+always _does_ behave pretty to you, doesn't he, father?"\r
+\r
+"Yes, child, nobody could behave better," said Silas, emphatically.\r
+"He's his mother's lad."\r
+\r
+"But I don't want any change," said Eppie. "I should like to go on a\r
+long, long while, just as we are. Only Aaron does want a change; and\r
+he made me cry a bit--only a bit--because he said I didn't care for\r
+him, for if I cared for him I should want us to be married, as he did."\r
+\r
+"Eh, my blessed child," said Silas, laying down his pipe as if it were\r
+useless to pretend to smoke any longer, "you're o'er young to be\r
+married. We'll ask Mrs. Winthrop--we'll ask Aaron's mother what _she_\r
+thinks: if there's a right thing to do, she'll come at it. But there's\r
+this to be thought on, Eppie: things _will_ change, whether we like it\r
+or no; things won't go on for a long while just as they are and no\r
+difference. I shall get older and helplesser, and be a burden on you,\r
+belike, if I don't go away from you altogether. Not as I mean you'd\r
+think me a burden--I know you wouldn't--but it 'ud be hard upon you;\r
+and when I look for'ard to that, I like to think as you'd have somebody\r
+else besides me--somebody young and strong, as'll outlast your own\r
+life, and take care on you to the end." Silas paused, and, resting his\r
+wrists on his knees, lifted his hands up and down meditatively as he\r
+looked on the ground.\r
+\r
+"Then, would you like me to be married, father?" said Eppie, with a\r
+little trembling in her voice.\r
+\r
+"I'll not be the man to say no, Eppie," said Silas, emphatically; "but\r
+we'll ask your godmother. She'll wish the right thing by you and her\r
+son too."\r
+\r
+"There they come, then," said Eppie. "Let us go and meet 'em. Oh, the\r
+pipe! won't you have it lit again, father?" said Eppie, lifting that\r
+medicinal appliance from the ground.\r
+\r
+"Nay, child," said Silas, "I've done enough for to-day. I think,\r
+mayhap, a little of it does me more good than so much at once."\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XVII\r
+\r
+While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing in the\r
+fleckered shade of the ash tree, Miss Priscilla Lammeter was resisting\r
+her sister's arguments, that it would be better to take tea at the Red\r
+House, and let her father have a long nap, than drive home to the\r
+Warrens so soon after dinner. The family party (of four only) were\r
+seated round the table in the dark wainscoted parlour, with the Sunday\r
+dessert before them, of fresh filberts, apples, and pears, duly\r
+ornamented with leaves by Nancy's own hand before the bells had rung\r
+for church.\r
+\r
+A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlour since we saw\r
+it in Godfrey's bachelor days, and under the wifeless reign of the old\r
+Squire. Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is ever\r
+allowed to rest, from the yard's width of oaken boards round the\r
+carpet, to the old Squire's gun and whips and walking-sticks, ranged on\r
+the stag's antlers above the mantelpiece. All other signs of sporting\r
+and outdoor occupation Nancy has removed to another room; but she has\r
+brought into the Red House the habit of filial reverence, and preserves\r
+sacredly in a place of honour these relics of her husband's departed\r
+father. The tankards are on the side-table still, but the bossed\r
+silver is undimmed by handling, and there are no dregs to send forth\r
+unpleasant suggestions: the only prevailing scent is of the lavender\r
+and rose-leaves that fill the vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity\r
+and order in this once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was\r
+entered by a new presiding spirit.\r
+\r
+"Now, father," said Nancy, "_is_ there any call for you to go home to\r
+tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with us?--such a beautiful evening\r
+as it's likely to be."\r
+\r
+The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing\r
+poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue between\r
+his daughters.\r
+\r
+"My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm voice, now\r
+become rather broken. "She manages me and the farm too."\r
+\r
+"And reason good as I should manage you, father," said Priscilla, "else\r
+you'd be giving yourself your death with rheumatism. And as for the\r
+farm, if anything turns out wrong, as it can't but do in these times,\r
+there's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with\r
+but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being master, to let somebody\r
+else do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud\r
+save many a man a stroke, _I_ believe."\r
+\r
+"Well, well, my dear," said her father, with a quiet laugh, "I didn't\r
+say you don't manage for everybody's good."\r
+\r
+"Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla," said Nancy, putting\r
+her hand on her sister's arm affectionately. "Come now; and we'll go\r
+round the garden while father has his nap."\r
+\r
+"My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I shall\r
+drive. And as for staying tea, I can't hear of it; for there's this\r
+dairymaid, now she knows she's to be married, turned Michaelmas, she'd\r
+as lief pour the new milk into the pig-trough as into the pans. That's\r
+the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the world 'ud be new-made\r
+because they're to be married. So come and let me put my bonnet on,\r
+and there'll be time for us to walk round the garden while the horse is\r
+being put in."\r
+\r
+When the sisters were treading the neatly-swept garden-walks, between\r
+the bright turf that contrasted pleasantly with the dark cones and\r
+arches and wall-like hedges of yew, Priscilla said--\r
+\r
+"I'm as glad as anything at your husband's making that exchange o' land\r
+with cousin Osgood, and beginning the dairying. It's a thousand pities\r
+you didn't do it before; for it'll give you something to fill your\r
+mind. There's nothing like a dairy if folks want a bit o' worrit to\r
+make the days pass. For as for rubbing furniture, when you can once\r
+see your face in a table there's nothing else to look for; but there's\r
+always something fresh with the dairy; for even in the depths o' winter\r
+there's some pleasure in conquering the butter, and making it come\r
+whether or no. My dear," added Priscilla, pressing her sister's hand\r
+affectionately as they walked side by side, "you'll never be low when\r
+you've got a dairy."\r
+\r
+"Ah, Priscilla," said Nancy, returning the pressure with a grateful\r
+glance of her clear eyes, "but it won't make up to Godfrey: a dairy's\r
+not so much to a man. And it's only what he cares for that ever makes\r
+me low. I'm contented with the blessings we have, if he could be\r
+contented."\r
+\r
+"It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, impetuously, "that way o'\r
+the men--always wanting and wanting, and never easy with what they've\r
+got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when they've neither\r
+ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to\r
+make 'em better than well, or else they must be swallowing something\r
+strong, though they're forced to make haste before the next meal comes\r
+in. But joyful be it spoken, our father was never that sort o' man.\r
+And if it had pleased God to make you ugly, like me, so as the men\r
+wouldn't ha' run after you, we might have kept to our own family, and\r
+had nothing to do with folks as have got uneasy blood in their veins."\r
+\r
+"Oh, don't say so, Priscilla," said Nancy, repenting that she had\r
+called forth this outburst; "nobody has any occasion to find fault with\r
+Godfrey. It's natural he should be disappointed at not having any\r
+children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for,\r
+and he always counted so on making a fuss with 'em when they were\r
+little. There's many another man 'ud hanker more than he does. He's\r
+the best of husbands."\r
+\r
+"Oh, I know," said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, "I know the way o'\r
+wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they turn\r
+round on one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell 'em. But\r
+father'll be waiting for me; we must turn now."\r
+\r
+The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and Mr.\r
+Lammeter was already on the stone steps, passing the time in recalling\r
+to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his master used to\r
+ride him.\r
+\r
+"I always _would_ have a good horse, you know," said the old gentleman,\r
+not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced from the memory of\r
+his juniors.\r
+\r
+"Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week's out, Mr. Cass,"\r
+was Priscilla's parting injunction, as she took the reins, and shook\r
+them gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.\r
+\r
+"I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, Nancy,\r
+and look at the draining," said Godfrey.\r
+\r
+"You'll be in again by tea-time, dear?"\r
+\r
+"Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour."\r
+\r
+It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little\r
+contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied\r
+him; for the women of her generation--unless, like Priscilla, they took\r
+to outdoor management--were not given to much walking beyond their own\r
+house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So,\r
+when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant's Bible\r
+before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little\r
+while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her thoughts had\r
+already insisted on wandering.\r
+\r
+But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the\r
+devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before\r
+her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very\r
+clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she\r
+opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life; but the spirit\r
+of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her\r
+conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had\r
+made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions\r
+with self-questioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a\r
+great variety of subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living\r
+inwardly, again and again, through all her remembered experience,\r
+especially through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her\r
+life and its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small\r
+details, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had\r
+opened a new epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight into the\r
+relations and trials of life, or which had called on her for some\r
+little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or\r
+real duty--asking herself continually whether she had been in any\r
+respect blamable. This excessive rumination and self-questioning is\r
+perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility\r
+when shut out from its due share of outward activity and of practical\r
+claims on its affections--inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless\r
+woman, when her lot is narrow. "I can do so little--have I done it all\r
+well?" is the perpetually recurring thought; and there are no voices\r
+calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to divert\r
+energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple.\r
+\r
+There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy's married\r
+life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the\r
+oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in\r
+the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent\r
+direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her\r
+thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow\r
+with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the\r
+defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's implied\r
+blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection\r
+can find for its wounds:--"A man must have so much on his mind," is the\r
+belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough\r
+answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come\r
+from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was\r
+dwelt on in her husband's mind as a privation to which he could not\r
+reconcile himself.\r
+\r
+Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the\r
+denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all the\r
+varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial,\r
+which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to become a\r
+mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of her hands,\r
+all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen\r
+years ago--just, but for one little dress, which had been made the\r
+burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy was so\r
+firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit\r
+of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be cherishing a\r
+longing for what was not given.\r
+\r
+Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she\r
+held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from applying\r
+her own standard to her husband. "It is very different--it is much\r
+worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman can always be\r
+satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man wants\r
+something that will make him look forward more--and sitting by the fire\r
+is so much duller to him than to a woman." And always, when Nancy\r
+reached this point in her meditations--trying, with predetermined\r
+sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it--there came a renewal of\r
+self-questioning. _Had_ she done everything in her power to lighten\r
+Godfrey's privation? Had she really been right in the resistance which\r
+had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago--the\r
+resistance to her husband's wish that they should adopt a child?\r
+Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that time than of\r
+our own; still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her\r
+mind to have an opinion on all topics, not exclusively masculine, that\r
+had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place\r
+for every article of her personal property: and her opinions were\r
+always principles to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not\r
+because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity\r
+inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties\r
+of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangements of the evening\r
+toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was three-and-twenty,\r
+had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits\r
+in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided\r
+judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted\r
+themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago,\r
+we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right\r
+for sisters to dress alike", and because "she would do what was right\r
+if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring". That was a trivial but\r
+typical instance of the mode in which Nancy's life was regulated.\r
+\r
+It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling,\r
+which had been the ground of Nancy's difficult resistance to her\r
+husband's wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had\r
+been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence:\r
+the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and\r
+would be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what\r
+it was clear that, for some high reason, they were better without.\r
+When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it was a bounden\r
+duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the\r
+wisest of men could scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her\r
+principle. But the conditions under which she held it apparent that a\r
+thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of\r
+thinking. She would have given up making a purchase at a particular\r
+place if, on three successive times, rain, or some other cause of\r
+Heaven's sending, had formed an obstacle; and she would have\r
+anticipated a broken limb or other heavy misfortune to any one who\r
+persisted in spite of such indications.\r
+\r
+"But why should you think the child would turn out ill?" said Godfrey,\r
+in his remonstrances. "She has thriven as well as child can do with\r
+the weaver; and _he_ adopted her. There isn't such a pretty little\r
+girl anywhere else in the parish, or one fitter for the station we\r
+could give her. Where can be the likelihood of her being a curse to\r
+anybody?"\r
+\r
+"Yes, my dear Godfrey," said Nancy, who was sitting with her hands\r
+tightly clasped together, and with yearning, regretful affection in her\r
+eyes. "The child may not turn out ill with the weaver. But, then, he\r
+didn't go to seek her, as we should be doing. It will be wrong: I feel\r
+sure it will. Don't you remember what that lady we met at the Royston\r
+Baths told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only\r
+adopting I ever heard of: and the child was transported when it was\r
+twenty-three. Dear Godfrey, don't ask me to do what I know is wrong: I\r
+should never be happy again. I know it's very hard for _you_--it's\r
+easier for me--but it's the will of Providence."\r
+\r
+It might seem singular that Nancy--with her religious theory pieced\r
+together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine\r
+imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small\r
+experience--should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so\r
+nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in\r
+the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge--singular, if we\r
+did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude\r
+the barriers of system.\r
+\r
+Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years\r
+old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred to\r
+him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie. Surely\r
+the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so much\r
+trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should happen to\r
+her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be well\r
+provided for to the end of his life--provided for as the excellent part\r
+he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate thing for\r
+people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of a man in a\r
+lower? It seemed an eminently appropriate thing to Godfrey, for\r
+reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he\r
+imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for\r
+desiring it. This was rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's\r
+relation to Eppie; but we must remember that many of the impressions\r
+which Godfrey was likely to gather concerning the labouring people\r
+around him would favour the idea that deep affections can hardly go\r
+along with callous palms and scant means; and he had not had the\r
+opportunity, even if he had had the power, of entering intimately into\r
+all that was exceptional in the weaver's experience. It was only the\r
+want of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey\r
+deliberately to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness\r
+had outlived that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of\r
+him as a husband was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion.\r
+\r
+"I was right," she said to herself, when she had recalled all their\r
+scenes of discussion--"I feel I was right to say him nay, though it\r
+hurt me more than anything; but how good Godfrey has been about it!\r
+Many men would have been very angry with me for standing out against\r
+their wishes; and they might have thrown out that they'd had ill-luck\r
+in marrying me; but Godfrey has never been the man to say me an unkind\r
+word. It's only what he can't hide: everything seems so blank to him,\r
+I know; and the land--what a difference it 'ud make to him, when he\r
+goes to see after things, if he'd children growing up that he was doing\r
+it all for! But I won't murmur; and perhaps if he'd married a woman\r
+who'd have had children, she'd have vexed him in other ways."\r
+\r
+This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort; and to give it greater\r
+strength, she laboured to make it impossible that any other wife should\r
+have had more perfect tenderness. She had been _forced_ to vex him by\r
+that one denial. Godfrey was not insensible to her loving effort, and\r
+did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her obstinacy. It was\r
+impossible to have lived with her fifteen years and not be aware that\r
+an unselfish clinging to the right, and a sincerity clear as the\r
+flower-born dew, were her main characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt\r
+this so strongly, that his own more wavering nature, too averse to\r
+facing difficulty to be unvaryingly simple and truthful, was kept in a\r
+certain awe of this gentle wife who watched his looks with a yearning\r
+to obey them. It seemed to him impossible that he should ever confess\r
+to her the truth about Eppie: she would never recover from the\r
+repulsion the story of his earlier marriage would create, told to her\r
+now, after that long concealment. And the child, too, he thought, must\r
+become an object of repulsion: the very sight of her would be painful.\r
+The shock to Nancy's mingled pride and ignorance of the world's evil\r
+might even be too much for her delicate frame. Since he had married\r
+her with that secret on his heart, he must keep it there to the last.\r
+Whatever else he did, he could not make an irreparable breach between\r
+himself and this long-loved wife.\r
+\r
+Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of children\r
+from a hearth brightened by such a wife? Why did his mind fly uneasily\r
+to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life was not thoroughly\r
+joyous to him? I suppose it is the way with all men and women who\r
+reach middle age without the clear perception that life never _can_ be\r
+thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of the grey hours,\r
+dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation\r
+of an untried good. Dissatisfaction seated musingly on a childless\r
+hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose return is greeted by young\r
+voices--seated at the meal where the little heads rise one above\r
+another like nursery plants, it sees a black care hovering behind every\r
+one of them, and thinks the impulses by which men abandon freedom, and\r
+seek for ties, are surely nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey's\r
+case there were further reasons why his thoughts should be continually\r
+solicited by this one point in his lot: his conscience, never\r
+thoroughly easy about Eppie, now gave his childless home the aspect of\r
+a retribution; and as the time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to\r
+adopt her, any retrieval of his error became more and more difficult.\r
+\r
+On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since there had been\r
+any allusion to the subject between them, and Nancy supposed that it\r
+was for ever buried.\r
+\r
+"I wonder if he'll mind it less or more as he gets older," she thought;\r
+"I'm afraid more. Aged people feel the miss of children: what would\r
+father do without Priscilla? And if I die, Godfrey will be very\r
+lonely--not holding together with his brothers much. But I won't be\r
+over-anxious, and trying to make things out beforehand: I must do my\r
+best for the present."\r
+\r
+With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her reverie, and\r
+turned her eyes again towards the forsaken page. It had been forsaken\r
+longer than she imagined, for she was presently surprised by the\r
+appearance of the servant with the tea-things. It was, in fact, a\r
+little before the usual time for tea; but Jane had her reasons.\r
+\r
+"Is your master come into the yard, Jane?"\r
+\r
+"No 'm, he isn't," said Jane, with a slight emphasis, of which,\r
+however, her mistress took no notice.\r
+\r
+"I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm," continued Jane, after a\r
+pause, "but there's folks making haste all one way, afore the front\r
+window. I doubt something's happened. There's niver a man to be seen\r
+i' the yard, else I'd send and see. I've been up into the top attic,\r
+but there's no seeing anything for trees. I hope nobody's hurt, that's\r
+all."\r
+\r
+"Oh, no, I daresay there's nothing much the matter," said Nancy. "It's\r
+perhaps Mr. Snell's bull got out again, as he did before."\r
+\r
+"I wish he mayn't gore anybody then, that's all," said Jane, not\r
+altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a few imaginary\r
+calamities.\r
+\r
+"That girl is always terrifying me," thought Nancy; "I wish Godfrey\r
+would come in."\r
+\r
+She went to the front window and looked as far as she could see along\r
+the road, with an uneasiness which she felt to be childish, for there\r
+were now no such signs of excitement as Jane had spoken of, and Godfrey\r
+would not be likely to return by the village road, but by the fields.\r
+She continued to stand, however, looking at the placid churchyard with\r
+the long shadows of the gravestones across the bright green hillocks,\r
+and at the glowing autumn colours of the Rectory trees beyond. Before\r
+such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is more\r
+distinctly felt--like a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny\r
+air. Nancy wished more and more that Godfrey would come in.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XVIII\r
+\r
+Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy felt\r
+that it was her husband. She turned from the window with gladness in\r
+her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was stilled.\r
+\r
+"Dear, I'm so thankful you're come," she said, going towards him. "I\r
+began to get--"\r
+\r
+She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat with trembling\r
+hands, and turned towards her with a pale face and a strange\r
+unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as part of a\r
+scene invisible to herself. She laid her hand on his arm, not daring\r
+to speak again; but he left the touch unnoticed, and threw himself into\r
+his chair.\r
+\r
+Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep\r
+away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when the door was closed again he\r
+exerted himself to speak more distinctly.\r
+\r
+"Sit down, Nancy--there," he said, pointing to a chair opposite him.\r
+"I came back as soon as I could, to hinder anybody's telling you but\r
+me. I've had a great shock--but I care most about the shock it'll be\r
+to you."\r
+\r
+"It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips,\r
+clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.\r
+\r
+"No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate\r
+skill with which he would have wished to make his revelation. "It's\r
+Dunstan--my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago.\r
+We've found him--found his body--his skeleton."\r
+\r
+The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in Nancy made her feel these\r
+words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness to hear what else he\r
+had to tell. He went on:\r
+\r
+"The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly--from the draining, I suppose; and\r
+there he lies--has lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great\r
+stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's my gold-handled\r
+hunting-whip, with my name on: he took it away, without my knowing, the\r
+day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen."\r
+\r
+Godfrey paused: it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you\r
+think he drowned himself?" said Nancy, almost wondering that her\r
+husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years\r
+ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been augured.\r
+\r
+"No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if he\r
+felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: "Dunstan was\r
+the man that robbed Silas Marner."\r
+\r
+The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and shame,\r
+for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship with crime as\r
+a dishonour.\r
+\r
+"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had\r
+immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more keenly\r
+by her husband.\r
+\r
+"There was the money in the pit," he continued--"all the weaver's\r
+money. Everything's been gathered up, and they're taking the skeleton\r
+to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was no hindering\r
+it; you must know."\r
+\r
+He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy would\r
+have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she refrained,\r
+from an instinctive sense that there was something behind--that Godfrey\r
+had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her\r
+face, and kept them fixed on her, as he said--\r
+\r
+"Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty\r
+wills it, our secrets are found out. I've lived with a secret on my\r
+mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't have you know it\r
+by somebody else, and not by me--I wouldn't have you find it out after\r
+I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been "I will" and "I won't" with me\r
+all my life--I'll make sure of myself now."\r
+\r
+Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife\r
+met with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.\r
+\r
+"Nancy," said Godfrey, slowly, "when I married you, I hid something\r
+from you--something I ought to have told you. That woman Marner found\r
+dead in the snow--Eppie's mother--that wretched woman--was my wife:\r
+Eppie is my child."\r
+\r
+He paused, dreading the effect of his confession. But Nancy sat quite\r
+still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She was pale\r
+and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her lap.\r
+\r
+"You'll never think the same of me again," said Godfrey, after a little\r
+while, with some tremor in his voice.\r
+\r
+She was silent.\r
+\r
+"I oughtn't to have left the child unowned: I oughtn't to have kept it\r
+from you. But I couldn't bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led away\r
+into marrying her--I suffered for it."\r
+\r
+Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost expected that she\r
+would presently get up and say she would go to her father's. How could\r
+she have any mercy for faults that must seem so black to her, with her\r
+simple, severe notions?\r
+\r
+But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. There was\r
+no indignation in her voice--only deep regret.\r
+\r
+"Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have done\r
+some of our duty by the child. Do you think I'd have refused to take\r
+her in, if I'd known she was yours?"\r
+\r
+At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not\r
+simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not measured this\r
+wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more\r
+agitation.\r
+\r
+"And--Oh, Godfrey--if we'd had her from the first, if you'd taken to\r
+her as you ought, she'd have loved me for her mother--and you'd have\r
+been happier with me: I could better have bore my little baby dying,\r
+and our life might have been more like what we used to think it 'ud be."\r
+\r
+The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak.\r
+\r
+"But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, if I'd told you," said\r
+Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to\r
+himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. "You may think you\r
+would now, but you wouldn't then. With your pride and your father's,\r
+you'd have hated having anything to do with me after the talk there'd\r
+have been."\r
+\r
+"I can't say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should\r
+never have married anybody else. But I wasn't worth doing wrong\r
+for--nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems\r
+beforehand--not even our marrying wasn't, you see." There was a faint\r
+sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last words.\r
+\r
+"I'm a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy," said Godfrey, rather\r
+tremulously. "Can you forgive me ever?"\r
+\r
+"The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey: you've made it up to\r
+me--you've been good to me for fifteen years. It's another you did the\r
+wrong to; and I doubt it can never be all made up for."\r
+\r
+"But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. "I won't mind the world\r
+knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my life."\r
+\r
+"It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy,\r
+shaking her head sadly. "But it's your duty to acknowledge her and\r
+provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God Almighty\r
+to make her love me."\r
+\r
+"Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon as\r
+everything's quiet at the Stone-pits."\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XIX\r
+\r
+Between eight and nine o'clock that evening, Eppie and Silas were\r
+seated alone in the cottage. After the great excitement the weaver had\r
+undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a longing for\r
+this quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had\r
+naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave him alone with his\r
+child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that\r
+stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus\r
+intolerable--when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an\r
+intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any\r
+one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness\r
+of the eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over coarse\r
+features from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of\r
+ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibrations through\r
+the heavy mortal frame--as if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had\r
+passed into the face of the listener.\r
+\r
+Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in his\r
+arm-chair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn her own chair towards his\r
+knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she looked up\r
+at him. On the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the recovered\r
+gold--the old long-loved gold, ranged in orderly heaps, as Silas used\r
+to range it in the days when it was his only joy. He had been telling\r
+her how he used to count it every night, and how his soul was utterly\r
+desolate till she was sent to him.\r
+\r
+"At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he was\r
+saying in a subdued tone, "as if you might be changed into the gold\r
+again; for sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I seemed to see\r
+the gold; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it, and find\r
+it was come back. But that didn't last long. After a bit, I should\r
+have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you from me,\r
+for I'd got to feel the need o' your looks and your voice and the touch\r
+o' your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie, when you were\r
+such a little un--you didn't know what your old father Silas felt for\r
+you."\r
+\r
+"But I know now, father," said Eppie. "If it hadn't been for you,\r
+they'd have taken me to the workhouse, and there'd have been nobody to\r
+love me."\r
+\r
+"Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you hadn't been sent\r
+to save me, I should ha' gone to the grave in my misery. The money was\r
+taken away from me in time; and you see it's been kept--kept till it\r
+was wanted for you. It's wonderful--our life is wonderful."\r
+\r
+Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. "It takes no\r
+hold of me now," he said, ponderingly--"the money doesn't. I wonder if\r
+it ever could again--I doubt it might, if I lost you, Eppie. I might\r
+come to think I was forsaken again, and lose the feeling that God was\r
+good to me."\r
+\r
+At that moment there was a knocking at the door; and Eppie was obliged\r
+to rise without answering Silas. Beautiful she looked, with the\r
+tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes and a slight flush on her\r
+cheeks, as she stepped to open the door. The flush deepened when she\r
+saw Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her little rustic curtsy, and\r
+held the door wide for them to enter.\r
+\r
+"We're disturbing you very late, my dear," said Mrs. Cass, taking\r
+Eppie's hand, and looking in her face with an expression of anxious\r
+interest and admiration. Nancy herself was pale and tremulous.\r
+\r
+Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to stand\r
+against Silas, opposite to them.\r
+\r
+"Well, Marner," said Godfrey, trying to speak with perfect firmness,\r
+"it's a great comfort to me to see you with your money again, that\r
+you've been deprived of so many years. It was one of my family did you\r
+the wrong--the more grief to me--and I feel bound to make up to you for\r
+it in every way. Whatever I can do for you will be nothing but paying\r
+a debt, even if I looked no further than the robbery. But there are\r
+other things I'm beholden--shall be beholden to you for, Marner."\r
+\r
+Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed between him and his wife\r
+that the subject of his fatherhood should be approached very carefully,\r
+and that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved for the\r
+future, so that it might be made to Eppie gradually. Nancy had urged\r
+this, because she felt strongly the painful light in which Eppie must\r
+inevitably see the relation between her father and mother.\r
+\r
+Silas, always ill at ease when he was being spoken to by "betters",\r
+such as Mr. Cass--tall, powerful, florid men, seen chiefly on\r
+horseback--answered with some constraint--\r
+\r
+"Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As for the robbery, I\r
+count it no loss to me. And if I did, you couldn't help it: you aren't\r
+answerable for it."\r
+\r
+"You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can; and I hope\r
+you'll let me act according to my own feeling of what's just. I know\r
+you're easily contented: you've been a hard-working man all your life."\r
+\r
+"Yes, sir, yes," said Marner, meditatively. "I should ha' been bad off\r
+without my work: it was what I held by when everything else was gone\r
+from me."\r
+\r
+"Ah," said Godfrey, applying Marner's words simply to his bodily wants,\r
+"it was a good trade for you in this country, because there's been a\r
+great deal of linen-weaving to be done. But you're getting rather past\r
+such close work, Marner: it's time you laid by and had some rest. You\r
+look a good deal pulled down, though you're not an old man, _are_ you?"\r
+\r
+"Fifty-five, as near as I can say, sir," said Silas.\r
+\r
+"Oh, why, you may live thirty years longer--look at old Macey! And that\r
+money on the table, after all, is but little. It won't go far either\r
+way--whether it's put out to interest, or you were to live on it as\r
+long as it would last: it wouldn't go far if you'd nobody to keep but\r
+yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good many years now."\r
+\r
+"Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying, "I'm\r
+in no fear o' want. We shall do very well--Eppie and me 'ull do well\r
+enough. There's few working-folks have got so much laid by as that. I\r
+don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a\r
+deal--almost too much. And as for us, it's little we want."\r
+\r
+"Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the\r
+moment after.\r
+\r
+"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that this\r
+turn in the point of view might help her husband. "We should agree in\r
+that: I give a deal of time to the garden."\r
+\r
+"Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey,\r
+surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition which\r
+had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a good part by\r
+Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great comfort to you to\r
+see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks blooming and\r
+healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't look like a\r
+strapping girl come of working parents. You'd like to see her taken\r
+care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady of her;\r
+she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she might come to\r
+have in a few years' time."\r
+\r
+A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a passing\r
+gleam. Eppie was simply wondering Mr. Cass should talk so about things\r
+that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but Silas was hurt and\r
+uneasy.\r
+\r
+"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at\r
+command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard Mr.\r
+Cass's words.\r
+\r
+"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to come to\r
+the point. "Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children--nobody to\r
+benefit by our good home and everything else we have--more than enough\r
+for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody in the place of a\r
+daughter to us--we should like to have Eppie, and treat her in every\r
+way as our own child. It 'ud be a great comfort to you in your old\r
+age, I hope, to see her fortune made in that way, after you've been at\r
+the trouble of bringing her up so well. And it's right you should have\r
+every reward for that. And Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and\r
+be grateful to you: she'd come and see you very often, and we should\r
+all be on the look-out to do everything we could towards making you\r
+comfortable."\r
+\r
+A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment,\r
+necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and\r
+that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While he had\r
+been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head,\r
+and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt him trembling\r
+violently. He was silent for some moments when Mr. Cass had\r
+ended--powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike painful.\r
+Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in\r
+distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when\r
+one struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every other in\r
+Silas, and he said, faintly--\r
+\r
+"Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr. and\r
+Mrs. Cass."\r
+\r
+Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step.\r
+Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the sense that\r
+her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of\r
+self-consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass and\r
+then to Mr. Cass, and said--\r
+\r
+"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir. But I can't leave my father, nor\r
+own anybody nearer than him. And I don't want to be a lady--thank you\r
+all the same" (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). "I couldn't give up\r
+the folks I've been used to."\r
+\r
+Eppie's lips began to tremble a little at the last words. She\r
+retreated to her father's chair again, and held him round the neck:\r
+while Silas, with a subdued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers.\r
+\r
+The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was,\r
+naturally, divided with distress on her husband's account. She dared\r
+not speak, wondering what was going on in her husband's mind.\r
+\r
+Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we\r
+encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had been full of his own\r
+penitence and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time was\r
+left to him; he was possessed with all-important feelings, that were to\r
+lead to a predetermined course of action which he had fixed on as the\r
+right, and he was not prepared to enter with lively appreciation into\r
+other people's feelings counteracting his virtuous resolves. The\r
+agitation with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed with anger.\r
+\r
+"But I've a claim on you, Eppie--the strongest of all claims. It's my\r
+duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child, and provide for her. She is my\r
+own child--her mother was my wife. I've a natural claim on her that\r
+must stand before every other."\r
+\r
+Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. Silas, on the\r
+contrary, who had been relieved, by Eppie's answer, from the dread lest\r
+his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit of resistance\r
+in him set free, not without a touch of parental fierceness. "Then,\r
+sir," he answered, with an accent of bitterness that had been silent in\r
+him since the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished--"then,\r
+sir, why didn't you say so sixteen year ago, and claim her before I'd\r
+come to love her, i'stead o' coming to take her from me now, when you\r
+might as well take the heart out o' my body? God gave her to me\r
+because you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine:\r
+you've no right to her! When a man turns a blessing from his door, it\r
+falls to them as take it in."\r
+\r
+"I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I've repented of my conduct in\r
+that matter," said Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of\r
+Silas's words.\r
+\r
+"I'm glad to hear it, sir," said Marner, with gathering excitement;\r
+"but repentance doesn't alter what's been going on for sixteen year.\r
+Your coming now and saying "I'm her father" doesn't alter the feelings\r
+inside us. It's me she's been calling her father ever since she could\r
+say the word."\r
+\r
+"But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, Marner," said\r
+Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the weaver's direct truth-speaking. "It\r
+isn't as if she was to be taken quite away from you, so that you'd\r
+never see her again. She'll be very near you, and come to see you very\r
+often. She'll feel just the same towards you."\r
+\r
+"Just the same?" said Marner, more bitterly than ever. "How'll she\r
+feel just the same for me as she does now, when we eat o' the same bit,\r
+and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same things from one day's\r
+end to another? Just the same? that's idle talk. You'd cut us i' two."\r
+\r
+Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy of Marner's\r
+simple words, felt rather angry again. It seemed to him that the\r
+weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily passed by those who have\r
+never tested their own power of sacrifice) to oppose what was\r
+undoubtedly for Eppie's welfare; and he felt himself called upon, for\r
+her sake, to assert his authority.\r
+\r
+"I should have thought, Marner," he said, severely--"I should have\r
+thought your affection for Eppie would make you rejoice in what was for\r
+her good, even if it did call upon you to give up something. You ought\r
+to remember your own life's uncertain, and she's at an age now when her\r
+lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in\r
+her father's home: she may marry some low working-man, and then,\r
+whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make her well-off. You're\r
+putting yourself in the way of her welfare; and though I'm sorry to\r
+hurt you after what you've done, and what I've left undone, I feel now\r
+it's my duty to insist on taking care of my own daughter. I want to do\r
+my duty."\r
+\r
+It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was\r
+more deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey's. Thought had been\r
+very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old\r
+long-loved father and this new unfamiliar father who had suddenly come\r
+to fill the place of that black featureless shadow which had held the\r
+ring and placed it on her mother's finger. Her imagination had darted\r
+backward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this\r
+revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in Godfrey's last\r
+speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite. Not\r
+that these thoughts, either of past or future, determined her\r
+resolution--_that_ was determined by the feelings which vibrated to\r
+every word Silas had uttered; but they raised, even apart from these\r
+feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and the newly-revealed\r
+father.\r
+\r
+Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and alarmed\r
+lest Godfrey's accusation should be true--lest he should be raising his\r
+own will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many moments he was mute,\r
+struggling for the self-conquest necessary to the uttering of the\r
+difficult words. They came out tremulously.\r
+\r
+"I'll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child. I'll\r
+hinder nothing."\r
+\r
+Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections,\r
+shared her husband's view, that Marner was not justifiable in his wish\r
+to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She felt\r
+that it was a very hard trial for the poor weaver, but her code allowed\r
+no question that a father by blood must have a claim above that of any\r
+foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous\r
+circumstances and the privileges of "respectability", could not enter\r
+into the pleasures which early nurture and habit connect with all the\r
+little aims and efforts of the poor who are born poor: to her mind,\r
+Eppie, in being restored to her birthright, was entering on a too long\r
+withheld but unquestionable good. Hence she heard Silas's last words\r
+with relief, and thought, as Godfrey did, that their wish was achieved.\r
+\r
+"Eppie, my dear," said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, not without\r
+some embarrassment, under the sense that she was old enough to judge\r
+him, "it'll always be our wish that you should show your love and\r
+gratitude to one who's been a father to you so many years, and we shall\r
+want to help you to make him comfortable in every way. But we hope\r
+you'll come to love us as well; and though I haven't been what a father\r
+should ha' been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my\r
+power for you for the rest of my life, and provide for you as my only\r
+child. And you'll have the best of mothers in my wife--that'll be a\r
+blessing you haven't known since you were old enough to know it."\r
+\r
+"My dear, you'll be a treasure to me," said Nancy, in her gentle voice.\r
+"We shall want for nothing when we have our daughter."\r
+\r
+Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she had done before. She\r
+held Silas's hand in hers, and grasped it firmly--it was a weaver's\r
+hand, with a palm and finger-tips that were sensitive to such\r
+pressure--while she spoke with colder decision than before.\r
+\r
+"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir, for your offers--they're very great,\r
+and far above my wish. For I should have no delight i' life any more\r
+if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at\r
+home, a-thinking of me and feeling lone. We've been used to be happy\r
+together every day, and I can't think o' no happiness without him. And\r
+he says he'd nobody i' the world till I was sent to him, and he'd have\r
+nothing when I was gone. And he's took care of me and loved me from\r
+the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall\r
+ever come between him and me."\r
+\r
+"But you must make sure, Eppie," said Silas, in a low voice--"you must\r
+make sure as you won't ever be sorry, because you've made your choice\r
+to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes and things, when you\r
+might ha' had everything o' the best."\r
+\r
+His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened to Eppie's\r
+words of faithful affection.\r
+\r
+"I can never be sorry, father," said Eppie. "I shouldn't know what to\r
+think on or to wish for with fine things about me, as I haven't been\r
+used to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in\r
+a gig, and sit in a place at church, as 'ud make them as I'm fond of\r
+think me unfitting company for 'em. What could _I_ care for then?"\r
+\r
+Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. But his eyes\r
+were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the end of his stick, as\r
+if he were pondering on something absently. She thought there was a\r
+word which might perhaps come better from her lips than from his.\r
+\r
+"What you say is natural, my dear child--it's natural you should cling\r
+to those who've brought you up," she said, mildly; "but there's a duty\r
+you owe to your lawful father. There's perhaps something to be given\r
+up on more sides than one. When your father opens his home to you, I\r
+think it's right you shouldn't turn your back on it."\r
+\r
+"I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie, impetuously,\r
+while the tears gathered. "I've always thought of a little home where\r
+he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do everything for him: I\r
+can't think o' no other home. I wasn't brought up to be a lady, and I\r
+can't turn my mind to it. I like the working-folks, and their\r
+victuals, and their ways. And," she ended passionately, while the\r
+tears fell, "I'm promised to marry a working-man, as'll live with\r
+father, and help me to take care of him."\r
+\r
+Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and smarting dilated\r
+eyes. This frustration of a purpose towards which he had set out under\r
+the exalted consciousness that he was about to compensate in some\r
+degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air of\r
+the room stifling.\r
+\r
+"Let us go," he said, in an under-tone.\r
+\r
+"We won't talk of this any longer now," said Nancy, rising. "We're your\r
+well-wishers, my dear--and yours too, Marner. We shall come and see\r
+you again. It's getting late now."\r
+\r
+In this way she covered her husband's abrupt departure, for Godfrey had\r
+gone straight to the door, unable to say more.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XX\r
+\r
+Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in silence. When\r
+they entered the oaken parlour, Godfrey threw himself into his chair,\r
+while Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the hearth\r
+near her husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes, and\r
+yet fearing to utter any word lest it might jar on his feeling. At\r
+last Godfrey turned his head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling\r
+in that meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual\r
+gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or\r
+refuge from a great weariness or a great danger--not to be interfered\r
+with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the\r
+fresh enjoyment of repose.\r
+\r
+But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers within it,\r
+he drew her towards him, and said--\r
+\r
+"That's ended!"\r
+\r
+She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his side, "Yes,\r
+I'm afraid we must give up the hope of having her for a daughter. It\r
+wouldn't be right to want to force her to come to us against her will.\r
+We can't alter her bringing up and what's come of it."\r
+\r
+"No," said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with\r
+his usually careless and unemphatic speech--"there's debts we can't pay\r
+like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by.\r
+While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been\r
+growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said\r
+about a man's turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to\r
+somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy--I shall\r
+pass for childless now against my wish."\r
+\r
+Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while she\r
+asked--"You won't make it known, then, about Eppie's being your\r
+daughter?"\r
+\r
+"No: where would be the good to anybody?--only harm. I must do what I\r
+can for her in the state of life she chooses. I must see who it is\r
+she's thinking of marrying."\r
+\r
+"If it won't do any good to make the thing known," said Nancy, who\r
+thought she might now allow herself the relief of entertaining a\r
+feeling which she had tried to silence before, "I should be very\r
+thankful for father and Priscilla never to be troubled with knowing\r
+what was done in the past, more than about Dunsey: it can't be helped,\r
+their knowing that."\r
+\r
+"I shall put it in my will--I think I shall put it in my will. I\r
+shouldn't like to leave anything to be found out, like this of Dunsey,"\r
+said Godfrey, meditatively. "But I can't see anything but difficulties\r
+that 'ud come from telling it now. I must do what I can to make her\r
+happy in her own way. I've a notion," he added, after a moment's\r
+pause, "it's Aaron Winthrop she meant she was engaged to. I remember\r
+seeing him with her and Marner going away from church."\r
+\r
+"Well, he's very sober and industrious," said Nancy, trying to view the\r
+matter as cheerfully as possible.\r
+\r
+Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he looked up at\r
+Nancy sorrowfully, and said--\r
+\r
+"She's a very pretty, nice girl, isn't she, Nancy?"\r
+\r
+"Yes, dear; and with just your hair and eyes: I wondered it had never\r
+struck me before."\r
+\r
+"I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her\r
+father: I could see a change in her manner after that."\r
+\r
+"She couldn't bear to think of not looking on Marner as her father,"\r
+said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her husband's painful impression.\r
+\r
+"She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She thinks me\r
+worse than I am. But she _must_ think it: she can never know all.\r
+It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to dislike me. I\r
+should never have got into that trouble if I'd been true to you--if I\r
+hadn't been a fool. I'd no right to expect anything but evil could\r
+come of that marriage--and when I shirked doing a father's part too."\r
+\r
+Nancy was silent: her spirit of rectitude would not let her try to\r
+soften the edge of what she felt to be a just compunction. He spoke\r
+again after a little while, but the tone was rather changed: there was\r
+tenderness mingled with the previous self-reproach.\r
+\r
+"And I got _you_, Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I've been grumbling\r
+and uneasy because I hadn't something else--as if I deserved it."\r
+\r
+"You've never been wanting to me, Godfrey," said Nancy, with quiet\r
+sincerity. "My only trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself to\r
+the lot that's been given us."\r
+\r
+"Well, perhaps it isn't too late to mend a bit there. Though it _is_\r
+too late to mend some things, say what they will."\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CHAPTER XXI\r
+\r
+The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were seated at their breakfast,\r
+he said to her--\r
+\r
+"Eppie, there's a thing I've had on my mind to do this two year, and\r
+now the money's been brought back to us, we can do it. I've been\r
+turning it over and over in the night, and I think we'll set out\r
+to-morrow, while the fine days last. We'll leave the house and\r
+everything for your godmother to take care on, and we'll make a little\r
+bundle o' things and set out."\r
+\r
+"Where to go, daddy?" said Eppie, in much surprise.\r
+\r
+"To my old country--to the town where I was born--up Lantern Yard. I\r
+want to see Mr. Paston, the minister: something may ha' come out to\r
+make 'em know I was innicent o' the robbery. And Mr. Paston was a man\r
+with a deal o' light--I want to speak to him about the drawing o' the\r
+lots. And I should like to talk to him about the religion o' this\r
+country-side, for I partly think he doesn't know on it."\r
+\r
+Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only of wonder\r
+and delight at seeing a strange country, but also of coming back to\r
+tell Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much wiser than she was about\r
+most things--it would be rather pleasant to have this little advantage\r
+over him. Mrs. Winthrop, though possessed with a dim fear of dangers\r
+attendant on so long a journey, and requiring many assurances that it\r
+would not take them out of the region of carriers' carts and slow\r
+waggons, was nevertheless well pleased that Silas should revisit his\r
+own country, and find out if he had been cleared from that false\r
+accusation.\r
+\r
+"You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o' your life, Master\r
+Marner," said Dolly--"that you would. And if there's any light to be\r
+got up the yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this world, and I'd\r
+be glad on it myself, if you could bring it back."\r
+\r
+So on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Eppie, in their Sunday\r
+clothes, with a small bundle tied in a blue linen handkerchief, were\r
+making their way through the streets of a great manufacturing town.\r
+Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought over his\r
+native place, had stopped several persons in succession to ask them the\r
+name of this town, that he might be sure he was not under a mistake\r
+about it.\r
+\r
+"Ask for Lantern Yard, father--ask this gentleman with the tassels on\r
+his shoulders a-standing at the shop door; he isn't in a hurry like the\r
+rest," said Eppie, in some distress at her father's bewilderment, and\r
+ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise, the movement, and the multitude\r
+of strange indifferent faces.\r
+\r
+"Eh, my child, he won't know anything about it," said Silas;\r
+"gentlefolks didn't ever go up the Yard. But happen somebody can tell\r
+me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I know the way\r
+out o' that as if I'd seen it yesterday."\r
+\r
+With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they\r
+reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of the jail, the first object\r
+that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the\r
+certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had hitherto given\r
+him, that he was in his native place.\r
+\r
+"Ah," he said, drawing a long breath, "there's the jail, Eppie; that's\r
+just the same: I aren't afraid now. It's the third turning on the left\r
+hand from the jail doors--that's the way we must go."\r
+\r
+"Oh, what a dark ugly place!" said Eppie. "How it hides the sky!\r
+It's worse than the Workhouse. I'm glad you don't live in this town\r
+now, father. Is Lantern Yard like this street?"\r
+\r
+"My precious child," said Silas, smiling, "it isn't a big street like\r
+this. I never was easy i' this street myself, but I was fond o'\r
+Lantern Yard. The shops here are all altered, I think--I can't make\r
+'em out; but I shall know the turning, because it's the third."\r
+\r
+"Here it is," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came to a\r
+narrow alley. "And then we must go to the left again, and then\r
+straight for'ard for a bit, up Shoe Lane: and then we shall be at the\r
+entry next to the o'erhanging window, where there's the nick in the\r
+road for the water to run. Eh, I can see it all."\r
+\r
+"O father, I'm like as if I was stifled," said Eppie. "I couldn't ha'\r
+thought as any folks lived i' this way, so close together. How pretty\r
+the Stone-pits 'ull look when we get back!"\r
+\r
+"It looks comical to _me_, child, now--and smells bad. I can't think\r
+as it usened to smell so."\r
+\r
+Here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked out from a gloomy doorway\r
+at the strangers, and increased Eppie's uneasiness, so that it was a\r
+longed-for relief when they issued from the alleys into Shoe Lane,\r
+where there was a broader strip of sky.\r
+\r
+"Dear heart!" said Silas, "why, there's people coming out o' the Yard\r
+as if they'd been to chapel at this time o' day--a weekday noon!"\r
+\r
+Suddenly he started and stood still with a look of distressed\r
+amazement, that alarmed Eppie. They were before an opening in front of\r
+a large factory, from which men and women were streaming for their\r
+midday meal.\r
+\r
+"Father," said Eppie, clasping his arm, "what's the matter?"\r
+\r
+But she had to speak again and again before Silas could answer her.\r
+\r
+"It's gone, child," he said, at last, in strong agitation--"Lantern\r
+Yard's gone. It must ha' been here, because here's the house with the\r
+o'erhanging window--I know that--it's just the same; but they've made\r
+this new opening; and see that big factory! It's all gone--chapel and\r
+all."\r
+\r
+"Come into that little brush-shop and sit down, father--they'll let you\r
+sit down," said Eppie, always on the watch lest one of her father's\r
+strange attacks should come on. "Perhaps the people can tell you all\r
+about it."\r
+\r
+But neither from the brush-maker, who had come to Shoe Lane only ten\r
+years ago, when the factory was already built, nor from any other\r
+source within his reach, could Silas learn anything of the old Lantern\r
+Yard friends, or of Mr. Paston the minister.\r
+\r
+"The old place is all swep' away," Silas said to Dolly Winthrop on the\r
+night of his return--"the little graveyard and everything. The old\r
+home's gone; I've no home but this now. I shall never know whether\r
+they got at the truth o' the robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha'\r
+given me any light about the drawing o' the lots. It's dark to me,\r
+Mrs. Winthrop, that is; I doubt it'll be dark to the last."\r
+\r
+"Well, yes, Master Marner," said Dolly, who sat with a placid listening\r
+face, now bordered by grey hairs; "I doubt it may. It's the will o'\r
+Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there's some\r
+things as I've never felt i' the dark about, and they're mostly what\r
+comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by that once, Master\r
+Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the rights of it; but that\r
+doesn't hinder there _being_ a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark\r
+to you and me."\r
+\r
+"No," said Silas, "no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the child\r
+was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light\r
+enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I\r
+shall trusten till I die."\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+CONCLUSION.\r
+\r
+There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe to be\r
+especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great lilacs and\r
+laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and purple\r
+wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were calves still\r
+young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk. People were not so\r
+busy then as they must become when the full cheese-making and the\r
+mowing had set in; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress\r
+could be worn with comfort and seen to advantage.\r
+\r
+Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts the\r
+morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one.\r
+She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the\r
+perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest\r
+pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to\r
+provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous\r
+meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at once.\r
+\r
+Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down\r
+the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair\r
+looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her husband's\r
+arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father Silas.\r
+\r
+"You won't be giving me away, father," she had said before they went to\r
+church; "you'll only be taking Aaron to be a son to you."\r
+\r
+Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the\r
+little bridal procession.\r
+\r
+There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Priscilla Lammeter was\r
+glad that she and her father had happened to drive up to the door of\r
+the Red House just in time to see this pretty sight. They had come to\r
+keep Nancy company to-day, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to\r
+Lytherley, for special reasons. That seemed to be a pity, for\r
+otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood\r
+certainly would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had ordered\r
+at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the weaver who\r
+had been wronged by one of his own family.\r
+\r
+"I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like that\r
+and bring her up," said Priscilla to her father, as they sat in the\r
+gig; "I should ha' had something young to think of then, besides the\r
+lambs and the calves."\r
+\r
+"Yes, my dear, yes," said Mr. Lammeter; "one feels that as one gets\r
+older. Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some young eyes\r
+about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be."\r
+\r
+Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister; and the wedding\r
+group had passed on beyond the Red House to the humbler part of the\r
+village.\r
+\r
+Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. Macey, who had been\r
+set in his arm-chair outside his own door, would expect some special\r
+notice as they passed, since he was too old to be at the wedding-feast.\r
+\r
+"Mr. Macey's looking for a word from us," said Dolly; "he'll be hurt if\r
+we pass him and say nothing--and him so racked with rheumatiz."\r
+\r
+So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. He had looked\r
+forward to the occasion, and had his premeditated speech.\r
+\r
+"Well, Master Marner," he said, in a voice that quavered a good deal,\r
+"I've lived to see my words come true. I was the first to say there\r
+was no harm in you, though your looks might be again' you; and I was\r
+the first to say you'd get your money back. And it's nothing but\r
+rightful as you should. And I'd ha' said the "Amens", and willing, at\r
+the holy matrimony; but Tookey's done it a good while now, and I hope\r
+you'll have none the worse luck."\r
+\r
+In the open yard before the Rainbow the party of guests were already\r
+assembled, though it was still nearly an hour before the appointed\r
+feast time. But by this means they could not only enjoy the slow\r
+advent of their pleasure; they had also ample leisure to talk of Silas\r
+Marner's strange history, and arrive by due degrees at the conclusion\r
+that he had brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a\r
+lone motherless child. Even the farrier did not negative this\r
+sentiment: on the contrary, he took it up as peculiarly his own, and\r
+invited any hardy person present to contradict him. But he met with no\r
+contradiction; and all differences among the company were merged in a\r
+general agreement with Mr. Snell's sentiment, that when a man had\r
+deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him\r
+joy.\r
+\r
+As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised in the\r
+Rainbow yard; and Ben Winthrop, whose jokes had retained their\r
+acceptable flavour, found it agreeable to turn in there and receive\r
+congratulations; not requiring the proposed interval of quiet at the\r
+Stone-pits before joining the company.\r
+\r
+Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever expected there now; and in\r
+other ways there had been alterations at the expense of Mr. Cass, the\r
+landlord, to suit Silas's larger family. For he and Eppie had declared\r
+that they would rather stay at the Stone-pits than go to any new home.\r
+The garden was fenced with stones on two sides, but in front there was\r
+an open fence, through which the flowers shone with answering gladness,\r
+as the four united people came within sight of them.\r
+\r
+"O father," said Eppie, "what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody\r
+could be happier than we are."\r
projects / gender-roles-text-analysis.git / blobdiff