Silas Marner

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SILAS MARNER

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

^^

•\^:;

THE CHILDREN ALWAYS CALLED HIM ' OLD MASTER MARNER. — P. 29.

[_Frofiiispiece.

SILAS MARNER

BY

GEORGE ELIOT

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

HUGH THOMSON

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET LONDON

1907

ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOURED

PAGE

Old Master Marner ..... Frojitispiecc

Take to their legs in terror .....

The rarer pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter .
At the covert side .......

A present from Miss Priscilla .....

The company at the Rainbow .....

Had made her blood creep .....

' Ring the bell for my ale, will you ? '

The ' carril ' .

Arrivals at the Red House ....

The field's length you'd go .... .

Dr. Kimble making himself agreeable to his feminine
patients .......

The gay procession ......

The young Squire leading off wi' Miss Nancy for partners
Inviting Silas .......

Here sat Eppie .......

Like little dogs face to face .....

A chance meeting .......

Eppie frisking . . ....

4
46

52
65
74
103
115
143
147
160

168

173
178
198
232
238
240
251
27T

VI

SILAS MARNER

The father whose return is greeted by young voices
She turned from the window ....

' That's ended '

To ask the name of this town ....

PAGE

282
285
307
312

IN THE TEXT

With a heavy bag on his back

7

The risk of fording streams

34

The object of his search .

61

The cry of desolation

69

The long pipes . . . .

91

He was seen setting off .

T06

Aaron peeping

137

Wheeled her round

157

His hospitality rayed out

165

Holding his son Aaron between his

knees

176

Godfrey's wife

185

In perfect contentment .

190

Silas fell on his knees .

195

All eyes were bent on Silas Marner

202

Beset by mothers .

214

Sat on Dolly's knee

217

Some favourite bank

227

'■ Eppie in de toal-hole ' .

. 235

Eppie's play ....

254

She held the door wide .

294

The little bridal procession

319

PART I

the days when the spinning-wheels
MjJ hummed busily in the farmhouses —
^^^ and even great ladies, clothed in
^^^g silk and thread-lace, had their toy
^ spinning-wheels of polished oak —
there might be seen, in districts far away among
the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain
pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the
brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of
a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked
fiercely when one of these alien -looking men
appeared on the upland, dark against the early
£ I B

2 SILAS MARNER part i

winter sunset ; for what dog likes a figure bent
under a heavy bag ? — and these pale men rarely
stirred abroad without that mysterious burden.
The shepherd himself, though he had good
reason to believe that the bag held nothing but
flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong
linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure
that this trade of weaving, indispensable though
it was, could be carried on entirely without the
help of the Evil One. In that far-off time super-
stition clung easily round every person or thing
that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent
and occasional merely, like the visits of the
pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where
wandering men had their homes or their origin ;
and how was a man to be explained unless you
at least knew somebody who knew his father and
mother ? To the peasants of old times, the world
outside their own direct experience was a region
of vagueness and mystery : to their untravelled
thought a state of wandering v/as a conception
as dim as the winter life of the swallows that
came back with the spring ; and even a settler,
if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased
to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which
would have prevented any surprise if a long
course of inoffensive conduct on his part had
ended in the commission of a crime ; especially
if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed
any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether
in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the
tongue, or In some other art unfamiliar to villagers,
was in itself suspicious : honest folk, born and

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 3

bred in a visible manner, were mostly not over-
wise or clever — at least, not beyond such a matter
as knowing the signs of the weather ; and the
process by which rapidity and dexterity of any
kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that
they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this
way it came to pass that those scattered linen-
weavers — emigrants from the town into the
country — were to the last regarded as aliens
by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted
the eccentric habits which belong to a state of
loneliness.

In the early years of this century, such a linen-
weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his
vocation in a stone cottage that stood among
the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe,
and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit.
The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike
the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-
machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had
a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys,
who would often leave off their nutting or blrds'-
nestlng to peep In at the window of the stone
cottage, counterbalancing- a certain awe at the
mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant
sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the
mockery of its alternating noises, along with the
bent, tread- mill attitude of the weaver. But
sometimes It happened that Marner, pausing to
adjust an irregularity In his thread, became aware
of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his
time, he liked their intrusion so III that he would
descend from his loom, and, opening the door.

4 SILAS MARNER part i

would fix on them a gaze that was always enough
to make them take to their legs in terror. For
how was it possible to believe that those large
brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale
face really saw nothing very distinctly that was
not close to them, and not rather that their
dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a
wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in
the rear ? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers
and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure
folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still
more darkly, that if you could only speak the
devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of
the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the
old .demon-worship might perhaps even now be
caught by the diligent listener among the grey-
haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty
associates the ideas of power and benignity. A
shadowy conception of power that by much
persuasion can be induced to refrain from in-
flicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by
the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men
who have always been pressed close by primitive
wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never
been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious
faith. To them pain and mishap present a far
wider range of possibilities than gladness and
enjoyment : their Imagination Is almost barren
of the Images that feed desire and hope, but is
all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual
pasture to fear. ' Is there anything you can fancy
that you would like to eat ? ' I once said to an
old labouring man, who was in his last illness,

TAKE TO THEIR LEGS IN TERROR.

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 5

and who had refused all the food his wife had
offered him. ' No,' he answered, ' I've never
been used to nothing but common victual, and
I can't eat that.' Experience had bred no
fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of
appetite.

And Raveloe was a village where many of the
old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices.
Not that it was one of those barren parishes
lying on the outskirts of civiHsation — inhabited
by meagre sheep and thinly scattered shepherds :
on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of
what we are pleased to call Merry England, and
held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point
of view, paid highly-desirable tithes. But it was
nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an
hour's journey on horseback from any turnpike,
where it was never reached by the vibrations of
the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an
important-looking village, with a fine old church
and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two
or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with
well -walled orchards and ornamental weather-
cocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting
more imposing fronts than the rectory, which
peeped from among the trees on the other side
of the churchyard : — a village which showed at
once the summits of its social life, and told the
practised eye that there was no great park and
manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were
several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly
quite at their ease, drawing enough money from
their bad farming, in those war times, to live in

6 SILAS MARNER parti

a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas,
Whitsun, and Easter tide.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had
first come to Raveloe ; he was then simply a
pallid young man, with prominent, short-sighted
brown eyes, whose appearance would have had
nothing strange for people of average culture and
experience, but for the villagers near whom he
had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities
which corresponded with the exceptional nature
of his occupation, and his advent from an unknown
region called ' North'ard.' So had his way of
life : — he invited no comer to step across his door-
sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink
a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheel-
wright's : he sought no man or woman, save for
the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply
himself with necessaries ; and it was soon clear to
the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one
of them to accept him against her will — quite as
if he had heard them declare that they would
never marry a dead man come to life again. This
view of Marner's personality was not without
another ground than his pale face and unexampled
eyes ; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred
that, one evening as he was returning homeward,
he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with
a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the
bag on the stile, as a man in his senses would
have done ; and that, on coming up to him, he
saw that Marner's eyes were set like a dead man's,
and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his
limbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag

With a heavy baif on his back.

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 9

as if they'd been made of iron ; but just as he had
made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he
came all right again, Hke, as you might say, in
the winking of an eye, and said ' Good-night,' and
walked off. All this Jem swore he had seen,
more by token, that it was the very day he had
been mole-catching on Squire Cass's land, down
by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner must have
been in a 'fit,' a word which seemed to explain
things otherwise incredible ; but the argumentative
Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook his head,
and asked if anybody was ever known to go off
in a fit and not fall down. A fit was a stroke,
wasn't it ? and it was in the nature of a stroke to
partly take away the use of a man's limbs and
throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children
to look to. No, no ; it was no stroke that would
let a man stand on his legs, like a horse between
the shafts, and then walk off as soon as you can
say ' Gee ! ' But there might be such a thing as
a man's soul being loose from his body, and going
out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back ;
and that was how folks got over-wise, for they
went to school in this shell -less state to those
who could teach them more than their neighbours
could learn with their five senses and the parson.
And where did Master Marner get his knowledge
of herbs from — and charms, too, if he liked to
give them away? Jem Rodney's story was no
more than what might have been expected by
anybody who had seen how Marner had cured
Sally Gates, and made her sleep like a baby,
when her heart had been beating enough to burst

lo SILAS MARNER part i

her body, for two months and more, while she
had been under the doctors care. He might
cure more folks if he would ; but he was worth
speaking fair, if it was only to keep him from
doing you a mischief

It v/as partly to this vague fear that Marner
was indebted for protecting him from the persecu-
tion that his singularities might have drawn upon
him, but still more to the fact that, the old linen-
weaver in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being
dead, his handicraft made him a highly welcome
settler to the richer housewives of the district,
and even to the more provident cottagers, who
had their little stock of yarn at the year's end ;
and their sense of his usefulness would have
counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which
was not confirmed by a deficiency in the quality
or the tale of the cloth he wove for them. And
the years had rolled on without producing any
change in the impressions of the neighbours con-
cerning Marner, except the change from novelty
to habit. At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe
men said just the same things about Silas Marner
as at the beginning : they did not say them quite
so often, but they believed them much more
strongly when they did say them. There was
only one important addition which the years had
brought : it was, that Master Marner had laid by
a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he
could buy up ' bigger men ' than himself

But while opinion concerning him had remained
nearly stationary, and his daily habits had presented
scarcely any visible change, Marner's inward life

CHAP. I SILAS MARKER ii

had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that
of every fervid nature must be when it has fled,
or been condemned, to soHtude. His hfe, before
he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the
movement, the mental activity, and the close
fellowship, which, in that day as in this, marked
the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow
religious sect, where the poorest layman has the
chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech,
and has, at the very least, the weight of a silent
voter in the government of his community.
Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden
world, known to itself as the church assembling
in Lantern Yard ; he was believed to be a young
man of exemplary life and ardent faith ; and a
peculiar interest had been centred in him ever
since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a
mysterious rigidity and suspension of conscious-
ness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been
mistaken for death. To have sought a medical
explanation for this phenomenon would have been
held by Silas himself, as well as by his minister
and fellow-members, a wilful self-exclusion from
the spiritual significance that might lie therein.
Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar
discipline, and though the effort to interpret this
discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his
part, of any spiritual vision during his outward
trance, yet it was believed by himself and others
that its effect w^as seen in an accession of light
and fervour. A less truthful man than he might
have been tempted into the subsequent creation
of a vision in the form of resurgent memory ; a

12 SILAS MARNER part i

less sane man might have believed in such a
creation ; but Silas was both sane and honest,
though, as with many honest and fervent men,
culture had not defined any channels for his sense
of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper
pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had
inherited from his mother some acquaintance with
medicinal herbs and their preparation — a little
store of wisdom which she had imparted to him
as a solemn bequest — but of late years he had
had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no
efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might
suffice without herbs ; so that the inherited delight
he had in wandering in the fields in search of fox-
glove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear
to him the character of a temptation.

Among the members of his church there was
one young man, a little older than himself, with
whom he had long lived in such close friendship
that it was the custom of their Lantern Yard
brethren to call them David and Jonathan. The
real name of the friend was William Dane, and
he, too, was regarded as a shining instance of
youthful piety, though somewhat given to over-
severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so
dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser
than his teachers. But whatever blemishes others
might discern in William, to his friend's mind
he was faultless ; for Marner had one of those
impressible self- doubting natures which, at an
inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and
lean on contradiction. The expression of trusting

CHAP. I SILAS MARKER 13

simplicity in Marner's face, heightened by that
absence of special observation, that defenceless,
deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent
eyes, was strongly contrasted by the self-com-
placent suppression of inward triumph that lurked
in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of
William Dane. One of the most frequent topics
of conversation between the two friends was
Assurance of salvation : Silas confessed that he
could never arrive at anything higher than hope
mingled with fear, and listened with longing
wonder when William declared that he had
possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the
period of his conversion, he had dreamed that he
saw the words ' calling and election sure' standing
by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.
Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of
pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have
been like young winged things, fluttering forsaken
in the twilight.

It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that
the friendship had suffered no chill even from his
formation of another attachment of a closer kind.
For some months he had been engaged to a
young servant-woman, waiting only for a little
increase to their mutual savings in order to their
marriage ; and it was a great delight to him that
Sarah did not object to William's occasional
presence in their Sunday interviews. It was at
this point in their history that Silas's cataleptic
fit occurred during the prayer - meeting ; and
amidst the various queries and expressions of
interest addressed to him by his fellow-members,

14 SILAS MARKER part i

William's suggestion alone jarred with the general
sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for
special dealings. He observed that, to him, this
trance looked more like a visitation of Satan than
a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his friend
to see that he hid no accursed thing within his
soul. Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and
admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resent-
ment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts
concerning him ; and to this was soon added
some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's
manner towards him began to exhibit a strange
fluctuation between an effort at an increased
manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of
shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she
wished to break off their engagement ; but she
denied this : their engagement was known to the
church, and had been recognised in the prayer-
meetings ; it could not be broken off without
strict investigation, and Sarah could render no
reason that would be sanctioned by the feeling of
the community. At this time the senior deacon
was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless
widower, he was tended night and day by some of
the younger brethren or sisters. Silas frequently
took his turn in the night-watching with William,
the one relieving the other at two in the morning.
The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed to
be on the way to recovery, when one night Silas,
sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usually
audible breathing had ceased. The candle was
burning low, and he had to lift it to see the
patient's face distinctly. Examination convinced

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 15

him that the deacon was dead — had been dead
some time, for the limbs were rigid. Silas asked
himself if he had been asleep, and looked at the
clock : it was already four in the mornino-. How
was it that William had not come? In much
anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there
were several friends assembled in the house, the
minister among them, while Silas went away to
his work, wishing he could have met William to
know the reason of his non-appearance. But at
six o'clock, as he was thinking of going to seek his
friend, William came, and with him the minister.
They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to
meet the church members there ; and to his
inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the
only reply was, * You will hear.' Nothing further
was said until Silas was seated in the vestry, in
front of the minister, with the eyes of those who
to him represented God's people fixed solemnly
upon him. Then the minister, taking out a
pocket-knife, showed it to Silas, and asked him if
he knew where he had left that knife ? Silas said,
he did not know that he had left it anywhere out
of his own pocket — but he was trembling at this
strange interrogation. He was then exhorted
not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent.
The knife had been found in the bureau by the
departed deacon's bedside — found in the place
where the little bag of church money had lain,
which the minister himself had seen the day
before. Some hand had removed that bag ; and
whose hand could it be, if not that of the man to
whom the knife belonged ? For some time Silas

i6 SILAS MARNER part i

was mute with astonishment : then he said, ' God
will clear me : I know nothing about the knife
being there, or the money being gone. Search
me and my dwelling : you will find nothing but
three pound five of my own savings, which
William Dane knows I have had these six
months.' At this William groaned, but the
minister said, ' The proof is heavy against you,
brother Marner. The money was taken In the
night last past, and no man was with our departed
brother but you, for William Dane declares to
us that he was hindered by sudden sickness
from going to take his place as usual, and you
yourself said that he had not come ; and, more-
over, you neglected the dead body.'

' I must have slept,' said Silas. Then, after a
pause, he added, ' Or I must have had another
visitation like that which you have all seen me
under, so that the thief must have come and
gone while I was not in the body, but out of the
body. But, I say again, search me and my
dwelling, for I have been nowhere else.'

The search was made, and it ended — In
William Dane's finding the well-known bag,
empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in
Silas's chamber ! On this William exhorted his
friend to confess, and not to hide his sin any
longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach
on him, and said, ' William, for nine years that
we have gone in and out together, have you ever
known me tell a lie? But God will clear me.'

' Brother,' said William, 'how do I know what
you may have done in the secret chambers of

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 17

your heart, to give Satan an advantage over
you ? '

Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly
a deep flush came over his face, and he was
about to speak impetuously, when he seemed
checked again by some Inward shock, that sent
the flush back and made him tremble. But at
last he spoke feebly, looking at William.

' I remember now — the knife wasn't in my
pocket.'

William said, ' I know nothing of what you
mean.' The other persons present, however,
began to inquire where vSilas meant to say that
the knife was, but he would give no further ex-
planation : he only said, * I am sore stricken ; I
can say nothing. God will clear me.'

On their return to the vestry there was further
deliberation. Any resort to legal measures for
ascertaining the culprit was contrary to the
principles of the Church : prosecution was held
by them to be forbidden to Christians, even if
It had been a case in which there was no scandal
to the community. But they were bound to
take other measures for finding out the truth,
and they resolved on praying and drawing lots.
This resolution can be a ground of surprise only
to those who are unacquainted with that obscure
religious life which has gone on in the alleys
of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren,
relying on his own innocence being certified by
immediate divine Interference, but feeling that
there was sorrow and mourning behind for him
even then — that his trust in man had been cruelly

c

i8 SILAS MARNER part i

bruised. The lots declared that Silas Marner
zuas gMilty. He was solemnly suspended from
church-membership, and called upon to render
up the stolen money : only on confession, as the
sign of repentance, could he be received once
more within the fold of the church. Marner
listened in silence. At last, when every one
rose to depart, he went towards William Dane
and said, in a voice shaken by agitation :

' The last time I remember using my knife,
was when I took it out to cut a strap for you.
I don't remember putting it in my pocket again.
You stole the money, and you have woven a
plot to lay the sin at my door. But you may
prosper, for all that : there is no just God that
governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies,
that bears witness against the innocent.'

There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.

William said meekly, ' I leave our brethren
to judge whether this is the voice of Satan or
not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas.'

Poor Marner went out with that despair in
his soul — that shaken trust in God and man,
which is little short of madness to a loving nature.
In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said
to himself, 'She will cast me off too.' And he
reflected that, if she did not believe the testimony
against him, her whole faith must be upset, as
his was. To people accustomed to reason about
the forms in which their religious feeling has
incorporated itself, It is difficult to enter into
that simple, untaught state of mind in which the
form and the feeling have never been severed

CHAP. I SILAS MARNER 19

by an act of reflection. We are apt to think it
inevitable that a man in Marner's position should
have begun to question the validity of an appeal
to the divine judgment by drawing lots ; but
to him this would have been an effort of inde-
pendent thought such as he had never known ;
and he must have made the effort at a moment
when all his energies were turned into the anguish
of disappointed faith. If there is an angel who
records the sorrows of men as well as their sins,
he knows how many and deep are the sorrows
that spring from false ideas for which no man is
culpable.

Marner went home, and for a whole day sat
alone, stunned by despair, without any impulse
to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in
his innocence. The second day he took refuge
from benumbing unbelief, by getting into his
loom and working away as usual ; and before
many hours were past, the minister and one of
the deacons came to him with the message from
Sarah, that she held her engagement to him at
an end. Silas received the message mutely, and
then turned away from the messengers to work
at his loom again. In little more than a month
from that time, Sarah was married to William
Dane ; and not long afterwards it was known
to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas
Marner had departed from the town.

CHAPTER II

Even people whose lives have been made various
by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast
hold on their habitual viev^s of life, on their faith
in the Invisible — nay, on the sense that their past
joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they
are suddenly transported to a new land, where the
beings around them know nothing of their history,
and share none of their ideas — where their mother
earth shows another lap, and human life has other
forms than those on which their souls have been
nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from
their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this
Lethean influence of exile, in which the past
becomes dreamy because its symbols have all
vanished, and the present too is dreamy because
it is linked with no memories. But even their
experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to
imagine what was the effect on a simple weaver
like Silas Marner, when he left his own country
and people and came to settle in Raveloe.
Nothing could be more unlike his native town,
set within sight of the widespread hillsides, than
this low, wooded region, where he felt hidden
even from the heavens by the screening trees and

I

CHAP. II SILAS MARKER 21

hedgerows. There was nothing here, when he
rose in the deep morning quiet and looked out on
the dewy brambles and rank tufted grass, that
seemed to have any relation with that life
centring in Lantern Yard, which had once been
to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The
white-washed walls ; the little pews where well-
known figures entered with a subdued rustling,
and where first one well-known voice and then
another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition,
uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like
the amulet worn on the heart ; the pulpit where
the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and
swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a
long-accustomed manner ; the very pauses between
the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and
the recurrent swell of voices in song : these things
had been the channel of divine influences to
Marner — they were the fostering home of his
religious emotions — they were Christianity and
God's kingdom upon earth. A weaver who finds
hard words in his hymn-book knows nothing of
abstractions ; as the little child knows nothing of
parental love, but only knows one face and one
lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge
and nurture.

And what could be more unlike that Lantern
Yard world than the world in Raveloe ? — orchards
looking lazy with neglected plenty ; the large
church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed
at lounging at their own doors in service-time ;
the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes
or turninof in at the Rainbow ; homesteads, where

22 SILAS MARKER part i

men supped heavily and slept in the Hght of the
evening hearth, and where women seemed to be
laying up a stock of linen for the life to come.
There were no lips in Raveloe from which a
word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's
benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early
ages of the world, we know, it was believed that
each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own
divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering
heights and be out of the reach of his native gods,
whose presence was confined to the streams and
the groves and the hills among which he had
lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely
conscious of something not unlike the feeling of
primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in
sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity.
It seemed to him that the Power in which he
had vainly trusted among the streets and in the
prayer-meetings, was very far away from this
land in which he had taken refuge, where men
lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing
nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been
turned to bitterness. The little light he possessed
spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated
belief was a curtain broad enough to create for
him the blackness of night.

His first movement after the shock had been
to work in his loom ; and he went on with this
unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he
was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the
night to finish the tale of Mrs. Osgood's table-
linen sooner than she expected — without con-
templating beforehand the money she would put

I

I

CHAP. II SILAS MARNER 23

into his hand for the work. He seemed to
weave, Hke the spider, from pure impulse, without
reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily,
tends in this way to become an end in itself, and
so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the
shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares
in the cloth complete themselves under his effort.
Then there were the calls of hunger ; and Silas,
in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast,
dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from
the well, and put his own kettle on the fire ; and
all these immediate promptings helped, along with
the weaving, to reduce his life to the unques-
tioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated
the thought of the past ; there was nothing that
called out his love and fellowship toward the
strangers he had come amongst ; and the future
was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that
cared for him. Thought was arrested by utter
bewilderment, now its old narrow pathway was
closed, and affection seemed to have died under
the bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves.

But at last Mrs. Osgood's table-linen was
finished, and Silas was paid in gold. His
earnings in his native town, where he worked for
a wholsesale dealer, had been after a lower rate ;
he had been paid weekly, and of his weekly
earnings a large proportion had gone to objects
of piety and charity. Now, for the first time in
his life, he had five bright guineas put into his
hand ; no man expected a share of them, and he
loved no man that he should offer him a share.

24 SILAS MARNER part i

But what were the guineas to him who saw no
vista beyond countless days of weaving ? It was
needless for him to ask that, for It was pleasant
to him to feel them In his palm, and look at their
bright faces, which were all his own : It was
another element of life, like the weaving and the
satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from
the life of belief and love from which he had been
cut off The weaver's hand had known the touch
of hard-won money even before the palm had
grown to Its full breadth ; for twenty years,
mysterious money had stood to him as the
symbol of earthly good, and the Immediate object
of toil. He had seemed to love It little in the
years when every penny had its purpose for him ;
for he loved the purpose then. But now, when
all purpose was gone, that habit of looking
towards the money and grasping it with a sense
of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep
enough for the seeds of desire ; and as Silas
walked homeward across the fields In the twilight,
he drew out the money and thought It was
brighter In the gathering gloom.

About this time an Incident happened which
seemed to open a possibility of some fellowship
with his neighbours. One day, taking a pair of
shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife
seated by the fire, suffering from the terrible
symptoms of heart-disease and dropsy, which he
had witnessed as the precursors of his mother's
death. He felt a rush of pity at the mingled
sight and remembrance, and, recalling the relief
his mother had found from a simple preparation

CHAP. II SILAS MARNER 25

of foxglove, he promised Sally Oates to bring her
something that would ease her, since the doctor
did her no good. In this office of charity, Silas
felt, for the first time since he had come to
Raveloe, a sense of unity between his past and
present life, which might have been the beginning
of his rescue from the insect-like existence into
which his nature had shrunk. But Sally Oates's
disease had raised her into a personage of much
interest and importance among the neighbours,
and the fact of her having found relief from
drinking Silas Marner's ' stuff' became a matter
of general discourse. When Doctor Kimble gave
physic, it was natural that it should have an
effect ; but when a weaver, who came from
nobody knew where, worked wonders with a
bottle of brown waters, the occult character of the
process was evident. Such a sort of thing had
not been known since the Wise Woman at
Tarley died ; and she had charms as well as
'stuff: everybody went to her when their
children had fits. Silas Marner must be a person
of the same sort, for how did he know what would
bring back Sally Oates's breath, if he didn't know
a fine sight more than that ?• The Wise Woman
had words that she muttered to herself, so that
you couldn't hear what they were, and if she tied
a bit of red thread round the child's toe the while,
it would keep off the water in the head. There
were women in Raveloe, at that present time,
who had worn one of the Wise Woman's little
bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had
never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had.

26 SILAS MARNER parti

Silas Marner could very likely do as much, and
more ; and now it was all clear how he should
have come from unknown parts, and be so
'comical-looking.' But Sally Oates must mind
and not tell the doctor, for he would be sure to
set his face against Marner : he was always angry
about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten
those who went to her that they should have
none of his help any more.

Silas now found himself and his cottage
suddenly beset by mothers who wanted him to
charm away the hooping-cough, or bring back
the milk, and by men who wanted stuff against
the rheumatics or the knots in the hands ; and,
to secure themselves against a refusal, the
applicants brought silver in their palms. Silas
might have driven a profitable trade in charms as
well as in his small list of drugs ; but money on
this condition was no temptation to him : he had
never known an impulse towards falsity, and he
drove one after another away with growing irrita-
tion, for the news of him as a wise man had
spread even to Tarley, and it was long before
people ceased to take long walks for the sake of
asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was
at length changed into dread, for no one believed
him when he said he knew no charms and could
work no cures, and every man and woman who
had an accident or a new attack after applying to
him, set the misfortune down to Master Marner's
ill-will and irritated glances. Thus it came to
pass that his movement of pity towards Sally
Oates, which had given him a transient sense of

CHAP. II SILAS MARKER 27

brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between
him and his neighbours, and made his isolation
more complete.

Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the
half-crowns, grew to a heap, and Marner drew
less and less for his own wants, trying to solve
the problem of keeping himself strong enough to
work sixteen hours a day on as small an outlay as
possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary
imprisonment, found an interest in marking the
moments by straight strokes of a certain length
on the wall, until the growth of the sum of
straight strokes arranged in triangles, has become
a mastering purpose ? Do we not wile away
moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeat-
ing some trivial movement or sound, until the
repetition has bred a want, which is incipient
habit ? That will help us to understand how the
love of accumulating money grows an absorbing
passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very
beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose
beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to
grow into a square, and then into a larger square ;
and every added guinea, while it was itself a
satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange
world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he might,
if he had had a less intense nature, have sat
weaving, weaving — looking towards the end of
his pattern, or towards the end of his web, till
he forgot the riddle, and everything else but his
mimediate sensations ; but the money had come
to mark off his weaving into periods, and the
'money not only grew, but it remained with him.

28 SILAS MARNER part i

He began to think it was conscious of him, as
his loom was, and he would on no account have
exchanged those coins, which had become his
familiars, for other coins with unknown faces.
He handled them, he counted them, till their
form and colour were like the satisfaction of a
thirst to him ; but it was only in the night, when
his work was done, that he drew them out to
enjoy their companionship. He had taken up
some bricks in his floor underneath his loom,
and here he had made a hole in which he set
the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver
coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he
replaced them. Not that the idea of being robbed
presented itself often or strongly to his mind :
hoarding was common in country districts in
those days ; there were old labourers in the parish
of Raveloe who were known to have their savings
by them, probably inside their flock-beds ; but
their rustic neighbours, though not all of them as
honest as their ancestors in the days of King
Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay
a plan of burglary. How could they have spent the
money in their own village without betraying
themselves ? They would be obliged to * run
away ' — a course as dark and dubious as a balloon
journey.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in
this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot,
and his life narrowing and hardening itself more
and more into a mere pulsation of desire and
satisfaction that had no relation to any other
being. His life had reduced itself to the mere

CHAP. II SILAS MARNER 29

functions of weaving and hoarding, without any
contemplation of an end towards which the
functions tended. The same sort of process has
perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when
they have been cut off from faith and love — only,
instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they
have had some erudite research, some ingenious
project, or some well - knit theory. Strangely
Marner's face and figure shrank and bent them-
selves into a constant mechanical relation to the
objects of his life, so that he produced the same
sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube,
which has no meaning standing apart. The
prominent eyes that used to look trusting and
dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to
see only one kind of thing that was very small, like
tiny grain, for which they hunted everywhere :
and he was so withered and yellow, that, though
he was not yet forty, the children always called
him, * Old Master Marner.'

Yet even in this stage of withering a little
incident happened, which showed that the sap of
affection was not all gone. It was one of his
daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple
of fields off, and for this purpose, ever since he
came to Raveloe, he had had a brown earthenware
pot, which he held as his most precious utensil,
among the very few conveniences he had granted
himself It had been his companion for twelve
years, always standing on the same spot, always
lending its handle to him in the early morning,
so that its form had an expression for him of
willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle

30 SILAS MARNER parti

on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that
of having the fresh clear water. One day as he
was returning from the well, he stumbled against
the step of the stile, and his brown pot, falling
with force against the stones that overarched
the ditch below him, was broken in three pieces.
Silas picked up the pieces and carried them home
with grief in his heart. The brown pot could
never be of use to him any more, but he stuck
the bits together and propped the ruin in its old
place for a memorial.

This is the history of Silas Marner until the
fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The
livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with
its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the
slow growth of sameness in the brownish web,
his muscles moving with such even repetition that
their pause seemed almost as much a constraint
as the holding of his breath. But at night came
his revelry : at night he closed his shutters, and
made fast his doors, and drew out his gold. Long
ago the heap of coins had become too large for
the Iron pot to hold them, and he had made for
them two thick leather bags, which wasted no
room in their resting-place, but lent themselves
flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone
as they came pouring out of the dark leather
mouths ! The silver bore no large proportion in
amount to the gold, because the long pieces of
linen which formed his chief work were always
partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he
supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always
the shillings and sixpences to spend In this way.

I^K wit

mm

CHAP. II SILAS MARNER 31

He loved the guineas best, but he would not
change the silver — the crowns and half-crowns
that were his own earnings, begotten by his
labour ; he loved them all. He spread them out
in heaps and bathed his hands in them ; then he
counted them and set them up in regular piles,
and felt their rounded outline between his thumb
and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas
that were only half-earned by the work in his
loom, as if they had been unborn children —
thought of the guineas that were coming slowly
through the coming years, through all his life,
which spread far away before him, the end quite
hidden by countless days of weaving. No
wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and
his money when he made his journeys through
the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home
his work, so that his steps never wandered to the
hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the
once familiar herbs : these too belonged to the
past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a
rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy
fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering
thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren
sand.

But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year,
a second great change came over Marner's life,
and his history became blent in a singular manner
with the life of his neighbours.

CHAPTER III

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass,
who lived in the large red house, with the hand-
some flight of stone steps in front and the high
stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He
was only one among several landed parishioners,
but he alone was honoured with the title of Squire ;
for though Mr. Osgood's family was also under-
stood to be of timeless origin — the Raveloe
imagination having never ventured back to that
fearful blank when there were no Osgoods —
still, he merely owned the farm he occupied ;
whereas Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who
complained of the game to him quite as if he had
been a lord.

It was still that glorious war-time which was
felt to be a peculiar favour of Providence towards
the landed interest, and the fall of prices had not
yet come to carry the race of small squires and
yeomen down that road to ruin for which extrava-
gant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully
anointing their wheels. I am speaking now In
relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled
it ; for our old-fashioned country life had many
different aspects, as all life must have when it Is

32

The risk of fording streams.

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARKER 35

Spread over a various surface, and breathed on
variously by multitudinous currents, from the
winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which
are for ever moving and crossing each other, with
incalculable results. Raveloe lay low among the
bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the
currents of industrial energy and Puritan earnest-
ness : the rich ate and drank freely, and accepted
gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously
in respectable families, and the poor thought that
the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a
jolly life ; besides, their feasting caused a multi-
plication of orts, which were the heirlooms of the
poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire
Cass's hams, but her longing was arrested by the
unctuous liquor in which they were boiled ; and
when the seasons brought round the great merry-
makings, they were regarded on all hands as a
fine thing for the poor. For the Raveloe feasts
were like the rounds of beef and the barrels of
ale — they were on a large scale, and lasted a
good while, especially in the winter-time. When
ladies had packed up their best gowns and top-
knots in band-boxes, and had incurred the risk of
fording streams on pillions with the precious
burden in rainy or snowy weather, when there
was no knowing how high the water would rise,
it was not to be supposed that they looked
forward to a brief pleasure. On this ground it
was always contrived in the dark seasons, when
there was little work to be done, and the hours
were long, that several neighbours should keep
open house in succession. When Squire Cass's

36 SILAS MARKER part i

Standing dishes diminished in plenty and fresh-
ness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a
little higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at
the Orchards, and they found hams and chines
uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them,
spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in
fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in
perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater
abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and
the Red House was without that presence of the
wife and mother which is the fountain of whole-
some love and fear in parlour and kitchen ; and
this helped to account not only for there being
more profusion than finished excellence in the
holiday provisions, but also for the frequency
with which the proud Squire condescended to
preside in the parlour of the Rainbow rather than
under the shadow of his own dark wainscot ;
perhaps, also, for the fact that his sons had turned
out rather ill. Raveloe was not a place where
moral censure was severe, but It was thought
a weakness In the Squire that he had kept all
his sons at home in idleness ; and though some
licence was to be allowed to young men whose
fathers could afford it, people shook their heads
at the courses of the second son, Dunstan,
commonly called Dunsey Cass, whose taste for
swopping and betting might turn out to be a
sowing of something worse than wild oats. To
be sure, the neighbours said, it was no matter
what became of Dunsey — a spiteful, jeering fellow,
who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARNER 2)7

Other people went dry — always provided that his
doings did not bring trouble on a family like
Squire Cass's, with a monument in the church,
and tankards older than King George. But it
would be a thousand pities if Mr. Godfrey, the
eldest, a fine, open-faced, good-natured young
man, who was to come into the land some day,
should take to going along the same road as his
brother, as he had seemed to do of late. If he
went on in that way, he would lose Miss Nancy
Lammeter ; for it was well known that she had
looked very shyly on 'him ever since last Whit-
suntide twelvemonth, when there was so much
talk about his being away from home days and
days together. There was something wrong,
more than common — that was quite clear ; for
Mr. Godfrey didn't look half so fresh-coloured
and open as he used to do. At one time every-
body was saying what a handsome couple he and
Miss Nancy Lammeter would make ! and if she
could come to be mistress at the Red House,
there would be a fine change, for the Lammeters
had been brought up in that way, that they never
suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet
everybody in their household had of the best,
according to his place. Such a daughter-in-law
would be a saving to the old Squire, if she never
brought a penny to her fortune, for it was to be
feared that, notwithstanding his incomings, there
were more holes in his pocket than the one where
he put his own hand in. But if Mr. Godfrey
didn't turn over a new leaf, he might say * Good-
by ' to Miss Nancy Lammeter.

38 SILAS MARNER part i

It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was
standing, with his hands in his side-pockets and
his back to the fire, in the dark wainscoted parlour,
one late November afternoon, in that fifteenth
year of Silas Marner's life at Raveloe. The
fading grey light fell dimly on the walls decorated
with guns, whips, and foxes' brushes, on coats
and hats flung on the chairs, on tankards sending
forth a scent of flat ale, and on a half-choked fire,
with pipes propped up in the chimney-corners :
signs of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing
charm, with which the look of gloomy vexation
on Godfrey's blonde face was in sad accordance.
He seemed to be waiting and listening for some
one's approach, and presently the sound of a
heavy step, with an accompanying whistle, was
heard across the large empty entrance hall.

The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking
young man entered, with the flushed face and the
gratuitously elated bearing which mark the first
stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the
sight of him Godfrey's face parted with some of
its gloom to take on the more active expression
of hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that
lay on the hearth retreated under the chair in the
chimney-corner.

'Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want
with me ?' said Dunsey, in a mocking tone. ' You're
my elders and betters, you know ; I was obliged
to come when you sent for me.'

' Why, this is what I want — and just shake
yourself sober and listen, will you ? ' said Godfrey,
savagely. He had himself been drinking more

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARKER 39

than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom
into uncalculating anger. ' I want to tell you, I
must hand over that rent of Fowler's to the
Squire, or else tell him I gave it you ; for he's
threatening to distrain for it, and it'll all be out
soon, whether I tell him or not. He said, just
now, before he went out, he should send word to
Cox to distrain, if Fowler didn't come and pay
up his arrears this week. The Squire's short o'
cash, and in no humour to stand any nonsense ;
and you know what he threatened, if ever he
found you making away with his money again.
So, see and get the money, and pretty quickly,
will you ? '

' Oh ! ' said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer
to his brother and looking in his face. * Suppose,
now, you get the money yourself, and save me
the trouble, eh ? Since you was so kind as to
hand it over to me, you'll not refuse me the kind-
ness to pay it back for me : it was your brotherly
love made you do it, you know.'

Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist.
' Don't come near me with that look, else I'll
knock you down.'

* O no, you won't,' said Dunsey, turning away
on his heel, however. * Because I'm such a good-
natured brother, you know. I might ^et you
turned out of house and home, and cut off with a
shilling any day. I might tell the Squire how
his handsome son was married to that nice young
woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy
because he couldn't live with his drunken wife,
and I should slip into your place as comfortable

40 SILAS MARNER part i

as could be. But, you see, I don't do It — I'm so
easy and good-natured. You'll take any trouble
for me. You'll get the hundred pounds for me —
I know you will.'

'How can I get the money?' said Godfrey,
quivering. ' I haven't a shilling to bless myself
with. And it's a lie that you'd slip into my place :
you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all. For
if you begin telling tales, I'll follow. Bob's my
father's favourite — you know that very well. He'd
only think himself well rid of you.'

* Never mind,' said Dunsey, nodding his head
sideways as he looked out of the window. ' It
'ud be very pleasant to me to go in your company
— you're such a handsome brother, and we've
always been so fond of quarrelling with one
another, I shouldn't know what to do without
you. But you'd like better for us both to stay
at home together ; I know you would. So you'll
manage to get that little sum o' money, and I'll
bid you good-by, though I'm sorry to part'

Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed
after him and seized him by the arm, saying,
with an oath :

' I tell you, I have no money : I can get no
money.'

' Borrow of old Kimble.'

' I tell you, he won't lend me any more, and I
shan't ask him.'

'Well then, sell Wildfire.'

' Yes, that's easy talking. I must have the
money directly.'

' Well, you've only got to ride him to the hunt

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARKER 41

to-morrow. There'll be Bryce and Keating there,
for sure. You'll get more bids than one.'

' I daresay, and get back home at eight
o'clock, splashed up to the chin. I'm going to
Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance.'

' Oho ! ' said Dunsey, turning his head on one
side, and trying to speak in a small, mincing
treble. 'And there's sweet Miss Nancy coming;
and we shall dance with her, and promise never
to be naughty again, and be taken into favour,
and '

* Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you
fool,' said Godfrey, turning red, 'else I'll throttle
you.'

'What for,' said Dunsey, still in an artificial
tone, but taking a whip from the table and beating
the butt-end of it on his palm. ' You've a very
good chance. I'd advise you to creep up her
sleeve again : it 'ud be saving time if Molly
should happen to take a drop too much laudanum
some day, and make a widower of you. Miss
Nancy wouldn't mind being a second, if she didn't
know it. And you've got a good-natured brother,
who'll keep your secret well, because you'll be so
very obliging to him.'

' I tell you what it is,' said Godfrey, quivering,
and pale again. ' My patience is pretty near at
an end. If you'd a little more sharpness in you,
you might know that you may urge a man a bit
too far, and make one leap as easy as another.
I don't know but what it is so now : I may as
well tell the Squire everything myself — I should
get you off my back, if I got nothing else. And,

42 SILAS MARNER part i

after all, he'll know some time. She's been
threatening to come herself and tell him. So,
don't flatter yourself that your secrecy's worth
any price you choose to ask. You drain me of
money till I've got nothing to pacify her with,
and she'll do as she threatens some day. It's all
one. I'll tell my father everything myself, and
you may go to the devil.'

Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his
mark, and that there was a point at which even
the hesitating Godfrey might be driven into
decision. But he said, with an air of unconcern :

' As you please ; but I'll have a draught of ale
first.' And ringing the bell, he threw himself
across two chairs, and began to rap the window-
seat with the handle of his whip.

Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire,
uneasily moving his fingers among the contents
of his side -pockets, and looking at the floor.
That big muscular frame of his held plenty of
animal courage, but helped him to no decision
when the dangers to be braved were such as
could neither be knocked down nor throttled.
His natural irresolution and moral cowardice
were exaggerated by a position in which dreaded
consequences seemed to press equally on all sides,
and his irritation had no sooner provoked him to
defy Dunstan and anticipate all possible betrayals,
than the miseries he must bring on himself by
such a step seemed more unendurable to him
than the present evil. The results of confession
v/ere not contingent, they were certain ; whereas
betrayal was not certain. From the near vision

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARNER 43

of that certainty he fell back on suspense and
vacillation with a sense of repose. The dis-
inherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined
to dig and to beg, was almost as helpless as an
uprooted tree, which, by the favour of earth and
sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot
where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would
have been possible to think of digging with some
cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be won
on those terms ; but, since he must irrevocably
lose her as well as the inheritance, and must
break every tie but the one that degraded him
and left him without motive for trying to recover
his better self, he could imagine no future for
himself on the other side of confession but that of
' 'listing for a soldier ' — the most desperate step,
short of suicide, in the eyes of respectable families.
No ! he would rather trust to casualties than to
his own resolve — rather go on sitting at the feast
and sipping the wine he loved, though with the
sword hanging over him and terror in his heart,
than rush away into the cold darkness where
there was no pleasure left. The utmost conces-
sion to Dunstan about the horse began to seem
easy, compared with the fulfilment of his own
threat. But his pride would not let him recom-
mence the conversation otherwise than by con-
tinuing the quarrel. Dunstan was waiting for
this, and took his ale in shorter draughts than
usual.

' It's just like you,' Godfrey burst out, in a
bitter tone, * to talk about my selling Wildfire in
that cool way — the last thing I've got to call my

44 SILAS MARNER parti

own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had In
my life. And if you'd got a spark of pride in
you, you'd be ashamed to see the stables emptied,
and everybody sneering about it. But it's my
belief you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the
pleasure of making somebody feel he'd got a bad
bargain.'

* Ay, ay,' said Dunstan, very placably, 'you do
me justice, I see. You know I'm a jewel for
'ticing people into bargains. For which reason I
advice you to let me sell Wildfire. I'd ride him
to the hunt to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I
shouldn't look so handsome as you in the saddle,
but it's the horse they'll • bid for, and not the
rider.'

' Yes, I daresay — trust my horse to you ! '

' As you please,' said Dunstan, rapping the
window-seat again with an air of great unconcern.
' It's you have got to pay Fowler's money ; it's
none of my business. You received the money
from him when you went to Bramcote, and you
told the Squire it wasn't paid. I'd nothing to do
with that ; you chose to be so obliging as give It
me, that was all. If you don't want to pay the
money, let It alone ; it's all one to me. But I
was willing to accommodate you by undertaking
to sell the horse, seeing it's not convenient to you
to go so far to-morrow.'

Godfrey was silent for some moments. He
would have liked to spring on Dunstan, wrench
the whip from his hand, and flog him to within
an inch of his life ; and no bodily fear could have
deterred him ; but he was mastered by another

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARNER 45

sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger
even than his resentment. When he spoke again
it was in a half-conciliatory tone.

' Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse,
eh ? You'll sell him all fair, and hand over the
money? If you don't, you know, everything '11
go to smash, for I've got nothing else to trust to.
And you'll have less pleasure in pulling the house
over my head, when your own skull's to be
broken too.'

'Ay, ay,' said Dunstan, rising, 'all right. I
thought you'd come round. I'm the fellow to
bring old Bryce up to the scratch. I'll get you a
hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny.'

' But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow,
as it did yesterday, and then you can't go,' said
Godfrey, hardly knowing whether he wished for
that obstacle or not.

'Not it' said Dunstan. ' I'm always lucky In
my weather. It might rain if you wanted to go
yourself. You never hold trumps, you know — 1
always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and
I've got the luck, so you must keep me by you
for your crooked sixpence ; you'll ne-w^r get
along without me.'

' Confound you, hold your tongue ! ' said
Godfrey, impetuously. 'And take care to keep
sober to-morrow, else you'll get pitched on your
head coming home, and Wildfire might be the
worse for It.'

' Make your tender heart easy,' said Dunstan,
opening the door. * You never knew me see
double when I'd got a bargain to make ; it 'ud

46 SILAS MARNER parti

spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm
warranted to fall on my legs.'

With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind
him, and left Godfrey to that bitter rumination on
his personal circumstances which was now un-
broken from day to day save by the excitement
of sporting, drinking, card-playing, or the rarer
and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy
Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains spring-
ing from the higher sensibility that accompanies
higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that
dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and con-
solation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual
urgent companionship of their own griefs and
discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers,
whom we are apt to think very prosaic figures —
men whose only work was to ride round their
land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles,
and who passed the rest of their days in the half-
listless gratification of senses dulled by monotony
— had a certain pathos in them nevertheless.
Calamities came to them too, and their early
errors carried hard consequences : perhaps the
love of some sweet maiden, the image of purity,
order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the
vision of a life in which the days would not seem
too long, even without rioting ; but the maiden
was lost, and the vision passed away, and then
what was left to them, especially when they had
become too heavy for the hunt, or for carrying a
gun over the furrows, but to drink and get merry,
or to drink and get angry, so that they might
be independent of variety, and say over again

THE RARER PLEASURE OF SEEING MISS NANCY LAMMETER

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARNER 47

with eager emphasis the things they had said
already any time that twelvemonth ? Assuredly,
among those flushed and dull-eyed men there
were some whom — thanks to their native human-
kindness — even riot could never drive into
brutality ; men who, when their cheeks were
fresh, had felt the keen point of sorrow or
remorse, had been pierced by the reeds they
leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters
from which no struggle could loose them ; and
under these sad circumstances, common to us all,
their thoughts could find no resting-place outside
the ever-trodden round of their own petty history.
That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey
Cass in this six-and-twentieth year of his life. A
movement of compunction, helped by those small
indefinable influences which every personal relation
exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a
secret marriage, which was a blight on his life.
It was an ugly story of low passion, delusion, and
waking from delusion, which needs not to be
dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's bitter
memory. He had long known that the delusion
was partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan,
who saw in his brother's degrading marriage the
means of gratifying at once his jealous hate and
his cupidity. And if Godfrey could have felt
himself simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny
had put into his mouth would have chafed him
less intolerably. If the curses he muttered half
aloud when he was alone had had no other object
than Dunstan's diabolical cunning, he might have
shrunk less from the consequences of avowal.

48 SILAS MARNER parti

But he had something else to curse — his own vicious
folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable
to him as almost all our follies and vices do when
their promptings have long passed away. For
four years he had thought of Nancy Lammeter,
and wooed her with tacit, patient worship, as the
woman who made him think of the future with
joy : she would be his wife, and would make home
lovely to him, as his father's home had never
been ; and it would be easy, when she was always
near, to shake off those foolish habits that were
no pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling
vacancy. Godfrey's was an essentially domestic
nature, bred up in a home where the hearth had
no smiles, and where the daily habits were not
chastised by the presence of household order ; his
easy disposition made him fall in unresistingly
with the family courses, but the need of some
tender permanent affection, the longing for some
influence that would make the good he preferred
easy to pursue, caused the neatness, purity, and
liberal orderliness of the Lammeter household,
sunned by the smile of Nancy, to seem like those
fresh bright hours of the morning, when tempta-
tions go to sleep, and leave the ear open to the
voice of the good angel, inviting to industry,
sobriety, and peace. And yet the hope of this
paradise had not been enough to save him from a
course which shut him out of it for ever. Instead
of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by
which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the
green banks, where it was easy to step firmly, he
had let himself be dragged back into mud and

CHAP. Ill SILAS MARKER 49

slime, in which it was useless to struggle. He
had made ties for himself which robbed him
of all wholesome motive, and were a constant
exasperation.

Still, there was one position worse than the
present : it was the position he would be in when
the ugly secret was disclosed ; and the desire that
continually triumphed over every other was that
of warding off the evil day, when he would have
to bear the consequences of his father's violent
resentment for the wound inflicted on his family
pride — would have, perhaps, to turn his back on
that hereditary ease and dignity which, after all,
was a sort of reason for living, and would carry
with him the certainty that he was banished for
ever from the sight and esteem of Nancy
Lammeter. The longer the interval, the more
chance there was of deliverance from some, at
least, of the hateful consequences to which he had
sold himself — the more opportunities remained for
him to snatch the strange gratification of seeing
Nancy, and gathering some faint indications of
her lingering regard. Towards this gratification
he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then,
after having passed weeks in which he had avoided
her as the far-off, bright- winged prize, that only
made him spring forward, and find his chain all
the more galling. One of those fits of yearning
was on him now, and it would have been strong
enough to have persuaded him to trust Wildfire
to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning,
even if he had not had another reason for his
disinclination towards the morrow's hunt. That

50 SILAS MARNER part i

Other reason was the fact that the morning's meet
was near Batherley, the market-town where the
unhappy woman Hved, whose image became more
odious to him every day ; and to his thought the
whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a
man creates for himself by wrong-doing will
breed hate in the kindliest nature ; and the good-
humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass, was
fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel
wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and
enter again, like demons who had found in him a
ready-garnished home.

What was he to do this evening to pass the
time ? He might as well go to the Rainbow, and
hear the talk about the cock-fighting : everybody
was there, and what else was there to be done ?
Though, for his own part, he did not care a button
for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who
had placed herself in front of him, and had been
watching him for some time, now jumped up in
impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey
thrust her away without looking at her, and left
the room, followed humbly by the unresenting
Snuff — perhaps because she saw no other career
open to her.

CHAPTER IV

DuNSTAN Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at
the judiciously quiet pace of a man who is obliged
to ride to cover on his hunter, had to take his
way along the lane, which, at its farther extremity,
passed by the piece of unenclosed ground called
the Stone-pit, where stood the cottage, once a
stone-cutter's shed, now for fifteen years inhabited
by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at
this season, with the moist trodden clay about it,
and the red, muddy water high up in the deserted
quarry. That was Dunstan's first thought as he
approached it ; the second was, that the old fool
of a weaver, whose loom he heard rattling already,
had a great deal of money hidden somewhere.
How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had often
heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never
thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should
frighten or persuade the old fellow into lending
the money on the excellent security of the young
Squire's prospects ? The resource occurred to
him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as
Marner's hoard was likely to be large enough to
leave Godfrey a handsome surplus beyond his
immediate needs, and enable him to accommodate

51

52 SILAS MARNER part i

his faithful brother, that he had almost turned
the horses head towards home again. Godfrey-
would be ready enough to accept the suggestion :
he would snatch eagerly at a plan that might save
him from parting with Wildfire. But when
Dunstan's meditation reached this point, the
inclination to go on grew strong and prevailed.
He didn't want to give Godfrey that pleasure : he
preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed.
Moreover, Dunstan enjoyed , the self-important
consciousness of having a horse to sell, and the
opportunity of driving a bargain, swaggering, and,
possibly, taking somebody in. He might have all
the satisfaction attendant on selling his brother's
horse, and not the less have the further satisfaction
of setting Godfrey to borrow Marner's money.
So he rode on to cover.

Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was
quite sure they would be — he was such a lucky
fellow.

' Hey-day ! ' said Bryce, who had long had his
eye on Wildfire, ' you're on your brother's horse
to-day : how's that ? '

' O, I've swopped with him,' said Dunstan,
whose delight in lying, grandly independent of
utility, was not to be diminished by the likelihood
that his hearer would not believe him — ' Wildfire's
mine now.'

' W^hat ! has he swopped with you for that big-
boned hack of yours ? ' said Bryce, quite aware
that he should get another lie in answer.

* O, there was a little account between us,' said
Dunsey, carelessly, 'and Wildfire made it even.

Lf

'^

S^Jjk.eyyiA^i'r .^

AT THE COVERT SIDE.

I

CHAP. IV SILAS MARNER 53

I accommodated him by taking the horse, though
it was against my will, for I'd got an itch for a
mare o' Jortin's — as rare a bit o' blood as ever you
threw your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire,
now I've got him ; though I'd a bid of a hundred
and fifty for him the other day, from a man over
at Flitton — he's buying for Lord Cromleck — a
fellow with a cast in his eye, and a green waist-
coat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire : I shan't
get a better at a fence in a hurry. The mare's
got more blood, but she's a bit too weak in the
hind-quarters.'

Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted
to sell the horse, and Dunstan knew that he
divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many
human transactions carried on in this ingenious
manner) ; and they both considered that the
bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied
ironically :

' I wonder at that now ; I wonder you mean to
keep him ; for I never heard of a man who
didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of half
as much again as the horse was worth. You'll
be lucky if you get a hundred.'

Keating rode up now, and the transaction
became more complicated. It ended in the
purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred
and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire,
safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did
occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him
to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to
Batherley, and, having waited for Bryce's return,
hire a horse to carry him home with the money

54 SILAS MARNER part i

in his pocket. But the inclination for a run,
encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a
draught of brandy from his pocket-pistol at the
conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to over-
come, especially with a horse under him that
would take the fences to the admiration of the
field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too
many, and 'staked' his horse. His own ill-
favoured person, which was quite unmarketable,
escaped without injury, but poor Wildfire, un-
conscious of his price, turned on his fiank, and
painfully panted his last. It happened that
Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get
down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good
many curses at this interruption, which had
thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the
moment of glory, and under this exasperation
had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when
the fatal accident happened ; and hence he was
between eager riders in advance, not troubling
themselves about what happened behind them,
and far-off stragglers, who were as likely as not
to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which
Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it
was to care more for immediate annoyances than
for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his
legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire,
than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of
witnesses to a position which no swaggering
could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after
his shake, with a little brandy and much swearing,
he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his

CHAP. IV SILAS MARKER 55

right hand, through which it occurred to him that
he could make his way to Batherley without
danger of encountering any member of the hunt.
His first intention was to hire a horse there and
ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles with-
out a gun in his hand, and along an ordinary road,
was as much but of the question to him as to
other spirited young men of his kind. He did
not much mind about taking the bad news to
Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same
time the resource of Marner s money ; and if
Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the notion
of making a fresh debt, from which he himself
got the smallest share of advantage, why, he
wouldn't kick long : Dunstan felt sure he could
worry Godfrey into anything. The idea of
Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now
the want of it had become immediate ; the
prospect of having to make his appearance with
the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley,
and encounter the grinning queries of stablemen,
stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience
to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous
plan ; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-
pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his
memory to the fact the two or three small coins
his fore-finger encountered there were of too
pale a colour to cover that small debt, without
payment of which Jennings had declared he
would never do any more business with Dunsey
Cass. After all, according to the direction in
which the run had brought him, he was not so
very much farther from home than he was from

56 SILAS MARNER part i

Batherley ; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for
clearness of head, was only led to this conclusion
by the gradual perception that there were other
reasons for, choosing the unprecedented course of
walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock,
and a mist was gathering : the sooner he got
into the road the better. He remehibered having
crossed the road and seen the finger-post only
a little while before Wildfire broke down ; so,
buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his hunting-
whip compactly round the handle, and rapping
the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as
if to assure himself that he was not at all taken
by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was
undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion,
which somehow, and at some time, he should be
able to dress up and magnify to the admiration
of a select circle at the Rainbow. When a young
gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional
a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip In his
hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering
dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position ;
and Dunstan, as he went along through the
gathering mist, was always rapping his whip
somewhere. It was Godfrey's whip, which he had
chosen to take without leave because it had a gold
handle ; of course no one could see, when Dunstan
held it, that the name Godfrey Cass was cut in
deep letters on that gold handle — they could only
see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey
was not without fear that he might meet some
acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a
pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people

CHAP. IV SILAS MARKER 57

get close to each other ; but when he at last
found himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes
without having met a soul, he silently remarked
that that was part of his usual good-luck. But
now the mist, helped by the evening darkness,
was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid
the ruts into w-hich his feet were liable to slip —
hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps
by dragging his whip along the low bushes in
advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he
thought, be getting near the opening at the
Stone-pits : he should find it out by the break
in the hedgerow. He found it out, however, by
another circumstance which he had not expected
— namely, by certain gleams of light, which he
presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's
cottage. That cottage and the money hidden
within it had been in his mind continually during
his walk, and he had been imagining ways of
cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with
the immediate possession of his money for the
sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if
there must be a little frightening added to the
cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were
not clear enough to afford him any forcible
demonstration as to the advantages of interest ;
and as for security, he regarded it -vaguely as the
means of cheating a man, by making him believe
that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation
on the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey
would be sure to hand over to his more daring
and cunning brother : Dunstan had made up his
mind to that ; and by the time he saw the light

S8 SILAS MARNER part i

gleaming through the chinks of Marner's shutters,
the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had
become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him
as quite a natural thing to make the acquaintance
forthwith. There might be several conveniences
attending this course : the weaver had possibly
got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling
his way. He was still nearly three-quarters of a
mile from home, and the lane was becoming
unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing
into rain. He turned up the bank, not without
some fear lest he might miss the right way, since
he was not certain whether the light were in
front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt
the ground before him cautiously with his whip-
handle, and at last arrived safely at the door.
He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that
the old fellow would be frightened at the sudden
noise. He heard no movement in reply : all was
silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to
bed, then ? If so, why had he left a light ? That
was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan
knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing
for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-
hole, intending to shake the door and pull the
latch-string up and down, not doubting that the
door was fastened. But, to his surprise, at this
double motion the door opened, and he found
himself in front of a bright fire, which lit up
every corner of the cottage — the bed, the loom,
the three chairs, ^nd the table — and showed him
that Marner was not there.

Nothing at that moment could be much more

CHAP. IV SILAS MARNER 59

inviting to Dunsey than the bright fire on the
brick hearth : he walked in and seated himself
by it at once. There was something in front of
the fire, too, that would ha^e been inviting to a
hungry man, if it had been in a different stage of
cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended
from the kettle-hanger by a string passed through
a large door-key, in a way known to primitive
housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But the pork
had been hung at the farthest extremity of the
hanger, apparently to prevent the roasting from
proceeding too rapidly during the owner's absence.
The old staring simpleton had hot meat for his
supper, then ? thought Dunstan. People had
always said he lived on mouldy bread, on purpose
to check his appetite. But where could he be at
this time, and on such an evening, leaving his
supper in this stage of preparation, and his door
unfastened ? Dunstan's own recent difficulty in
making his way suggested to him that the weaver
had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch in
fuel, or for * some such brief purpose, and had
slipped into the Stone-pit. That was an inter-
esting idea to Dunstan, carrying consequences
of entire novelty. If the weaver was dead, who
had a right to his money ? Who would know
where his money was hidden ? PV/io ivould know
that anybody had come to take it away ? He went
no farther into the subtleties of evidence : the
pressing question, 'Where is the money?' now
took such entire possession of him as to make
him quite forget that the weaver's death was not
a certainty. A dull mind, once arriving at an

6o SILAS MARNER parti

inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to
retain the impression that the notion from which
the inference started was purely problematic.
And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind
of a possible felon usually is. There were only
three hiding-places where he had ever heard of
cottagers' hoards being found : the thatch, the
bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage
had no thatch ; and Dunstan's first act, after a
train of thought made rapid by the stimulus of
cupidity, was to go up to the bed ; but while he
did so, his eyes travelled eagerly over the floor,
where the bricks, distinct in the firelight, were
discernible under the sprinkling of sand. But
not everywhere ; for there was one spot, and
one only, which was quite covered with sand,
and sand showing the marks of fingers which
had apparently been careful to spread it over a
given space. It was near the treddles of the
loom. In an instant Dunstan darted to that
spot, swept away the sand with his whip, and,
inserting the thin end of the hook between the
bricks, found that they were loose. In haste he
lifted up two bricks, and saw what he had no
doubt was the object of his search ; for what
could there be but money in those two leathern
bags ? And, from their weight, they must be
filled with guineas. Dunstan felt round the hole,
to be certain that it held no more ; then hastily
replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over
them. Hardly more than five minutes had passed
since he entered the cottage, but it seemed to
Dunstan like a long while ; and though he was

6i

The object of his search.

CHAP. IV SILAS MARNER 63

without any distinct recognition of the possibility
that Marner might be alive, and might re-enter
the cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable
dread laying hold on him, as he rose to his feet
with the bags in his hand. He would hasten out
into the darkness, and then consider what he
should do with the bags. He closed the door
behind him immediately, that he might shut in
the stream of light : a few steps would be enough
to carry him beyond betrayal by the gleams from
the shutter-chinks and the latch-hole. The rain
and darkness had got thicker, and he was glad of
it ; though it was awkward walking with both
hands filled, so that it was as much as he could
do to grasp his whip along with one of the bags.
But when he had gone a yard or two, he might
take his time. So he stepped forward into the
darkness.

CHAPTER V

When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the
cottage, Silas Marner was not more than a
hundred yards away from it, plodding along from
the village with a sack thrown round his shoulders
as an overcoat, and with a horn lantern in his
hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at
ease, free from the presentiment of change. The
sense of security more frequently springs from
habit than from conviction, and for this reason it
often subsists after such a change in the conditions
as might have been expected to suggest alarm.
The lapse of time during which a given event
has not happened, is, in this logic of habit,
constantly alleged as a reason why the event
should never happen, even when the lapse of
time is precisely the added condition which makes
the event imminent. A man will tell you that he
has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by
an accident, as a reason why he should apprehend
no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink ;
and it is often observable, that the older a man
gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a
believing conception of his own death. This
influence of habit was necessarily strong in a

64

A PRESENT FROM MISS PRISCILLA.

CHAP. V SILAS MARKER 65

man whose life was so monotonous as Marner*s —
who saw no new people and heard of no new
events to keep alive in him the idea of the unex-
pected and the changeful ; and it explains, simply
enough, why his mind could be at ease, though
he had left his house and his treasure more
defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with
double complacency of his supper: first, because
it would be hot and savoury ; and secondly,
because it would cost him nothing. For the
little bit of pork was a present from that excellent
housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to whom he
had this day carried home a handsome piece of
linen ; and it was only on occasion of a present
like this, that Silas indulged himself with roast-
meat. Supper was his favourite meal, because it
came at his time of revelry, when his heart warmed
over his gold; whenever he had roast -meat, he
always chose to have it for supper. But this
evening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted
his string fast round his bit of pork, twisted the
string according to rule over his door-key, passed
it through the handle, and made it fast on the
hanger, than he remembered that a piece of very
fine twine was indispensable to his ' setting up ' a
new piece of work in his loom early in the
morning. It had slipped his memory, because,
in coming from Mr. Lammeter's, he had not had
to pass through the village ; but to lose time by
going on errands in the morning was out of the
question. It was a nasty fog to turn out into,
but there were things Silas loved better than
^■lis own comfort ; so, drawing his pork to the

66 SILAS MARNER part i

extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with
his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what,
in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty
minutes' errand. He could not have locked his
door without undoing his well-knotted string and
retarding his supper ; it was not worth his while
to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his
way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this ?
and why should he come on this particular night,
when he had never come through all the twelve
years before ? These questions were not distinctly
present in Silas's mind ; they merely serve to
represent the vaguely-felt foundation of his freedom
from anxiety.

He reached his door in much satisfaction
that his errand was done : he opened it, and to
his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he
left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome
increase of heat. He trod about the floor while
putting by his lantern and throwing aside his hat
and sack, so as to merge the marks of Dunstan's
feet on the sand in the marks of his own nailed
boots. Then he moved his pork nearer to the
fire, and sat down to the agreeable business of
tending the meat and warming himself at the
same time.

Any one who had looked at him as the red
light shone upon his pale face, strange straining
eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have
understood the mixture of contemptuous pity,
dread, and suspicion with which he was regarded
by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men
could be more harmless than poor Marner. In

CHAP, V SILAS MARNER 67

his truthful simple soul, not even the growing
greed and worship of gold could beget any vice
directly injurious to others. The light of his faith
quite put out, and his affections made desolate,
he had clung with all the force of his nature to
his work and his money ; and like all objects to
which* a man devotes himself, they had fashioned
him into correspondence with themselves. His
loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in
its turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and
more the monotonous craving for its monotonous
response. His gold, as he hung over it and saw
it grow, gathered his power of loving together
into a hard isolation like its own.

As soon as he was warm he began to think it
would be a long while to wait till after supper
before he drew out his guineas, and it would be
pleasant to see them on the table before him as
he ate his unwonted feast. For joy is the best of
wine, and Silas's guineas were a golden wine of
that sort.

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly
on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand
without noticing any change, and removed the
bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his
heart leap violently, but the belief that his gold

iwas gone could not come at once — only terror,
and the eager effort to put an end to the terror.
He passed his trembling hand all about the hole,
trying to think it possible that his eyes had
deceived him ; then he held the candle in the
hole and examined it curiously, trembling more
and more. At last he shook so violently that he

68 SILAS MARKER parti

let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head,
trying to steady himself, that he might think.
Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden
resolution last night, and then forgotten it ? A
man falling into dark water seeks a momentary
footing even on sliding stones ; and Silas, by
acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off
the moment of despair. He searched in every
corner, he turned his bed over, and shook it, and
kneaded it ; he looked in his brick oven where he
laid his sticks. When there was no other place
to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt
once more all round the hole. There was no
untried refuge left for a moment's shelter from
the terrible truth.

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always
comes with the prostration of thought under an
overpowering passion : it was that expectation
of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory
images, which is still distinct from madness,
because it is capable of being dissipated by the
external fact. Silas got up from his knees
trembling, and looked round at the table : didn't
the gold lie there after all ? The table was bare.
Then he turned and looked behind him — looked
all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown
eyes after some possible appearance of the bags
where he had already sought them in vain. He
could see every object in his cottage — and his
gold was not there.

Again he put his trembling hands to his head,
and gave a wild ringing scream, the cry of
desolation. For a few moments after, he stood

The cry of desolation.

CHAP. V SILAS MARNER 71

motionless ; but the cry had relieved him from
the first maddening pressure of the truth. He
turned, and tottered towards his loom, and got
into the seat where he worked, instinctively
seeking this as the strongest assurance of reality.
And now that all the false hopes had vanished,
and the first shock of certainty was past, the idea
of a thief began to present itself, and he enter-
tained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught
and made to restore the gold. The thought
brought some new strength with It, and he started
from his loom to the door. As he opened it the
rain beat in upon him, for It was falling more and
more heavily. There were no footsteps to be
tracked on such a night — footsteps.'^ When had
the thief come. '^ During Silas's absence in the
daytime the door had been locked, and there had
been no marks of any inroad on his return by
daylight. And in the evening, too, he said to
himself, everything was the same as when he had
left it. The sand and bricks looked as if they
had not been moved. Was it a thief who had
taken the bags ? or was it a cruel power that no
hands could reach, which had delighted in making
him a second time desolate ? He shrank from
this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind with
struggling effort on the robber with hands, who
could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced
at all the neighbours who had made any remarks,
or asked any questions which he might now regard
as a ground of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney,
a known poacher, and otherwise disreputable : he
had often met Marner in his journeys across the

72 SILAS MARNER parti

fields, and had said something jestingly about the
weaver's money ; nay, he had once irritated
Marner, by lingering at the fire when he called to
light his pipe, instead of going about his business.
Jem Rodney was the man — there was ease in the
thought. Jem could be found and made to
restore the money : Marner did not want to
punish him, but only to get back his gold which
had gone from him, and left his soul like a forlorn
traveller on an unknown desert. The robber
must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal
authority were confused, but he felt that he must
go and proclaim his loss ; and the great people in
the village — the clergyman, the constable, and
Squire Cass — would make Jem Rodney, or some-
body else, deliver up the stolen money. He
rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus of this
hope, forgetting to cover his head, not caring to
fasten his door ; for he felt as if he had nothing
left to lose. He ran swiftly till want of breath
compelled him to slacken his pace as he was
entering the village at the turning close to the
Rainbow.

The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place
of luxurious resort for rich and stout husbands,
whose wives had superfluous stores of linen ; it
was the place where he was likely to find the
powers and dignities of Raveloe, and where he
could most speedily make his loss public. He
lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or
kitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty
customers of the house were in the habit of
assembling, the parlour on the left being reserved

CHAP, V

SILAS MARKER

72>

for the more select society in which Squire Cass
frequently enjoyed the double pleasure of con-
viviality and condescension. But the parlour was
dark to-night, the chief personages who orna-
mented its circle being all at Mrs. Osgood's
birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was. And in
consequence of this, the party on the high-screened
seats in the kitchen was more numerous than
usual ; several personages, who would otherwise
have been admitted into the parlour and enlarged
the opportunity of hectoring and condescension
for their betters, being content this evening to
vary their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-
water where they could themselves hector and
condescend in company that called for beer.

CHAPTER VI

The conversation, which was at a high pitch of
animation when SJlas approached the door of the
Rainbow, had, as usual, been slow and intermittent
when the company first assembled. The pipes
began to be puffed in a silence which had an air
of severity ; the more important customers, who
drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at
each other as if a bet were depending on the first
man who winked ; while the beer-drinkers, chiefly
men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept
their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across
their mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a
funereal duty attended with embarrassing sadness.
At last, Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral
disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human
differences as those of beings who were all alike
in need of liquor, broke silence, by saying in a
doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher :

' Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you
druv In yesterday. Bob ? '

The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man,
was not disposed to answer rashly. He gave a
few puffs before he spat and replied, *And they
wouldn't be fur wrong, John.'

74

I

THE COMPANY AT THE ' RAINBOW.'

CHAP. VI SILAS MARKER 75

After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set
in as severely as before.

* Was it a red Durham ? ' said the farrier,
taking up the thread of discourse after the lapse
of a few minutes.

The farrier looked at the landlord, and the
landlord looked at the butcher, as the person who
must take the responsibility of answering.

' Red it was,' said the butcher, in his good-
humoured husky treble — * and a Durham it was.'

* Then you needn't tell 7ne who you bought it
of,' said the farrier, looking round with some
triumph ; * I know who it is has got the red
Durhams o' this country-side. And she'd a
white star on her brow, I'll bet a penny ?' The
farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees
as he put this question, and his eyes twinkled
knowingly.

*Well; yes — she might,' said the butcher,
slowly, considering that he was giving a decided
affirmative. ' I don't say contrairy.'

' I knew that very well,' said the farrier,
throwing himself backward again, and speaking
defiantly ; * if / don't know Mr. Lammeter's
cows, I should like to know who does — that's all.
And as for the cow you've bought, bargain or no
bargain, I've been at the drenching of her —
contradick me who will.'

The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's
conversational spirit was roused a little.

* I'm not for contradicking no man,' he said ;
* I'm for peace and quietness. Some are for
cutting long ribs — I'm for cutting 'em short,

76 SILAS MARNER part i

myself; but / don't quarrel with em. All I say
is, it's a lovely carkiss — and anybody as was
reasonable, it 'ud bring tears into their eyes to
look at it'

' Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever
it is,' pursued the farrier; angrily; 'and it was
Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told a lie when
you said it was a red Durham.'

*I tell no lies,' said the butcher, with the
same mild huskiness as before, ' and I contradick
none — not if a man was to swear himself black :
he's no meat o' mine, nor none o* my bargains.
All I say is, it's a lovely carkiss. And what I
say, I'll stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man.'

* No,' said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm,
looking at the company generally ; ' and p'rhaps
you aren't pig-headed ; and p'rhaps you didn't
say the cow was a red Durham ; and p'rhaps you
didn't say she'd got a star on her brow — stick to
that, now you're at it'

* Come, come,' said the landlord; 'let the
cow alone. The truth lies atween you : you're
both right and both wrong, as I allays say. And
as for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say
nothing to that ; but this I say, as the Rainbow's
the Rainbow. And for the matter o' that, if the
talk is to be o' the Lammeters, you know the
most upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey ? You
remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come
into these parts, and took the Warrens ? '

Mr. Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter
of which functions rheumatism had of late obliged
him to share with a small-featured young man

CHAP. VI SILAS MARKER ']']

who sat opposite him, held his white head on
one side, and twirled his thumbs with an air
of complacency, slightly seasoned with criticism.
He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord's
appeal, and said :

* Ay, ay ; I know, I know ; but I let other
folks talk. I've laid by now, and gev up to the
young uns. Ask them as have been to school
at Tarley : they've learn't pernouncing ; that's
come up since my day.'

* If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey,' said
the deputy-clerk, with an air of anxious propriety,
* I'm nowise a man to speak out of my place.
As the psalm says —

" I know what's right, nor only so,
But also practise what I know." '

*Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the
tune when it's set for you ; if you're for practz.s'Ing,
I wish you'd prac/zV^ that,' said a large jocose-
looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his
week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the
choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the
company, who were known officially as the
'bassoon' and the * key-bugle,' In the confidence
that he was expressing the sense of the musical
profession in Raveloe.

Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the
unpopularity common to deputies, turned very
reel, but replied, with careful moderation — ' Mr.
Winthrop, If you'll bring me any proof as I'm in
the wrong, I'm not the man to say I won't alter.
But there's people set up their own ears for a

78 SILAS MARKER part i

Standard, and expect the whole choir to follow 'em.
There may be two opinions, I hope.'

'Ay, ay,' said Mr. Macey, who felt very well
satisfied with this attack on youthful presumption :
* you're right there, Tookey : there's allays two
'pinions ; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen,
and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him.
There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if
the bell could hear itself.'

'Well, Mr. Macey,' said poor Tookey, serious
amidst the general laughter, ' I undertook to
partially fill up the office of parish-clerk by Mr.
Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities
should make you unfitting ; and it's one of the
rights thereof to sing in the choir — else why have
you done the same yourself .f^'

' Ah ! but the old gentleman and you are two
folks,' said Ben Winthrop. ' The old gentleman's
got a gift. Why, the Squire used to invite him
to take a glass, only to hear him sing the *' Red
Rovier"; didn't he, Mr. Macey? It's a nat'ral
gift. There's my little lad Aaron, he's got a gift
— he can sing a tune off straight, like a throstle.
But as for you, Master Tookey, you'd better stick
to your '*Amens": your voice is well enough
when you keep it up in your nose. It's your
inside as isn't right made for music : it's no better
nor a hollow stalk.'

This kind of unflinching frankness was the
most piquant form of joke to the tompany at the
Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by
everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's epigram.

* I see what it is plain enough,' said Mr. Tookey,

CHAP. VI SILAS MARKER 79

unable to keep cool any longer. * There's a
consperacy to turn me out o' the choir, as I
shouldn't share the Christmas money — that's
where it is. But I shall speak to Mr. Crackenthorp ;
I'll not be put upon by no man.'

' Nay, nay, Tookey,' said Ben Winthrop.
' We'll pay you your share to keep out of It —
that's what we'll do. There's things folk 'ud pay
to be rid on, besides varmin.'

*Come, come,' said the landlord, who felt that
paying people for their absence was a principle
dangerous to society ; * a joke's a joke. We're
all good friends here, I hope. We must give
and take. You're both right and you're both
wrong, as I say. I agree wi* Mr. Macey here,
as there's two opinions ; and If mine was asked,
I should say they're both right. Tookey's right
and Winthrop's right, and they've only got to
split the difference and make themselves even.'

The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely.
In some contempt at this trivial discussion. He
had no ear for music himself, and never went to
church, as being of the medical profession, and
likely to be in requisition for delicate cows. But
the butcher, having music In his soul, had listened
with a divided desire for Tookey's defeat, and
for the preservation of the peace.

' To be sure,' he said, following up the land-
lord's conciliatory view, 'we're fond of our old
clerk ; it's nat'ral, and him used to be such a
singer, and got a brother as Is known for the
first fiddler In this country-side. Eh, it's a pity
but what Solomon lived in our village, and could

8p SILAS MARNER part i

give us a tune when we liked ; eh, Mr. Macey ?
I'd keep him in liver and lights for nothing — that
I would/

*Ay, ay,' said Mr. Macey, in the height of
complacency ; * our family's been known for
musicianers as far back as anybody can tell.
But them things are dying out, as I tell Solomon
every time he comes round ; there's no voices
like what there used to be, and there's nobody
remembers what we remember, if it isn't the old
crows.'

' Ay, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's
father came into these parts, don't you, Mr.
Macey ? ' said the landlord.

' I should think I did,' said the old man, who
had now gone through that complimentary process
necessary to bring him up to the point of narra-
tion ; * and a fine old gentleman he was — as fine,
and finer nor the Mr. Lammeter as now is. He
came from a bit north'ard, so far as I could ever
make out. But there's nobody rightly knows
about those parts : only it couldn't be far north'ard,
nor much different from this country, for he
brought a fine breed o' sheep with him, so there
must be pastures there, and everything reasonable.
We beared tell as he'd sold his own land to come
and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for
a man as had land of his own, to come and rent
a farm in a strange place. But they said it was
along of his wife's dying ; though there's reasons
in things as nobody knows on — that's pretty
much what I've made out; though some folks
are so wise, they'll find you fifty reasons straight

I

CHAr. VI SILAS MARKER 8i

off, and all the while the real reason's winking
at em in the corner, and they niver see't. How-
somever, it was soon seen as we'd got a new
parish'ner as know'd the rights and customs o'
things, an kep a good house, and was well
looked on by everybody. And the young man —
that's the Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver
a sister — soon begun to court Miss Osgood, that's
the sister o' the Mr. Osgood as now is, and a
fine handsome lass she was — eh, you can't think
— they pretend this young lass is like her, but
that's the way wi' people as don't know what
come before 'em. / should know, for I helped
the old rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I helped
him marry 'em.'

Here Mr. Macey paused ; he always gave his
narrative in instalments, expecting to be ques-
tioned according to precedent.

' Ay, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't
it, Mr. Macey, so as you were likely to remember
that marriage ? ' said the landlord, in a con-
gratulatory tone.

' I should think there did — a very partic'lar
thing,' said Mr. Macey, nodding sideways. ' For
Mr. Drumlow — poor old gentleman, I was fond
on him, though he'd got a bit confused in his
head, what wi' age and wi' taking a drop o'
summat warm when the service come of a cold
morning. And young Mr. Lammeter, he'd have
no way but he must be married in Janiwary,
which, to be sure, 's a unreasonable time to be
married in, for it isn't like a christening or a
burying, as you can't help ; and so Mr. Drumlow

G

82 SILAS MARKER part i

— poor old gentleman, I was fond on him — but
when he come to put the questions, he put em
by the rule o' contrairy, like, and he says, " Wilt
thou have this man to thy wedded wife ? " says
he, and then he says, '' Wilt thou have this
woman to thy wedded husband ? " says he. But
the partic'larest thing of all is, as nobody took any
notice on it but me, and they answered straight
off *'yes," like as if it had been me saying
*' Amen " i' the right place, without listening to
what went before.'

' But jK^?^ knew what was going on well enough,
didn't you, Mr. Macey ? You were live enough,
eh ? ' said the butcher.

' Lor bless you ! ' said Mr. Macey, pausing,
and smiling in pity at the impotence of his
hearer's imagination — ' why, I was all of a
tremble: it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by
the two tails, like ; for I couldn't stop the parson,
1 couldn't take upon me to do that ; and yet I
said to myself, I says, ''Suppose they shouldn't
be fast married, 'cause the words are contrairy ? "
and my head went working like a mill, for I
was allays uncommon for turning things over and
seeing all round 'em ; and I says to myself, '* Is't
the meanin' or the words as makes folks fast i'
wedlock.^" For the parson meant right, and
the bride and bridegroom meant right. But then,
when I come to think on it, meanin' goes but a
little way i' most things, for you may mean to
stick things together and your glue may be bad,
and then where are you? And so I says to
mysen, '' It Isn't the meanin', it's the glue." And

\

CHAP. VI SILAS MARNER 83

I was worreted as if I'd got three bells to pull
at once, when we got into the vestry, and they
begun to sign their names. But where's the
use o' talking ? — you can't think what goes on
in a 'cute man's inside.'

' But you held in for all that, didn't you, Mr.
Macey ? ' said the landlord.

' Ay, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi'
Mr. Drumlow, and then I out wi' everything,
but respectful, as I allays did. And he made
light on it, and he says, '' Pooh, pooh, Macey,
make yourself easy," he says, " it's neither the
meaning nor the words — it's the re^'^^ter does it
— that's the glue." So you see he settled it easy ;
for parsons and doctors know everything by
heart, like, so as they aren't worreted wi' thinking
what's the rights and wrongs o' things, as I'n
been many and many's the time. And sure
enough the wedding turned out all right, on'y
poor Mrs. Lammeter — that's Miss Osgood as
was — died afore the lasses were growed up ; but
for prosperity and everything respectable, there's
no family more looked on.'

Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard
this story many times, but it was listened to as if
it had been a favourite tune, and at certain points
the puffing of the pipes was momentarily sus-
pended, that the listeners might give their whole
minds to the expected words. But there was
more to come ; and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly
put the leading question.

'Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin,
didn't they say, w^hen he come into these parts ? '

84 SILAS MARKER part i

* Well, yes,' said Mr. Macey ; ' but I daresay
it's as much as this Mr. Lammeter's done to
keep it whole. For there was allays a talk as
nobody could get rich on the Warrens : though
he holds it cheap, for it's what they call Charity
Land.'

' Ay, and there's few folks know so well as you
how it come to be Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey ? '
said the butcher.

' How should they.f^' said the old clerk, with
some contempt. ' Why, my grandfather made the
grooms' livery for that Mr. Cliff as came and built
the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they're
stables four times as big as Squire Cass's, for he
thought o' nothing but bosses and hunting, Cliff
didn't — a Lunnon tailor, some folks said, as had
gone mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't ride ; lor
bless you ! they said he'd got no more grip o' the
boss that if his legs had been cross - sticks :
my grandfather beared old Squire Cass say so
many and many a time. But ride he would, as if
old Harry had been a-driving him ; and he'd a
son, a lad o' sixteen ; and nothing would his
father have him do, but he must ride and ride —
though the lad was frighted, they said. And it
was a common saying as the father wanted to
ride the tailor out o' the lad, and make a gentle-
man on him — not but what I'm a tailor myself,
but in respect as God made me such, I'm proud
on it, for *' Macey, tailor," 's been wrote up over
our door since afore the Queen's heads went out
on the shillings. But CHff, he was ashamed o'
being called a tailor, and he was sore vexed as

CHAP. VI SILAS MARKER 85

his riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the
gentlefolks hereabout could abide him. How-
somever, the poor lad got sickly and died, and
the father didn't live long after him, for he got
queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out
i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his hand,
to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for
he got as he couldn't sleep ; and there he'd stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his bosses ; and
they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get
burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em.
But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd
left all his property. Warrens and all, to a Lunnon
Charity, and that's how the Warrens come to be
Charity Land ; though, as for the stables, Mr.
Lammeter never uses 'em — they're out o' all
charicter — lor bless you ! if you was to set the
doors a-banging in 'em, it 'ud sound like thunder
half o'er the parish.'

' Ay, but there's more going on in the stables
than what folks see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey ? '
said the landlord.

' Ay, ay ; go that way of a dark night, that's
all,' said Mr. Macey, winking mysteriously, *and
then make believe, if you like, as you didn't see
lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping o' the
bosses, nor the cracking o' the whips, and
howling, too, if it's tow'rt daybreak. '' Cliff's
Holiday " has been the name of it ever sin' I were
a boy ; that's to say, some said as it was the
holiday old Harry gev him from roasting, like.
That's what my father told me, and he was a
reasonable man, though there's folks nowadays

86 SILAS MARKER part i

know what happened afore they were born better
nor they know their own business.'

' What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas ? ' said
the landlord, turning to the farrier, who was
swelling with impatience for his cue. * There's a
nut (or you to crack.'

Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the
company, and was proud of his position.

' Say ? I say what a man should say as
doesn't shut his eyes to look at a finger-post. I
say, as I'm ready to wager any man ten pound, if
he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the pasture
before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see
lights nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of
our own noses. That's what I say, and I've said
it many a time ; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a
ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as they make so
sure of/

* Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is,'
said Ben Winthrop. * You might as well bet a
man as he wouldn't catch the rheumatise if he
stood up to's neck in the pool of a frosty night.
It 'ud be fine fun for a man to win his bet as he'd
catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in Cliffs
Holiday aren't agoing to ventur near it for a
matter o' ten pound.'

* If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth
on it,' said Mr. Macey, with a sarcastic smile,
tapping his thumbs together, ' he's no call to lay
any bet — let him go and stan' by himself — there's
nobody 'ull hinder him ; and then he can let the
parish'ners know if they're wrong.'

'Thank you! I'm obliged to you,' said the

CHAP. VI SILAS MARNER 87

farrier, with a snort of scorn. ' If folks are fools,
it's no business o' mine. / don't want to make
out the truth about ghos'es : / know it a'ready.
But I'm not against a bet — everything fair and
open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall
see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by
myself I want no company. I'd as lief do it as
I'd fill this pipe.'

*Ah, but who's to watch you, Dowlas, and
see you do it ? That's no fair bet,' said the
butcher.

'No fair bet?' replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily.
' I should like to hear any man stand up and say
I w^ant to bet unfair. Come now. Master Lundy,
I should like to hear you say it.'

* Very like you would,' said the butcher. ' But
it's no business o' mine. You're none o' my
bargains, and I aren't a-2;^oing to try and 'bate
your price. If anybody '11 bid for you at your
own vallying, let him. I'm for peace and quiet-
ness, I am.'

' Yes, that's what every yapping cur is, when
you hold a stick up at him,' said the farrier.
' But I'm afraid o' neither man nor ghost, and
I'm ready to lay a fair bet — / aren't a turn-
tail cur.'

*Ay, but there's this in it. Dowlas,' said the
landlord, speaking in a tone of much candour and
tolerance. ' There's folks, i' my opinion, they
can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a
pike-staff before 'em. And there's reason i' that.
For there's my wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd
the strongest o' cheese under her nose. I never

88 SILAS MARKER part i

see'd a ghost myself, but then I says to myself,
" Very like I haven't got the smell for 'em." I
mean, putting a ghost for a smell, or else con-
trairiways. And so, I'm for holding with both
sides ; for, as I say, the truth lies between 'em.
And if Dowlas was to go and stand, and say he'd
never seen a wink o' Cliffs Holiday all the night
through, I'd back him ; and if anybody said as
Cliff's Holiday was certain sure, for all that, I'd
back Mm too. For the smell's what I go by.'

The landlord's analogical argument was not
well received by the farrier — a man intensely
opposed to compromise.

'Tut, tut,' he said, setting down his glass with
refreshed irritation ; ' what's the smell got to do
with it ? Did ever a ghost give a man a black
eye ? That's what I should like to know. If
ghos'es want me to believe in 'em, let' em leave off
skulking i' the dark and i' lone places — let 'em
come where there's company and candles.'

' As if ghos'es 'ud want to be believed in by
anybody so ignirant ! ' said Mr. Macey, in deep
disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence to
apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.

CHAPTER VII

Yet the next moment there seemed to be some
evidence that ghosts had a more condescending
disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them ;
for the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was
suddenly seen standing in the warm light, uttering
no word, but looking round at the company with
his strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave
a simultaneous movement, like the antennae of
startled insects, and every man present, not ex-
cepting even the sceptical farrier, had an
impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in the
flesh, but an apparition ; for the door by which
Silas had entered was hidden by the high-
screened seats, and no one had noticed his
approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the
ghost, might be supposed to have felt an argumen-
tative triumph, which would tend to neutralise his
share of the general alarm. Had he not always
said that when Silas Marner was in that strange
trance of his, his soul went loose from his body ?
Here was the demonstration : nevertheless, on
the whole, he would have been as well contented
without it. For a few moments there was a dead
silence, Marner's want of breath and agitation not

89

90 SILAS MARNER part i

allowing him to speak. The landlord, under the
habitual sense that he was bound to keep his
house open to all company, and confident in the
protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took
on himself the task of adjuring the ghost.

' Master Marner,' he said, in a conciliatory tone,
'what's lacking to you.^ What's your business
here.^'

'Robbed!' said Silas, gaspingly. 'I've been
robbed ! I want the constable — and the Justice —
and Squire Cass — and Mr. Crackenthorp.'

' Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney,' said the land-
lord, the Idea of a ghost subsiding ; * he's off his
head, I doubt. He's wet through.'

Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat
conveniently near Marner's standing-place ; but
he declined to give his services.

' Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr.
Snell, if you've a mind,' said Jem, rather sullenly.
' He's been robbed, and murdered too, for what I
know,' he added, in a muttering tone.

'Jem Rodney! 'said Silas, turning and fixing
his strange eyes on the suspected man.

' Ay, Master Marner, what do you want wi'
me ? ' said Jem, trembling a little, and seizing his
drinking-can as a defensive weapon.

' If it was you stole my money,' said Silas,
clasping his hands entreatingly, and raising his
voice to a cry, ' give it me back, — and I won't
meddle with you. I won't set the constable on
you. Give it me back, and I'll let you— I'll let
you have a guinea.'

'Me stole your money!' said Jem, angrily.

The long pipes, 9^

CHAP. VII SILAS MARKER 93

' I'll pitch this can at your eye if you talk o' my
stealing your money.'

'Come, come, Master Marner,' said the land-
lord, now rising resolutely, and seizing Marner by
the shoulder, ' if you've got any information to
lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you're
in your right mind, if you expect anybody to
listen to you. You're as wet as a drowned rat.
Sit down and dry yourself, and speak straight
forrard.'

'Ah, to be sure, man,' said the farrier, who
began to feel that he had not been quite on a par
with himself and the occasion. ' Let's have no
more staring and screaming, else we'll have you
strapped for a madman. That was why I didn't
speak at the first — thinks I, the man's run mad.'

'Ay, ay, make him sit down,' said several
voices at once, well pleased that the reality of
ghosts remained still an open question.

The landlord forced Marner to take off his
coat, and then to sit down on a chair aloof from
every one else, in the centre of the circle, and in
the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble
to have any distinct purpose beyond that of
getting help to recover his money, submitted un-
resistingly. The transient fears of the company
were now forgotten in their strong curiosity, and
all faces were turned towards Silas, when the
landlord, having seated himself again, said :

' Now then. Master Marner, what's this youVe
got to say, as you've been robbed ? speak out.'

' He'd better not say again as it was me robbed
him,' cried Jem Rodney, hastily. 'What could I

94 SILAS MARKER part i

ha' done with his money ? I could as easy steal
the parson's surplice, and wear it.

' Hold your tongue, Jem, and let's hear what
he's got to say,' said the landlord. ' Now then,
Master Marner.'

Silas now told his story under frequent ques-
tioning, as the mysterious character of the robbery
became evident.

This strangely novel situation of opening his
trouble to his Raveloe neighbours, of sitting in the
warmth of a hearth not his own, and feeling the
presence of faces and voices which were his
nearest promise of help, had doubtless its influence
on Marner, in spite of his passionate preoccupation
with his loss. Our consciousness rarely registers
the beginning of a growth within us any more than
without us : there have been many circulations
of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of
the bud.

The slight suspicion with which his hearers at
first listened to him, gradually melted away before
the convincing simplicity of his distress : it was
Impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner
was telling the truth, not because they were capable
of arguing at once from the nature of his state-
ments to the absence of any motive for making
them falsely, but because, as Mr Macey observed,
' Folks as had the devil to back 'em were not
likely to be so mushed ' as poor Silas was. Rather,
from the strange fact that the robber had left no
traces, and had happened to know the nick of time,
utterly incalculable by mortal agents, when Silas
would go away from home without locking his door,

CHAP. VII SILAS MARKER 95

the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that
his disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever
existed, had been broken up, and that, in con-
sequence, this ill turn had been done to Marner by-
somebody it was quite in vain to set the constable
after. Why this preternatural felon should be
obliged to wait till the door was unlocked, was a
question which did not present itself.

' It isn't Jem Rodney as has done this work,
Master Marner,' said the landlord. 'You mustn't
be a-casting your eye at poor Jem. There may
be a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter
of a hare or so, if anybody was bound to keep their
eyes staring open, and niver to wink — but Jem's
been a-sltting here drinking his can, like the
decentest man i ' the parish, since before you left
your house, Master Marner, by your own account.'

* Ay, ay,' said Mr Macey ; ' let's have no accus-
ing o' the innicent. That Isn't the law. There
must be folks to swear again' a man before he can
be ta'en up. Let's have no accusing o' the Innicent,
Master Marner.'

Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that
it could not be wakened by these words. With a
movement of compunction, as new and strange to
him as everything else within the last hour, he
started from his chair and went close up to Jem,
looking at him as if he wanted to assure himself of
the expression in his face.

* I was wrong,' he said — ' yes, yes — I ought to
have thought. There's nothing to witness against
you, Jem. Only you'd been Into my house oftener
than anybody else, and so you came Into my head.

96 SILAS MARNER part i

I don't accuse you — I won't accuse anybody — only,'
he added, lifting up his hands to his head, and
turning away with bewildered misery, ' I try — I
try to think where my money can be.'

' Ay, ay, they're gone where it's hot enough
to melt 'em, I doubt,' said Mr. Macey.

' Tchuh ! ' said the farrier. And then he
asked, with a cross-examining air, * How much
money might there be in the bags, Master
Marner ? '

* Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve
and sixpence, last night when I counted It,' said
Silas, seating himself again, with a groan.

' Pooh ! why, they'd be none so heavy to carry.
Some tramp's been in, that's all ; and as for the
no footmarks, and the bricks and the sand being
all right — why, your eyes are pretty much like a
insect's. Master Marner ; they're obliged to look
so close, you can't see much at a time. It's my
opinion as. If I'd been you, or you'd been me —
for it comes to the same thing — you wouldn't
have thought you'd found everything as you left
it. But what I vote is, as two of the senslblest
o' the company should go with you to Master
Kench, the constable's — he's ill i' bed, I know
that much — and get him to appoint one of us
his depplty ; for that's the law, and I don't think
anybody 'ull take upon him to contradick me
there. It Isn't much of a walk to Kench's ; and
then, if it's me as is depplty, I'll go back with
you. Master Marner, and examine your primlses ;
and if anybody's got any fault to find with that, I'll
thank him to stand up and say it out like a man.'

CHAP. VII SILAS MARKER 97

By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-
established his self-complacency, and waited with
confidence to hear himself named as one of the
superlatively sensible men.

' Let us see how the night is, though,' said the
landlord, who also considered himself personally
concerned in this proposition. * Why, it rains
heavy still,' he said, returning from the door.

* Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the
rain,' said the farrier. ' For it'll look bad when
Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us
had a information laid before 'em and took no
steps.'

The landlord agreed with this view, and after
taking the sense of the company, and duly re-
hearsing a small ceremony known in high ecclesi-
astical life as the nolo episcopari, he consented
to take on himself the chill dignity of going to
Kench's. But to the farrier's strong disgust,
Mr. Macey now started an objection to his
proposing himself as a deputy -constable ; for
that oracular old gentleman, claiming to know
the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his
father, that no doctor could be a constable.

* And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're
only a cow-doctor — for a fly's a fly, though it
may be a hoss-fly,' concluded Mr. Macey, wonder-
ing a little at his own ''cuteness.'

There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier
being of course indisposed to renounce the quality
of doctor, but contending that a doctor could be a
constable if he liked — the law meant, he needn't
be one if he didn't like. Mr. Macey thought this

H

98 SILAS MARNER parti

was nonsense, since the law was not likely to be
fonder of doctors than of other folks. Moreover,
if it was in the nature of doctors more than of
other men not to like being constables, how came
Mr. Dowlas to be so eager to act in that capacity?

*/ don't want to act the constable,' said the
farrier, driven into a corner by this merciless
reasoning ; ' and there's no man can say it of
me, if he'd tell the truth. But if there's to be
any jealousy and envying about going to Kench's
in the rain, let them go as like it — you won t get
me to go, I can tell you."

By the landlord's intervention, however, the
dispute was accommodated. Mr. Dowlas con-
sented to go as a second person disinclined to
act officially ; and so poor Silas, furnished with
some old coverings, turned out with his two
companions Into the rain again, thinking of the
long night-hours before him, not as those do who
long to rest, but as those who expect to ' watch
for the morning.'

CHAPTER VIII

When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood's
party at midnight, he was not much surprised to
learn that Dunsey had not come home. Perhaps
he had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for
another chance — perhaps, on that foggy after-
noon, he had preferred housing himself at the
Red Lion at Batherley for the night, if the run
had kept him in that neighbourhood ; for he was
not likely to feel much concern about leaving his
brother in suspense. Godfrey's mind was too
full of Nancy Lammeter's looks and behaviour,
too full of the exasperation against himself and
his lot, "which the sight of her always produced
in him, for him to give much thought to Wildfire
or to the probabilities of Dunstan's conduct.

The next morning the whole village was
excited by the story of the robbery, and Godfrey,
like every one else, was occupied in gathering
and discussing news about it, and in visiting the
Stone-pits. The rain had washed away all possi-
bility of distinguishing foot-marks, but a close
investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the
direction opposite to the village, a tinder-box,
with a flint and steel, half sunk in the mud. It

99

loo SILAS MARNER part i

was not Silas's tinder-box, for the only one he
had ever had was. still standing on his shelf;
and the inference generally accepted was, that
the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow con-
nected with the robbery. A small minority
shook their heads, and intimated their opinion
that it was not a robbery to have much light
thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master
Marner's tale had a queer look with it, and
that such things had been known as a man's
doing himself a mischief, and then setting the
justice to look for the doer. But when questioned
closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and
what Master Marner had to gain by such false
pretences, they only shook their heads as before,
and observed that there was no knowing what
some folks counted gain ; moreover, that every-
body had a right to their own opinions, grounds
or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody
knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, though he
joined in the defence of Marner against all
suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the tinder-
box ; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious
suggestion, tending to imply that everything
must be done by human hands, and that there
was no power which could make away with the
guineas without moving the bricks. Nevertheless,
he turned round rather sharply on Mr. Tookey,
when the zealous deputy, feeling that this was a
view of the case peculiarly suited to a parish-
clerk, carried it still further, and doubted whether
it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when
the circumstances were so mysterious.

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER loi

'As if,' concluded Mr. Tookey — *as if there
was nothing but what could be made out by
justices and constables.'

' Now, don't you be for overshooting the mark,
Tookey,' said Mr. Macey, nodding his head aside,
admonishingly. ' That's what you're allays at ;
if I throw a stone and hit, you think there's
summat better than hitting, and you try to throw
a stone beyond. What I said was against the
tinder-box : I said nothing against justices and
constables, for they're o' King George's making,
and it 'ud be ill-becoming a man in a parish office
to fly out again' King George.'

While these discussions were going on amongst
the group outside the Rainbow, a higher con-
sultation was being carried on within, under the
presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector,
assisted by Squire Cass and other substantial
parishioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell,
the landlord — he being, as he observed, a man
accustomed to put two and two together — to
connect with the tinder-box which, as deputy-
constable, he himself had had the honourable dis-
tinction of finding, certain recollections of a pedlar
who had called to drink at the house about a
month before, and had actually stated that he
carried a tinder-box about with him to light his
pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed
out. And as memory, when duly impregnated
with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly
fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered a vivid
impression of the effect produced on him by the
pedlar's countenance and conversation. He had

I02 SILAS MARKER part i

a * look with his eye ' which fell unpleasantly on
Mr. Snell's sensitive organism. To be sure, he
didn't say anything particular — no, except that
about the tinder-box — but it isn't what a man
says, it's the way he says it. Moreover he had a
swarthy foreignness of complexion which boded
little honesty.

'Did he wear ear-rings.'^' Mr. Crackenthorp
wished to know, having some acquaintance with
foreign customs.

*Well — stay — let me see,' said Mr. Snell, like
a docile clairvoyante, who would really not make
a mistake if she could help it. After stretching
the corners of his mouth and contracting his eyes,
as if he were trying to see the ear-rings, he
appeared to give up the effort, and said, ' Well,
he'd got ear-rings in his box to sell, so it's nat'ral
to suppose he might wear 'em. But he called at
every house, a'most, in the village ; there's some-
body else, mayhap, saw 'em in his ears, though I
can't take upon me rightly to say.'

Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that
somebody else would remember the pedlar's ear-
rings. For, on the spread of inquiry among the
villagers, it was stated with gathering emphasis,
that the parson had wanted to know whether the
pedlar wore ear-rings in his ears, and an impres-
sion was created that a great deal depended on
the eliciting of this fact. Of course every one
who heard the question, not having any distinct
image of the pedlar as without ear-rings, immedi-
ately had an image of him with ear-rings, larger
or smaller, as the case might be ; and the image

t tfU ' ir'V 1 »-;

HAD MADE HER BLOOD CREEP.

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER 103

was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so
that the glazier's wife, a well-intentioned woman,
not given to lying, and whose house was among
the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare,
as sure as ever she meant to take the sacrament,
the very next Christmas that was ever coming,
that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape of
the young moon, in the pedlar's two ears ; while
Jinny Oates, the cobbler's daughter, being a more
imaginative person, stated not only that she had
seen them too, but that they had made her blood
creep, as it did at that very moment while there
she stood.

Also, by way of throwing further light on this
clue of the tinder-box, a collection was made of
all the articles purchased from the pedlar at
various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be
exhibited there. In fact, there was a general
feeling in the village, that for the clearing-up of
this robbery there must be a great deal done at
the Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife
an excuse for going there while it was the scene
of severe public duties.

Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a
little indignation also, when it became known
that Silas Marner, on being questioned by the
Squire and the parson, had retained no other
recollection of the pedlar than that he had called
at his door, but had not entered his house, having
turned away at once when Silas, holding the door
ajar, had said that he wanted nothing. This
had been Silas's testimony, though he clutched
strongly at the idea of the pedlar's being the

I04 SILAS MARNER part i

culprit, if only because it gave him a definite
image of a whereabout for his gold, after it had
been taken away from its hiding-place : he could
see it now in the pedlar's box. But it was
observed with some irritation in the village, that
anybody but a 'blind creatur ' like Marner would
have seen the man prowling about, for how came
he to leave his tinder-box in the ditch close by, if
he hadn't been lingering there ? Doubtless, he
had made his observations when he saw Marner
at the door. Anybody might know — and only
look at him — that the weaver was a half-crazy
miser. It was a wonder the pedlar hadn't
murdered him ; men of that sort, with rings in
their ears, had been known for murderers often
and often ; there had been one tried at the 'sizes,
not so long ago but what there were people living
who remembered it.

Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow
during one of Mr. Snell's frequently repeated
recitals of his testimony, had treated it lightly,
stating that he himself had bought a penknife of
the pedlar, and thought him a merry grinning
fellow enough ; It was all nonsense, he said, about
the man's evil looks. But this was spoken of in
the village as the random talk of youth, ' as If it
was only Mr. Snell who had seen something odd
about the pedlar ! ' On the contrary, there were
at least half-a-dozen who were ready to go before
Justice Malam, and give In much more striking
testimony than any the landlord could furnish.
It was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey would not go to
Tarley and throw cold water on what Mr. Snell

<-^'^//h.•C^^VU'^J^a~"■^--^. o"?

io6

He was seen setting off.

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER 107

said there, and so prevent the justice from
drawing up a warrant. He was suspected of
intending this, when, after mid-day, he was seen
setting off on horseback in the direction of
Tarley.

But by this time Godfrey's interest in the
robbery had faded before his growing anxiety
about Dunstan and Wildfire, and he was going,
not to Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in
uncertainty about them any longer. The possi-
bility that Dunstan has played him the ugly trick
of riding away with Wildfire, to return at the end
of a month, when he had gambled away or other-
wise squandered the price of the horse, was a fear
that urged itself upon him more, even, than the
thought of an accidental injury ; and now that the
dance at Mrs. Osgood's was past, he was irritated
with himself that he had trusted his horse to
Dunstan. Instead of trying to still his fears, he
encouraged them, with that superstitious impression
which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very
strongly it is the less likely to come ; and when
he heard a horse approaching at a trot, and saw
a hat rising above a hedge beyond an angle of
the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeeded.
But no sooner did the horse come within sight,
than his heart sank again. It was not Wildfire ;
and in a few moments more he discerned that the
rider was not Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled
up to speak, with a face that implied something
disagreeable.

' Well, Mr. Godfrey, that's a lucky brother of
yours, that Master Dunsey, isn't he?'

io8 SILAS MARNER part i

* What do you mean ? ' said Godfrey, hastily.

* Why, hasn't he been home yet ? ' said Bryce.

* Home ? no. What has happened } Be quick.
What has he done with my horse ? *

' Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pre-
tended you had parted with it to him.'

'Has he thrown him down and broken his
knees } ' said Godfrey, flushed with exasperation.

'Worse than that,' said Bryce. 'You see, I'd
made a bargain with him to buy the horse for a
hundred and twenty — a swinging price, but I
always liked the horse. And what does he do
but go and stake him — fly at a hedge with stakes
in it, atop of a bank with a ditch before it. The
horse had been dead a pretty good while when he
was found. So he hasn't been home since, has
he?'

' Home ? no,' said Godfrey, ' and he'd better
keep away. Confound me for a fool ! I might
have known this would be the end of it.'

'Well, to tell you the truth,' said Bryce, 'after
I'd bargained for the horse, it did come into my
head that he might be riding and selling the horse
without your knowledge, for I didn't believe it
was his own. I knew Master Dunsey was up to
his tricks sometimes. But where can he be
gone } He's never been seen at Batherley. He
couldn't have been hurt, for he must have walked
off.'

' Hurt,' said Godfrey, bitterly. ' He'll never
be hurt — he's made to hurt other people.'

' And so you did give him leave to sell the
horse, eh ? ' said Bryce.

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER 109

' Yes ; I wanted to part with the horse — he
was always a httle too hard in the mouth for me,'
said Godfrey ; his pride making him wince under
the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a
matter of necessity. * I was going to see after
him — I thought some mischief had happened.
I'll go back now,' he added, turning the horse's
head, and wishing he could get rid of Bryce ; for
he felt that the long-dreaded crisis in his life was
close upon him. 'You're coming on to Raveloe,
aren't you ? '

' Well, no, not now,' said Bryce. ' I was coming
round there, for I had to go to Flitton, and I
thought I might as well take you in my way, and
just let you know all I knew myself about the
horse. I suppose Master Dunsey didn't like to
show himself till the ill news had blown over a
bit. He's perhaps gone to pay a visit at the
Three Crowns, by Whitbridge — I know he's fond
of the house.'

* Perhaps he is,' said Godfrey, rather absently.
Then rousing himself, he said, with an effort at
carelessness, * We shall hear of him soon enough,
I'll be bound.'

'Well, here's my turning,' said Bryce, not
surprised to perceive that Godfrey was rather
'down'; 'so I'll bid you good-day, and wish I
may bring you better news another time.'

Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to
himself the scene of confession to his father from
which he felt that there was now no longer any
escape. The revelation about the money must be
made the very next morning ; and if he withheld

no SILAS MARNER part i

the rest, Dunstan would be sure to come back
shortly, and finding that he must bear the brunt
of his father's anger, would tell the whole story-
out of spite, even though he had nothing to
gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by
which he might still win Dunstan's silence and
put off the evil day : he might tell his father that
he had himself spent the money paid to him by
Fowler ; and as he had never been guilty of such
an offence before, the affair would blow over after
a little storming. But Godfrey could not bend
himself to this. He felt that in letting Dunstan
have the money, he had already been guilty of a
breach of trust hardly less culpable than that of
spending the money directly for his own behoof;
and yet there was a distinction between the two
acts which made him feel that the one was so
much more blackening than the other as to be
intolerable to him.

* I don't pretend to be a good fellow,' he said
to himself; * but I'm not a scoundrel — at least, I'll
stop short somewhere. I'll bear the consequences
of what I have done sooner than make believe
I've done what I never would have done. I'd
never have spent the money for my own pleasure
— I was tortured into it.'

Through the remainer of this day Godfrey,
with only occasional fluctuations, kept his will
bent in the direction of a complete avowal to his
father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire's loss
till the next morning, that it might serve him as
an introduction to heavier matter. The old Squire
was accustomed to his son's frequent absence from

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER iii

home, and thought neither Dunstan's nor Wild-
fire's non-appearance a matter calling for remark.
Godfrey said to himself again and again, that if
he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he
might never have another ; the revelation might
be made even in a more odious v^ay than by
Dunstan's malignity : she might come, as she had
threatened to do. And then he tried to make the
scene easier to himself by rehearsal : he made up
his mind how he would pass from the admission
of his weakness in letting Dunstan have the
money to the fact that Dunstan had a hold on
him which he had been unable to shake off, and
how he would work up his father to expect some-
thing very bad before he told him the fact. The
old Squire was an implacable man : he made
resolutions in violent anger, but he was not to be
moved from them after his anger had subsided —
as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into
rock. Like many violent and implacable men,
he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own
heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with
exasperating force, and then he turned round with
fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard.
This was his system with his tenants : he allowed
them to get into arrears, neglect their fences,
reduce their stock, sell their straw, and otherwise
go the wrong way, — and then, when he became
short of money in consequence of this indulgence,
he took the hardest measures and would listen to
no appeal. Godfrey knew all this, and felt it
with the greater force because he had constantly
suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's

112 SILAS MARNER part i

sudden fits of unrelentlngness, for which his own
habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.
(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence
which preceded these fits ; that seemed to him
natural enough.) Still there was just the chance,
Godfrey thought, that his father s pride might see
this marriage in a light that would induce him to
hush it up, rather than turn his son out and make
the family the talk of the country for ten miles
round.

This was the view of the case that Godfrey
managed to keep before him pretty closely till
midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he
had done with inward debating. But when he
awoke in the still morning darkness he found it
impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts ; it
was as if they had been tired out and were not to
be roused to further work. Instead of arguments
for confession, he could now feel the presence of
nothing but its evil consequences : the old dread
of disgrace came back — the old shrinking from
the thought of raising a hopeless barrier between
himself and Nancy — the old disposition to rely
on chances which might be favourable to him,
and save him from betrayal. Why, after all,
should he cut off the hope of them by his own
act .-^ He had seen the matter in a wrong light
yesterday. He had been in a rage with Dunstan,
and had thought of nothing but a thorough break-
up of their mutual understanding ; but what it
would be really wisest for him to do, was to try
and soften his father's anger against Dunsey, and
keep things as nearly as possible in their old

CHAP. VIII SILAS MARNER 113

condition. If Dunsey did not come back for a
few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the
rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable
him to keep away still longer), everything might
blow over.

CHAPTER IX

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier
than usual, but lingered in the wainscoted parlour
till his younger brothers had finished their meal
and gone out, awaiting his father, who always
went out and had a walk with his managing-man
before breakfast. Every one breakfasted at a
different hour in the Red House, and the Squire
was always the latest, giving a long chance to a
rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it.
The table had been spread with substantial eatables
nearly two hours before he presented himself — a
tall, stout man of sixty, with a face in which the
knit brow and rather hard glance seemed con-
tradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His
person showed marks of habitual neglect, his
dress was slovenly ; and yet there was something
in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable
from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish,
who were perhaps every whit as refined as he,
but, having slouched their way through life with
a consciousness of being in the vicinity of their
** betters," wanted that self-possession and authori-
tativeness of voice and carriage which belonged
to a man who thought of superiors as remote

114

•ring the bell for my ale, will you.

CHAP, rx SILAS MARNER 115

existences, with whom he had personally little
more to do than with America or the stars. The
Squire had been used to parish homage all his
life, used to the presupposition that his family, his
tankards, and everything that was his, were the
oldest and best ; and as he never associated with
any gentry higher than himself, his opinion was
not disturbed by comparison.

He glanced at his son as he entered the room,
and said, 'What, sir! haven't you had your
breakfast yet ? ' but there was no pleasant morning
greeting between them ; not because of any un-
friendliness, but because the sweet flower of
courtesy is not a growth of such homes as the
Red House.

' Yes, sir,' said Godfrey, * I've had my breakfast,
but I was waiting to speak to you.'

' Ah ! well,' said the Squire, throwing himself
indifferently into his chair, and speaking in a
ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in
Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank,
while he cut a piece of beef, and held it up before
the deer-hound that had come in with him. * Ring
the bell for my ale, will you } You youngsters'
business is your own pleasure, mostly. There's
no hurry about it for anybody but yourselves.'

The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons',
but it was a fiction kept up by himself and his
contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was ex-
clusively the period of folly, and that their aged
wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance
mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey waited, before
he spoke again, until the ale had been brought

ii6 SILAS MARNER parti

and the door closed — an interval during which
Fleet, the deer-hound, had consumed enough bits
of beef to make a poor man's holiday dinner.

' There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with
Wildfire,' he began ; ' happened the day before
yesterday.'

* What ! broke his knees ? ' said the Squire,
after taking a draught of ale. ' I thought you
knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never
threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might
ha whistled for another, for my father wasn't quite
so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know
of. But they must turn over a new leaf — they
must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as
short o' cash as a roadside pauper. And that fool
Kimble says the newspaper's talking about peace.
Why, the country wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Prices 'ud run down like a jack, and I should
never get my arrears, not if I sold all the fellows
up. And there's that damned Fowler, I won't put
up with him any longer ; I've told Winthrop to go
to Cox this very day. The lying scoundrel told
me he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last month.
He takes advantage because he's on that outlying
farm, and thinks I shall forget him.'

The Squire had delivered this speech in a
coughing and interrupted manner, but with no
pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext
for taking up the word again. He felt that his
father meant to ward off any request for money
on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and
that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on
his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to

cHAr. IX SILAS MARNER 117

produce an attitude of mind the utmost unfavour-
able for his own disclosure. But he must go on,
now he had begun.

* It's worse than breaking the horse's knees —
he's been staked and killed,' he said, as soon as
his father was silent, and had begun to cut his
meat. * But I wasn't thinking of asking you to
buy me another horse; I was only thinking I'd
lost the means of paying you with the price of
Wildfire, as I'd meant to do. Dunsey took him
to the hunt to sell him for me the other day, and
after he'd made a bargain for a hundred and twenty
with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took
some fool's leap or other, that did for the horse at
once. If it hadn't been for that, I should have
paid you a hundred pounds this morning.'

The Squire had laid down his knife and fork,
and was staring at his son in amazement, not being
sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable
guess as to what could have caused so strange an
inversion of the paternal and filial relations as this
proposition of his son to pay him a hundred
pounds.

'The truth is, sir — I'm very sorry — I was quite
to blame,' said Godfrey. ' Fowler did pay that
hundred pounds. He paid it to me, when I was
over there one day last month. And Dunsey
bothered me for the money, and I let him have it,
because I hoped I should be able to pay it you
before this.'

The Squire was purple with anger before his
son had done speaking, and found utterance
difficult. 'You let Dunsey have it, sir.^ And

ii8 SILAS MARNER parti

how long have you been so thick with Dunsey
that you must collogue with him to embezzle my
money ? Are you turning out a scamp ? I tell
you, I won't have it. I'll turn the whole pack of
you out of the house together, and marry again.
I'd have you to remember, sir, my property's
got no entail on it ; — since my grandfather's time
the Casses can do as they like with their land.
Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the
money ! Why should you let Dunsey have the
money ? There's some lie at the bottom of it.'

* There's no lie, sir,' said Godfrey. ' I wouldn't
have spent the money myself, but Dunsey bothered
me, and I was fool enough to let him have it. But
I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's
the whole story. I never meant to embezzle
money, and I'm not the man to do it. You never
knew me do a dishonest trick, sir.'

' Where's Dunsey, then '^ What do you stand
talking there for ? Go and fetch Dunsey, as I
tell you, and let him give account of what he
wanted the money for, and what's he's done with
it. He shall repent it. I'll turn him out. I said
I would, and I'll do it. He shan't brave me. Go
and fetch him.'

' Dunsey isn't come back, sir.'

' What ! did he break his own neck then .^ '
said the Squire, with some disgust at the idea
that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.

'No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse
was found dead, and Dunsey must have walked
off. I daresay we shall see him again by-and-by.
I don't know where he is.'

CHAP. IX SILAS MARNER 119

' And what must you be letting him have my
money for? Answer me that,' said the Squire,
attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not
within reach.

' Well, sir, I don't know,' said Godfrey, hesi-
tatingly. That was a feeble evasion, but Godfrey
was not fond of lying, and, not being sufficiently
aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish
without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite
unprepared with invented motives.

' You don't know ? I tell you what it is, sir.
You've been up to some trick, and you've been
bribing him not to tell,' said the Squire, with a
sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt
his heart beat violently at the nearness of his
father's guess. The sudden alarm pushed him on
to take the next step — a very slight impulse
suffices for that on a downward road.

' Why, sir,' he said, trying to speak with care-
less ease, ' it was a little affair between me and
Dunsey ; it's no matter to anybody else. It's
hardly worth while to pry into young men's
fooleries : it wouldn't have made any difference
to you, sir, if I'd not had the bad luck to lose
Wildfire. I should have paid you the money.'

* Fooleries ! Pshaw ! it's time you'd done with
fooleries. And I'd have you know, sir, you m^cs^
ha' done with 'em,' said the Squire, frowning and
casting an angry glance at his son. ' Your goings-
on are not what I shall find money for any longer.
There's my grandfather had his stables full o'
horses, and kept a good house too, and in worse
times, by what I can make out ; and so might I,

I20 SILAS MARNER part i

if I hadn't four good-for-nothing fellows to hang
on me like horse-leeches. I've been too good a
father to you all — that's what it is. But I shall
pull up, sir.'

Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be
very penetrating in his judgments, but he had
always had a sense that his father's indulgence
had not been kindness, and had had a vague
longing for some discipline that would have
checked his own errant weakness, and helped his
better will. The Squire ate his bread and meat
hastily, took a deep draught of ale, then turned
his chair from the table, and began to speak
again.

* It'll be all the worse for you, you know —
you'd need try and help me keep things together.'

' Well, sir, I've often offered to take the
management of things, but you know you've
taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted
to push you out of your place.'

* I know nothing o' your offering or o' my
taking it ill,' said the Squire, whose memory
consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified
by detail ; * but I know, one while you seemed to
be thinking o' marrying, and I didn't offer to put
any obstacles in your way, as some fathers would.
I'd as lieve you married Lammeter's daughter as
anybody. I suppose, if I'd said you nay, you'd
ha' kept on with it ; but, for want o' contradic-
tion, you've changed your mind. You're a shilly-
shallow fellow : you take after your poor mother.
She never had a will of her own ; a woman has
no call for one, if she's got a proper man for her

CHAP. IX SILAS MARNER 121

husband. But your wife had need have one, for
you hardly know your own ' mind enough to
make both your legs walk one way. The lass
hasn't said downright she won't have you, has
she?'

' No,' said Godfrey, feeling very hot and un-
comfortable ; ' but I don't think she will.'

* Think ! why, haven't you the courage to ask
her .^ Do you stick to it, you want to have her —
that's the thing ? '

'There's no other woman I want to marry,'
said Godfrey, evasively.

' Well, then, let me make the offer for you,
that's all, if you haven't the pluck to do it your-
self. Lammeter isn't likely to be loath for his
daughter to marry into my family, I should think.
And as for the pretty lass, she wouldn't have her
cousin — and there's nobody else, as I see, could
ha' stood in your way.'

' I'd rather let it be, please sir, at present,' said
Godfrey, in alarm. * I think she's a little offended
with me just now, and I should like to speak for
myself. A man must manage these things for
himself.'

' Well, speak then and manage it, and see if
you can't turn over a new leaf. That's what a
man must do when he thinks o' marrying.'

* I don't see how I can think of it at present,
sir. You wouldn't like to settle me on one of
the farms, I suppose, and I don't think she'd
come to live in this house with all my brothers.
It's a different sort of life to what she's been
used to.'

122 SILAS MARNER part i

' Not come to live in this house ? Don't tell
me. You ask her, that's all,' said the Squire,
with a short, scornful laugh.

* I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir,'
said Godfrey. ' I hope you won't try to hurry it
on by saying anything.'

' I shall do what I choose,' said the Squire,
'and I shall let you know I'm master; else you
may turn out and find an estate to drop into
somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not
to go to Cox's, but wait for me. And tell 'em to
get my horse saddled. And stop : look out and
get that hack o' Dunsey s sold, and hand me
the money, will you .'^ He'll keep no more hacks
at my expense. And if you know where he's
sneaking — I daresay you do — you may tell him to
spare himself the journey o' coming back home.
Let him turn ostler, and keep himself. He shan't
hang on me any more.'

' I don't know where he is, sir ; and if I did,
it isn't my place to tell him to keep away,' said
Godfrey, moving towards the door.

' Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go
and order my horse,' said the Squire, taking up a
pipe.

Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether
he were more relieved by the sense that the
interview was ended without having made any
change in his position, or more uneasy that he
had entangled himself still further in prevarication
and deceit. What had passed about his proposing
to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some
after-dinner words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter

CHAP. IX SILAS MARNER 123

he should be thrown into the embarrassment of
being obliged absolutely to decline her when she
seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his
usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen
turn of fortune, some favourable chance which
would save him from unpleasant consequences —
perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting
its prudence. And in this point of trusting to
some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly
be called specially old-fashioned. Favourable
Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who
follow their own devices instead of obeying a law
they believe in. Let even a polished man of
these days get into a position he is ashamed to
avow, and his mind will be bent on all the
possible issues that may deliver him from the
calculable results of that position. Let him live
outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest
work that brings wages, and he will presently
find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a
possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using
his interest, a possible state of mind in some
possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him
neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he
will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that
the thing left undone may turn out not to be of
the supposed importance. Let him betray his
friend's confidence, and he will adore that same
cunning complexity called Chance, which gives
him the hope that his friend will never know ;
let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue
the gentilities of a profession to which nature
never called him, and his religion will infallibly

24 SILAS INIARNER

be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will
believe in as the mighty creator of success. The
evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the
orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth
a crop after its kind.

CHAPTER X

Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley
and Raveloe as a man of capacious mind, seeing
that he could draw much wider conclusions with-
out evidence than could be expected of his
neighbours who were not on the Commission of
the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect
the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set
on foot concerning a pedlar, name unknown, with
curly black hair and a foreign complexion, carrying
a box of cutlery and jewellery, and wearing large
rings in his ears. But either because inquiry was
too slow-footed to overtake him, or because the
description applied to so many pedlars that
inquiry did not know how to choose among them,
weeks passed away, and there was no other
result concerning the robbery than a gradual
cessation of the excitement it had caused in
Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly a
subject of remark : he had once before had a
quarrel with his father, and had gone off, nobody
knew whither, to return at the end of six weeks,
take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger
as usual. His own family, who equally expected
this issue, with the sole difference that the Squire

125

126 SILAS MARNER part i

was determined this time to forbid him the old
quarters, never mentioned his absence ; and when
his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood noticed it, the
story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed
some offence against his father, was enough to
prevent surprise. To connect the fact of Dunsey's
disappearance with that of the robbery occurring
on the same day, lay quite away from the track
of every one's thought — even Godfrey's, who had
better reason than any one else to know what
his brother was capable of He remembered no
mention of the weaver between them since the
time, twelve years ago, when it was their boyish
sport to deride him ; and, besides, his imagination
constantly created an alibi for Dunstan : he saw
him continually in some congenial haunt, to which
he had walked off on leaving Wildfire — saw him
sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating
a return home to the old amusement of tormenting
his elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe
had put the said two facts together, I doubt
whether a combination so injurious to the pre-
scriptive respectability of a family with a mural
monument and venerable tankards, would not
have been suppressed as of unsound tendency.
But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance
of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental origin-
ality into the channel of nightmare, are great
preservatives against a dangerous spontaneity of
waking thought.

When the robbery was talked of at the Rain-
bow and elsewhere, in good company, the balance
continued to waver between the rational explana-

CHAP. X SILAS MARNER 127

tion founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of
an impenetrable mystery that mocked investiga-
tion. The advocates of the tinder-box-and-pedlar
view considered the other side a muddle-headed
and credulous set, who, because they themselves
were wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have
the same blank outlook ; and the adherents of
the inexplicable, more than hinted that their
antagonists were animals inclined to crow before
they had found any corn — mere skimming-dishes
in point of depth — whose clear-sightedness con-
sisted in supposing there was nothing behind a
barn-door because they couldn't see through it ;
so that, though their controversy did not serve to
elicit the fact concerning the robbery, it elicited
some true opinions of collateral importance.

But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush
the slow current of Raveloe conversation, Silas
himself was feeling the withering desolation of
that bereavement, about which his neighbours
were arguing at their ease. To any one who had
observed him before he lost his gold, it might
have seemed that so withered and shrunken a life
as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise,
could hardly endure any subtraction but such as
would put an end to it altogether. But in reality
it had been an eager life, filled with immediate
purpose, which fenced him in from the wide,
cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life ;
and though the object round which its fibres had
clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the
need for clinging. But now the fence was broken
down — the support was snatched away. Marner's

128 SILAS MARNER parti

thoughts could no longer move in their old round,
and were baffled by a blank like that which meets
a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on
its homeward path. The loom was there, and the
weaving, and the growing pattern in the cloth ;
but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet
was gone ; the prospect of handling and counting
it was gone : the evening had no phantasm of
delight to still the poor soul's craving. The
thought of the money he would get by his actual
work could bring no joy, for its meagre image was
only a fresh reminder of his loss ; and hope was
too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his
imagination to dwell on the growth of a new
hoard from that small beginning.

He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat
weaving, he every now and then moaned low,
like one in pain : it was the sign that his thoughts
had come round again to the sudden chasm — to
the empty evening-time. And all the evening,
as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he
leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his
head with his hands, and moaned very low — not
as one who seeks to be heard.

And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his
trouble. The repulsion Marner had always
created in his neighbours was partly dissipated
by the new light in which this misfortune had
shown him. Instead of a man who had more
cunning than honest folks could come by, and,
what was worse, had not the inclination to use
that cunning in a neighbourly way, it was now
apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 129

keep his own. He was generally spoken of as
a * poor mushed creatur ' ; and that avoidance of
his neighbours, which had before been referred to
his ill-will, and to a probable addiction to worse
company, was now considered mere craziness.

This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in
various ways. The odour of Christmas cooking
being on the wind, it was the season when super-
fluous pork and black puddings are suggestive oif
charity in well-to-do families ; and Silas's mis-
fortune had brought him uppermost in the
memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood. Mr.
Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas
that his money had probably been taken from
him because he thought too much of it, and
never came to church, enforced the doctrine by
a present of pigs' pettitoes, well calculated to
dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical
character. Neighbours, who had nothing but
verbal consolation to give, showed a disposition
not only to greet Silas, and discuss his misfortune
at some length when they encountered him in the
village, but also to take the trouble of calling at
his cottage, and getting him to repeat all the
details on the very spot ; and then they would try
to cheer him by saying, 'Well, Master Marner,
you're no worse off nor other poor folks, after all ;
and if you was to be crippled, the parish ud give
you a 'lowance.'

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able
to comfort our neighbours with our words is, that
our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of our-
selves, before it can pass our lips. We can send

K

I30 SILAS MARNER part i

black puddings and pettitoes without giving them
a flavour of our own egoism ; but language is a
stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled
soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in
Raveloe ; but it was often of a beery and bungling
sort, and took the shape least allied to the com-
plimentary and hypocritical.

Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening
expressly to let Silas know that recent events
had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judg-
ment was not formed lightly, opened the con-
versation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs :

' Come, Master Marner, why, you've no call
to sit a-moaning. You're a deal better off to ha'
lost your money, nor to ha' kep it by foul means.
I used to think, when you first come into these
parts, as you were no better nor you should be ;
you were younger a deal than what you are now ;
but you were allays a staring, white-faced creatur,
partly like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But
there's no knowing : it isn't every queer-looksed
thing as Old Harry's had the making of — I mean,
speaking o' toads and such ; for they're often
harmless, like, and useful against varmin. And
it's pretty much the same wi' you, as fur as I can
see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure
the breathing, if you brought that sort o' know-
ledge from distant parts, you might ha' been a
bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn't well
come by, why, you might ha' made up for it by
coming to church reg'lar ; for, as for the children

CHAP. X SILAS MARNER 131

as the Wise Woman charmed, I've been at the
christening of 'em again and again, and they took
the water just as well. And that's reasonable ;
for if Old Harry's a mind to do a bit o' kindness
for a holiday, like, who's got anything against it ?
That's my thinking; and I've been clerk o' this
parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday,
there's no cussing o' folks as have a mind to be
cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he
will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying —
for there's windings i' things as they may carry
you to the fur end o' the prayer-book afore you
get back to 'em — my advice is, as you keep up
your sperrits ; for as for thinking you're a deep
un, and ha' got more inside you nor 'ull bear
daylight, I'm not o' that opinion at all, and so I
tell the neighbours. For, says I, you talk o'
Master Marner making out a tale — why, it's
nonsense, that is : it 'ud take a 'cute man to make
a tale like that ; and, says I, he looked as scared
as a rabbit.'

During this discursive address Silas had con-
tinued motionless in his previous attitude, leaning
his elbows on his knees, and pressing his hands
against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that
he had been listened to, paused, in the expectation
of some appreciatory reply, but Marner remained
silent. He had a sense that the old man meant
to be good-natured and neighbourly ; but the
kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the
wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt
that it was very far off him.

132 SILAS MARNER part i

* Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing
to say to that ? ' said Mr. Macey at last, with a
slight accent of impatience.

' Oh,' said Marner, slowly, shaking his head
between his hands, ' I thank you — thank you —
kindly.'

' Ay, ay, to be sure : I thought you would,'
said Mr. Macey ; ' and my advice is — have you
got a Sunday suit ? '

'No,' said Marner.

' I doubted it was so,' said Mr. Macey. * Now,
let me advise you to get a Sunday suit : there's
Tookey, he's a poor creatur, but he's got my
tailoring business, and some o' my money in it,
and he shall make a suit at a low price, and give
you trust, and then you can come to church, and
be a bit neighbourly. Why you've never heard
me say "Amen " since you come into these parts,
and I recommend you to lose no time, for it'll
be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself,
for I mayn't be equil to stand i* the desk at all,
come another winter.' Here Mr. Macey paused,
perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his
hearer ; but not observing any, he went on.
' And as for the money for the suit o' clothes,
why, you get a matter of a pound a week at your
weaving. Master Marner, and you're a young
man, eh, for all you look so mushed. Why, you
couldn't ha' been five-and-twenty when you come
into these parts, eh ? '

Silas started a little at the change to a question-
ing tone, and answered mildly, * I don't know ; I
can't rightly say — it's a long while since.'

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 133

After receiving such an answer as this, it is
not surprising that Mr. Macey observed, later
on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner's
head was 'all of a muddle,' and that it was to be
doubted if he ever knew when Sunday came
round, which showed him a worse heathen than
many a dog.

Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr.
Macey, came to him with a mind highly charged
on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop,
the wheel -Wright's wife. The inhabitants of
Raveloe were not severely regular in their church-
going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in
the parish who would not have held that to go to
church every Sunday in the calendar would have
shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven,
and get an undue advantage over their neighbours
— a wish to be better than the 'common run,'
that would have implied a reflection on those
who had had godfathers and godmothers as well
as themselves, and had an equal right to the
burying-service. At the same time, it was under-
stood to be requisite for all who were not house-
hold servants, or young men, to take the sacrament
at one of the great festivals : Squire Cass himself
took it on Christmas-day ; while those who were
held to be 'good livers' went to church with
greater, though still with moderate frequency.

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these ; she was in
all respects a woman of scrupulous conscience, so
eager for duties, that life seemed to offer them
too scantily unless she rose at half-past four,
though this threw a scarcity of work over the

134 SILAS MARNER part i

more advanced hours of the morning, which it
was a constant problem with her to remove.
Yet she had not the vixenish temper which is
sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition
of such habits : she was a very mild, patient
woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the
sadder and more serious elements of life, and
pasture her mind upon them. She was the
person always first thought of in Raveloe when
there was illness or death in a family, when
leeches were to be applied, or there was a sudden
disappointment in a monthly nurse. She was a
* comfortable woman ' — good-looking, fresh-com-
plexioned, having her lips always slightly screwed,
as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the
doctor or the clergyman present. But she was
never whimpering ; no one had seen her shed
tears ; she was simply grave and inclined to
shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly,
like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It
seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved
his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with
Dolly ; but she took her husband's jokes and
joviality as patiently as everything else, consider-
ing that 'men would be so,' and viewing the
stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had
pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome,
like bulls and turkey-cocks.

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail
to have her mind drawn strongly towards Silas
Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a
sufferer ; and one Sunday afternoon she took her
little boy Aaron with her, and went to call on

CHAP. X SILAS MARNER 135

Silas, carrying in her hand some small lard-cakes,
flat paste-like articles, much esteemed in Raveloe.
Aaron, an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with
a clean starched frill, which looked like a plate
for the apples, needed all his adventurous
curiosity to embolden him against the possibility
that the big-eyed weaver might do him some
bodily injury ; and his dubiety was much increased
when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard
the mysterious sound of the loom.

* Ah, it is as I thought,' said Mrs. Winthrop,
sadly.

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard
them ; but when he did come to the door he
showed no impatience, as he would once have
done, at a visit that had been unasked for and
unexpected. Formerly, his heart had been as a
locked casket with its treasure inside ; but now
the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.
Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly
gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull
and half-despairing one, that if any help came to
him it must come from without ; and there was a
slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his
fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence
on their goodwill. He opened the door wide to
admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning her
greeting than by moving the armchair a few
inches as a si^rn that she was to sit down in it.
Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed the
white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said
in her gravest way :

* I'd a baking ylsterday. Master Marner, and

136 SILAS MARNER part i

the lard-cakes turned out better nor common, and
I'd ha' asked you to accept some, if you'd thought
well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o'
bread's what I like from one year's end to the
other ; but men's stomichs are made so comical,
they want a change — they do, I know, God help
em.

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes
to Silas, who thanked her kindly, and looked very
close at them, absently, being accustomed to look
so at everything he took Into his hand — eyed all
the while by the wondering bright orbs of the
small Aaron, who had made an outwork of his
mother's chair, and was peeping round from
behind it.

* There's letters pricked on 'em,' said Dolly.
' I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody, not
Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they
mean ; but they've a good meaning, for they're
the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church.
What are they, Aaron, my dear ? '

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.

' O go, that's naughty,' said his mother, mildly.
' Well, whativer the letters are, they've a good
meaning ; and it's a stamp as has been in our
house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un,
and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and
I've allays put it on too ; for if there's any good,
we've need of it i' this world.'

' It's I. H. S.,' said Silas, at which proof of
learning Aaron peeped round the chair again.

' Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off,' said
Dolly. * Ben's read 'em to me many and many a

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 139

time, but they slip out o' my mind again ; the
more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they
wouldn't be in the church ; and so I prick 'em on
all the loaves and all the cakes, though sometimes
they won't hold, because o' the rising — for, as I
said, if there's any good to be got we've need of
it i' this world — that w^e have ; and I hope they'll
bring good to you. Master Marner, for it's wi'
that will I brought you the cakes ; and you see
the letters have held better nor common.'

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as
Dolly, but there was no possibility of misunder-
standing the desire to give comfort that made
itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with
more feeling than before — 'Thank you— thank
you kindly.' But he laid down the cakes and
seated himself absently — drearily unconscious of
any distinct benefit towards which the cakes and
the letters, or even Dolly's kindness, could tend
for him.

' Ah, If there's good anywhere, we've need of
it,' repeated Dolly, who did not lightly forsake a
serviceable phrase. She looked at Silas pityingly
as she went on. * But you didn't hear the church-
bells this morning. Master Marner ? I doubt you
didn't know it was Sunday. Living so lone here,
you lose your count, I daresay ; and then, when
your loom makes a noise, you can't hear the bells,
more partic'lar now the frost kills the sound.'

* Yes, I did ; I heard 'em,' said Silas, to whom
Sunday bells were a mere accident of the day,
and not part of its sacredness. There had been
no bells in Lantern Yard.

I40 SILAS MARNER parti

' Dear heart ! ' said Dolly, pausing before she
spoke again. ' But what a pity it is you should
work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself — if you
didfit go to church ; for if you'd a roasting bit, it
might be as you couldn't leave it, being a lone
man. But there's the bakehus, if you could make
up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven
now and then, — not every week, in course — I
shouldn't like to do that myself, — you might carry
your bit o' dinner there, for it's nothing but right
to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday, and not
to make it as you can't know your dinner from
Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas- day, this
blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was
to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go to
church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear
the anthim, and then take the sacramen', you'd
be a deal the better, and you'd know which end
you stood on, and you could put your trust i'
Them as knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha'
done what it lies on us all to do.'

Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually
long effort of speech for her, was uttered in the
soothing persuasive tone with which she would
have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his
medicine, or a basin of gruel for which he had no
appetite. Silas had never before been closely
urged on the point of his absence from church,
which had only been thought of as a part of his
general queerness ; and he was too direct and
simple to evade Dolly's appeal.

' Nay, nay,' he said, ' I know nothing o'
church. I've never been to church.'

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 141

* No ! ' said Dolly, In a low tone of wonder-
ment. Then bethinking herself of Silas's advent
from an unknown country, she said, ' Could It ha'
been as they'd no church where you was born ? '

* O yes,' said Silas, meditatively, sitting In
his usual posture of leaning on his knees, and
supporting his head. * There was churches — a
many — it was a big town. But 1 knew nothing
of 'em — I went to chapel.'

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word,
but she was rather afraid of Inquiring further,
lest ' chapel ' meant some haunt of wickedness.
After a little thought, she said :

* Well, Master Marner, It's niver too late to
turn over a new leaf, and If you've niver had no
church, there's no telling the good It'll do you.
For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver
was, when I've been and heard the prayers, and
the singing to the praise and glory o' God, as
Mr. Macey gives out — and Mr. Crackenthorp
saying good words, and more partic'lar on
Sacramen' Day ; and If a bit o' trouble comes,
I feel as I can put up wl' It, for I've looked for
help i' the right quarter, and gev myself up to
Them as we must all give ourselves up to at
the last ; and if we'n done our part, It Isn't to be
believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse
nor we are, and come short o' Thelrn.'

Poor Dolly's exposition of her simple Raveloe
theology fell rather unmeaningly on Silas's ears,
for there was no word In it that could rouse a
memory of what he had known as religion, and
his comprehension was quite baffled by the

142 SILAS MARNER part i

plural pronoun, which was no heresy of Dolly's,
but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous
familiarity. He remained silent, not feeling in-
clined to assent to the part of Dolly's speech
which he fully understood — her recommendation
that he should go to church. Indeed, Silas was
so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief
questions and answers necessary for the trans-
action of his simple business, that words did not
easily come to him without the urgency of a
distinct purpose.

But now, little Aaron, having become used
to the weaver's awful presence, had advanced
to his mother's side, and Silas, seeming to notice
him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's
signs of goodwill by offering the lad a bit of
lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a little, and rubbed
his head against his mother's shoulder, but still
thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting
his hand out for it.

* O for shame, Aaron,' said his mother, taking
him on her lap, however ; ' why, you don't want
cake again yet awhile. He's wonderful hearty,'
she went on, with a little sigh — ' that he is, God
knows. He's my. youngest, and we spoil him
sadly, for either me or the father must allays hev
him in our sight — that we must.'

She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought
it must do Master Marner good to see such a
'pictur of a child.' But Marner, on the other
side of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy
face as a mere dim round, with two dark spots
in it.

THE " CARRIL.

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 143

* And he's got a voice like a bird — you wouldn't
think,' Dolly went on ; 'he can sing a Christmas
carril as his father's taught him ; and I take it
for a token as he'll come to good, as he can learn
the good tunes so quick. Come, Aaron, stan' up
and sing the carril to Master Marner, come.'

Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against
his mother's shoulder.

' O, that's naughty,' said Dolly gently. ' Stan'
up, when mother tells you, and let me hold the
cake till you've done.'

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents,
even to an ogre, under protecting circumstances ;
and after a few more signs of coyness, consisting
chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over
his eyes, and then peeping between them at
Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious for
the ' carril,' he at length allowed his head to be
duly adjusted, and standing behind the table,
which let him appear above it only as far as his
broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head
untroubled with a body, he began with a clear
chirp, and in a melody that had the rhythm of
an industrious hammer :

" God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas-day."

Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at
Marner in some confidence that this strain would
help to allure him to church.

' That's Christmas music,' she said, when

144 SILAS MARNER part i

Aaron had ended, and had secured his piece of
cake again. * There's no other music equil to the
Christmas music — " Hark the erol angils sing."
And you may judge what it is at church, Master
Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you
can't help thinking you've got to a better place
a'ready — for I wouldn't speak ill o' this world,
seeing as Them put us in it as knows best ; but
what wi' the drink, and the quarrelling, and the
bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen
times and times, one's thankful to hear of a
better. The boy sings pretty, don't he. Master
Marner ? '

* Yes,' said Silas, absently, * very pretty.'

The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like
rhythm, had fallen on his ears as strange music,
quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of
the effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to
show her that he was grateful, and the only
mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a
bit more cake.

* O, no, thank you. Master Marner,' said Dolly,
holding down Aaron's willing hands. ' We
must be going home now. And so I wish you
good-by. Master Marner; and if ever you feel
anyways bad in your inside, as you can't fend for
yourself, I'll come and clean up for you, and get
you a bit o' victual, and willing. But I beg and
pray of you to leave off weaving of a Sunday,
for it's bad for soul and body — and the money as
comes i' that way 'ull be a bad bed to lie down
on at the last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody
knows where, like the white frost. And you'll

CHAP. X SILAS MARNER 145

excuse me being that free with you, Master
Marner, for I wish you well — I do. Make your
bow, Aaron.'

Silas said ' Good-by, and thank you, kindly,' as
he opened the door for Dolly, but he couldn't help
feeling- relieved when she was gone — relieved that
he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her
simple view of life and its comforts, by which she
had tried to cheer him, was only like a report of
unknown objects, which his imagination could not
fashion. The fountains of human love and divine
faith had not yet been unlocked, and his soul was
still the shrunken rivulet, with only this difference,
that its little grove of sand was blocked up, and it
wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.

And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions
of Mr. Macey and Dolly Winthrop, Silas spent
his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating his meat in
sadness of heart, though the meat had come to
him as a neighbourly present. In the morning he
looked out on the black frost that seemed to press
cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half-icy
red pool shivered under the bitter wind ; but
towards evening the snow began to fall, and
curtained from him even that dreary outlook,
shutting him close up with his narrow grief. And
he sat in his robbed home through the livelong
evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock
his door, pressing his head between his hands and
moaning, till the cold grasped him and told him
that his fire was grey.

Nobody in this world but himself knew that he
was the same Silas Marner who had once loved his

146 SILAS MARKER part i

fellow with tender love, and trusted in an unseen
goodness. Even to himself that past experience
had become dim.

But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily,
and the church was fuller than all through the rest
of the year, with red faces among the abundant
dark-green boughs — faces prepared for a longer
service than usual by an odorous breakfast of toast
and ale. Those green boughs, the hymn and
anthem never heard but at Christmas — even the
Athanasian Creed, which was discriminated from
the others only as being longer and of exceptional
virtue, since it was only read on rare occasions
— brought a vague exulting sense, for which the
grown men could as little have found words as the
children, that something great and mysterious had
been done for them in heaven above, and In earth
below, which they were appropriating by their
presence. And then the red faces made their way
through the black biting frost to their own homes,
feeling themselves free for the rest of the day to
eat, drink, and be merry, and using that Christian
freedom without diffidence.

At Squire Cass's family party that day nobody
mentioned Dunstan — nobody was sorry for his
absence, or feared It would be too long. The
doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were
there, and the annual Christmas talk was carried
through without any omissions, rising to the climax
of Mr. Kimble's experience when he walked the
London hospitals thirty years back, together with
striking professional anecdotes then gathered.
Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble's

1

-». I.. 1 \ V .\1>^ \ A ,>TT.-J

A:-iRIVALS AT THE RED HOUSE.

CHAP. X SILAS MARKER 147

annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's
irascibility concerning the odd trick, which was
rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his
side, without a general visitation of tricks to see
that they were formed on sound principles : the
whole being accompanied by a strong steaming
odour of spirits-and-water.

But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly
family party, was not the pre-eminently brilliant
celebration of the season at the Red House. It
was the great dance on New Year's Eve that
made the glory of Squire Cass's hospitality, as of
his forefathers', time out of mind. This was the
occasion when all the society of Raveloe and Tarley,
whether old acquaintances separated by long rutty
distances, or cooled acquaintances separated by
misunderstandings concerning runaway calves, or
acquaintances founded on intermittent condescen-
sion, counted on meeting and on comporting them-
selves with mutual appropriateness. This was the
occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions
sent their bandboxes before them, supplied with
more than their evening costume ; for the feast
was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry
town entertainment, where the whole supply of
eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is
scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for
a siege ; and as for the spare feather-beds ready to
be laid on floors, they were as plentiful as might
naturally be expected in a family that had killed its
own geese for many generations.

Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New
Year's Eve with a foolish reckless longing, that

148 SILAS MARNER part i

made him half deaf to his importunate companion,
Anxiety.

' Dunsey will be coming home soon : there will
be a great blow-up, and how will you bribe his spite
to silence ? ' said Anxiety.

' O, he won't come home before New Year's
Eve, perhaps,' said Godfrey; 'and I shall sit by
Nancy then, and dance with her, and get a kind
look from her in spite of herself.'

' But money is wanted in another quarter,' said
Anxiety, in a louder voice, * and how will you
get it without selling your mother's diamond pin ?
And if you don't get it . . . ? '

*Well, but something may happen to make
things easier. At any rate, there's one pleasure
for me close at hand : Nancy is coming.'

* Yes, and suppose your father should bring
matters to a pass that will oblige you to decline
marrying her — and to give your reasons ? '

' Hold your tongue, and don't worry me. I can
see Nancy's eyes, just as they will look at me, and
feel her hand in mine already.'

But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas
company ; refusing to be utterly quieted even by
much drinking.

CHAPTER XI

Some women, I grant, would not appear to
advantage seated on a pillion, and attired in a
drab Joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with a
crown resembling a small stew-pan ; for a garment
suggesting a coachman's greatcoat, cut out under
an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of
miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal
deficiencies of contour, nor is drab a colour that
will throw sallow cheeks into lively contrast. It
was all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy
Lammeter s beauty that she looked thoroughly
bewitching in that costume, as seated on the
pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one
arm around him, and looked down, with open-
eyed anxiety, at the treacherous snow-covered
pools and puddles, which sent up formidable
splashings of mud under the stamp of Dobbin's
foot. A painter would, perhaps, have preferred
her in those moments when she was free from self-
consciousness ; but certainly the bloom on her
cheeks was at its highest point of contrast with
the surrounding drab when she arrived at the
door of the Red House, and saw Mr. Godfrey
Cass ready to lift her from the pillion. She

149

ISO SILAS MARNER parti

wished her sister Priscilla had come up at the
same time with the servant, for then she would
have contrived that Mr. Godfrey should have
lifted off Priscilla first, and, in the meantime, she
would have persuaded her father to go round to
the horse-block instead of alighting at the door-
steps. It was very painful, when you had made
it quite clear to a young man that you were
determined not to marry him, however much he
might wish it, that he would still continue to pay
you marked attentions ; besides, why didn't he
always show the same attentions, if he meant
them sincerely, instead of being so strange as
Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if
he didn't want to speak to her, and taking no
notice of her for weeks and weeks, and then, all
on a sudden, almost making love again ? More-
over, it was quite plain that he had no real love
for her, else he would not let people have that to
say of him which they did say. Did he suppose
that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by
any man, squire or no squire, who led a bad life ?
That was not what she had been used to see in
her own father, who was the soberest and best
man in that country-side, only a little hot and
hasty now and then, if things were not done to
the minute.

All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy's
mind, in their habitual succession, in the moments
between her first sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass
standing at the door and her own arrival there.
Happily, the Squire came out too, and gave a loud
greeting to her father, so that, somehow, under

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 151

cover of this noise, she seemed to find conceal-
ment for her confusion and neglect of any suitably-
formal behaviour, while she was being lifted from
the pillion by strong arms, which seemed to find
her ridiculously small and light. And there was
the best reason for hastening into the house at
once, since the snow was beginning to fall again,
threatening an unpleasant journey for such guests
as were still on the road. These were a small
minority ; for already the afternoon was beginning
to decline, and there would not be too much time
for the ladies who came from a distance to attire
themselves in readiness for the early tea which
was to inspirit them for the dance.

There was a buzz of voices though the house,
as Miss Nancy entered, mingled with the scrape
of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen ; but the
Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evi-
dently been thought of so much that it had been
watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble,
who did the honours at the Red House on these
great occasions, came forward to meet Miss
Nancy in the hall, and conduct her upstairs.
Mrs. Kimble was the Squire's sister, as well as
the doctor's wife — a double dignity, with which
her diameter was in direct proportion ; so that,
a journey upstairs being rather fatiguing to her,
she did not oppose Miss Nancy's request to be
allowed to find her way alone to the Blue Room,
where the Miss Lammeters* bandboxes had been
deposited on their arrival in the morning.

There was hardly a bedroom in the house
where feminine compliments were not passing

152 SILAS MARNER parti

and feminine toilettes going forward, in various
stages, in space made scanty by extra beds spread
upon the floor ; and Miss Nancy, as she entered
the Blue Room, had to make her little formal
curtsy to a group of six. On the one hand, there
were ladies no less important than the two Miss
Gunns, the wine merchant's daughters from
Lytherly, dressed in the height of fashion, with
the tightest skirts and the shortest waists, and
gazed at by Miss Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures)
with a shyness not unsustained by inward criticism.
Partly, Miss Ladbrook felt that her own skirt
must be regarded as unduly lax by the Miss
Gunns, and partly, that it was a pity the Miss
Gunns did not show that judgment which she
herself would show if she were in their place,
by stopping a little on this side of the fashion.
On the other hand, Mrs. Ladbrook was standing
in skull-cap and front, with her turban in her
hand, curtsying and smiling blandly and saying,
'After you, ma'am,' to another lady in similar
circumstances, who had politely offered the pre-
cedence at the looking-glass.

But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her
curtsy than an elderly lady came forward, whose
full white muslin kerchief, and mob-cap round her
curls of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast
with the puffed yellow satins and top-knotted caps
of her neighbours. She approached Miss Nancy
with much primness, and said, with a slow, treble
suavity :

* Niece, I hope I see you well in health.' Miss
Nancy kissed her aunt's cheek dutifully, and

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 153

answered, with the same sort of amiable primness,
' Quite well, I thank you, aunt, and I hope I see
you the same.'

' Thank you, niece, I keep my health for the
present. And how is my brother-in-law ? '

These dutiful questions and answers were
continued until it was ascertained in detail that
the Lammeters were all as well as usual, and the
Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must
certainly arrive shortly, and that travelling on
pillions in snowy weather was unpleasant, though
a Joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy
was formally introduced to her aunt's visitors, the
Miss Gunns, as being the daughters of a mother
known to ^/^etr mother, though now for the first
time induced to make a journey into these parts ;
and these ladies were so taken by surprise at
finding such a lovely face and figure in an out-of-
the-way country place, that they began to feel
some curiosity about the dress she would put on
when she took off her Joseph. Miss Nancy,
whose thoughts were always conducted with the
propriety and moderation conspicuous in her
manners, remarked to herself that the Miss
Gunns were rather hard-featured than otherwise,
and that such very low dresses as they wore
might have been attributed to vanity if their
shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they
were, it was not reasonable to suppose that they
showed their necks from a love of display, but
rather from some obligation not inconsistent with
sense and modesty. She felt convinced, as she
opened her box, that this must be her aunt

154 SILAS MARKER part i

Osgood's opinion, for Miss Nancys mind re-
sembled her aunt's to a degree that everybody
said was surprising, considering the kinship was
on Mr. Osgood's side ; and though you might
not have supposed it from the formaHty of their
greeting, there was a devoted attachment and
mutual admiration between aunt and niece. Even
Miss Nancy's refusal of her cousin Gilbert
Osgood (on the ground solely that he was her
cousin), though it had grieved her aunt greatly,
had not in the least cooled the preference which
had determined her to leave Nancy several of her
hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert's future wife be
whom she might.

Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the
Miss Gunns were quite content that Mrs. Osgood's
inclination to remain with her niece gave them
also a reason for staying to see the rustic beauty's
toilette. And it was really a pleasure — from the
first opening of the bandbox, where everything
smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, to the clasping
of the small coral necklace that fitted closely round
her little white neck. Everything belonging to
Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattlness :
not a crease was where it had no business to be,
not a bit of her linen professed whiteness without
fulfilling its profession ; the very pins on her
pincushion were stuck in after a pattern from
which she was careful to allow no aberration ;
and as for her own person, it gave the same idea
of perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a
little bird. It is true that her light-brown hair
was cropped behind like a boy's, and was dressed

CHAP. XI SILAS MARKER 155

in front in a number of fiat rings, that lay quite
away from her face ; but there was no sort of
coiffure that could make Miss Nancy's cheek and
neck look otherwise than pretty ; and when at last
she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her
lace tucker, her coral necklace, and coral ear-drops,
the Miss Gunns could see nothing to criticise
except her hands, which bore the traces of butter-
making, cheese-crushing, and even still coarser
work. But Miss Nancy was not ashamed of that,
for even while she was dressing she narrated to
her aunt how she and Priscilla had packed their
boxes yesterday, because this morning was baking
morning, and since they were leaving home, it
was desirable to make a good supply of meat-pies
for the kitchen ; and as she concluded this
judicious remark, she turned to the Miss Gunns
that she might not commit the rudeness of not
including them in the conversation. The Miss
Gunns smiled stiffly, and thought what a pity it
was that these rich country people, who could
afford to buy such good clothes (really Miss
Nancy's lace and silk were very costly), should
be brought up in utter ignorance and vulgarity.
She actually said * mate ' for ' meat,' * 'appen ' for
'perhaps,' and *oss' for 'horse,' which, to young
ladies living in good Lytherly society, who habitu-
ally said 'orse, even in domestic privacy, and only
said 'appen on the right occasions, was necessarily
shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed, had never been
to any school higher than Dame Tedman's : her
acquaintance with profane literature hardly went
beyond the rhymes she had worked in her large

156 SILAS MARKER part i

sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess ;
and in order to balance an account, she was
obliged to effect her subtraction by removing
visible metallic shillings and sixpences from a
visible metallic total. There is hardly a servant-
maid in these days who is not better informed
than Miss Nancy ; yet she had the essential
attributes of a lady — high veracity, delicate honour
in her dealings, deference to others, and refined
personal habits, — and lest these should not suffice
to convince grammatical fair ones that her feelings
can at all resemble theirs, I will add that she
was slightly proud and exacting, and as constant
in her affections towards a baseless opinion as
towards an erring lover.

The anxiety about sister Priscilla, which had
grown rather active by the time the coral necklace
was clasped, was happily ended by the entrance
of that cheerful-looking lady herself, with a face
made blowsy by cold and damp. After the first
questions and greetings, she turned to Nancy, and
surveyed her from head to foot — then wheeled
her round, to ascertain that the back view was
equally faultless.

* What do you think o' these gowns, aunt
Osgood.^' said Priscilla, while Nancy helped her
to unrobe.

'Very handsome indeed, niece,' said Mrs.
Osgood, with a slight increase of formality. She
always thought niece Priscilla too rough.

* I'm obliged to have the same as Nancy, you
know, for all I'm five years older and it makes
me look yallow ; for she never will have anything

Wheeled her I'onnd.

1 57

CHAP XI SILAS MARNER 159

without I have mine just like it, because she wants
us to look like sisters. And I tell her folks ull
think it's my weakness makes me fancy as I shall
look pretty in what she looks pretty in. For I
am ugly — there's no denying that : I feature my
father's family. But, law! I don't mind, do you?'
Priscilla here turned to the Miss Gunns, rattling
on in too much preoccupation with the delight of
talking, to notice that her candour was not
appreciated. ' The pretty uns do for fly-catchers
— they keep the men off us. I've no opinion o'
the men, Miss Gunn — I don't know what you
have. And as for fretting and stewing about
what they II think of you from morning till night,
and making your life uneasy about what they're
doing when they're out o' your sight — as I tell
Nancy, it's a folly no woman need be guilty of, if
she's got a good father and a good home ; let her
leave it to them as have got no fortin, and can't
help themselves. As I say, Mr. Have-your-own-
way is the best husband, and the only one I'd
ever promise to obey. I know it isn't pleasant,
when you've been used to living in a big way,
and managing hogsheads and all that, to go and
put your nose in by somebody else's fireside, or to
sit down by yourself to a scrag or a knuckle ; but,
thank God ! my father's a sober man and likely
to live ; and if you've got a man by the chimney-
corner, it doesn't matter if he's childish — the
business needn't be broke up.'

The delicate process of getting her narrow
gown over her head without injury to her smooth
curls, obliged Miss Priscilla to pause in this

i6o SILAS MARKER part i

rapid survey of life, and Mrs. Osgood seized the
opportunity of rising and saying :

* Well, niece, you'll follow us. The Miss
Gunns will like to go down.'

'Sister,' said Nancy, when they were alone,
* you've offended the Miss Gunns, I'm sure.'

' What have I done, child ? ' said Priscilla, in
some alarm.

' Why, you asked them if they minded about
being ugly — you're so very blunt.'

' Law, did I ? Well, it popped out : It's a
mercy I said no more, for I'm a bad un to live
with folks when they don't like the truth. But
as for being ugly, look at me, child, In this silver-
coloured silk — I told you how it 'ud be — I look
as yallow as a daffadil. Anybody 'ud say you
wanted to make a mawkin of me.'

' No, Priscy, don't say so. I begged and
prayed of you not to let us have this silk if you'd
like another better. I was willing to have yozti"
choice, you know I was,' said Nancy, In anxious
self-vindication.

* Nonsense, child, you know you'd set your
heart on this ; and reason good, for you're the
colour o' cream. It 'ud be fine doings for you to
dress yourself to suit my skin. What I find fault
with, is that notion o' yours as I must dress my-
self just like you. But you do as you like with
me — you always did, from when first you began
to walk. If you wanted to go the field's length,
the field's length you'd go ; and there was no
whipping you, for you looked as prim and Innlcent
as a daisy all the while.'

'**'%

•the field's length you'd go.'

CHAP. XI SILAS MARKER i6i

* Priscy,' said Nancy, gently, as she fastened
a coral necklace, exactly like her own, round
Priscilla's neck, which was very far from being
like her own, ' I'm sure I'm willing to give way
as far as is right, but who shouldn't dress alike if
it isn't sisters? Would you have us go about
looking as if we were no kin to one another — us
that have got no mother and not another sister in
the world ? I'd do what was right, if I dressed in
a gown dyed with cheese-colouring ; and I'd rather
you'd choose, and let me wear what pleases you.'

' There you go again ! You'd come round to
the same thing if one talked to you from Saturday
night till Saturday morning. It'll be fine fun to
see how you'll master your husband and never
raise your voice above the singing o' the kettle
all the while. I like to see the men mastered ! '

* Don't talk so, Priscy,' said Nancy blushing.
* You know I don't mean ever to be married.'

* O, you never mean a fiddlestick's end ! ' said
Priscilla, as she arranged her discarded dress, and
closed her bandbox. ' Who shall / have to work
for when father's gone, if you are to go and take
notions in your head and be an old maid, because
some folks are no better than they should be ? I
haven't a bit o' patience with you — sitting on an
addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh
un in the world. One old maid's enough out o'
two sisters ; and I shall do credit to a single life,
for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come, we
can go down now. I'm as ready as a mawkin
ca7t be — there's nothing awanting to frighten the
crows, now I've got my ear-droppers in.'

M

i62 SILAS MARNER parti

As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the
large parlour together, any one who did not know
the character of both, might certainly have
supposed that the reason why the square-
shouldered, clumsy, high-featured Priscilla wore a
dress the facsimile of her pretty sister's, was
either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the
malicious contrivance of the other in order to set
off her own rare beauty. But the good-natured
self-forgetful cheeriness and common-sense of
Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one
suspicion ; and the modest calm of Nancy's
speech and manners told clearly of a mind free
from all disavowed devices.

Places of honour had been kept for the Miss
Lammeters near the head of the principal tea-
table in the wainscoted parlour, now looking fresh
and pleasant with handsome branches of holly,
yew, and laurel, from the abundant growths of
the old garden ; and Nancy felt an inward flutter,
that no firmness of purpose could prevent, when
she saw Mr. Godfrey Cass advancing to lead her
to a seat between himself and Mr. Crackenthorp,
while Priscilla was called to the opposite side
between her father and the Squire. It certainly
did make some difference to Nancy that the lover
she had given up was the young man of quite the
highest consequence in the parish — at home in a
venerable and unique parlour, which was the
extremity of grandeur in her experience, a parlour
where she might one day have been mistress, with
the consciousness that she was spoken of as
* Madam Cass,' the Squire's wife. These circum-

CHAP. XI SILAS MARKER . 163

Stances exalted her Inward drama in her own
eyes, and deepened the emphasis with which she
declared to herself that not the most dazzling
rank should Induce her to marry a man whose
conduct showed him careless of his character, but
that, 'love once, love always,' was the motto of a
true and pure woman, and no man should ever
have any right over her which would be a call on
her to destroy the dried flowers that she treasured,
and always would treasure, for Godfrey Cass's
sake. And Nancy was capable of keeping her
word to herself under very trying conditions.
Nothing but a becoming blush betrayed the
moving thoughts that urged themselves upon her
as she accepted the seat next to Mr. Cracken-
thorp ; for she was so Instinctively neat and
adroit In all her actions, and her pretty lips met
each other with such quiet firmness, that It would
have been difficult for her to appear agitated.

It was not the rectors practice to let a charm-
ing blush pass without an appropriate compliment.
He was not in the least lofty or aristocratic, but
simply a merry-eyed, small-featured, grey-haired
man, with his chin propped by an ample many-
creased white neckcloth which seemed to pre-
dominate over every other point In his person,
and somehow to impress Its peculiar character
on his remarks ; so that to have considered his
amenities apart from his cravat would have been
a severe, and perhaps a dangerous, effort of
abstraction.

* Ha, Miss Nancy,' he said, turning his head
within his cravat, and smiling down pleasantly

i64 SILAS MARNER part i

upon her, ' when anybody pretends this has been
a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw the roses
blooming on New Year's Eve — eh, Godfrey, what
do you say ? '

Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking
at Nancy very markedly ; for though these com-
plimentary personalities were held to be in ex-
cellent taste in old-fashioned Raveloe society,
reverent love has a politeness of its own which
it teaches to men otherwise of small schooling.
But the Squire was rather impatient at Godfrey's
showing himself a dull spark in this way. By
this advanced hour of the day, the Squire was
always in higher spirits than we have seen him
in at the breakfast-table, and felt it quite pleasant
to fulfil the hereditary duty of being noisily jovial
and patronising : the large silver snuff-box was
in active service, and was offered without fail to
all neighbours from time to time, however often
they might have declined the favour. At present,
the Squire had only given an express welcome
to the heads of families as they appeared ; but
always as the evening deepened, his hospitality
rayed out more widely, till he had tapped the
youngest guests on the back and shown a peculiar
fondness for their presence, in the full belief that
they must feel their lives made happy by their
belonging to a parish where there was such a
hearty man as Squire Cass to invite them and
wish them well. Even in this early stage of
the jovial mood, it was natural that he should
wish to supply his son's deficiencies by looking
and speaking for him.

His hospitality fayed out.

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 167

*Ay, ay,' he began, offering his snuff-box to
Mr. Lammeter, who for the second time bowed
his head and waved his hand in stiff rejection
of the offer, ' us old fellows may wish ourselves
young to-night, when we see the misletoe-bough
in the White Parlour. It's true, most things are
gone back'ard in these last thirty years — the
country's going down since the old king fell ill.
But when I look at Miss Nancy here, I begin
to think the lasses keep up their quality ; — ding
me if I remember a sample to match her, not
when I was a fine young fellow, and thought a
deal about my pigtail. No offence, to you,
madam,' he added, bending to Mrs. Crackenthorp,
who sat by him, * I didn't know yoti when you
were as young as Miss Nancy here.'

Mrs. Crackenthorp — a small blinking woman,
who fidgeted incessantly with her lace, ribbons,
and gold chain, turning her head about and
making subdued noises, very much like a guinea-
pig, that twitches its nose and soliloquises in
all company indiscriminately — now blinked and
fidgeted towards the Squire, and said, ' O no —
no offence.'

This emphatic compliment of the Squire's to
Nancy was felt by others besides Godfrey to
have a diplomatic significance ; and her father
gave a slight additional erectness to his back,
as he looked across the table at her with com-
placent gravity. That grave and orderly senior
was not going to bate a jot of his dignity by
seeming elated at the notion of a match between
his family and the Squire's : he was gratified by

i68 SILAS MARKER part i

any honour paid to his daughter ; but he must
see an alteration in several ways before his
consent would be vouchsafed. His spare but
healthy person, and high-featured firm face, that
looked as if it had never been flushed by excess,
was in strong contrast, not only with the Squire's,
but with the appearance of the Raveloe farmers
generally — in accordance with a favourite saying
of his own, that ' breed was stronger than
pasture.'

* Miss Nancy's wonderful like what her mother
was, though ; isn't she, Kimble ? ' said the stout
lady of that name, looking round for her husband.

But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in
old days enjoyed that title without authority of
diploma), being a thin and agile man, was
flitting about the room with his hands in his
pockets, making himself agreeable to his feminine
patients, with medical impartiality, and being
welcomed everywhere as a doctor by hereditary
right — not one of those miserable apothecaries
who canvass for practice in strange neighbour-
hoods, and spend all their income in starving
their one horse, but a man of substance, able to
keep an extravagant table like the best of his
patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor
had been a Kimble ; Kimble was inherently a
doctor's name ; and it was difficult to contem-
plate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual
Kimble had no son, so that his practice might
one day be handed over to a successor, with
the incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson.
But in that case the wiser people in Raveloe

ii«^^

^^^%

DR. KIMBLE MAKING HIMSELF AGREEABLE TO HIS FEMININE PATIENTS.

CHAP. XI SILAS MARKER 169

would employ Dr. Blick of Flitton — as less
unnatural.

* Did you speak to me, my dear ? ' said the
authentic doctor, coming quickly to his wife's
side ; but, as if foreseeing that she would be too
much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went
on immediately — * Ha, Miss Priscilla, the sight
of you revives the taste of that super-excellent
pork pie. I hope the batch isn't near an end.'

' Yes, indeed, it is, doctor,' said Priscilla ; ' but
I'll answer for it the next shall be as good. My
pork-pies don't turn out well by chance.'

'Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble i^ —
because folks forget to take your physic, eh ? '
said the Squire, who regarded physic and doctors
as many loyal churchmen regard the church and
the clergy — tasting a joke against them when he
was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid
when anything was the matter with him. He
tapped his box, and looked round him with a
triumphant laugh.

' Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla
has,' said the doctor, choosing to attribute the
epigram to a lady rather than allow a brother-in-
law that advantage over him. ' She saves a
little pepper to sprinkle over her talk — that's the
reason why she never puts too much into her
pies. There's my wife, now, she never has an
answer at her tongue's end ; but if I offend her,
she's sure to scarify my throat with black pepper
the next day, or else give me the colic with
watery greens. That's an awful tit-for-tat.' Here
the vivacious doctor made a pathetic grimace.

I70 SILAS MARNER part i

'Did you ever hear the like?' said Mrs.
Kimble, laughing above her double chin with
much good-humour, aside to Mrs. Crackenthorp,
who blinked and nodded, and seemed to intend
a smile, which, by the correlation of forces, went
off in small twitchings and noises.

' I suppose that's the sort of tit-for-tat adopted
in your profession, Kimble, if you've a grudge
against a patient,' said the rector.

' Never do have a grudge against our patients,'
said Mr. Kimble, ' except when they leave us :
and then, you see, we haven't the chance of
prescribing for 'em. Ha, Miss Nancy,' he con-
tinued, suddenly skipping to Nancy's side, ' you
won't forget your promise ? You're to save a
dance for me, you know.'

' Come, come, Kimble, don't you be too for'ard,'
said the Squire. ' Give the young uns fair-play.
There's my son Godfrey '11 be wanting to have a
round with you if you run off with Miss Nancy.
He's bespoke her for the first dance, I'll be bound.
Eh, sir ! what do you say ? ' he continued, throw-
ing himself backward, and looking at Godfrey.
' Haven't you asked Miss Nancy to open the dance
with you ? '

Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this signifi-
cant insistence about Nancy, and afraid to think
where it would end by the time his father had set
his usual hospitable example of drinking before
and after supper, saw no course open but to turn
to Nancy and say, with as little awkwardness as
possible :

* No ; I've not asked her yet, but I hope she'll

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 171

consent — if somebody else hasn't been before
me.'

* No, I've not engaged myself,' said Nancy,
quietly, though blushingly. (If Mr. Godfrey
founded any hopes on her consenting to dance
with him, he would soon be undeceived ; but
there was no need for her to be uncivil.)

' Then I hope you've no objections to dancing
with me,' said Godfrey, beginning to lose the
sense that there was anything uncomfortable in
this arrangement.

* No, no objections,' said Nancy, in a cold tone.
'Ah, well, you're a lucky fellow, Godfrey,' said

Uncle Kimble ; * but you're my godson, so I
won't stand in your way. Else I'm not so very
old, eh, my dear.^^' he went on, skipping to his
wife's side again. ' You wouldn't mind my having
a second after you were gone — not if I cried a
good deal first ? '

' Come, come, take a cup o' tea and stop your
tongue, do,' said good-humoured Mrs. Kimble,
feeling some pride in a husband who must be
regarded as so clever and amusing by the company
generally. If he had only not been irritable at
cards !

While safe, well-tested personalities were en-
livening the tea in this way, the sound of the
fiddle approached within a distance at which it
could be heard distinctly, made the young people
look at each other with sympathetic impatience
for the end of the meal.

*Why, there's Solomon in the hall,' said the
Squire, ' and playing my fav'rite tune, I believe —

172 SILAS MARKER parti

*' The flaxen-headed ploughboy" — he's for giving
us a hint as we aren't enough in a hurry to hear
him play. Bob,' he called out to his third long-
legged son, who was at the other end of the room,
* open the door, and tell Solomon to come in. He
shall give us a tune here.'

Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling
as he walked, for he would on no account break
off in the middle of a tune.

' Here, Solomon,' said the Squire, with loud
patronage. * Round here, my man. Ah, I knew
it was ''The flaxen-headed ploughboy": there's
no finer tune.'

Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an
abundant crop of long white hair reaching nearly
to his shoulders, advanced to the indicated spot,
bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as
to say that he respected the company, though he
respected the key-note more. As soon as he
had repeated the tune and lowered his fiddle, he
bowed again to the Squire and the rector, and
said, ' I hope I see your honour and your
reverence well, and wishing you health and long
life and a happy New Year. And wishing the
same to you, Mr. Lammeter, sir; and to the
other gentlemen, and the madams, and the young
lasses.'

As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed
in all directions solicitously, lest he should be
wanting in due respect. But thereupon he
immediately began to prelude, and fell into the
tune which he knew would be taken as a special
compliment by Mr. Lammeter.

THE GAY PROCESSION.

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 173

' Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye,' said Mr.
Lammeter when the fiddle paused again. ' That's
'' Over the hills and far away," that is. My father
used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune,
** Ah, lad, /come from over the hills and far away."
There's a many tunes I don't make head or tail
of; but that speaks to me like the blackbird's
whistle, I suppose it's the name ; there's a deal in
the name of a tune.'

But Solomon was already impatient to prelude
again, and presently broke with much spirit into
* Sir Roger de Coverley,' at which there was
a sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing
voices.

* Ay, ay, Solomon, we know what that means,'
said the Squire, rising. * It's time to begin the
dance, eh ? Lead the way, then, and we'll all
follow you.'

So Solomon, holding his white head on one
side, and playing vigorously, marched forward at
the head of the gay procession into the White
Parlour, where the mistletoe-bough was hung,
and multitudinous tallow candles made rather a
brilliant effect, gleaming among the berried holly-
boughs, and reflected in the old-fashioned oval
mirrors fastened in the panels of the white
wainscot. A quaint procession ! Old Solomon,
in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed
to be luring that decent company by the magic
scream of his fiddle — luring discreet matrons in
turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp her-
self, the summit of whose perpendicular feather
was on a level with the Squire's shoulder — luring

174 SILAS MARNER part i

fair lasses complacently conscious of very short
waists and skirts blameless of front-folds — burly
fathers in large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy
sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, in short
nether garments and very long coat-tails.

Already, Mr Macey and a few other privileged
villagers, who were allowed to be spectators on
these great occasions, were seated on benches
placed for them near the door ; and great was
the admiration and satisfaction in that quarter
when the couples had formed themselves for
the dance, and the Squire led off with Mrs.
Crackenthorp, joining hands with the Rector and
Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should be — that
was what everybody had been used to — and the
charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by
the ceremony. It was not thought of as an
unbecoming levity for the old and middle-
aged people to dance a little before sitting down
to cards, but rather as part of their social
duties. For what were these if not to be merry
at appropriate times, interchanging visits and
poultry with due frequency, paying each other
old-established compliments in sound traditional
phrases, passing well-tried personal jokes, urging
your guests to eat and drink too much out of
hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in
your neighbour's house to show that you liked
your cheer ? And the parson naturally set an
example in these social duties. For it would
not have been possible for the Raveloe mind,
without a peculiar revelation, to know that a
clergyman should be a pale-faced memento of

Holding his son Aaron between his knees.

CHAP, xr SILAS MARNER 177

solemnities, Instead of a reasonably faulty man,
whose exclusive authority to read prayers and
preach, to christen, marry, and bury you, neces-
sarily co-existed with the right to sell you the
ground to be buried In, and to take tithe in
kind ; on which last point, of course, there was
a little grumbling, but not to the extent of
Irreligion — not beyond the grumbling at the rain,
which was by no means accompanied with a
spirit of impious defiance, but with a desire
that the prayer for fine weather might be read
forthwith.

There was no reason, then, why the rector's
dancing should not be received as part of the
fitness of things quite as much as the Squire's,
or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey's official
respect should restrain him from subjecting the
parson's performance to that criticism with which
minds of extraordinary acuteness must necessarily
contemplate the doings of their fallible fellow-men.

' The Squire's pretty springe, considering his
weight,' said Mr. Macey, 'and he stamps un-
common well. But Mr. Lammeter beats 'em all
for shapes : you see, he holds his head like a
sodger, and he isn't so cushiony as most o' the
oldish gentlefolks — they run fat in general ; and
he's got a fine leg. The parson's nimble enough,
but he hasn't got much of a leg : it's a bit too
thick down'ard, and his knees might be a bit
nearer wi'out damage ; but he might do worse,
he might do worse. Though he hasn't that grand
way o' waving his hand as the Squire has.'

* Talk o' nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood,' said

N

178 SILAS MARKER part i

Ben Winthrop, who was holding his son Aaron
between his knees. * She trips along with her
little steps, so as nobody can see how she goes —
it's like as if she had little wheels to her feet. She
doesn't look a day older nor last year : she's the
finest-made woman as is, let the next be where
she will.'

* I don't heed how the women are made,' said
Mr. Macey, with contempt. ' They wear nayther
coat nor breeches : you can't make much out o'
their shapes.'

* Fayder,' said Aaron, whose feet were busy
beating out the tune, ' how does that big cock's-
feather stick in Mrs. Crackenthorp's yead } Is
there a little hole for it, like in my shuttle-cock ? '

' Hush, lad, hush ; that's the way the ladies
dress theirselves, that is,' said the father, adding,
however, in an undertone to Mr. Macey, ' It does
make her look funny, though — partly like a short-
necked bottle wi' a long quill in it. Hey, by
jingo, there's the young Squire leading off now,
wi' Miss Nancy for partners ! There's a lass for
you ! — like a pink and white posy — there's nobody
'ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I
shouldn't wonder if she's Madam Cass some day,
arter all — and nobody more rightfuller, for they'd
make a fine match. You can find nothing against
Master Godfrey's shapes, Macey, /ll bet a penny.'

Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his
head further on one side, and twirled his thumbs
with a presto movement as his eyes followed
Godfrey up the dance. At last he summed up
his opinion.

T'^jTl/S^t^^WVl. ey

THE YOUNG SQUIRE LEADING OFF \Vl' MISS NANCY FOR PARTNERS.

CHAP. XI SILAS MARKER 179

• Pretty well down'ard, but a bit too round i'
the shoulder-blades. And as for them coats as
he gets from the Flitton tailor, they're a poor cut
to pay double money for.'

*Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks,'
said Ben, slightly indignant at this carping.
'When I've got a pot o' good ale, I like to
swaller it, and do my inside good, i'stead o' smelling
and staring at it to see if I can't find faut wi' the
brewing. I should like you to pick me out a
finer-limbed young fellow nor Master Godfrey —
one as 'ud knock you down easier, or 's more
pleasanter-looksed when he's piert and merry.'

'Tchuh!' said Mr. Macey, provoked to in-
creased severity, ' he isn't come to his right
colour yet : he's partly like a slack-baked pie.
And I doubt he's got a soft place in his head, else
why should he be turned round the finger by
that offal Dunsey as nobody's seen o' late, and
let him kill that fine hunting boss as was the
talk o' the country.^ And one while he was
allays after Miss Nancy, and then it all went off
again, like a smell o' hot porridge, as I may say.
That wasn't my way, when / went a-coorting.'

'Ah, but mayhap Miss Nancy hung off, like,
and your lass didn't,' said Ben.

' I should say she didn't,' said Mr. Macey,
significantly. 'Before I said "sniff," I took care
to know as she'd say "snaff," and pretty quick
too. I wasn't a-going to open my mouth, like a
dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi' nothing to
swaller.'

' Well, I think Miss Nancy's a-coming round

i8o SILAS MARNER parti

again/ said Ben, 'for Master Godfrey doesn't
look so down-hearted to-night. And I see he's
for taking her away to sit down, now they're at
the end o' the dance : that looks like sweethearting,
that does.'

The reason why Godfrey and Nancy had left
the dance was not so tender as Ben imagined.
In the close press of couples a slight accident had
happened to Nancy's dress, which, while it was
short enough to show her neat ankle in front, was
long enough behind to be caught under the stately
stamp of the Squire's foot, so as to rend several
stitches at the waist, and cause much sisterly
agitation in Priscilla's mind, as well as serious
concern in Nancy's. One's thoughts may be
much occupied with love-struggles, but hardly so
as to be insensible to a disorder in the general
framework of things. Nancy had no sooner
completed her duty in the figure they were dancing
than she said to Godfrey, with a deep blush, that
she must go and sit down till Priscilla could come
to her; for the sisters had already exchanged a
short whisper and an open-eyed glance full of
meaning. No reason less urgent than this could
have prevailed on Nancy to give Godfrey this
opportunity of sitting apart with her. As for
Godfrey, he was feeling so happy and oblivious
under the long charm of the country-dance with
Nancy, that he got rather bold on the strength of
her confusion, and was capable of leading her
straight away, without leave asked, into the
adjoining small parlour, where the card -tables
were set.

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER i8i

' O no, thank you,' said Nancy, coldly, as soon
as she perceived where he was going, ' not in
there. I'll wait here till Priscilla's ready to come
to me. I'm sorry to bring you out of the dance
and make myself troublesome.'

* Why, you'll be more comfortable here by
yourself,' said the artful Godfrey ; * I'll leave you
here till your sister can come.' He spoke in an
indifferent tone.

That was an agreeable proposition, and just
what Nancy desired ; why, then, was she a little
hurt that Mr. Godfrey should make it ? They
entered, and she seated herself on a chair against
one of the card -tables, as the stiffest and most
unapproachable position she could choose.

' Thank you, sir,' she said immediately. ' I
needn't give you any more trouble. I'm sorry
you've had such an unlucky partner.'

* That's very ill-natured of you,' said Godfrey,
standing by her without any sign of intended
departure, ' to be sorry you've danced with me.'

' O, no, sir, I don't mean to say what's ill-
natured at all,' said Nancy, looking distractingly
prim and pretty. * When gentlemen have so
many pleasures, one dance can matter but very
little.'

* You know that isn't true. You know one
dance with you matters more to me than all the
other pleasures in the world.'

• It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said
anything so direct as that, and Nancy was startled.
But her instinctive dignity and repugnance to any
show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and

i82 SILAS MARNER

PART I

only throw a little more decision into her voice as
she said :

' No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that's not known to
me, and I have very good reasons for thinking
different. But if it's true, I don't wish to hear it.'

' Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy — •
never think well of me, let what would happen —
would you never think the present made amends
for the past ? Not if I turned a good fellow, and
gave up everything you didn't like ? '

Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden
opportunity of speaking to Nancy alone had
driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had
got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt
much agitated by the possibility Godfrey's words
suggested, but this very pressure of emotion that
she was in danger of finding too strong for her,
roused all her power of self-command.

' I should be glad to see a good change in
anybody, Mr. Godfrey,' she answered, with the
slightest discernible difference of tone, * but it 'ud
be better if no change was wanted.'

'You're very hard-hearted, Nancy,'said Godfrey,
pettishly. ' You might encourage me to be a
better fellow. I'm very miserable — but you've
no feeling.'

* I think those have the least feeling that act
wrong to begin with,' said Nancy, sending out a
flash in spite of herself. Godfrey was delighted
with that little flash, and would have liked to go
on and make her quarrel with him ; Nancy was
so exasperatingly quiet and firm. But she was
not indifferent to him ^e^, though; —

CHAP. XI SILAS MARNER 183

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and
saying, ' Dear heart aHve, child, let us look at this
gown,' cut off Godfrey's hopes of a quarrel.

* I suppose I must go now,' he said to Priscilla.

* It's no matter to me whether you go or stay,'
said that frank lady, searching for something in
her pocket, with a preoccupied brow.

* Do you want me to go ? ' said Godfrey, look-
ing at Nancy, who was now standing up by
Priscilla's order.

* As you like,' said Nancy, trying to recover all
her former coldness, and looking down carefully
at the hem of her gown.

* Then I like to stay,' said Godfrey, with a
reckless determination to get as much of this joy
as he could to-night, and think nothing of the
morrow.

CHAPTER XII

While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of for-
getfalness from the sweet presence of Nancy,
willingly losing all sense of that hidden bond
which at other moments galled and fretted him so
as to mingle irritation with the very sunshine,
Godfrey's wife was walking with slow uncertain
steps through the snow-covered Raveloe lanes,
carrying her child in her arms.

This journey on New Year's Eve was a pre-
meditated act of vengeance which she had kept
in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of passion,
had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge
her as his wife. There would be a great party at
the Red House on New Year's Eve, she knew :
her husband would be smiling and smiled upon,
hiding her existence in the darkest corner of his
heart. But she would mar his pleasure : she
would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face,
once as handsome as the best, with her little child
that had its father's hair and eyes, and disclose
herself to the Squire as his eldest son's wife. It
is seldom that the miserable can help regarding
their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who
are less miserable. Molly knew that the cause

184

Godfrey's wife.

CHAP. XII SILAS MARNER 187

of her dingy rags was not her husband's neglect,
but the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved,
body and soul, except in the lingering mother's
tenderness that refused to give him her hungry
child. She knew this well ; and yet, in the
moments of wretched unbenumbed consciousness,
the sense of her want and degradation transformed
itself continually into bitterness towards Godfrey.
He was well off; and if she had her rights she
would be well off too. The belief that he
repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only
aggravated her vindictiveness. Just and self-
reproving thoughts do not come to us too thickly,
even in the purest air, and with the best lessons
of heaven and earth ; how should those white-
winged delicate messengers make their way to
Molly's poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher
memories than those of a barmaid's paradise of
pink ribbons and gentlemen's jokes ?

She had set out at an early hour, but had
lingered on the road, inclined by her indolence
to believe that if she waited under a warm shed
the snow would cease to fall. She had waited
longer than she knew, and now that she found
herself belated in the snow-hidden ruggedness of
the long lanes, even the animation of a vindictive
purpose could not keep her spirit from falling.
It was seven o'clock, and by this time she was
not very far from Raveloe, but she was not familiar
enough with those monotonous lanes to know
how near she was to her journey's end. She
needed comfort, and she knew but one comforter
— the familiar demon in her bosom ; but she

i88 SILAS MARNER parti

hesitated a moment, after drawing out the black
remnant, before she raised it to her lips. In that
moment the mother's love pleaded for painful
consciousness rather than oblivion — pleaded to be
left in aching weariness, rather than to have the
encircling arms benumbed so that they could not
feel the dear burden. In another moment Molly
had flung something away, but it was not the
black remnant — it was an empty phial. And she
walked on again under the breaking cloud, from
which there came now and then the light of a
quickly-veiled star, for a freezing wind had sprung
up since the snow had ceased. But she walked
always more and more drowsily, and clutched
more and more automatically the sleeping child
at her bosom.

Slowly the demon was working his w^ill, and
cold and weariness were his helpers. Soon she
felt nothing but a supreme immediate longing that
curtained off all futurity — the longing to lie down
and sleep. She had arrived at a spot where her
footsteps were no longer checked by a hedgerow,
and she had wandered vaguely, unable to dis-
tinguish any objects, notwithstanding the wide
whiteness around her, and the growing starlight.
She sank down against a straggling furze bush,
an easy pillow enough ; and the bed of snow, too,
was soft. She did not feel that the bed was cold,
and did not heed whether the child would wake
and cry for her. But her arms had not yet
relaxed their instinctive clutch ; and the little one
slumbered on as gently as if It had been rocked
In a lace-trlmmed cradle.

^7

In perfect content7nent.

CHAP. XII . SILAS MARNER 191

But the complete torpor came at last : the fingers
lost their tension, the arms unbent ; then the little
head fell away from the bosom, and the blue eyes
opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there
was a little peevish cry of * mammy,' and an effort
to regain the pillowing arm and bosom ; but
mammy's ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to
be slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the
child rolled downward on its mother's knees, all
wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright
glancing light on the white ground, and, with the
ready transition of infancy, it was immediately ab-
sorbed in watching the bright living thing running
towards it, yet never arriving. That bright living
thing must be caught ; and in an instant the child
had slipped on all-fours, and held out one little hand
to catch the gleam. But the gleam would not be
caught in that way, and now the head was held
up to see where the cunning gleam came from.
It came from a very bright place ; and the little
one, rising on Its legs, toddled through the snow,
the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing
behind it, and the queer little bonnet dangling
at its back — toddled on to the open door of Silas
Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth,
where there was a bright fire of logs and sticks,
which had thoroughly warmed the old sack (Silas's
greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry. The
little one, accustomed to be left to itself for long
hours without notice from its mother, squatted
down on the sack, and spread its tiny hands
towards the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling
and making many inarticulate communications to

192 SILAS MARNER part i

the cheerful fire, like a new - hatched gosling
beginning to find itself comfortable. But presently
the warmth had a lulling effect, and the little
golden head sank down on the old sack, and the
blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-
transparent lids.

But where was Silas Marner while this strange
visitor had come to his hearth ? He was in the
cottage, but he did not see the child. During the
last few weeks, since he had lost his money, he
had contracted the habit of opening his door and
looking out from time to time, as if he thought
that his money might be somehow coming back
to him, or that some trace, some news of it, might
be mysteriously on the road, and be caught by
the listening ear or the straining eye. It was
chiefly at night, when he was not occupied in his
loom, that he fell into this repetition of an act for
which he could have assigned no definite purpose,
and which can hardly be understood except by
those who have undergone a bewildering separation
from a supremely loved object. In the evening
twilight, and later whenever the night was not
dark, Silas looked out . on that narrow prospect
round the Stone-pits, listening and gazing, not
with hope, but with mere yearning and unrest.

This morning he had been told by some of his
neighbours that it was New Year's Eve, and that
he must sit up and hear the old year rung out
and the new rung in, because that was good luck,
and might bring his money back again. This
was only a friendly Raveloe-way of jesting with
the half-crazy oddities of a miser, but it had

CHAP. XII SILAS MARNER 193

perhaps helped to throw Silas into a more than
usually excited state. Since the oncoming of
twilight he had opened his door again and again,
though only to shut it immediately at seeing all
distance veiled by the falling snow. But the last
time he opened it the snow had ceased, and the
clouds were parting here and there. He stood
and listened, and gazed for a long while — there
was really something on the road coming towards
him then, but he caught no sign of it ; and the
stillness and the wide trackless snow seemed to
narrow his solitude, and touched his yearning with
the chill of despair. He went in again, and put his
right hand on the latch of the door to close it —
but he did not close it : he was arrested, as he had
been already since his loss, by the invisible wand
of catalepsy, and stood like a graven image, with
wide but sightless eyes, holding open his door,
powerless to resist either the good or evil that
might enter there.

When Marner's sensibility returned, he con-
tinued the action which had been arrested, and
closed his door, unaware of the chasm in his con-
sciousness, unaware of any intermediate change,
except that the light had grown dim, and that he
was chilled and faint. He thought he had been
too long standing at the door and looking out.
Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs
had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red un-
certain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside
chair, and was stooping to push his logs together,
when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there
were gold on the floor in front of the hearth.

O

194 SILAS MARKER parti

Gold! — his own gold — brought back to him as
mysteriously as it had been taken away ! He felt
his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few
moments he was unable to stretch out his hand
and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of
gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his
agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and
stretched forth his hand ; but instead of the hard
coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers
encountered soft warm curls. In utter amaze-
ment, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head
low to examine the marvel : it was a sleeping
child — a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings
all over its head. Could this be his little sister
come back to him in a dream — his little sister
whom he had carried about In his arms for a
year before she died, when he was a small boy
without shoes or stockings ? That was the first
thought that darted across Silas's blank wonder-
ment. Was It a dream ? Pie rose to his feet
again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on
some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame ; but
the flame did not disperse the vision — it only lit
up more distinctly the little round form of the
child and Its shabby clothing. It was very much
like his little sister. Silas sank Into his chair
powerless, under the double presence of an Inex-
plicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories.
How and when had the child come in without his
knowledge ? He had never been beyond the
door. But along with that question, and almost
thrusting It away, there was a vision of the old
home and the old streets leading to Lantern Yard

<J-\^ KxT^M...<4<5~M 07

Silas fell on his hiees.

CHAP. XII SILAS MARKER 197

— and within that vision another, of the thoughts
which had been present with him in those far-off
scenes. The thoughts were strange to him now,
Hke old friendships impossible to revive ; and yet
he had a dreamy feeling that this child was some-
how a message come to him from that far-off life :
it stirred fibres that had never been moved in
Raveloe — old quiverings of tenderness — old im-
pressions of awe at the presentiment of some
Power presiding over his life ; for his imagination
had not yet extricated itself from the sense of
mystery in the child's sudden presence, and had
formed no conjectures of ordinary natural means
by which the event could have been brought about.

But there was a cry on the hearth : the child
had awaked, and Marner stooped to lift it on his
knee. It clung round his neck, and burst louder
and louder into that mingling of inarticulate cries
with * mammy ' by which little children express
the bewilderment of waking. Silas pressed it to
him, and almost unconsciously uttered sounds of
hushing tenderness, while he bethought himself
that some of his porridge, which had got cool by
the dying fire, would do to feed the child with if
it were only warmed up a little.

He had plenty to do through the next
hour. The porridge, sweetened with some dry
brown sugar from an old store which he had
refrained from using for himself, stopped the cries
of the little one, and made her lift her blue eyes
with a wide quiet gaze at Silas, as he put the
spoon into her mouth. Presently she slipped
from his knee and began to toddle about, but

198 SILAS MARNER part i

with a pretty stagger that made Silas jump up
and follow her lest she should fall against any-
thing that would hurt her. But she only fell in a
sitting posture on the ground, and began to pull
at her boots, looking up at him with a crying face
as if the boots hurt her. He took her on his
knee again, but it was some time before it
occurred to Silas's dull bachelor mind that the
wet boots were the grievance, pressing on her
warm ankles. He got them off with difficulty,
and baby was at once happily occupied with the
primary mystery of her own toes, inviting Silas,
with much chuckling, to consider the mystery too.
But the wet boots had at last suggested to Silas
that the child had been walking on the snow, and
this roused him from his entire oblivion of any
ordinary means by which it could have entered or
been brought into his house. Under the prompt-
ing of this new idea, and without waiting to form
conjectures, he raised the child in his arms, and
went to the door. As soon as he had opened it,
there was the cry of ' mammy ' again, which Silas
had not heard since the child's first hungry
waking. Bending forward, he could just discern
the marks made by the little feet on the virgin
snow, and he followed their track to the furze
bushes. ' Mammy ! ' the little one cried again
and again, stretching itself forward so as almost
to escape from Silas's arms, before he himself was
aware that there was something more than the
bush before him — that there was a human body,
with the head sunk low in the furze, and half-
covered with the shaken snow.

INVITING SILAS WITH MUCH CHUCKLING.

CHAPTER XIII

It was after the early supper- time at the Red
House, and the entertainment was in that stage
when bashfulness itself had passed into easy
jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual
accomplishments, could at length be prevailed
on to dance a hornpipe, and when the Squire
preferred talking loudly, scattering snuff, and
patting his visitors' backs, to sitting longer at
the whist-table — a choice exasperating to uncle
Kimble, who, being always volatile in sober
business hours, became intense and bitter over
cards and brandy, shuffled before his adversary's
deal with a glare of suspicion, and turned up a
mean trump -card with an air of inexpressible
disgust, as if in a world where such things could
happen one might as well enter on a course of
reckless profligacy. When the evening had
advanced to this pitch of freedom and enjoy-
ment, it w^as usual for the servants, the heavy
duties of supper being well over, to get their
share of amusement by coming to look on at the
dancing ; so that the back regions of the house
were left in solitude.

There were two doors by which the White
199

200 SILAS MARKER parti

Parlour was entered from the hall, and they were
both left standing open for the sake of air ; but
the lower one was crowded with the servants
and villagers, and only the upper doorway was
left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe,
and his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom
he repeatedly declared to be just like himself in
his young days, in a tone that implied this to be
the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the
centre of a group who had placed themselves
opposite the performer, not far from the upper
door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, not
to admire his brother's dancing, but to keep sight
of Nancy, who was seated in the group, near her
father. He stood aloof, because he wished to
avoid suggesting himself as a subject for the
Squire's fatherly jokes in connection with matri-
mony and Miss Nancy Lammeter's beauty, which
were likely to become more and more explicit.
But he had the prospect of dancing with her
again when the hornpipe was concluded, and in
the meantime it was very pleasant to get long
glances at her quite unobserved.

But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from
one of those long glances, they encountered an
object as startling to him at that moment as if
it had been an apparition from the dead. It
was an apparition from that hidden life which
lies, like a dark by-street, behind the goodly orna-
mented facade that meets the sunlight and the
gaze of respectable admirers. It was his own
child, carried in Silas Marner's arms. That was
his instantaneous impression, unaccompanied by

■i

I'lll f

ll"!i.llilil«''''

All eyes were bent on Silas Marner,

CHAP. XIII SILAS MARNER 203

doubt, though he had not seen the child for
months past ; and when the hope was rising
that he might possibly be mistaken, Mr. Cracken-
thorp and Mr. Lammeter had already advanced
to Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent.
Godfrey joined them immediately, unable to rest
without hearing every word — trying to control
himself, but conscious that if any one noticed
him, they must see that he was white-lipped and
trembling.

But now all eyes at that end of the room were
bent on Silas Marner ; the Squire himself had
risen, and asked angrily, 'How's this? — what's
this ? — what do you do coming in here in this
way ?'

' I'm come for the doctor — I want the doctor,'
Silas had said, in the first moment, to Mr.
Crackenthorp.

'Why, what's the matter, Marner.^' said the
rector. ' The doctor's here ; but say quietly what
you want him for.'

'It's a woman,' said Silas, speaking low, and
half-breathlessly, just as Godfrey came up. ' She's
dead, I think — dead in the snow at the Stone-pits
— not far from my door.'

Godfrey felt a great throb : there was one
terror in his mind at that moment : it was, that
the woman might no^ be dead. That was an
evil terror — an ugly inmate to have found a
nesding- place in Godfrey's kindly disposition;
but no disposition is a security from evil wishes
to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.

'Hush, hush!' said Mr. Crackenthorp. 'Go

204 SILAS MARNER part i

out into the hall there. I'll fetch the doctor to
you. Found a woman in the snow — and think's
she's dead,' he added, speaking low to the Squire.
' Better say as little about it as possible : it will
shock the ladies. Just tell them a poor woman is
ill from cold and hunger. I'll go and fetch Kimble.'

By this time, however, the ladies had pressed
forward, curious to know what could have brought
the solitary linen-weaver there under such strange
circumstances, and interested in the pretty child,
who, half alarmed and half attracted by the
brightness and the numerous company, now
frowned and hid her face, now lifted up her
head again and looked round placably, until a
touch or a coaxing word brought back the
frown, and made her bury her face with new
determination.

' What child is it ? ' said several ladies at once,
and, among the rest, Nancy Lammeter, addressing
Godfrey.

* I don't know — some poor woman's who has
been found in the snow, I believe,' was the answer
Godfrey wrung from himself with a terrible effort.
('After all, a7n I certain?' he hastened to add,
silently, in anticipation of his own conscience.)

* Why, you'd better leave the child here, then.
Master Marner,' said good-natured Mrs. Kimble,
hesitating, however, to take those dingy clothes
into contact with her own ornamented satin
bodice. ' I'll tell one o' the girls to fetch it.'

' No — no — I can't part with it, I can't let it
go,' said Silas, abruptly. ' It's come to me — I've
a right to keep it.'

CHAP. XIII SILAS MARKER 205

The proposition to take the child from him
had come to Silas quite unexpectedly, and his
speech, uttered under a strong sudden impulse,
was almost like a revelation to himself : a minute
before, he had no distinct intention about the
child.

' Did you ever hear the like ? ' said Mrs.
Kimble, in mild surprise, to her neighbour.

' Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand
aside,' said Mr. Kimble, coming from the card-
room, in some bitterness at the interruption, but
drilled by the long habit of his profession into
obedience to unpleasant calls, even when he was
hardly sober.

* It's a nasty business turning out now, eh,
Kimble ?' said the Squire. ' He might ha' gone
for your young fellow — the 'prentice, there —
what's his name ? '

'Might? ay — what's the use of talking about
might?' growled uncle Kimble, hastening out
with Marner, and followed by Mr. Crackenthorp
and Godfrey. * Get me a pair of thick boots,
Godfrey, will you ? And stay, let somebody run
to Winthrop's, and fetch Dolly — she's the best
woman to get. Ben was here himself before
supper ; is he gone ? '

' Yes, sir, I met him,' said Marner ; ' but I
couldn't stop to tell him anything, only I said I
was going for the doctor, and he said the doctor
was at the Squire's. And I made haste and ran,
and there was nobody to be seen at the back o'
the house, and so I went in to where the company
was.'

2o6 SILAS MARKER part i

The child, no longer distracted by the bright
light and the smiling women's faces, began to cry
and call for ' mammy,' though always clinging to
Marner, who had apparently won her thorough
confidence. Godfrey had come back with the
boots, and felt the cry as If some fibre were
drawn tight within him.

' I'll go,' he said, hastily, eager for some move-
ment; 'I'll go and fetch the woman — Mrs.
WInthrop.'

' O, pooh — send somebody else,* said uncle
Kimble, hurrying away with Marner.

* You'll let me know if I can be of any use,
Kimble,' said Mr. Cracken thorp. But the doctor
was out of hearing.

Godfrey, too, had disappeared : he was gone to
snatch his hat and coat, having just reflection
enough to remember that he must not look like a
madman ; but he rushed out of the house into the
snow without heeding his thin shoes.

In a few minutes he w^as on his rapid way to
the Stone-pits by the side of Dolly, who, though
feeling that she was entirely in her place in
encountering cold and snow on an errand of
mercy, was much concerned at a young gentle-
man's getting his feet wet under a like impulse.

'You'd a deal better go back, sir,' said Dolly,
with respectful compassion. ' You've no call to
catch cold ; and I'd ask you If you'd be so good
as tell my husband to come, on your way back
— he's at the Rainbow, I doubt — if you found him
anyway sober enough to be o' use. Or else,
there's Mrs. Snell 'ud happen send the boy up to

CHAP. XIII SILAS MARNER 207

fetch and carry, for there may be things wanted
from the doctor's.'

' No, I'll stay, now I'm once out — I'll stay out-
side here,' said Godfrey, when they came opposite
Marner's cottage. ' You can come and tell me if
I can do anything.'

* Well, sir, you're very good : you've a tender
heart,' said Dolly, going to the door.

Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a
twinge of self-reproach at this undeserved praise.
He walked up and down, unconscious that he
was plunging ankle-deep in snow, unconscious of
everything but trembling suspense about what
was going on in the cottage, and the effect of
each alternative on his future lot. No, not quite
unconscious of everything else. Deeper down,
and half- smothered by passionate desire and
dread, there was the sense that he ought not to
be waiting on these alternatives ; that he ought
to accept the consequences of his deeds, own the
miserable wife, and fulfil the claims of the help-
less child. But he had not moral courage enough
to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy
as possible for him : he had only conscience and
heart enough to make him for ever uneasy under
the weakness that forbade the renunciation. And
at this moment his mind leaped away from all
restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliver-
ance from his long bondage.

* Is she dead?' said the voice that predomi-
nated over every other within him. ' If she is, I
may marry Nancy ; and then I shall be a good
fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the

2o8 SILAS MARNER part i

child — shall be taken care of somehow.' But
across that vision came the other possibility —
' She may live, and then it's all up with me.'

Godfrey never knew how long it was before
the door of the cottage opened and Mr. Kimble
came out. He went forward to meet his uncle,
prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel,
whatever news he was to hear.

' I waited for you, as I'd come so far,' he said,
speaking first.

' Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out :
why didn't you send one of the men ? There's
nothing to be done. She's dead — has been dead
for hours, I should say.'

' What sort of woman is she ? ' said Godfrey,
feeling the blood rush to his face.

' A young woman, but emaciated, with long
black hair. Some vagrant — quite in rags. She's
got a wedding-ring on, however. They must fetch
her away to the workhouse to-morrow. Come,
come along.'

' I want to look at her,' said Godfrey. ' I
think I saw such a woman yesterday. I'll over-
take you in a minute or two.'

Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back
to the cottage. He cast only one glance at the
dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had smoothed
with decent care ; but he remembered that last
look at his unhappy hated wife so well, that at the
end of sixteen years every line in the worn face
was present to him when he told the full story of
this night.

He turned immediately towards the hearth

CHAP. XIII SILAS MARNER 209

where Silas Marner sat lulling the child. She
was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only-
soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that
wide-o^azinof calm which makes us older human
beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe
in the presence of a little child, such as we feel
before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth
or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-
flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a
silent pathway. The wide-open blue eyes looked
up at Godfrey's without any uneasiness or sign
of recognition : the child could make no visible
audible claim on its father ; and the father felt a
strange mixture of feelings, a conflict of regret
and joy, that the pulse of that little heart had no
response for the half-jealous yearning in his own,
when the blue eyes turned away from him slowly,
and fixed themselves on the weaver's queer face,
which was bent low down to look at them, while
the small hand began to pull Marner's withered
cheek with loving disfiguration.

* You'll take the child to the parish to-morrow ?'
asked Godfrey, speaking as indifferently as he
could.

' Who says so ? ' said Marner sharply. * Will
they make me take her ? '

' Why, you wouldn't like to keep her, should
you — an old bachelor like you ? '

' Till anybody shows they've a right to take
her away from me,' said Marner. 'The mother's
dead, and I reckon it's got no father : it's a lone
thing, and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone,
I don't know where — and this is come from I

2IO SILAS MARKER parti

don't know where. I know nothing — I'm partly
mazed.'

' Poor little thing,' said Godfrey. * Let me
give something towards finding it clothes.'

He had put his hand in his pocket and found
half-a-guinea, and, thrusting it into Silas's hand,
he hurried out of the cottage to overtake Mr.
Kimble.

' Ah, I see it's not the same woman I saw,' he
said, as he came up. 'It's a pretty little child :
the old fellow seems to want to keep it ; that's
strange for a miser like him. But I gave him a
trifle to help him out : the parish isn't likely to
quarrel with him for the right to keep the child.'

' No ; but I've seen the time when I might
have quarrelled with him for it myself. It's too
late now, though. If the child ran into the fire,
your aunt's too fat to overtake it : she could only
sit and grunt like an alarmed sow. But what a
fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your dancing
shoes and stockings in this way — and you one of
the beaux of the evening, and at your house !
What do you mean by such freaks, young fellow ?
Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do you want to
spite her by spoiling your pumps? '

' O, everything has been disagreeable to-night.
I was tired to death of jigging and gallanting,
and that bother about the hornpipes. And I'd
got to dance with the other Miss Gunn,' said
Godfrey, glad of the subterfuge his uncle had
suggested to him.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind
that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy

CHAP. XIII SILAS MARNER 211

under as a great artist under the false touches
that no eye detects but his own, are worn as
lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions
have become a lie.

Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with
dry feet, and, since the truth must be told, with a
sense of relief and gladness that was too strong
for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could
he not venture now, whenever opportunity offered,
to say the tenderest things to Nancy Lammeter
— to promise her and himself that he would
always be just what she would desire to see him }
There was no danger that his dead wife would
be recognised : those were not days of active
inquiry and wide report ; and as for the registry
of their marriage, that was a long way off, buried
in unturned pages, away from every one's interest
but his own. Dunsey might betray him if he
came back ; but Dunsey might be won to silence.

And when events turn out so much better for
a man than he has had reason to dread, is it
not a proof that his conduct has been less
foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise
have appeared ? When we are treated well, we
naturally begin to think that we are not altogether
unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should
treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good
fortune. Where, after all, would be the use of
his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and
throwing away his happiness ? — nay, hers ? for he
felt some confidence that she loved him. As for
the child, he would see that it was cared for : he
would never forsake it ; he would do everything

212 SILAS MARNER part i

but own it. Perhaps it would be just as happy
in life without being owned by its father, seeing
that nobody could tell how things would turn out,
and that — is there any other reason wanted ? —
well, then, that the father would be much happier
without owning the child.

Beset by mothers.

CHAPTER XIV

There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe,
and up Kench Yard at Batherley it was known
that the dark-haired woman with the fair child,
who had lately come to lodge there, was gone
away again. That was all the express note taken
that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men.
But the unwept death which, to the general lot,
seemed as trivial as the summer- shed leaf, was
charged with the force of destiny to certain human
lives that we know of, shaping their joys and
sorrows even to the end.

Silas Marner's determination to keep the
' tramp's child ' was matter of hardly less surprise
and iterated talk in the village than the robbery
of his money. That softening of feeling towards
him which dated from his misfortune, that merging
of suspicion and dislike in a rather contemptuous
pity for him as lone and crazy, was now ac-
companied with a more active sympathy, especially
amongst the women. Notable mothers, who knew
what it was to keep children ' whole and sweet ' ;
lazy mothers, who knew what it was to be
interrupted in folding their arms and scratching
their elbows by the mischievous propensities of

215

2i6 SILAS MARNER parti

children just firm on their legs, were equally
interested in conjecturing how a lone man would
manage with a two-year-old child on his hands,
and were equally ready with their suggestions :
the notable chiefly telling him what he had better
do, and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling
him what he would never be able to do.

Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop
was the one whose neighbourly offices were the
most acceptable to Marner, for they were rendered
without any show of bustling instruction. Silas
had shown her the half-guinea given to him by
Godfrey, and had asked her what he should do
about getting some clothes for the child.

'Eh, Master Marner,' said Dolly, 'there's no
call to buy, no more nor a pair o' shoes ; for I've
got the little petticoats as Aaron wore five years
ago, and it's ill spending the money on them
baby-clothes, for the child 'ull grow like grass i'
May, bless it — that it will.'

And the same day Dolly brought her bundle,
and displayed to Marner, one by one, the tiny
garments in their due order of succession, most
of them patched and darned, but clean and neat
as fresh-sprung herbs. This was the introduction
to a great ceremony with soap and water, from
which baby came out in new beauty, and sat on
Dolly's knee, handling her toes and chuckling
and patting her palms together with an air of
having made several discoveries about herself,
which she communicated by alternate sounds of
' ^^^"g^'-'§^"^"g»' ^^^ 'mammy.' The 'mammy'
was not a cry of need or uneasiness ; Baby had

Sat on Dolly s knee.

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 219

been used to utter it without expecting either
tender sound or touch to follow.

' Anybody 'ud think the angils in heaven
couldn't be prettier,' said Dolly, rubbing the
golden curls and kissing them. ' And to think of
its being covered wi' them dirty rags — and the
poor mother — froze to death ; but there's Them
as took care of it, and brought it to your door,
Master Marner. The door was open, and it
walked in over the snow, like as if it had been a
little starved robin. Didn't you say the door was
open ? '

'Yes,' said Silas, meditatively. 'Yes — the
door was open. The money's gone I don't
know where, and this is come from I don't know
where.'

He had not mentioned to any one his un-
consciousness of the child's entrance, shrinking
from questions which might lead to the fact he
himself suspected — namely, that he had been in
one of his trances.

'Ah,' said Dolly, with soothing gravity, 'it's
like the night and the morning, and the sleeping
and the waking, and the rain and the harvest —
one goes and the other comes, and we know
nothing how nor where. We may strive and
scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all —
the big things come and go wi' no striving o'
our'n — they do, that they do ; and I think you're
in the right on it to keep the litde un, Master
Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though
there's folks as thinks different. You'll happen
be a bit moithered with it while it's so little ; but

220 SILAS MARNER part i

I'll come, and welcome, and see to it for you :
I've a bit o' time to spare most days, for when
one gets up betimes i' the morning, the clock
seems to stan' still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go
about the victual. So, as I say, I'll come and see
to the child for you, and welcome.'

' Thank you . . . kindly,' said Silas, hesitating
a little. ' I'll be glad if you'll tell me things.
But,' he added, uneasily, leaning forward to look
at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting
her head backward against Dolly's arm, and eye-
ing him contentedly from a distance — ' But I
want to do things for it myself, else it may get
fond o' somebody else, and not fond o' me. I've
been used to fending for myself in the house — I
can learn, I can learn.'

'Eh, to be sure,' said Dolly, gently. 'I've
seen men as are wonderful handy wi' children.
The men are awk'ard and contrairy mostly, God
help 'em — but when the drink's out of 'em, they
aren't unsensible, though they're bad for leeching
and bandaging — so fiery and unpatient. You see
this goes first, next the skin,' proceeded Dolly,
takinor up the little shirt, and putting it on.

' Yes,' said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes
very close, that they might be initiated in the
mysteries ; whereupon Baby seized his head with
both her small arms, and put her lips against his
face with purring noises.

'See there,' said Dolly, with a woman's tender
tact, 'she's fondest o' you. She wants to go o'
your lap, I'll be bound. Go, then : take her,
Master Marner ; you can put the things on, and

CHAP, XIV SILAS MARKER 221

then you can say as you've done for her from the
first of her coming to you.'

Marner took her on his lap, trembHng with an
emotion mysterious to himself, at something un-
known dawning on his life. Thought and feeling
were so confused within him, that if he had tried
to give them utterance, he could only have said
that the child was come instead of the gold — that
the gold had turned into the child. He took the
garments from Dolly, and put them on under
her teaching ; interrupted, of course, by Baby's
gymnastics.

' There, then ! why, you take to it quite easy,
Master Marner,' said Dolly ; 'but what shall you
do when you're forced to sit in your loom ? For
she'll get busier and mischievouser every day —
she will, bless her. It's lucky as you've got that
high hearth i'stead of a grate, for that keeps the
fire more out of her reach ; but if you've got any-
thing as can be spilt or broke, or as is fit to cut
her fingers off, she'll be at it — and it is but right
you should know.'

Silas meditated a little while in some per-
plexity. * I'll tie her to the leg o' the loom,' he
said at last — ' tie her with a good long strip o'
something.'

' Well, mayhap that'll do, as it's a little gell,
for they're easier persuaded to sit i' one place nor
the lads. I know what the lads are ; for I've had
four — four I've had, God knows — and if you was
to take and tie 'em up, they'd make a fighting and
a crying as if you was ringing pigs. But I'll
bring you my little chair, and some bits o' red

222 SILAS MARNER part i

rag and things for her to play wl' ; an' she'll sit
and chatter to 'em as if they was alive. Eh, if it
wasn't a sin to the lads to wish 'em made different,
bless 'em, I should ha' been glad for one of 'em
to be a little gell ; and to think as I could ha'
taught her to scour, and mend, and the knitting,
and everything. But I can teach 'em this little
un, Master Marner, when she gets old enough.'

' But she'll be ;^j)/ little un,' said Marner, rather
hastily. ' She'll be nobody else's.'

* No, to be sure ; you'll have a right to her if
you're a father to her, and bring her up according.
But,' added Dolly, coming to a point which she
had determined beforehand to touch upon, ' you
must bring her up like christened folks's children,
and take her to church, .and let her learn her
catechise, as my little Aaron can say off — the '' I
believe," and everything, and "hurt nobody by
word or deed," — as well as If he was the clerk.
That's what you must do. Master Marner, if you'd
do the right thing by the orphin child.'

Marner's pale face flushed suddenly under a
new anxiety. His mind was too busy trying to
give some definite bearing to Dolly's words for
him to think of answering her.

' And it's my belief,' she went on, ' as the poor
little creatur has never been christened, and it's
nothing but right as the parson should be spoke
to ; and if you was noways unwilling, I'd talk to
Mr. Macey about it this very day. For if the
child ever went anyways wrong, and you hadn't
done your part by it, Master Marner — 'noculation,
and everything to save it from harm — it 'ud be a

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 223

thorn i' your bed for ever o' this side the grave ;
and I can't think as it 'ud be easy lying down for
anybody when they'd got to another world, if they
hadn't done their part by the helpless children as
come wi'out their own asking.'

Dolly herself was disposed to be silent for
some time now, for she had spoken from the
depths of her own simple belief, and was much
concerned to know whether her words would
produce the desired effect on Silas. He was
puzzled and anxious, for Dolly's word ' christened '
conveyed no distinct meaning to him. He had
only heard of baptism, and had only seen the
baptism of grown-up men and women.

'What is it as you mean by ''christened".'^'
he said at last, timidly. ' Won't folks be good to
her without it ?*

' Dear, dear ! Master Marner,' said Dolly, with
gentle distress and compassion. ' Had you never
no father nor mother as taught you to say your
prayers, and as there's good words and good
things to keep us from harm ? '

' Yes,' said Silas, in a low voice ; ' I know a
deal about that — used to, used to. But your ways
are different : my country was a good way off.'
He paused a few moments, and then added, more
decidedly, ' But I want to do everything as can
be done for the child. And whatever's right for
it i' this country, and you think 'ull do it good, I'll
act according, if you'll tell me.'

'Well, then, Master Marner,' said Dolly, in-
wardly rejoiced, ' I'll ask Mr. Macey to speak to
the parson about it ; and you must fix on a name

224 SILAS MARNER parti

for it, because It must have a name giv' it when
it's christened.'

' My mother's name was Hephzlbah,' said Silas,
'and my little sister was named after her.'

' Eh, that's a hard name,' said Dolly. ' I partly
think it isn't a christened name.'

' It's a Bible name,' said Silas, old ideas
recurring.

'Then I've no call to speak again' it,' said
Dolly, rather startled by Silas's knowledge on this
head ; ' but you see I'm no scholard, and I'm slow
at catching the words. My husband says I'm
allays like as if I was putting the haft for the
handle — that's what he says — for he's very sharp,
God help him. But it was awk'ard calling your
little sister by such a hard name, when you'd
got nothing big to say, like — wasn't it. Master
Marner ? '

* We called her Eppie,' said Silas.

* Well, if it was noways wrong to shorten the
name, it 'ud be a deal handier. And so I'll go
now, Master Marner, and I'll speak about the
christening afore dark ; and I wish you the best
o' luck, and it's my belief as it'll come to you, if
you do what's right by the orphin child ; — and
there's the 'noculation to be seen to ; and as to
washing it's bits o' things, you need look to
nobody but me, for I can do 'em wi' one hand
when I've got my suds about. Eh, the blessed
angil ! You'll let me bring my Aaron one o'
these days, and he'll show her his little cart as his
father's made for him, and the black-and-white
pup as he's got a-rearing.'

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARKER 225

Baby was christened, the rector deciding that
a double baptism was a lesser risk to incur ; and
on this occasion Silas, making himself as olean
and tidy as he could, appeared for the first time
within the church, and shared in the observances
held sacred by his neighbours. He was quite
unable, by means of anything he heard or saw, to
identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith ;
if he could at any time in his previous life have
done so, it must have been by the aid of a strong
feeling ready to vibrate with sympathy, rather
than by a comparison of phrases and ideas : and
now for long years that feeling had been dormant.
He had no distinct idea about the baptism and
the church-going, except that Dolly had said it
was for the good of the child ; and in this way, as
the weeks grew to months, the child created fresh
and fresh links between his life and the lives
from which he had hitherto shrunk continually
into narrower isolation. Unlike the gold which
needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-
locked solitude — which was, hidden away from
the daylight, was deaf to the song of birds, and
started to no human tones — Eppie was a creature
of endless claims and ever-growing desires, seek-
ing and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and
living movements ; making trial of everything,
with trust in new joy, and stirring the human
kindness in all eyes that looked on her. The
gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated
circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie
was an object compacted of changes and hopes
that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them

Q

226 SILAS MARNER part i

far away from their old eager pacing towards the
same blank limit — carried them away to the new
things that would come with the coming years,
when Eppie would have learned to understand
how her father Silas cared for her ; and made
him look for images of that time in the ties and
charities that bound together the families of his
neighbours. The gold had asked that he should
sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and
blinded more and more to all things except the
monotony of his loom and the repetition of his
web ; but Eppie called him away from his weaving,
and made him think all its pauses a holiday, re-
awakening his senses with her fresh life, even to
the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in
the early spring sunshine, and warming him into
joy because she had joy.

And when the sunshine grew strong and
lasting, so that the buttercups were thick in the
meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny mid-
day, or in the late afternoon when the shadows
were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling
out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond
the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till
they reached some favourite bank where he
could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the
flowers, and make remarks to the winged things
that murmured happily above the bright petals,
calling * Dad-dad's ' attention continually by
bringing him the flowers. Then she would turn
her ear to some sudden bird-note, and Silas
learned to please her by making signs of hushed
stillness, that they might listen for the note to

Some favourite bank

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 229

come acrain : so that when it came, she set up
her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph.
Sitting on the banks in this way, Silas began
to look for the once familiar herbs again ; and
as the leaves, with their unchanged outline and
markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of
crowding remembrances from which he turned
away timidly, taking refuge in Eppie's little
world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.

As the child's mind was growing into know-
ledge, his mind was growing into memory : as
her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold
narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling
gradually into full consciousness.

It was an influence which must gather force
with every new year : the tones that stirred
Silas's heart grew articulate, and called for more
distinct answers ; shapes and sounds grew clearer
for Eppie's eyes and ears, and there vv^as more that
' Dad-dad ' was imperatively required to notice
and account for. Also, by the time Eppie was
three years old, she developed a fine capacity
for mischief, and for devising ingenious ways of
being troublesome, which found much exercise,
not only for Silas's patience, but for his watchful-
ness and penetration. Sorely was poor Silas
puzzled on such occasions by the incompatible
demands of love. Dolly Winthrop told him
punishment was good for Eppie, and that, as for
rearing a child without making it tingle a little
in soft and safe places now and then, it was not
to be done.

' To be sure, there's another thing you might

230 SILAS MARNER parti

do, Master Marner,' added Dolly, meditatively :
' you might shut her up once i' the coal-hole.
That was what I did wi' Aaron ; for I was that
silly wi' the youngest lad, as I could never bear
to smack him. Not as I could find i' my heart
to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a minute,
but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he
must be new washed and dressed, and it was as
good as a rod to him — that was. But I put it
upo' your conscience, Master Marner, as there's
one of 'em you must choose — ayther smacking or
the coal-hole — else she'll get so masterful, there'll
be no holding her.'

Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth
of this last remark ; but his force of mind failed
before the only two penal methods open to him,
not only because it was painful to him to hurt
Eppie, but because he trembled at a moment's
contention with her, lest she should love him the
less for it. Let even an affectionate Goliath get
himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading
to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to
snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be
master? It was clear that Eppie, with her short
toddling steps, must lead father Silas a pretty
dance on any fine morning when circumstances
favoured mischief

For example. He had wisely chosen a broad
strip of linen as a means of fastening her to his
loom when he was busy : it made a broad belt
round her waist, and was long enough to allow
of her reaching the truckle-bed and sitting down
on it, but not long enough for her to attempt

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 231

any dangerous climbing. One bright summer's
morning Silas had been more engrossed than
usual in ' setting up ' a new piece of work, an
occasion on which his scissors were in requisition.
These scissors, owing to an especial warning of
Dolly's, had been kept carefully out of Eppie's
reach ; but the click of them had had a peculiar
attraction for her ear, and watching the results
of that click, she had derived the philosophic
lesson that the same cause would produce the
same effect. Silas had seated himself in his
loom, and the noise of weaving had begun ; but
he had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie's
arm was long enough to reach ; and now, like a
small mouse, watching her opportunity, she stole
quietly from her corner, secured the scissors, and
toddled to the bed again, setting up her back
as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a
distinct intention as to the use of the scissors ;
and having cut the linen strip in a jagged but
effectual manner, in two moments she had run
out at the open door where the sunshine was
inviting her, while poor Silas believed her to be
a better child than usual. It was not until he
happened to need his scissors that the terrible
fact burst upon him : Eppie had run out by
herself — had perhaps fallen into the Stone-pit.
Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have
befallen him, rushed out, calling ' Eppie ! ' and
ran eagerly about the unenclosed space, ex-
ploring the dry cavities into which she might
have fallen, and then gazing with questioning
dread at the smooth red surface of the water.

232 SILAS MARNER part i

The cold drops stood on his brow. How long
had she been out ? There was one hope — that
she had crept through the stile and got into the
fields where he habitually took her to stroll.
But the grass was high in the meadow, and
there was no descrying her, if she were there,
except by a close search that would be a trespass
on Mr. Osgood's crop. Still, that misdemeanour
must be committed ; and poor Silas, after peering
all round the hedgerows, traversed the grass,
beginning with perturbed vision to see Eppie
behind every group of red sorrel, and to see her
moving always farther off as he approached.
The meadow was searched in vain ; and he got
over the stile into the next field, looking with
dying hope towards a small pond which w^as now
reduced to its summer shallowness, so as to
leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud.
Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully
to her own small boot, which she was using as
a bucket to convey the water into a deep hoof-
mark, while her little naked foot was planted
comfortably on a cushion of olive-green mud. A
red-headed calf was observing her with alarmed
doubt through the opposite hedge.

Here was clearly a case of aberration in a
christened child which demanded severe treat-
ment ; but Silas, overcome with convulsive joy
at finding his treasure again, could do nothing
but snatch her up, and cover her with half-
sobbing kisses. It was not until he had carried
her home, and had begun to think of the necessary
washing, that he recollected the need that he

HERE SAT EPPIE.

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 233

should punish Epple, and * make her remember.'
The idea that she might run away again and
come to harm, gave him unusual resolution, and
for the first time he determined to try the coal-
hole— a small closet near the hearth.

' Naughty, naughty Eppie,' he suddenly began,
holding her on his knee, and pointing to her
muddy feet and clothes — ' naughty to cut with the
scissors and run away. Eppie must go into the
coal-hole for being naughty. Daddy must put her
in the coal-hole.'

He half-expected that this would be shock
enough, and that Eppie would begin to cry. But
instead of that, she began to shake herself on
his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing
novelty. Seeing that he must proceed to ex-
tremities, he put her into the coal-hole, and held
the door closed, with a trembling sense that he
was using a strong measure. For a moment there
was silence, but then came a little cry, *Opy, opy!'
and Silas let her out again, saying, ' Now Eppie
'uU never be naughty again, else she must go in
the coal-hole — a black, naughty place.'

The weaving must stand still a long while this
morning, for now Eppie must be washed, and
have clean clothes on ; but it was to be hoped
that this punishment would have a lasting effect,
and save time in future — though, perhaps, it would
have been better if Eppie had cried more.

In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas
having turned his back to see what he could do
with the linen band, threw it down again, with
the reflection that Eppie would be good without

234 SILAS MARNER part i

fastening for the rest of the morning. He turned
round again, and was going to place her in her
little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at
him with black face and hands again, and said,
' Eppie in de toal-hole ! '

This total failure of the coal-hole discipline
shook Silas's belief in the efficacy of punishment.

* She'd take it all for fun,' he observed to Dolly,

* if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs.
Winthrop. If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I
can bear it. And she's got no tricks but what
she'll grow out of

* Well, that's partly true, Master Marner,' said
Dolly, sympathetically, ' and if you can't bring
your mind to frighten her off touching things, you
must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way.
That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are
allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw —
worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday
cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it.
They know no difference, God help 'em ; it's the
pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what
it is.'

So Eppie was reared without punishment, the
burden of her misdeeds being borne vicariously
by father Silas. The stone hut was made a soft
nest for her, lined with downy patience ; and also
in the world that lay beyond the stone hut for her,
she knew nothing of frowns and denials.

Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her
and his yarn or linen at the same time, Silas took
her with him in most of his journeys to the farm-
houses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly

CJVjT^Jvf-^^^^-'

Eppie in de toal-hoh. '

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 237

Winthrop's, who was always ready to take care of
her ; and little curly-headed Epple, the weaver's
child, became an object of interest at several out-
lying homesteads, as well as in the village.
Hitherto he had been treated very much as if he
had been a useful gnome or brownie — a queer
and unaccountable creature, who must necessarily
be looked at with wondering curiosity and repulsion
and with whom one would be glad to make all
greetings and bargains as brief as possible, but
who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way,
and occasionally have a present of pork or garden
stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without
him there was no getting the yarn woven. But
now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheer-
ful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions
and difficulties could be understood. Everywhere
he must sit a little and talk about the child, and
words of interest were always ready for him : * Ah,
Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the
measles soon and easy!' — or, 'Why, there isn't
many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up
with a little un like that : but I reckon the
weaving makes you handier than men as do
outdoor work — you're partly as handy as a
woman, for weaving comes next to spinning.'
Elderly masters and mistresses, seated observantly
in large kitchen armchairs, shook their heads over
the difficulties attendant on rearing children, felt
Eppie's round arms and legs, and pronounced
them remarkably firm, and told Silas that, if she
turned out well (which, however, there was no
telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a

238 SILAS MARKER parti

Steady lass to do for him when he got helpless.
Servant maidens were fond of carrying her out to
look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any
cherries could be shaken down in the orchard ;
and the small boys and girls approached her
slowly, with cautious movement and steady gaze,
like little dogs face to face with one of their own
kind, till attraction had reached the point at which
the soft lips were put out for a kiss. No child
was afraid of approaching Silas when Eppie was
near him : there was no repulsion around him
now, either for young or old ; for the little child
had come to link him once more with the whole
world. There was love between him and the
child that blent them into one, and there was love
between the child and the world — from men and
women with parental looks and tones, to the red
lady-birds and the round pebbles.

Silas began now to think of Raveloe life
entirely in relation to Eppie : she must have
everything that was a good In Raveloe ; and he
listened docilely, that he might come to understand
better what this life was, from which, for fifteen
years, he had stood aloof as from a strange thing,
with which he could have no communion : as
some man who has a precious plant to which he
would give a nurturing home in a new soil, thinks
of the rain and sunshine, and all influences. In
relation to his nursling, and asks Industriously for
all knowledge that will help him to satisfy the
wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf and
bud from invading harm. The disposition to
hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first

^^jiW^^-ir^ a 7

LIKE LITTLE DOGS FACE TO FACE.

CHAP. XIV SILAS MARNER 239

by the loss of his long-stored gold : the coins he
earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones
brought to complete a house suddenly buried by
an earthquake ; the sense of bereavement was too
heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to
arise again at the touch of the newly-earned coin.
And now something had come to replace his hoard
which gave a growing purpose to the earnings,
drawing his hope and joy continually onward
beyond the money.

In old days there were angels who came and
took men by the hand and led them away from
the city of destruction. We see no white-winged
angels now. But yet men are led away from
threatening destruction ; a hand is put into theirs,
which leads them forth gently towards a calm and
bright land, so that they look no more backward ;
and the hand may be a little child's.

CHAPTER XV

There was one person, as you will believe, who
watched with keener though more hidden interest
than any other, the prosperous growth of Eppie
under the weaver's care. He dared not do any-
thing that would imply a stronger Interest in a
poor man's adopted child than could be expected
from the kindliness of the young Squire, when a
chance meeting suggested a little present to a
simple old fellow whom others noticed with good-
will ; but he told himself that the time would
come when he might do something towards
furthering the welfare of his daughter without
incurring suspicions. Was he very uneasy in
the meantime at his Inability to give his daughter
her birthright ? I cannot say that he was. The
child was being taken care of, and would very
likely be happy, as people in humble station often
were — happier, perhaps, than those brought up
in luxury.

That famous ring that pricked its owner when
he forgot duty and followed desire — I wonder if
it pricked very hard when he set out on the chase,
or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only
pierced to the quick when the chase had long

240

NP3^^

A CHANCE MEETING.

CHAP. XV SILAS MARNER 241

been ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked
backward and became regret ?

Godfrey Casss cheek and eye were brighter
than ever now. He was so undivided in his
aims, that he seemed like a man of firmness. No
Dunsey had come back : people had made up
their minds that he was gone for a soldier, or
gone ' out of the country,' and no one cared to
be specific In their inquiries on a subject delicate
to a respectable family. Godfrey had ceased to
see the shadow of Dunsey across his path ; and
the path now lay straight forward to the accom-
plishment of his best, longest-cherished wishes.
Everybody said Mr. Godfrey had taken the right
turn ; and it was pretty clear what would be the
end of things, for there were not many days in
the week that he was not seen riding to the
Warrens. Godfrey himself, when he was asked
jocosely if the day had been fixed, smiled with
the pleasant consciousness of a lover who could
say 'yes,' if he liked. He felt a reformed man,
delivered from temptation ; and the vision of his
future life seemed to him as a promised land for
which he had no cause to fight. He saw himself
with all his happiness centred on his own hearth,
while Nancy would smile on him as he played
with the children.

And that other child — not on the hearth — he
would not forget it ; he would see that it was well
provided for. That was a father's duty.

PART II

243

CHAPTER XVI

It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years
after Silas Marner had found his new treasure
on the hearth. The bells of the old Raveloe
church were ringing the cheerful peal which told
that the morning service was ended ; and out of
the arched doorway in the tower came slowly,
retarded by friendly greetings and questions, the
richer parishioners who had chosen this bright
Sunday morning as eligible for church-going. It
was the rural fashion of that time for the more
important members of the congregation to depart
first, while their humbler neighbours waited and
looked on, stroking their bent heads or dropping
their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned
to notice them.

Foremost among these advancing groups of
well-clad people, there are some whom we shall
recognise, in spite of Time, who has laid his hand
on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not
much changed in feature from the Godfrey Cass
of six-and-twenty : he is only fuller in flesh, and
has only lost the indefinable look of youth — a
loss which is marked even when the eye is undulled
and the wrinkles are not yet come. Perhaps the

245

246 SILAS MARNER part ii

pretty woman, not much younger than he, who
is leaning on his arm, is more changed than her
husband : the lovely bloom that used to be always
on her cheek now comes but fitfully, with the
fresh morning air or with some strong surprise ;
yet to all who love human faces best for what
they tell of human experience, Nancy's beauty
has a heightened interest. Often the soul is
ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread
an ugly film, so that mere glances can never
divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the
years have not been so cruel to Nancy. The
firm yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance
of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature that
has been tested and has kept its highest qualities ;
and even the costume, with its dainty neatness
and purity, has more significance now the
coquetries of youth can have nothing to do
with it.

Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title
has died away from Raveloe lips since the old
Squire was gathered to his fathers, and his
inheritance was divided) have turned round to
look for the tall aged man and the plainly dressed
woman who are a little behind — Nancy having
observed that they must wait for * father and
Priscilla ' — and now they all turn into a narrower
path leading across the churchyard to a small
gate opposite the Red House. We will not
follow them now ; for may there not be some
others in this departing congregation whom we
should like to see again — some of those who are
not likely to be handsomely clad, and whom we

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 247

may not recognise so easily as the master and
mistress of the Red House?

But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner.
His large brown eyes seem to have gathered a
longer vision, as is the way with eyes that have
been short-sighted in early life, and they have a
less vague, a more answering look ; but in
everything else one sees signs of a frame much
enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The
weaver's bent shoulders and white hair give him
almost the look of advanced age, though he is not
more than five-and-fifty ; but there is the freshest
blossom of youth close by his side — a blonde
dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to
chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness
under her brown bonnet : the hair ripples as
obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze,
and the little ringlets burst away from the restrain-
ing comb behind and show themselves below the
bonnet-crown. Eppie cannot help being rather
vexed about her hair, for there is no other girl in
Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks
hair ought to be smooth. She does not like to be
blameworthy even in small things : you see how
neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted
handkerchief

That good-looking young fellow, in a new
fustian suit, who walks behind her, is not quite
sure upon the question of hair in the abstract,
when Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that
perhaps straight hair is the best in general, but
he doesn't want Eppie's hair to be different. She
surely divines that there is some one behind her

248 SILAS MARKER part ii

who is thinking about her very particularly, and
mustering courage to come to her side as soon as
they are out in the lane, else why should she look
rather shy, and take care not to turn away her
head from her father Silas, to whom she keeps
murmuring little sentences as to who was at
church and who was not at church, and how
pretty the red mountain-ash is over the Rectory
wall?

' I wish we had a little garden, father, with
double daisies in, like Mrs. Winthrop's,' said
Eppie, when they were out in the lane; 'only
they say it ud take a deal of digging and bringing
fresh soil — and you couldn't do that, could you,
father ? Anyhow, I shouldn't like you to do it,
for it 'ud be too hard work for you.'

* Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o'
garden : these long evenings, I could work at
taking in a little bit o' the waste, just enough for
a root or two o' flowers for you ; and again, i' the
morning, I could have a turn wi' the spade before
I sat down to the loom. Why didn't you tell me
before as you wanted a bit o' garden ? '

*/can dig it for you. Master Marner,' said the
young man in fustian, who was now by Eppie's
side, entering into the conversation without the
trouble of formalities. * It'll be play to me after
I've done my day's work, or any odd bits o' time
when the work's slack. And I'll bring you some
soil from Mr. Cass's garden — he'll let me, and
willing.'

'Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?' said
Silas ; * I wasn't aware of you ; for when Eppie's

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 249

talking o' things, I see nothing but what she's
a-saying. Well, if you could help me with the
digging, we might get her a bit o' garden all the
sooner.'

'Then, if you think well and good,' said
Aaron, * I'll come to the Stone-pits this afternoon,
and we'll settle what land's to be taken in, and
I'll get up an hour earlier i' the morning, and
begin on it.'

' But not if you don't promise me not to work
at the hard digging, father,' said Eppie. ' For I
shouldn't ha' said anything about it,' she added,
half-bashfully, half-roguishly, ' only Mrs. Winthrop
said as Aaron 'ud be so good, and '

' And you might ha' known it without mother
telling you,' said Aaron. ' And Master Marner
knows too, I hope, as I'm able and willing to
do a turn o' work for him, and he won't do me
the unkindness to anyways take it out o' my
hands.'

* There, now, father, you won't work in it till
it's all easy,' said Eppie, 'and you and me can
mark out the beds, and make holes and plant the
roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits
when we've got some flowers, for I always think
the flowers can see us and know what we're
talking about. And I'll have a bit o' rosemary,
and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so
sweet-smelling ; but there's no lavender only in
the gentlefolks' gardens, I think.'

* That's no reason why you shouldn't have
some,' said Aaron, ' for I can bring you slips of
anything ; I'm forced to cut no end of 'em when

250 SILAS MARKER part ii

I'm gardening, and throw em away mostly.
There's a big bed o' lavender at the Red House :
the missis is very fond of it.'

'Well,' said Silas, gravely, * so as you don't
make free for us, or ask for anything as is worth
much at the Red House : for Mr. Cass's been
so good to us, and built us up the new end o'
the cottage, and given us beds and things, as I
couldn't abide to be imposin' for garden-stuff or
anything else.'

'No, no, there's no imposin',' said Aaron ;
' there's never a garden in all the parish but what
there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as
could use everything up. It's what I think to
myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short
o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and
there was never a morsel but what could find its
way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that —
gardening does. But I must go back now, else
mother 'ull be in trouble as I aren't there.'

' Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron,' said
Eppie ; * I shouldn't like to fix about the garden,
and her not know everything from the first — should
you, father } '

'Ay, bring her if you can, Aaron,' said Silas;
' she's sure to have a word to say as'll help us to
set things on their right end.'

Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas
and Eppie went on up the lonely sheltered lane.

'O daddy! 'she began, when they were in
privacy, claspinor and squeezing Silas's arm, and
skiopinsf round to ^ive him an energetic kiss.
• My little old daddy ! I'm so glad. I don't think

EPPIE FRISKING.

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 251

I shall want anything else when we've got a little
garden ; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us,'
she went on with roguish triumph — ' I knew that
very well.'

' You're a deep little puss ; you are,' said Silas,
with the mild passive happiness of love-crowned
age in his face ; ' but you'll make yourself fine and
beholden to Aaron.'

*0 no, I shan't,' said Eppie, laughing and
frisking ; ' he likes it'

' Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book,
else you'll be dropping it, jumping i' that way.'

Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was
under observation, but it was only the observation
of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log fastened
to his foot — a meek donkey, not scornfully critical
of human trivialities, but thankful to share in them,
if possible, by getting his nose scratched ; and
Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her usual
notice, though it was attended with the inconveni-
ence of his following them, painfully, up to the very
door of their home.

But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie
put the key in the door, modified the donkey's
views, and he limped away again without bidding.
The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome
that was awaiting them from a knowing brown
terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in a hysteri-
cal manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a
tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then
rushed back with a sharp bark again, as much as
to say, ' I have done my duty by this feeble
creature, you perceive ' ; while the lady-mother of

252 SILAS MARNER part ii

the kitten sat sunning her white bosom in the
window, and looked round with a sleepy air of
expecting caresses, though she was not going to
take any trouble for them.

The presence of this happy animal life was not
the only change which had come over this interior
of the stone cottage. There was no bed now in
the living-room, and the small space was well filled
with decent furniture, all bright and clean enough
to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye. The oaken table
and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what
was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage : they
had come, with the beds and other things, from the
Red House ; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every one
said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver ;
and it was nothing but right a man should be looked
on and helped by those who could afford it, when
he had brought up an orphan child, and been
father and mother to her — and had lost his money
too, so as he had nothing but what he worked for
week by week, and when the weaving was going
down too — for there was less and less flax spun —
and Master Marner was none so young. Nobody
was jealous of the weaver, for he was regarded as
an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly
help were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any
superstition that remained concerning him had
taken an entirely new colour ; and Mr Macey, now
a very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never
seen except in his chimney-corner or sitting in the
sunshine at his door-sill, was of opinion that when
a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan
child, it was a sign that his money would come to

v^.. '^--^"^y/fy^y^^^yy^^

Eppie's play

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARKER 255

light again, or leastwise that the robber would be
made to answer for it — for, as Mr Macey observed
of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever,

Silas sat down and watched Eppie with a
satisfied gaze as she spread the clean cloth, and set
on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly in a safe
Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over
a slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an
oven. For Silas would not consent to have a
grate and oven added to his conveniences : he
loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his
brown pot — and was it not there when he had
found Eppie ? The gods of the hearth exist for
us still ; and let all new faith be tolerant of that
fetishism, lest It bruise its own roots.

Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual,
soon laying down his knife and fork, and watching
half-abstractedly Eppie's play with Snap and the
cat, by which her own dining was made rather a
lengthy business. Yet It was a sight that might
well arrest wandering thoughts : Eppie, with the
rippling radiance of her hair and the whiteness of
her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-
blue cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten
held on with her four claws to one shoulder, like a
design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the right
hand and Puss on the other put up their paws
towards a morsel which she held out of the reach
of both — Snap occasionally desisting in order to
remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying
growl on the greediness and futility of her con-
duct ; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and
divided the morsel between them.

2^6 SILAS MARKER part ii

But at last Epple, glancing at the clock, checked
the play, and said, ' O daddy, you're wanting to go
into the sunshine to smoke your pipe. But I must
clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when
godmother comes. I'll make haste — I won't be

Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during
the last two years, having been strongly urged to
it by the sages of Raveloe, as a practice *good
for the fits ' ; and this advice was sanctioned by
Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well to
try what could do no harm — a principle which
was made to answer for a great deal of work in
that gentleman's medical practice. Silas did not
highly enjoy smoking, and often wondered how
his neighbours could be so fond of it ; but a
humble sort of acquiescence in what was held
to be good, had become a strong habit of that
new self which had been developed in him since
he had found Eppie on his hearth : it had been
the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by
in cherishing this young life that had been sent
to him out of the darkness into which his gold
had departed. By seeking what was needful for
Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything
produced on her, he had himself come to
appropriate the forms of custom and belief which
were the mould of Raveloe life ; and as, with re-
awakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened,
he had begun to ponder over the elements of
his old faith, and blend them with his new
impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of
unity between his past and present. The sense

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 257

of presiding goodness and the human trust which
come with all pure peace and joy, had given
him a dim impression that there had been some
error, some mistake, which had thrown that dark
shadow over the days of his best years ; and as
it grew more and more easy to him to open his
mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually communi-
cated to her all he could describe of his early life.
The communication was necessarily a slow and
difficult process, for Silas's meagre power of
explanation was not aided by any readiness of
interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward
experience gave her no key to strange customs,
and made every novelty a source of wonder that
arrested them at every step of the narrative. It
was only by fragments, and at intervals which left
Dolly time to revolve what she had heard till it
acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas at last
arrived at the climax of the sad story — the
drawing of lots, and its false testimony concerning
him ; and this had to be repeated in several
interviews, under new questions on her part as
to the nature of this plan for detecting the guilty
and clearing the innocent.

'And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o'
that. Master Marner — the Bible as you brought
wi' you from that country — it's the same as what
they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning
to read in ? '

'Yes,' said Silas, 'every bit the same; and
there's drawings o' lots in the Bible, mind you,'
he added in a lower tone.

'O dear, dear,' said Dolly, in a grieved voice,

s

258 SILAS MARNER part ii

as if she were hearing an unfavourable report
of a sick man's case. She was silent for some
minutes ; at last she said :

' There's wise folks, happen, as know how it
all is; the parson knows, I'll be bound; but it
takes big words to tell them things, and such as
poor folks can't make much out on. I can never
rightly know the meaning o' what I hear at
church, only a bit here and there, but I know it's
good words — I do. But what lies upo' your
mind — it's this. Master Marner : as, if Them
above had done the right thing by you, They'd
never ha' let you be turned out for a wicked thief
when you was innicent.'

' Ah ! ' said Silas, who had now come to
understand Dolly's phraseology, ' that was what
fell on me like as if it had been red-hot iron ;
because, you see, there was nobody as cared for
me or clave to me above nor below. And him
as I'd gone out and in wi' for ten year and more,
since when we was lads and went halves — mine
own famil'ar friend, in whom I trusted, had lifted
up his heel again' me, and worked to ruin me.'

' Eh, but he was a bad 'un — I can't think as
there's another such,' said Dolly. 'But I'm
o'ercome, Master Marner; I'm like as if I'd
waked and didn't know whether it was night or
morning. I feel somehow as sure as I do when
I've laid something up though I can't justly put
my hand on it, as there was a rights in what
happened to you, if one could but make it out ;
and you'd no call to lose heart as you did. But
we'll talk on it again ; for sometimes things come

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 259

into my head when I'm leeching or poulticing, or
such, as I could never think on when I was
sitting still.'

Dolly was too useful a woman not to have
many opportunities of illumination of the kind
she alluded to, and she was not long before she
recurred to the subject.

* Master Marner,' she said, one day that she
came to bring home Eppie's washing, ' I've been
sore puzzled for a good bit wi' that trouble o'
yourn and the drawing o' lots ; and it got twisted
back'ards and for'ards, as I didn't know which
end to lay hold on. But it come to me all clear
like, that night when I was sitting up with poor
Bessie Fawkes, as is dead and left her children
behind, God help 'em — it come to me as clear as
daylight ; but whether I've got hold on it now,
or can anyways bring it to my tongue's end, that
I don't know. For I've often a deal inside me
as '11 never come out ; and for what you talk o'
your folks in your old country niver saying
prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a book,
they must be wonderful cliver ; for if I didn't
know * Our Father,' and little bits o' good words
as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I might
down o' my knees every night, but nothing could
I say.'

* But you can mostly say something as I can
make sense on, Mrs. Winthrop,' said Silas.

* Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me
summat like this : I can make nothing o' the
drawing o' lots and the answer coming wrong ;
it 'ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he

26o SILAS MARNER part ii

could only tell us i' big words. But what come
to me as clear as the daylight, it was when I was
troubling over poor Bessie Fawkes, and it allays
comes into my head when I'm sorry for folks,
and feel as I can't do a power to help em, not if
I was to get up i' the middle o' the night — it
comes into my head as Them above has got a
deal tenderer heart nor what I've got — for I can't
be anyways better nor Them as made me, and if
anything looks hard to me, it's because there's
things I don't know on ; and for the matter o' that,
there may be plenty o' things I don't know on,
for it's little as I know — that it is. And so,
while I was thinking o' that, you come into my
mind. Master Marner, and it all come pouring
in : — if / felt i' my inside what was the right
and just thing by you, and them as prayed
and drawed the lots, all but that wicked un,
if theyd. ha' done the right thing by you if they
could, isn't there Them as was at the making on
us, and knows better and has a better will ? And
that's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything
else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it.
For there was the fever come and took off them
as were full-growed, and left the helpless children;
and there's the breaking o' limbs; and them as
'ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them
as are contralry — eh, there's trouble i' this world,
and there's things as we can niver make out the
rights on. And all as we've got to do is to trusten,
Master Marner — to do the right thing as fur as
we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so
little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 261

be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor
what we can know — I feel it i' my own inside as
it must be so. And if you could but ha' gone on
trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run
away from your fellow-creaturs and been so lone.'

* Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard,' said Silas, in
an undertone ; ' it 'ud ha' been hard to trusten
then.'

'And so it would,' said Dolly, almost with
compunction ; ' them things are easier said nor
done ; and I'm partly ashamed o' talking.'

* Nay, nay,' said Silas, ' you're i' the right, Mrs.
Winthrop — you're i' the right. There's good i'
this world — I've a feeling o' that now; and it
makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he
can see, i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness.
That drawing o' the lots is dark : but the child
was sent to me : there's dealings with us — there's
dealings.'

This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier
years, when Silas had to part with her for two
hours every day, that she might learn to read at
the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself
to guide her in that first step to learning. Now
that she was grown up, Silas had often been led,
in those moments of quiet outpouring which come
to people who live together in perfect love, to talk
with /^er too of the past, and how and why he had
lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him.
For it would have been impossible for him to hide
from Eppie that she was not his own child : even
if the most delicate reticence on the point could
have been expected from Raveloe gossips in her

262 SILAS MARNER part ii

presence, her own questions about her mother
could not have been parried, as she grew up, with-
out that complete shrouding of the past which
would have made a painful barrier between their
minds. So Eppie had long known how her
mother had died on the snowy ground, and how
she herself had been found on the hearth by father
Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his lost
guineas brought back to him. The tender and
peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in
almost inseparable companionship with himself,
aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had pre-
served her from the lowering influences of the
village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in
that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed
to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect
love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the
relations of the least-instructed human beings ;
and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie
from the time when she had followed the bright
gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth : so
that it is not surprising if, in other things besides
her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common
village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and
fervour which came from no other teaching than
that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She
was too childish and simple to rove into questions
about her unknown father ; for a long while it did
not even occur to her that she must have had a
father ; and the first time that the idea of her
mother having had a husband presented itself to
her, was when Silas showed her the wedding-ring
which had been taken from the wasted finger, and

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 263

had been carefully preserved by him In a little
lackered box shaped like a shoe. He delivered
this box Into Epple's charge when she had grown
up, and she often opened It to look at the ring ;
but still she thought hardly at all about the father
of whom it was the symbol. Had she not a father
very close to her, who loved her better than any
real fathers in the village seemed to love their
daughters ^ On the contrary, who her mother
was, and how she came to die in that forlornless,
were questions that often pressed on Epple's
mind. Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who
was her nearest friend next to Silas, made her
feel that a mother must be very precious ; and
she had again and again asked Silas to tell her
how her mother looked, whom she was like, and
how he had found her against the furze bush, led
towards It by the little footsteps and the out-
stretched arms. The furze bush was there still ;
and this afternoon, when Eppie came out with
Silas into the sunshine. It was the first object
that arrested her eyes and thoughts.

' Father,' she said, in a tone of gentle gravity,
which sometimes came like a sadder, slower
cadence across her playfulness, ' we shall take the
furze bush into the garden ; it's come into the
corner, and just against it I'll put snowdrops and
crocuses, 'cause Aaron says they won't die out,
but '11 always get more and more.'

* Ah, child,' said Silas, always ready to talk
when he had his pipe in his hand, apparently en-
joying the pauses more than the puffs, ' it wouldn't
do to leave out the furze bush ; and there's nothing

264 SILAS MARNER part ii

prettier, to my thinking, when it's yallow with
flowers. But it's just come into my head what
we're to do for a fence — mayhap Aaron can help
us to a thought ; but a fence we must have, else
the donkeys and things 'ull come and trample
everything down. And fencing's hard to be got
at, by what I can make out.'

' O, I'll tell you, daddy,' said Eppie, clasping
her hands suddenly, after a minute's thought.
* There's lots o' loose stones about, some of 'em
not big, and we might lay 'em atop of one another,
and make a wall. You and me could carry the
smallest, and Aaron 'ud carry the rest — I know
he would.'

* Eh, my precious 'un,' said Silas, ' there isn't
enough stones to go all round ; and as for you
carrying, why, wi' your little arms you couldn't
carry a stone no bigger than a turnip. You're
dlllicate made, my dear,' he added, with a tender
Intonation — 'that's what Mrs. Winthrop says.'

' O, I'm stronger than you think, daddy,' said
Eppie; ' and if there wasn't stones enough to go
all round, why they'll go part o' the way, and then
it'll be easier to get sticks and things for the rest.
See here, round the big pit, what a many stones ! '

She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to
lift one of the stones and exhibit her strength,
but she started back in surprise.

' O, father, just come and look here,' she ex-
claimed— 'come and see how the w^ater's gone
down since yesterday. Why, yesterday the pit
was ever so full ! '

*Well, to be sure,' said Silas, coming to her

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARKER 265

side. 'Why, that's the draining they've begun
on, since harvest, i' Mr. Osgood's fields, I reckon.
The foreman said to me the other day, when
I passed by 'em, ** Master Marner," he said, *' I
shouldn't wonder if we lay your bit o' waste as
dry as a bone." It was Mr. Godfrey Cass, he
said, had gone into the draining : he'd been taking
these fields o' Mr. Osgood.'

' How odd it'll seem to have the old pit dried
up,' said Eppie, turning away, and stooping to
lift rather a large stone. ' See, daddy, I can carry
this quite well,' she said, going along with much
energy for a few steps, but presently letting it fall.

' Ah, you're fine and strong, arn't you ? ' said
Silas, while Eppie shook her aching arms and
laughed. * Come, come, let us go and sit down
on the bank against the stile there, and have no
more lifting. You might hurt yourself, child.
You'd need have somebody to work for you —
and my arm isn't over strong.'

Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it
Implied more than met the ear ; and Eppie, when
they sat down on the bank, nestled close to his
side, and, taking hold caressingly of the arm that
was not over strong, held it on her lap, while Silas
puffed again dutifully at the pipe, which occupied
his other arm. An ash in the hedgerow behind
made a fretted screen from the sun, and threw
happy playful shadows all about them.

' Father,' said Eppie, very gently, after they
had been sitting in silence a litde while, ' if I was
to be married, ought I to be married with my
mother's rine ? '

266 SILAS MARNER part ii

Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though
the question fell in with the under -current of
thought in his own mind, and then said, in a
subdued tone, ' Why, Eppie, have you been a-
thinking on it ? '

' Only this last week, father,' said Eppie, in-
genuously, ' since Aaron talked to me about it.'

' And what did he say ? ' said Silas, still in the
same subdued way, as if he were anxious lest he
should fall into the slightest tone that was not
for Eppie's good.

' He said he should like to be married, because
he was a-going in four-and-twenty, and had got a
deal of gardening work, now Mr. Mott's given up ;
and he goes twice a-week regular to Mr. Cass's,
and once to Mr. Osgood's, and they're going to
take him on at the Rectory.'

' And who is it as he's wanting to marry ? ' said
Silas, with rather a sad smile.

'Why, me, to be sure, daddy,' said Eppie, with
dimpling laughter, kissing her father's cheek ; ' as
if he'd want to marry anybody else ! '

' And you mean to have him, do you ? ' said
Silas.

' Yes, some time,' said Eppie, ' I don't know
when. Everybody's married some time, Aaron
says. But I told him that wasn't true : for, I said,
look at father — he's never been married.'

' No, child,' said Silas, 'your father was a lone
man till you was sent to him.'

* But you'll never be lone again, father,' said
Eppie, tenderly. ' That was what Aaron said —
" I could never think o' taking you away from

CHAP. XVI SILAS MARNER 267

Master Marner, Eppie." And I said, '' It 'ud be
no use If you did, Aaron." And he wants us all to
live together, so as you needn't work a bit, father,
only what's for your own pleasure ; and he'd be
as good as a son to you — that was what he said.'

' And should you like that, Eppie ? ' said Silas,
looking at her.

' I shouldn't mind it, father,' said Eppie, quite
simply. ' And I should like things to be so as you
needn't work much. But if it wasn't for that, I'd
sooner things didn't change. I'm very happy : I
like Aaron to be fond of me, and come and see us
often, and behave pretty to you — he always does
behave pretty to you, doesn't he, father ? '

'Yes, child, nobody could behave better,' said
Silas, emphatically. ' He's his mother's lad.'

* But I don't want any change,' said Eppie.
' I should like to go on a long, long while, just as
we are. Only Aaron does want a change ; and he
made me cry a bit — only a bit — because he said I
didn't care for him, for if I cared for him I should
want us to be married, as he did.'

* Eh, my blessed child,' said Silas, laying down
his pipe as if it were useless to pretend to smoke
any longer, * you're o'er young to be married.
We'll ask Mrs. Winthrop — we'll ask Aaron's
mother what sAe thinks : If there's a right thing
to do, she'll come at it. But there's this to be
thought on, Eppie : things wz// change, whether
we like it or not ; things won't go on for a long
while just as they are and no difference. I shall
get older and helplesser, and be a burden on you,
belike, if I don't go away from you altogether.

268 SILAS MARNER part ii

Not as I mean you'd think me a burden — I know
you wouldn't — but it 'ud be hard upon you ; and
when I look for'ard to that, I like to think as you'd
have somebody else besides me — somebody young
and strong, as'll outlast your own life, and take
care on you to the end.' Silas paused, and, resting
his wrists on his knees, lifted his hands up and
down meditatively as he looked on the ground.

' Then, would you like me to be married,
father ? ' said Eppie, with a little trembling in her
voice.

' I'll not be the man to say no, Eppie,' said
Silas, emphatically ; ' but we'll ask your god-
mother. She'll wish the right thing by you and
her son too.'

* There they come then,' said Eppie. ' Let us
go and meet 'em. O the pipe ! won't you have it
lit again, father ? ' said Eppie, lifting that medicinal
appliance from the ground.

* Nay, child,' said Silas, ' I've done enough for
to-day. I think, mayhap, a little of it does me
more good than so much at once.'

CHAPTER XVII

While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank
discoursing in the fleckered shade of the ash-tree,
Miss Priscilla Lammeter was resisting her sister's
arguments, that it would be better to take tea at
the Red House, and let her father have a long
nap, than drive home to the Warrens so soon after
dinner. The family party (of four only) were
seated round the table in the dark wainscoted
parlour, with the Sunday dessert before them, of
fresh filberts, apples, and pears, duly ornamented
with leaves by Nancy's own hands before the
bells had rung for church.

A great change has come over the dark wains-
coted parlour since we saw it in Godfrey's bachelor
days, under the wifeless reign of the old Squire.
Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is
ever allowed to rest, from the yard's width of
oaken boards round the carpet, to the old Squire's
gun and whips and walking-sticks, ranged on the
stag's antlers above the mantelpiece. All other
signs of sporting and outdoor occupation Nancy
has removed to another room ; but she has
brought into the Red House the habit of filial
reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of

269

270 SILAS MARNER part ii

honour these relics of her husband's departed
father. The tankards are on the side-table still,
but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling,
and there are no dregs to send forth unpleasant
suggestions : the only prevailing scent is of the
lavender and rose-leaves that fill the vases of
Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this
once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was
entered by a new presiding spirit.

'Now, father,' said Nancy, 'is there any call
for you to go home to tea ? Mayn't you just as
well stay with us ? — such a beautiful evening as
it's likely to be.'

The old gentleman had been talking with
Godfrey about the increasing poor-rate and the
ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue
between his daughters.

' My dear, you must ask Priscilla,' he said in
the once firm voice, now become rather broken.
' She manages me and the farm too.'

' And reason good as I should manage you,
father,' said Priscilla, 'else you'd be giving your-
self your death with rheumatism. And as for the
farm, if anything turns out wrong, as it can't but
do in these times, there's nothing kills a man so
soon as having nobody to find fault with but him-
self. It's a deal the best way o' being master, to
let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the
blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a
man a stroke, /believe.'

'Well, well, my dear,' said her father, with a
quiet laugh, ' I didn't say you don't manage for
everybody's good.'

[ ^^^'

A BEAUTIFUL NAP IN THE GIG.

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 271

' Then manage so as you may stay tea, Pris-
cilla,' said Nancy, putting her hand on her sister's
arm affectionately. * Come now ; and we'll go
round the garden while father has his nap.'

' My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in
the gig, for I shall drive. And as for staying
tea, I can't hear of it ; for there's this dairymaid,
now she knows she's to be married, turned
Michaelmas, she'd as lieve pour the new milk
into the pig-trough as into the pans. That's the
way with 'em all : it's as if they thought the
world 'ud be new-made because they're to be
married. So come and let me put my bonnet on,
and there'll be time for us to walk round the
garden while the horse is being put in.'

When the sisters were treading the neatly-
swept garden-walks, between the bright turf that
contrasted pleasantly with the dark cones and
arches and wall- like hedges of yew, Priscilla
said :

'I'm as glad as anything at your husband's
making that exchange o' land with cousin Osgood,
and beginning the dairying. It's a thousand pities
you didn't do it before ; for it'll give you some-
thing to fill your mind. There's nothing like a
dairy if folks want a bit o' worrit to make the
days pass. For as for rubbing furniture, when
you can once see your face in a table there's
nothing else to look for ; but there's always
something fresh with the diary ; for even in the
depths of winter there's some pleasure in con-
quering the butter, and making it come whether
or no. My dear,' added Priscilla, pressing her

272 SILAS MARKER part ii

sister's hand affectionately as they walked side by
side, * you'll never be low when you've got a
dairy.'

* Ah, Priscilla,' said Nancy, returning the pres-
sure with a grateful glance of her clear eyes, ' but
it won't make up to Godfrey : a dairy's not so
much to a man. And it's only what he cares for
that ever makes me low. I'm contented with the
blessings we have, if he could be contented.'

' It drives me past patience,' said Priscilla,
impetuously, 'that way o' the men — always want-
ing and wanting, and never easy with what
they've got : they can't sit comfortable in their
chairs when they've neither ache nor pain, but
either they must stick a pipe in their mouths,
to make 'em better than well, or else they must
be swallowing something strong, though they're
forced to make haste before the next meal comes
in. But joyful be it spoken, our father was
never that sort o' man. And If It had pleased
God to make you ugly, like me, so as the men
wouldn't ha' run after you, we might have kept
to our own family, and had nothing to do with
folks as have got uneasy blood in their veins.'

* O don't say so, Priscilla,' said Nancy, repent-
ing that she had called forth this outburst; 'nobody
has any occasion to find fault with Godfrey. It's
natural he should be disappointed at not having
any children : every man likes to have somebody
to work for and lay by for, and he always counted
so on making a fuss with 'em when they were
little. There's many another man 'ud hanker
more than he does. He's the best of husbands.'

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 273

'O, I know/ said Priscllla, smilling sarcastically,
' I know the way o' wives ; they set one on to
abuse their husbands, and then they turn round
on one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell
'em. But father'll be waiting for me ; we must
turn now.'

The large gig with the steady old grey was at
the front door, and Mr. Lammeter was already
on the stone steps, passing the time in recalling
to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had
when his master used to ride him.

' I always would have a good horse, you know,'
said the old gentleman, not liking that spirited
time to be quite effaced from the memory of his
juniors.

* Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before
the week's out, Mr. Cass,' was Priscilla's parting
injunction, as she took the reins, and shook them
gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.

' I shall just take a turn to the fields against
the Stone-pits, Nancy, and look at the draining,'
said Godfrey.

' You'll be in again by tea-time, dear ? '

' O yes, I shall be back in an hour.'

It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon
to do a little contemplative farming in a leisurely
walk. Nancy seldom accompanied him ; for the
women of her generation — unless, like Priscilla,
they took to outdoor management — were not
given to much walking beyond their own house
and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic
duties. So, when Priscilla was not with her, she
usually sat with Mant's Bible before her, and after

274 SILAS MARNER part ii

following the text with her eyes for a little while,
she would gradually permit them to wander as her
thoughts had already insisted on wandering.

But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite
out of keeping with the devout and reverential
intention implied by the book spread open before
her. She was not theologically instructed enough
to discern very clearly the relation between the
sacred documents of the past which she opened
without method, and her own obscure, simple
life ; but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of
responsibility for the effect of her conduct on
others, which were strong elements in Nancy's
character, had made it a habit with her to
scrutinise her past feelings and actions with self-
questioning solicitude. Her mind not being
courted by a great variety of subjects, she filled
the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and
again, through all her remembered experience,
especially through the fifteen years of her married
time, in which her life and its significance had
been doubled. She recalled the small details, the
words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes
which had opened a new epoch for her, by giving
her a deeper insight into the relations and trials
of life, or which had called on her for some little
effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to
an imagined or real duty — asking herself continu-
ally whether she had been in any respect blamable.
This excessive rumination and self-questioning is
perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of
much moral sensibility when shut out from its due
share of outward activity and of practical claims

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 275

on its affections — inevitable to a noble-hearted,
childless woman, when her lot is narrow. ' I can
do so little — have I done it all well ? ' is the
perpetually recurring thought ; and there are no
voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no
peremptory demands to divert energy from vain
regret or superfluous scruple.

There was one main thread of painful experience
in Nancy's married life, and on it hung certain
deeply-felt scenes, which were the oftenest revived
in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla
in the garden had determined the current of
retrospect in that frequent direction this particular
Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her
thought from the text, which she still attempted
dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent lips,
was into an imaginary enlargement of the defence
she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's
implied blame. The vindication of the loved
object is the best balm affection can find for its
wounds : — * A man must have so much on his
mind,' is the belief by which a wife often supports
a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling
words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all
come from the perception that the absence of
children from their hearth was dwelt on in her
husband's mind as a privation to which he could
not reconcile himself

Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to
feel still more keenly the denial of a blessing to
which she had looked forward with all the varied
expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily
trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman

276 SILAS MARNER part ii

when she expects to become a mother. Was
there not a drawer filled with the neat work of
her hands, all unworn and untouched, just as she
had arranged it there fourteen years ago — just,
but for one little dress, which had been made the
burial-dress ? But under this immediate personal
trial Nancy was so firmly unmurmuring, that
years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit
of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way
be cherishing a longing for what was not given.

Perhaps it was this very severity towards any
indulgence of what she held to be sinful regret in
herself, that made her shrink from applying her
own standard to her husband. ' It was very
different — it was much worse for a man to be
disappointed in that way : a woman could always
be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband,
but a man wanted something that would make
him look forward more — and sitting by the fire
was so much duller to him than to a woman.'
And always, when Nancy reached this point in
her meditations — trying, with predetermined
sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it —
there came a renewal of self-questioning. I/ad
she done everything in her power to lighten
Godfrey's privation ? Had she really been right
in the resistance which had cost her so much pain
six years ago, and again four years ago — the
resistance to her husband's wish that they should
adopt a child ? Adoption was more remote from
the ideas and habits of that time than of our own ;
still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as
necessary to her mind to have an opinion on all

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 277

topics, not exclusively masculine, that had come
under her notice, as for her to have a precisely-
marked place for every article of her personal
property : and her opinions were always principles
to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm,
not because of their basis, but because she held
them with a tenacity inseparable from her mental
action. On all the duties and proprieties of life,
from filial behaviour to the arrangements of the
evening toilet, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the
time she was three-and-twenty, had her unalter-
able little code, and had formed every one of her
habits in strict accordance with that code. She
carried these decided judgments within her in the
most unobtrusive way : they rooted themselves in
her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass.
Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like
Priscilla, because ' it was right for sisters to dress
alike,' and because *she would do what was right
if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring.'
That was a trivial but typical instance of the mode
in which Nancy's life was regulated.

It was one of those rigid principles, and no
petty egoistic feeling, which had been the ground
of Nancy's difficult resistance to her husband's
wish. To adopt a child, because children of your
own had been denied you, was to try and choose
your lot in spite of Providence : the adopted child,
she was convinced, would never turn out well,
and would be a curse to those who had wilfully
and rebelliously sought what it was clear that, for
some high reason, they were better without.
When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said

278 SILAS MARNER part ii

Nancy, it was a bounden duty to leave off so
much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the
wisest of men could scarcely make more than a
verbal improvement in her principle. But the
conditions under which she held it apparent that
a thing was not meant to be, depended on a more
peculiar mode of thinking. She would have
given up making a purchase at a particular place
if, on three successive times, rain, or some other
cause of Heaven's sending, had formed an
obstacle ; and she would have anticipated a
broken limb or other heavy misfortune to any one
who persisted in spite of such indications.

' But why should you think the child would
turn out ill ? ' said Godfrey, in his remonstrances.
' She has thriven as well as child can do with the
weaver ; and /le adopted her. There isn't such a
pretty little girl anywhere else in the parish, or
one fitter for the station we could give her.
Where can be the likelihood of her being a curse
to anybody ? '

'Yes, my dear Godfrey,' said Nancy, who was
sitting with her hands tightly clasped together,
and with yearning, regretful affection in her eyes.
' The child may not turn out ill with the weaver.
But, then, he didn't go to seek her, as we should
be doing. It will be wrong : I feel sure it will.
Don't you remember what that lady we met at
the Royston Baths told us about the child her
sister adopted ? That was the only adopting I
ever heard of: and the child was transported
when it was twenty-three. Dear Godfrey, don't
ask me to do what is wrong : I should never be

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 279

happy again. I know it's very hard for yoti — it's
easier for me — but it's the will of Providence.'

It might seem singular that Nancy — with her
religious theory pieced together out of narrow
.social traditions, fragments of church doctrine
imperfecdy understood, and girlish reasonings on
her small experience — should have arrived by
herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that
of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in
the shape of a system quite remote from her
knowledge — singular, if we did not know that
human beliefs, like all other natural growths,
elude the barriers of system.

Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie,
then about twelve years old, as a child suitable
for them to adopt. It had never occurred to him
that Silas would rather part with his life than
with Eppie. Surely the weaver would wish the
best to the child he had taken so much trouble
with, and would be glad that such good fortune
should happen to her : she would always be very
grateful to him, and he would be well provided
for to the end of his life — provided for as the
excellent part he had done by the child deserved.
Was it not an appropriate thing for people in a
higher station to take a charge off the hands of a
man in a lower ? It seemed an eminently appro-
priate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were
known only to himself; and by a common fallacy,
he imagined the measure would be easy because
he had private motives for desiring it. This was
rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's relation
to Eppie ; but we must remember that many

28o SILAS MARNER part ii

of the impressions which Godfrey was likely to
gather concerning the labouring people around
him would favour the idea that deep affections
can hardly go along with callous palms and scant
means ; and he had not had the opportunity, even
if he had had the power, of entering intimately
into all that was exceptional in the weaver's
experience. It was only the want of adequate
knowledge that could have made it possible for
Godfrey deliberately to entertain an unfeeling
project : his natural kindness had outlived that
blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise
of him as a husband was not founded entirely on
a wilful illusion.

' I was right,' she said to herself, when she
had recalled all their scenes of discussion — ' I feel
I was right to say him nay, though it hurt me
more than anything ; but how good Godfrey has
been about it ! Many men would have been very
angry with me for standing out against their
wishes ; and they might have thrown out that
they'd had ill-luck in marrying me ; but Godfrey
has never been the man to say me an unkind
word. It's only what he can't hide : everything
seems so blank to him, I know ; and the land —
what a difference it 'ud make to him, when he
goes to see after things, if he'd children growing
up that he was doing it all for ! But I won't
murmur ; and perhaps if he'd married a woman
who'd have had children, she'd have vexed him
in other ways.'

This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort ; and
to give it greater strength, she laboured to make

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 281

it impossible that any other wife should have had
more perfect tenderness. She had been forced
to vex him by that one denial. Godfrey was not
insensible to her loving effort, and did Nancy no
injustice as to the motives of her obstinacy. It
was impossible to have lived with her fifteen years
and not be aware that an unselfish clinging to the
right, and a sincerity clear as the fiower-born dew,
were her main characteristics ; indeed, Godfrey
felt this so strongly, that his own more wavering
nature, too averse to facing difificulty to be unvary-
ingly simple and truthful, was kept in a certain
awe of this gentle wife who watched his looks
with a yearning to obey them. It seemed to him
impossible that he should ever confess to her the
truth about Eppie : she would never recover from
the repulsion the story of his earlier marriage
would create, told to her now, after that long con-
cealment. And the child, too, he thought, must
become an object of repulsion : the very sight of
her would be painful. The shock to Nancy's
mingled pride and ignorance of the world's evil
might even be too much for her delicate frame.
Since he had married her with that secret on his
heart, he must keep it there to the last. What-
ever else he did, he could not make an irreparable
breach between himself and this long-loved wife.

Meanwhile, why could he not make up his
mind to the absence of children from a hearth
brightened by such a wife ? Why did his mind
fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole
reason why life was not thoroughly joyous to
him ? I suppose it is the way with all men and

282 SILAS MARNER part ii

women who reach middle age without the clear
perception that life never can be thoroughly
joyous : under the vague dulness of the grey
hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and
finds It In the privation of an untried good. Dis-
satisfaction, seated musingly on a childless hearth,
thinks with envy of the father whose return Is
greeted by young voices — seated at the meal
where the little heads rise one above another like
nursery plants, it sees a black care hovering
behind every one of them, and thinks the impulses
by which men abandon freedom, and seek for
ties, are surely nothing but a brief madness. In
Godfrey's case there were further reasons why
his thoughts should be continually solicited by
this one point In his lot : his conscience, never
thoroughly easy about Eppie, now gave his child-
less home the aspect of a retribution ; and as the
time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to adopt
her, any retrieval of his error became more and
more difficult.

On this Sunday afternoon It was already four
years since there had been any allusion to the
subject between them, and Nancy supposed that
It was for ever burled.

' I wonder If he'll mind it less or more as he
gets older,' she thought ; ' I'm afraid more. Aged
people feel the miss of children : what would
father do without Priscilla ? And if I die, Godfrey
will be very lonely — not holding together with
his brothers much. But I won't be over-anxious,
and trying to make things out beforehand : I must
do my best for the present.'

!j:5JS

h,<yv<'<-AT/vv-

THE FATHER WHOSE RETURN IS GREETED BY YOUNG VOICES.

CHAP. XVII SILAS MARNER 283

With that last thought Nancy roused herself
from her reverie, and turned her eyes again
towards the forsaken page. It had been forsaken
longer than she imagined, for she was presently
surprised by the appearance of the servant with
the tea-things. It was, in fact, a little before the
usual time for tea ; but Jane had her reasons.

' Is your master come into the yard, Jane? '

* No'm, he isn't,' said Jane, with a slight
emphasis, of which, however, her mistress took
no notice.

* I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm,'
continued Jane, after a pause, *but there's folks
making haste all one way, afore the front window.
I doubt something's happened. There's niver a
man to be seen i' the yard, else I'd send and see.
I've been up into the top attic, but there's no
seeing anything for trees. I hope nobody's hurt,
that's all.'

' O, no, I daresay there's nothing much the
matter,' said Nancy. ' It's perhaps Mr. Snell's
bull got out again, as he did before.'

' I wish he mayn't gore anybody, then, that's
all,' said Jane, not altogether despising a hypothesis
which covered a few imaginary calamities.

' That girl is always terrifying me,' thought
Nancy ; * I wish Godfrey would come in.'

She went to the front window and looked as
far as she could see along the road, with an
uneasiness which she felt to be childish, for there
were now no such signs of excitement as Jane
had spoken of, and Godfrey would not be likely
to return by the village road, but by the fields.

284 SILAS MARNER part ii

She continued to stand, however, looking at the
placid churchyard with the long shadows of the
gravestones across the bright green hillocks, and
at the glowing autumn colours of the Rectory
trees beyond. Before such calm external beauty
the presence of a vague fear is more distinctly
felt — like a raven flapping its slow wing across
the sunny air. Nancy wished more and more
that Godfrey would come in.

SHE TURNED FROM THE WINDOW WITH GLADNESS IN HER EYES.

CHAPTER XVIII

Some one opened the door at the other end of
the room, and Nancy felt that it was her husband.
She turned from the window with gladness
in her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was
stilled.

* Dear, I'm so thankful you're come,' she said,
going towards him. ' I began to get. . . .'

She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying
down his hat with trembling hands, and turned
towards her with a pale face and a strange un-
answering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but
saw her as part of a scene invisible to herself.
She laid her hand on his arm, not daring to
speak again ; but he left the touch unnoticed,
and threw himself into his chair.

Jane was already at the door with hissing urn.
* Tell her to keep away, will you ? ' said Godfrey ;
and when the door was closed again he exerted
himself to speak more distinctly.

' Sit down, Nancy — there,' he said, pointing to
a chair opposite him. ' I came back as soon as I
could, to hinder anybody's telling you but me.
I've had a great shock — but I care most about
the shock it'll be to you.'

285

286 SILAS MARNER part ii

* It isn't father and Priscllla?' said Nancy,
with quivering lips, clasping her hands together
tightly on her lap.

'No, it's nobody living,' said Godfrey, unequal
to the considerate skill with which he would have
wished to make his revelation. * It's Dunstan —
my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen
years ago. We've found him — found his body —
his skeleton.'

The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in
Nancy made her feel these words a relief She
sat in comparative calmness to hear what else he
had to tell. He went on :

' The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly — from
the draining, I suppose ; and there he lies — has
lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great
stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's
my gold-handled hunting-whip, with my name
on : he took it away, without my knowing, the
day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time
he was seen.'

Godfrey paused : it was not so easy to say
what came next. ' Do you think he drowned
himself.-^' said Nancy, almost wondering that
her husband should be so deeply shaken by what
happened all those years ago to an unloved
brother, of whom worse things had been augured.

' No, he fell in,' said Godfrey, in a low but
distinct voice, as if he felt some deep meaning
in the fact. Presently he added : ' Dunstan was
the man that robbed Silas Marner.'

The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck
at this surprise and shame, for she had been bred

CHAP. XVIII SILAS MARNER 287

up to regard even a distant kinship with crime
as a dishonour.

* O Godfrey ! ' she said, with compassion in
her tone, for she had immediately reflected that
the dishonour must be felt still more keenly by
her husband.

' There was the money in the pit,' he continued
— ' all the weaver's money. Everything's been
gathered up, and they're taking the skeleton to
the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you ;
there was no hindering it ; you must know.'

He was silent, looking on the ground for two
long minutes. Nancy would have said some
words of comfort under this disgrace, but she
refrained, from an instinctive sense that there
was something behind — that Godfrey had some-
thing else to tell her. Presently he lifted his
eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as
he said :

' Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner
or later. When God Almighty wills it, our
secrets are found out. I've lived with a secret
on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer.
I wouldn't have you know it by somebody else,
and not by me — I wouldn't have you find it out
after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been " I
will" and *' I won't" with me all my life — I'll
make sure of myself now.'

Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The
eyes of the husband and wife met with awe in
them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.

* Nancy,' said Godfrey, slowly, * when I
married you, I hid something from you — some-

288 SILAS MARNER part ii

thing I ought to have told you. That woman
Marner found dead in the snow — Eppie's mother
— that wretched woman — was my wife : Eppie is
my child.'

He paused, dreading the effect of his con-
fession. But Nancy sat quite still, only that her
eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She was
pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping
her hands on her lap.

' You'll never think the same of me again,'
said Godfrey, after a little while, with some
tremor in his voice.

She was silent.

* I oughtn't to have left the child unowned :
I oughtn't to have kept it from you. But I
couldn't bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led
away into marrying her — I suffered for it.'

Still Nancy was silent, looking down ; and he
almost expected that she would presently get up
and say she would go to her father's. How
could she have any mercy for faults that must
seem so black to her, with her simple, severe
notions ?

But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again
and spoke. There was no indignation in her
voice — only deep regret.

' Godfrey, if you had but told me this six
years ago, we could have done some of our duty
by the child. Do you think I'd have refused to
take her in, if I'd known she was yours ? '

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness
of an error that was not simply futile, but had
defeated its own end. He had not measured

CHAP. XVIII SILAS MARNER 289

this wife with whom he had lived so long. But
she spoke again, with more agitation.

' And — O, Godfrey — if we'd had her from
the first, if you'd taken to her as you ought, she'd
have loved me for her mother — and you'd have
been happier with me : I could better have bore
my little baby dying, and our life might have
been more like what we used to think it 'ud be.'

The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak.

' But you wouldn't have married me then,
Nancy, if I'd told you,' said Godfrey, urged, in
the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to
himself that his conduct had not been utter folly.
' You may think you would now, but you wouldn't
then. With your pride and your father's, you'd
have hated having anything to do with me after
the talk there'd have been.'

' I can't say what I should have done about
that, Godfrey. I should never have married
anybody else. But I wasn't w^orth doing wrong
for — nothing is in this world. Nothing is so
good as it seems beforehand- — not even our
marrying wasn't, you see.' There was a faint
sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last
words.

' I'm a worse man than you thought I was,
Nancy,' said Godfrey, rather tremulously. ' Can
you forgive me ever ? '

' The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey :
you've made it up to me — you've been good to
me for fifteen years. It's another you did the
wrong to ; and I doubt it can never be all made
up for.'

u

290 SILAS MARNER part ii

* But we can take Eppie now,' said Godfrey.
' I won't mind the world knowing at last. I'll
be plain and open for the rest o' my life.'

* It'll be different coming to us, now she's
grown up,' said Nancy, shaking her head sadly.
* But it's your duty to acknowledge her and
provide for her ; and I'll do my part by her, and
pray to God Almighty to make her love me.'

' Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's
this very night, as soon as everything 's quiet at
the Stone-pits.'

CHAPTER XIX

Between eight and nine o'clock that evening,
Eppie and Silas were seated alone in the cottage.
After the great excitement the weaver had
undergone from the events of the afternoon, he
had felt a longing for this quietude, and had
even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had
naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave
him alone with his child. The excitement had
not passed away : it had only reached that stage
when the keenness of the susceptibility makes
external stimulus intolerable — when there is no
sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of
mward life, under which sleep is an impossibility.
Any one who has watched such moments in other
men remembers the brightness of the eyes and
the strange definiteness that comes over coarse
features from that transient influence. It is as if
a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had
sent wonder-working vibrations through the heavy
mortal frame — as if ' beauty born of murmuring
sound ' had passed into the face of the listener.

Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration,
as he sat in his arm-chair and looked at Eppie.
She had drawn her own chair towards his knees,

291

292 SILAS MARNER part ii

and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while
she looked up at him. On the table near them,
lit by a candle, lay the recovered gold — the old
long-loved gold, ranged in orderly heaps, as Silas
used to range it in the days when it was his only
joy. He had been telling her how he used to
count it every night, and how his soul was utterly
desolate till she was sent to him.

* At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me
now and then,' he was saying in a subdued tone,
* as if you might be changed into gold again ; for
sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I
seemed to see the gold ; and I thought I should
be glad if I could feel it, and find it was come
back. But that didn't last long. After a bit, I
should have thought it was a curse come again, if
it had drove you from me, for I'd got to feel the
need o' your looks and your voice and the touch o'
your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie,
when you were such a little un — you didn't know
what your old father Silas felt for you.'

' But I know now, father,' said Eppie. * If it
hadn't been for you, they'd have taken me to the
workhouse, and there'd have been nobody to love
me.'

' Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine.
If you hadn't been sent to save me, I should ha'
gone to the grave in my misery. The money
was taken away from me in time ; and you see
it's been kept — kept till it was wanted for you.
It's wonderful — our life is wonderful'

Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at
the money. * It takes no hold of me now,' he

She held the door xvide.

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARNER 295

said, ponderlngly — * the money doesn't. I wonder
if it ever could again — I doubt it might, if I lost
you, Eppie. I might come to think I was for-
saken again, and lose the feeling that God was
good to me.'

At that moment there was a knocking at the
door ; and Eppie was obliged to rise without
answering Silas. Beautiful she looked, with the
tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes and a
slight flush on her cheeks, as she stepped to open
the door. The flush deepened when she saw
Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her little
rustic curtsy, and held the door wide for them to
enter.

' We're disturbing you very late, my dear,'
said Mrs. Cass, taking Eppie's hand, and looking
in her face with an expression of anxious interest
and admiration. Nancy herself was pale and
tremulous.

Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs.
Cass, went to stand against Silas, opposite to them.

'Well, Marner,' said Godfrey, trying to speak
with perfect firmness, ' it's a great comfort to me
to see you with your money again, that you've
been deprived of so many years. It was one of
my family did you the wrong — the more grief to
me — and I feel bound to make up to you for it in
every way. Whatever I can do for you will be
nothing but paying a debt, even if I looked no
further than the robbery. But there are other
things I'm beholden — shall be beholden to you
for, Marner.'

Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed

296 SILAS MARKER part ii

between him and his wife that the subject of his
fatherhood should be approached very carefully, and
that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved
for the future, so that it might be made to Eppie
gradually. Nancy had urged this, because she
felt strongly the painful light in which Eppie must
inevitably see the relation between her father and
mother.

Silas, always ill at ease when he was being
spoken to by 'betters,* such as Mr. Cass — tall,
powerful, florid men, seen chiefly on horseback —
answered with some constraint :

' Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As
for the robbery, I count it no loss to me. And if
I did, you couldn't help it : you aren't answerable
for it.'

' You may look at it in that way, Marner, but
I never can ; and I hope you'll let me act according
to my own feeling of what's just. I know you're
easily contented : you've been a hard-working
man all your life.'

' Yes, sir, yes,' said Marner, meditatively. ' I
should ha' been bad off without my work : it was
what I held by when everything else was gone
from me.'

'Ah,' said Godfrey, applying Marner's words
simply to his bodily wants, ' it was a good trade
for you in this country, because there's been a
great deal of linen-weaving to be done. But you're
getting rather past such close work, Marner : It's
time you laid by and had some rest. You look a
good deal pulled down, though you're not an old
man, a7^e you ? '

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARNER 297

* Fifty-five, as near as I can say, sir,' said
Silas.

* O, why, you may live thirty years longer —
look at old Macey ! And that money on the
table, after all, is but little. It won't go far either
way — whether it's put out to interest, or you were
to live on it as long as it would last : it wouldn't
go far if you'd nobody to keep but yourself, and
you've had two to keep for a good many years
now.'

' Eh, sir,' said Silas, unaffected by anything
Godfrey was saying, ' I am in no fear o' want.
We shall do very well — Eppie and me 'ull do well
enough. There's few working-folks have got so
much laid by as that. I don't know what it is to
gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a deal — almost
too much. And as for us, it's little we want.'

* Only the garden, father,' said Eppie, blushing
up to the ears the moment after.

' You love a garden, do you, my dear ? ' said
Nancy, thinking that this turn in the point of view
might help her husband. ' We should agree in
that : I give a deal of time to the garden.'

* Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red
House,' said Godfrey, surprised at the difficulty
he found in approaching a proposition which had
seemed so easy to him in the distance. * You've
done a good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen
years. It 'ud be a great comfort to you to see
her well provided for, wouldn't it ? She looks
blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hard-
ships : she doesn't look like a strapping girl
come of working parents. You'd like to see her

298 SILAS MARKER part 11

taken care of by those who can leave her well off,
and make a lady of her ; she's more fit for it than
for a rough life, such as she might come to have
in a few years' time.'

A slight flush came over Marner's face, and
disappeared, like a passing gleam. Eppie was
simply wondering Mr. Cass should talk so about
things that seemed to have nothing to do with
reality ; but Silas was hurt and uneasy.

' I don't take your meaning, sir,' he answered,
not having words at command to express the
mingled feelings with which he had heard Mr.
Cass's words.

' Well, my meaning is this, Marner,' said
Godfrey, determined to come to the point.
' Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children
— nobody to benefit by our good home and
everything else we have — more than enough for
ourselves. And we should like to have somebody
in the place of a daughter to us — we should like
to have Eppie, and treat her in every way as our
own child. It would be a great comfort to you
in your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made
in that way, after you've been at the trouble of
bringing her up so well. And it's right you
should have every reward for that. And Eppie,
I'm sure, will always love you and be grateful to
you : she'd come and see you very often, and we
should all be on the lookout to do everything we
could towards making you comfortable.'

A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under
some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on
words that are coarser than his intentions, and

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARKER 299

that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible
feelings. While he had been speaking, Eppie
had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head,
and let her hand rest against it caressingly : she
felt him trembling violently. He was silent for
some moments when Mr. Cass had ended —
powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike
painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense
that her father was in distress ; and she was just
going to lean down and speak to him, when one
struggling dread at last gained the mastery over
every other in Silas, and he said, faintly :

' Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in
your way. Thank Mr. and Mrs. Cass.'

Eppie took her hand from her father's head,
and came forward a step. Her cheeks were
flushed, but not with shyness this time : the sense
that her father was in doubt and suffering banished
that sort of self-consciousness. She dropt a low
curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass and then to Mr. Cass,
and said :

' Thank you, ma'am — thank you, sir. But I
can't leave my father, nor own anybody nearer
than him. And I don't want to be a lady- — thank
you all the same ' (here Eppie dropped another
curtsy). ' I couldn't give up the folks I've been
used to.'

Eppie's lip began to tremble a little at the last
words. She retreated to her father's chair again,
and held him round the neck : while Silas, with a
subdued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers.

The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her
sympathy with Eppie was, naturally, divided with

300 SILAS MARNER part ii

distress on her husband's account. She dared not
speak, wondering what was going on in her
husband's mind.

Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost
all of us when we encounter an unexpected
obstacle. He had been full of his own penitence
and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the
time was left to him ; he was possessed with all-
important feelings, that were to lead to a pre-
determined course of action which he had fixed
on as the right, and he was not prepared to enter
with lively appreciation into other people's feelings
counteracting his virtuous resolves. The agitation
with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed
with anger.

' But I've a claim on you, Eppie — the strongest
of all claims. It's my duty, Marner, to own
Eppie as my child, and provide for her. She is
my own child — her mother was my wife. I have
a natural claim on her that must stand before
every other.'

Eppie had given a violent start, and turned
quite pale. Silas, on the contrary, who had been
relieved, by Eppie's answer, from the dread lest
his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the
spirit of resistance in him set free, not without a
touch of parental fierceness. 'Then, sir,' he
answered, with an accent of bitterness that had
been silent in him since the memorable day when
his youthful hope had perished — ' then, sir, why
didn't you say so sixteen years ago, and claim her
before I'd come to love her, i'stead o' coming to
take her from me now, when you might as well

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARKER 301

take the heart out o' my body ? God gave her
to me because you turned your back upon her,
and He looks upon her as mine ; you've no right
to her ! When a man turns a blessing from his
door, it falls to them as take it in.'

' I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I've
repented of my conduct in that matter,' said
Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of
Silas's words.

' I am glad to hear it, sir,' said Marner, with
gathering excitement ; * but repentance doesn't
alter what's been going on for sixteen year.
Your coming now and saying ** I'm her father,"
doesn't alter the feelings inside us. It's me she's
been calling her father ever since she could say
the word.'

' But I think you might look at the thing more
reasonably, Marner,' said Godfrey, unexpectedly
awed by the weaver's direct truth-speaking. * It
isn't as if she was to be taken quite away from
you, so that you'd never see her again. She'll be
very near you, and come to see you very often.
She'll feel just the same towards you.'

'Just the same?' said Marner, more bitterly
than ever. ' How'll she feel just the same for
me as she does now, when we eat o' the same bit,
and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same
things from one day's end to another ? Just the
same ? that's idle talk. You'd cut us i' two.'

Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern
the pregnancy of Marner's simple words, felt
rather angry again. It seemed to him that the
weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily

302 SILAS MARNER part ii

passed by those who have never tested their own
power of sacrifice) to oppose what was undoubtedly
for Eppie's welfare ; and he felt himself called
upon, for her sake, to assert his authority.

* I should have thought, Marner,' he said,
severely — * I should have thought your affection
for Eppie would have made you rejoice in what
was for her good, even if it did call upon you to
give up something. You ought to remember
your own life's uncertain, and she's at an age now
when her lot may soon be fixed in a way very
different from what it would be in her father's home :
she may marry some low working-man, and then,
whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make her
well-off. You're putting yourself in the way of
her welfare ; and though I'm sorry to hurt you
after what you've done, and what I've left undone,
I feel now it's my duty to insist on taking care of
my own daughter. I want to do my duty.'

It would be difficult to say whether it were
Silas or Eppie that was most deeply stirred by
this last speech of Godfrey's. Thought had been
very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest
between her old long-loved father and this new
unfamiliar father who had suddenly come to fill
the place of that black featureless shadow which
had held the ring and placed it on her mother's
finger. Her imagination had darted backward in
conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what
this revealed fatherhood implied ; and there were
words in Godfrey's last speech which helped to
make the previsions especially definite. Not that
these thoughts, either of past or future, determined

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARNER 303

her resolution — that was determined by the feel-
ings which vibrated to every word Silas had
uttered ; but they raised, even apart from these
feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and
the newly-revealed father.

Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in
conscience, and alarmed lest Godfrey's accusation
should be true — lest he should be raising his own
will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many
moments he was mute, struggHng for the self-
conquest necessary to the uttering of the difficult
words. They came out tremulously.

* I'll say no more. Let it be as you will.
Speak to the child. I'll hinder nothing.'

Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of
her own affections, shared her husband's view, that
Marner was not justifiable In his wish to retain
Epple, after her real father had avowed himself.
She felt that it was a very hard trial for the poor
weaver, but her code allowed no question that a
father by blood must have a claim above that of
any foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her
life to plenteous circumstances and the privileges
of 'respectability,' could not enter into the
pleasures which early nurture and habit connect
with all the little aims and efforts of the poor who
are born poor : to her mind, Epple, In being re-
stored to her birthright, was entering on a too
long withheld but unquestionable good. Hence
she heard Silas's last words with relief, and thought,
as Godfrey did, that their wish was achieved.

' Epple, my dear,' said Godfrey, looking at his
daughter, not without some embarrassment, under

304 SILAS MARNER part ii

the sense that she was old enough to judge him,
' it'll always be our wish that you should show
your love and gratitude to one who's been a father
to you so many years, and we shall want to help
you to make him comfortable in every way. But
we hope you'll come to love us as well ; and
though I haven't been what a father should have
been to you all these years, I wish to do the
utmost in my power for you for the rest of my
life, and provide for you as my only child. And
you'll have the best of mothers in my wife — that'll
be a blessing you haven't known since you were
old enough to know it.'

' My dear, you'll be a treasure to me,' said
Nancy, in her gentle voice. * We shall want for
nothing when we have our daughter.'

Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she
had done before. She held Silas's hand in hers,
and grasped it firmly — it was a weaver's hand, with
a palm and finger-tips that were sensitive to such
pressure — while she spoke with colder decision
than before.

' Thank you, ma'am — thank you, sir, for your
offers — they're very great, and far above my wish.
For I should have no delight i' life any more if I
was forced to go away from my father, and knew
he was sitting at home, a-thinking of me and feel-
ing lone. We've been used to be happy together
every day, and I can't think o' no happiness with-
out him. And he says he'd nobody i' the world
till I was sent to him, and he'd have nothing
when I was gone. And he's took care of me and
loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him

CHAP. XIX SILAS MARNER 305

as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come
between him and me.'

' But you must make sure, Eppie,' said Silas,
in a low voice — * you must make sure as you won't
ever be sorry, because you've made your choice
to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes
and things, when you might ha' had everything
o' the best.'

His sensitiveness on this point had increased as
he listened to Eppie's words of faithful affection.

' I can never be sorry, father,' said Eppie. * I
shouldn't know what to think on or to wish for
with fine things about me, as I haven't been used
to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on
things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at
church, as 'ud make them as I'm fond of think
me unfitting company for 'em. What could /
care for then ? '

Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained
questioning glance. But his eyes were fixed on
the floor, where he was moving the end of his
stick, as if he were pondering on something
absently. She thought there was a word which
might perhaps come better from her lips than
from his.

' What you say is natural, my dear child — it's
natural you should cling to those who've brought
you up,' she said, mildly ; ' but there's a duty you
owe to your lawful father. There's perhaps some-
thing to be given up on more sides than one.
When your father opens his home to you, I think
It's right you shouldn't turn your back on it.'

' I can't feel as I've got any father but one,'

X

3o6 SILAS MARNER part ii

said Eppie, Impetuously, while the tears gathered.
'I've always thought of a little home where he'd
sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do every-
thing for him : I can't think o' no other home. I
wasn't brought up to be a lady, and I can't turn
my mind to it. I like the working-folks, and
their houses, and their ways. And,' she ended
passionately, while the tears fell, ' I'm promised
to marry a working-man, as'll live with father, and
help me to take care of him.'

Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed
face and a smarting dilation of the eyes. This
frustration of a purpose towards which he had
set out under the exalted consciousness that he
was about to compensate in some degree for the
greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air
of the room stifling.

' Let us go,' he said, in an undertone.

*We won't talk of this any longer now,' said
Nancy, rising. * We're your well-wishers, my
dear — and yours too, Marner. We shall come
and see you again. It's getting late now.'

In this way she covered her husband's abrupt
departure, for Godfrey had gone straight to the
door, unable to say more.

n/nk^7<l<:a.*'<.-<v->^

that's ended !

CHAPTER XX

Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the
starlight in silence. When they entered the
oaken parlour, Godfrey threw himself into his
chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and
shawl, and stood on the hearth near her husband,
unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes,
and yet fearing to utter any word lest it might
jar on his feeling. At last Godfrey turned his
head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling
in that meeting without any movement on either
side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting
husband and wife is like the first moment of rest
or refuge from a great weariness or a great
danger — not to be interfered with by speech or
action which would distract the sensations from
the fresh enjoyment of repose.

But presently he put out his hand, and as
Nancy placed hers within it, he drew her towards
him, and said :

' That's ended ! '

She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she
stood by his side, 'Yes, I'm afraid we must give
up the hope of having her for a daughter. It
wouldn't be right to want to force her to come to

307

3o8 SILAS MARNER part ii

US against her will. We can't alter her bringing
up and what's come of it.'

'No,' said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness
of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and
unemphatic speech — ' there's debts we can't pay
like money debts, by paying extra for the years
that have slipped by. While I've been putting off
and putting off, the trees have been growing — it's
too late now. Marner was in the right in what he
said about a man's turning away a blessing from
his door : it falls to somebody else. I wanted to
pass for childless once, Nancy — I shall pass for
childless now against my wish.'

Nancy did not speak immediately, but after
a little while she asked — ' You won't make it
known, then, about Eppie's being your daughter ? '

'No — where would be the good to anybody.'^
— only harm. I must do what I can for her in
the state of life she chooses. I must see who it
is she's thinking of marrying.'

' If it won't do any good to make the thing
known,' said Nancy, who thought she might now
allow herself the relief of entertaining a feeling
which she had tried to silence before, ' I should
be very thankful for father and Priscilla never
to be troubled with knowing what was done in
the past, more than about Dunsey : it can't be
helped, their knowing that.'

' I shall put it in my will — I think I shall put
it in my will. I shouldn't like to leave anything
to be found out, like this of Dunsey,' said Godfrey,
meditatively. ' But I can't see anything but
difficulties that 'ud come from telling it now. I

CHAP. XX SILAS MARNER 309

must do what I can to make her happy in her
own way. I've a notion,' he added, after a
moment's pause, ' it's Aaron Winthrop she meant
she was engaged to. I remember seeing him
with her and Marner going away from church.'

'Well, he's very sober and industrious,' said
Nancy, trying to view the matter as cheerfully
as possible.

Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Pre-
sently he looked up at Nancy, sorrowfully, and
said :

* She's a very pretty, nice girl, isn't she,
Nancy ? '

' Yes, dear ; and with just your hair and eyes :
I wondered it had never struck me before.'

' I think she took a dislike to me at the thought
of my being her father ; I could see a change in
her manner after that'

* She couldn't bear to think of not looking on
Marner as her father,' said Nancy, not wishing
to confirm her husband's painful impression.

' She thinks I did wrong by her mother as
well as by her. She thinks me worse than I am.
But she mt^s^ think it : she can never know all.
It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my
daughter to dislike me. I should never have
got into that trouble if I'd been true to you — if
I hadn't been a fool. I'd no right to expect
anything but evil could come of that marriage —
and when I shirked doing a father's part too.'

Nancy was silent : her spirit of rectitude would
not let her try to soften the edge of what she felt
to be a just compunction. He spoke again after

3IO SILAS MARKER part ii

a little while, but the tone was rather changed :
there was tenderness mingled with the previous
self-reproach.

* And I got you, Nancy, in spite of all ; and
yet I've been grumbling and uneasy because I
hadn't something else — as if I deserved it.'

'You've never been wanting to me, Godfrey,'
said Nancy, with quiet sincerity. ' My only
trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself
to the lot that's been given us.'

' Well, perhaps it isn't too late to mend a bit
there. Though it is too late to mend some things,
say what they will.'

CHAPTER XXI

The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were
seated at their breakfast, he said to her :

' Eppie, there's a thing I've had on my mind
to do this last two year, and now the money's
been brought back to us, we can do it. I've been
turning it over and over in the night, and I think
we'll set out to-morrow, while the fine days last.
We'll leave the house and everything for your
godmother to take care on, and we'll make a little
bundle o' things and set out.'

* Where to go, daddy ? ' said Eppie, in much
surprise.

' To my old country — to the town where I
was born — up Lantern Yard. I want to see Mr.
Paston, the minister : something may ha' come
out to make 'em know I was innicent o' the
robbery. And Mr. Paston was a man wi' a deal
o' light — I want to speak to him about the drawing
o' the lots. And I should like to talk to him
about the religion o' this country-side, for I partly
think he doesn't know on it.'

Eppie was very joyful, for there was the
prospect not only of wonder and delight at seeing
a strange country, but also of coming back to tell

312 SILAS MARKER part ii

Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much wiser
than she was about most things — it would be
rather pleasant to have this little advantage over
him. Mrs. Winthrop, though possessed with a
dim fear of dangers attendant on so long a
journey, and requiring many assurances that it
would not take them out of the region of carriers'
carts and slow wagons, was nevertheless well
pleased that Silas should revisit his own country,
and find out if he had been cleared from that false
accusation.

* You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o'
your life. Master Marner,' said Dolly — ' that you
would. And if there's any light to be got up the
yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this world,
and I'd be glad on it myself, if you could bring it
back.'

So on the fourth day from that time, Silas and
Eppie, in their Sunday clothes, with a small bundle
tied in a blue linen handkerchief, were making
their way through the streets of a great manu-
facturing town. Silas, bewildered by the changes
thirty years had brought over his native place,
had stopped several persons in succession to ask
them the name of this town, that he might be
sure he was not under a mistake about it.

' Ask for Lantern Yard, father — ask this gentle-
man with the tassels on his shoulders a-standing
at the shop door ; he isn't in a hurry like the rest,'
said Eppie, in some distress at her father's bewilder-
ment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise,
the movement, and the multitude of strange in-
different faces.

TO ASK THE NAME OF THIS TOWN.

CHAP. XXI SILAS MARNER 313

' Eh, my child, he won't know anything about
it,' said Silas; 'gentlefolks didn't ever go up the
Yard. But happen somebody can tell me which
is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I
know the way out o' that as if I'd seen it
yesterday.'

With some difficulty, after many turnings and
new inquiries, they reached Prison Street ; and
the grim walls of the jail, the first object that
answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered
him with the certitude, which no assurance of the
town's name had hitherto given him, that he was
in his native place.

' Ah,' he said, drawing a long breath, ' there's
the jail, Eppie ; that's just the same : I aren't
afraid now. It's the third turning on the left
hand from the jail doors, that's the way we
must go.'

'O, what a dark ugly place!' said Eppie.
* How it hides the sky! It's worse than the
Workhouse. I'm glad you don't live in this
town now, father. Is Lantern Yard like this
street ? '

'My precious child,' said Silas, smiling, 'it
isn't a big street like this. I never was easy i'
this street myself, but I was fond o' Lantern Yard.
The shops here are all altered, I think — I can't
make 'em out ; but I shall know the turning,
because it's the third.'

* Here it is,' he said, in a tone of satisfaction,
as they came to a narrow alley. ' And then we
must go to the left again, and then straight for'ard
for a bit, up Shoe Lane : and then we shall be at

314 SILAS MARNER part ii

the entry next to the o'erhanging window, where
there's the nick in the road for the water to run.
Eh, I can see it all.'

' O, father, I'm like as if I was stifled,' said
Eppie. * I couldn't ha' thought as any folks lived
i' this way, so close together. How pretty the
Stone-pits 'ull look when we get back.'

* It looks comical to me, child, now — and
smells bad. I can't think as it usened to
smell so.'

Here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked
out from a gloomy doorway at the strangers, and
Increased Eppie's uneasiness, so that it was a
longed-for relief when they issued from the alleys
into Shoe Lane, where there was a broader strip
of sky.

' Dear heart ! ' said Silas, ' why, there's people
coming out o' the Yard as if they'd been to chapel
at this time o' day — a weekday noon ! '

Suddenly he started and stood still with a look
of distressed amazement, that alarmed Eppie.
They were before an opening in front of a large
factory, from which men and women were streaming
for their mid-day meal.

'Father,' said Eppie, clasping his arm, * what's
the matter ? '

But she had to speak again and again before
Silas could answer her.

' It's gone, child,' he said, at last, in strong
agitation — * Lantern Yard's gone. It must ha'
been here, because here's the house with the
o'erhanging window — I know that — it's just the
same ; but they've made this new opening ;

CHAP. XXI SILAS MARNER 315

and see that big factory! It's all gone — chapel
and all.'

' Come into that little brush-shop and sit down,
father — they'll let you sit down,' said Eppie, always
on the watch lest one of her father's strange attacks
should come on. ' Perhaps the people can tell
you all about it.'

But neither from the brush-maker, who had
come to Shoe Lane only ten years ago, when the
factory was already built, nor from any other
source within his reach, could Silas learn anything
of the old Lantern Yard friends, or of Mr. Paston,
the minister.

' The old place is all swep' away,' Silas said to
Dolly Winthrop on the night of his return — 'the
little graveyard and everything. The old home's
gone ; I've no home but this now. I shall
never know whether they got at the truth o' the
robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha' given
me any light about the drawing o' the lots. It's
dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is ; I doubt it'll
be dark to the last.'

'Well, yes. Master Marner,' said Dolly, who
sat with a placid listening face, now bordered by
grey hairs ; ' I doubt it may. It's the will o'
Them above as a many things should be dark to
us ; but there's some things as I've never felt i'
the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i'
the day's work. You were hard done by that
once. Master Marner, and it seems as you'll never
know the rights of it ; but that doesn't hinder
there detn£- a rights. Master Marner, for all it's
dark to you and me.'

3i6 SILAS MARNER part ii

'No,' said Silas, 'no; that doesn't hinder.
Since the time the child was sent to me and I've
come to love her as myself, I've had light enough
to trusten by ; and, now she says she'll never
leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.'

CONCLUSION

There was one time of the year which was held
in Raveloe to be especially suitable for a wedding.
It was when the great lilacs and laburnums in the
old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and
purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and
when there were calves still young enough to
want bucketfuls of fragrant milk. People were
not so busy then as they must become when the
full cheese-making and the mowing had set in ;
and besides, it was a time when a light bridal
dress could be worn with comfort and seen to
advantage.

Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than
usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie
was married, for her dress was a very light one.
She had often thought, though with a feeling of
renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-
dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest
pink sprig at wide intervals ; so that when Mrs.
Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked
Eppie to choose what it should be, previous
meditation had enabled her to give a decided
answer at once.

Seen at a little distance as she walked across
317

3i8 SILAS MARKER part ii

the churchyard and down the village, she seemed
to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked
like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was
on her husband's arm, and with the other she
clasped the hand of her father Silas.

' You won't be giving me away, father,' she
had said before they went to church ; ' you'll only
be taking Aaron to be a son to you.'

Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her hus-
band ; and there ended the little bridal procession.

There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss
Priscilla Lammeter was glad that she and her
father had happened to drive up to the door of
the Red House just in time to see this pretty
sight. They had come to keep Nancy company
to-day, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to
Lytherley, for special reasons. That seemed to
be a pity, for otherwise he might have gone, as
Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood certainly
would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he
had ordered at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a
great interest in the weaver who had been wronged
by one of his own family.

' I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck
to find a child like that and bring her up,' said
Priscilla to her father, as they sat in the gig ; ' I
should ha' had something young to think of then,
besides the lambs and the calves.'

' Yes, my dear, yes,' said Mr. Lammeter ; * one
feels that as one gets older. Things look dim to
old folks : they'd need have some young eyes
about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same
as it used to be.'

The little bridal procession.

SILAS MARNER 321

Nancy came out now to welcome her father
and sister ; and the wedding group had passed
on beyond the Red House to the humbler part
of the village.

Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that
old Mr. Macey, who had been set in his arm-
chair outside his own door, would expect some
special notice as they passed, since he was too
old to be at the wedding-feast.

' Mr. Macey's looking for a word from us,'
said Dolly ; * he'll be hurt if we pass him and say
nothing — and him so racked with rheumatiz.'

So they turned aside to shake hands with the
old man. He had looked forward to the occasion,
and had his premeditated speech.

' Well, Master Marner,' he said, in a voice
that quavered a good deal, ' I've lived to see my
words come true. I was the first to say there
was no harm in you, though your looks might be
again' you ; and I was the first to say you'd get
your money back. And it's nothing but rightful
as you should. And I'd ha' said the ''Amens."
and willing, at the holy matrimony ; but Tookey's
done it a good while now, and I hope you'll have
none the worse luck.'

In the open yard before the Rainbow, the party
of guests were already assembled, though it was
still nearly an hour before the appointed feast-time.
But by this means they could not only enjoy the
slow advent of their pleasures ; they had also
ample leisure to talk of Silas Marner's strange
history, and arrive by due degrees at the conclusion
that he had brought a blessing on himself by

Y

322 SILAS MARNER part ii

acting like a father to a lone motherless child.
Even the farrier did not negative this sentiment :
on the contrary, he took it up as peculiarly his
own, and invited any hardy person present to
contradict him. But he met with no contra-
diction ; and all differences among the company
were merged in a general agreement with Mr.
Snell's sentiment, that when a man had deserved
his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours
to wish him joy.

As the bridal party approached, a hearty cheer
was raised in the Rainbow yard ; and Ben
Winthrop, whose jokes had retained their accept-
able flavour, found it agreeable to turn in there
and receive congratulations: not requiring the
proposed interval of quiet at the Stone-pits before
joining the company.

Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever
expected there now ; and in other ways there
had been alterations at the expense of Mr. Cass,
the landlord, to suit Silas's larger family. For he
and Eppie had declared that they would rather
stay at the Stone-pits than go to any new home.
The garden was fenced with stones on two sides,
but in front there was an open fence, through
which the flowers shone with answering gladness,
as the four united people came within sight of them.

' O father,' said Eppie, ' what a pretty home
ours is ! I think nobody could be happier than
we are.'

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