nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow—poor old gentleman, I was fond on
him, though he’d got a bit confused in his head, what wi’ age and wi’
taking a drop o’ summat warm when the service come of a cold morning.
And young Mr. Lammeter, he’d have no way but he must be married in
Janiwary, which, to be sure, ’s a unreasonable time to be married in,
for it isn’t like a christening or a burying, as you can’t help; and so
Mr. Drumlow—poor old gentleman, I was fond on him—but when he come to
put the questions, he put ’em by the rule o’ contrairy, like, and he
says, ‘Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded wife?’says he, and then
he says, ‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded husband?’ says he.
But the partic’larest thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it
but me, and they answered straight off ‘yes,’ like as if it had been me
saying ‘Amen’ i’ the right place, without listening to what went
before.”
“But _you_ knew what was going on well enough, didn’t you, Mr. Macey?
You were live enough, eh?” said the butcher.
“Lor bless you!” said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the
impotence of his hearer’s imagination—“why, I was all of a tremble: it
was as if I’d been a coat pulled by the two tails, like; for I couldn’t
stop the parson, I couldn’t take upon me to do that; and yet I said to
myself, I says, ‘Suppose they shouldn’t be fast married, ’cause the
words are contrairy?’ and my head went working like a mill, for I was
allays uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round ’em; and I
says to myself, ‘Is’t the meanin’ or the words as makes folks fast i’
wedlock?’ For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom
meant right. But then, when I come to think on it, meanin’ goes but a
little way i’ most things, for you may mean to stick things together
and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? And so I says to
mysen, ‘It isn’t the meanin,’ it’s the glue.’ And I was worreted as if
I’d got three bells to pull at once, when we went into the vestry, and
they begun to sign their names. But where’s the use o’ talking?—you
can’t think what goes on in a ’cute man’s inside.”
“But you held in for all that, didn’t you, Mr. Macey?” said the
landlord.
“Aye, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi’ Mr. Drumlow, and then I
out wi’ everything, but respectful, as I allays did. And he made light
on it, and he says, ‘Pooh, pooh, Macey, make yourself easy,’ he says;
‘it’s neither the meaning nor the words—it’s the re_ges_ter does
it—that’s the glue.’ So you see he settled it easy; for parsons and
doctors know everything by heart, like, so as they aren’t worreted wi’
thinking what’s the rights and wrongs o’ things, as I’n been many and
many’s the time. And sure enough the wedding turned out all right, on’y
poor Mrs. Lammeter—that’s Miss Osgood as was—died afore the lasses was
growed up; but for prosperity and everything respectable, there’s no
family more looked on.”
Every one of Mr. Macey’s audience had heard this story many times, but
it was listened to as if it had been a favourite tune, and at certain
points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily suspended, that the
listeners might give their whole minds to the expected words. But there
was more to come; and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading
question.
“Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn’t they say, when he
come into these parts?”
“Well, yes,” said Mr. Macey; “but I daresay it’s as much as this Mr.
Lammeter’s done to keep it whole. For there was allays a talk as nobody
could get rich on the Warrens: though he holds it cheap, for it’s what
they call Charity Land.”
“Aye, and there’s few folks know so well as you how it come to be
Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the butcher.
“How should they?” said the old clerk, with some contempt. “Why, my
grandfather made the grooms’ livery for that Mr. Cliff as came and
built the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they’re stables four times
as big as Squire Cass’s, for he thought o’ nothing but hosses and
hunting, Cliff didn’t—a Lunnon tailor, some folks said, as had gone mad
wi’ cheating. For he couldn’t ride; lor bless you! they said he’d got
no more grip o’ the hoss than if his legs had been cross-sticks: my
grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so many and many a time. But
ride he would, as if Old Harry had been a-driving him; and he’d a son,
a lad o’ sixteen; and nothing would his father have him do, but he must
ride and ride—though the lad was frighted, they said. And it was a
common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out o’ the lad,
and make a gentleman on him—not but what I’m a tailor myself, but in
respect as God made me such, I’m proud on it, for ‘Macey, tailor,’ ’s
been wrote up over our door since afore the Queen’s heads went out on
the shillings. But Cliff, he was ashamed o’ being called a tailor, and
he was sore vexed as his riding was laughed at, and nobody o’ the
gentlefolks hereabout could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got
sickly and died, and the father didn’t live long after him, for he got
queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i’ the dead o’ the
night, wi’ a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o’
lights burning, for he got as he couldn’t sleep; and there he’d stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a
mercy as the stables didn’t get burnt down wi’ the poor dumb creaturs
in ’em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he’d left all his
property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that’s how the
Warrens come to be Charity Land; though, as for the stables, Mr.
Lammeter never uses ’em—they’re out o’ all charicter—lor bless you! if
you was to set the doors a-banging in ’em, it ’ud sound like thunder
half o’er the parish.”
“Aye, but there’s more going on in the stables than what folks see by
daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord.
“Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that’s all,” said Mr. Macey,
winking mysteriously, “and then make believe, if you like, as you
didn’t see lights i’ the stables, nor hear the stamping o’ the hosses,
nor the cracking o’ the whips, and howling, too, if it’s tow’rt
daybreak. ‘Cliff’s Holiday’ has been the name of it ever sin’ I were a
boy; that’s to say, some said as it was the holiday Old Harry gev him
from roasting, like. That’s what my father told me, and he was a
reasonable man, though there’s folks nowadays know what happened afore
they were born better nor they know their own business.”
“What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?” said the landlord, turning to
the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his cue. “There’s a
nut for _you_ to crack.”
Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was proud of his
position.
“Say? I say what a man _should_ say as doesn’t shut his eyes to look at
a finger-post. I say, as I’m ready to wager any man ten pound, if he’ll
stand out wi’ me any dry night in the pasture before the Warren
stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn’t
the blowing of our own noses. That’s what I say, and I’ve said it many
a time; but there’s nobody ’ull ventur a ten-pun’ note on their ghos’es
as they make so sure of.”
“Why, Dowlas, that’s easy betting, that is,” said Ben Winthrop. “You
might as well bet a man as he wouldn’t catch the rheumatise if he stood
up to ’s neck in the pool of a frosty night. It ’ud be fine fun for a
man to win his bet as he’d catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in
Cliff’s Holiday aren’t agoing to ventur near it for a matter o’ ten
pound.”
“If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it,” said Mr. Macey, with
a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs together, “he’s no call to lay
any bet—let him go and stan’ by himself—there’s nobody ’ull hinder him;
and then he can let the parish’ners know if they’re wrong.”
“Thank you! I’m obliged to you,” said the farrier, with a snort of
scorn. “If folks are fools, it’s no business o’ mine. _I_ don’t want to
make out the truth about ghos’es: I know it a’ready. But I’m not
against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as
I shall see Cliff’s Holiday, and I’ll go and stand by myself. I want no
company. I’d as lief do it as I’d fill this pipe.”
“Ah, but who’s to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? That’s no fair
bet,” said the butcher.
“No fair bet?” replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. “I should like to hear any
man stand up and say I want to bet unfair. Come now, Master Lundy, I
should like to hear you say it.”
“Very like you would,” said the butcher. “But it’s no business o’ mine.
You’re none o’ my bargains, and I aren’t a-going to try and ’bate your
price. If anybody ’ll bid for you at your own vallying, let him. I’m
for peace and quietness, I am.”
“Yes, that’s what every yapping cur is, when you hold a stick up at
him,” said the farrier. “But I’m afraid o’ neither man nor ghost, and
I’m ready to lay a fair bet. _I_ aren’t a turn-tail cur.”
“Aye, but there’s this in it, Dowlas,” said the landlord, speaking in a
tone of much candour and tolerance. “There’s folks, i’ my opinion, they
can’t see ghos’es, not if they stood as plain as a pike-staff before
’em. And there’s reason i’ that. For there’s my wife, now, can’t smell,
not if she’d the strongest o’ cheese under her nose. I never see’d a
ghost myself; but then I says to myself, ‘Very like I haven’t got the
smell for ’em.’ I mean, putting a ghost for a smell, or else
contrairiways. And so, I’m for holding with both sides; for, as I say,
the truth lies between ’em. And if Dowlas was to go and stand, and say
he’d never seen a wink o’ Cliff’s Holiday all the night through, I’d
back him; and if anybody said as Cliff’s Holiday was certain sure, for
all that, I’d back _him_ too. For the smell’s what I go by.”
The landlord’s analogical argument was not well received by the
farrier—a man intensely opposed to compromise.
“Tut, tut,” he said, setting down his glass with refreshed irritation;
“what’s the smell got to do with it? Did ever a ghost give a man a
black eye? That’s what I should like to know. If ghos’es want me to
believe in ’em, let ’em leave off skulking i’ the dark and i’ lone
places—let ’em come where there’s company and candles.”
“As if ghos’es ’ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!” said
Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier’s crass incompetence to
apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.
CHAPTER VII.
Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had a
more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them; for
the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing in the
warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his
strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement,
like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not
excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw,
not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which
Silas had entered was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one had
noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost,
might be supposed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would
tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always
said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul
went loose from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on
the whole, he would have been as well contented without it. For a few
moments there was a dead silence, Marner’s want of breath and agitation
not allowing him to speak. The landlord, under the habitual sense that
he was bound to keep his house open to all company, and confident in
the protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took on himself the
task of adjuring the ghost.
“Master Marner,” he said, in a conciliatory tone, “what’s lacking to
you? What’s your business here?”
“Robbed!” said Silas, gaspingly. “I’ve been robbed! I want the
constable—and the Justice—and Squire Cass—and Mr. Crackenthorp.”
“Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney,” said the landlord, the idea of a ghost
subsiding; “he’s off his head, I doubt. He’s wet through.”
Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently near Marner’s
standing-place; but he declined to give his services.
“Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you’ve a mind,” said
Jem, rather sullenly. “He’s been robbed, and murdered too, for what I
know,” he added, in a muttering tone.
“Jem Rodney!” said Silas, turning and fixing his strange eyes on the
suspected man.
“Aye, Master Marner, what do you want wi’ me?” said Jem, trembling a
little, and seizing his drinking-can as a defensive weapon.
“If it was you stole my money,” said Silas, clasping his hands
entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry, “give it me back—and I
won’t meddle with you. I won’t set the constable on you. Give it me
back, and I’ll let you—I’ll let you have a guinea.”
“Me stole your money!” said Jem, angrily. “I’ll pitch this can at your
eye if you talk o’ _my_ stealing your money.”
“Come, come, Master Marner,” said the landlord, now rising resolutely,
and seizing Marner by the shoulder, “if you’ve got any information to
lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you’re in your right mind, if
you expect anybody to listen to you. You’re as wet as a drownded rat.
Sit down and dry yourself, and speak straight forrard.”
“Ah, to be sure, man,” said the farrier, who began to feel that he had
not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion. “Let’s have no
more staring and screaming, else we’ll have you strapped for a madman.
That was why I didn’t speak at the first—thinks I, the man’s run mad.”
“Aye, aye, make him sit down,” said several voices at once, well
pleased that the reality of ghosts remained still an open question.
The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to sit down
on a chair aloof from every one else, in the centre of the circle and
in the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble to have any
distinct purpose beyond that of getting help to recover his money,
submitted unresistingly. The transient fears of the company were now
forgotten in their strong curiosity, and all faces were turned towards
Silas, when the landlord, having seated himself again, said—
“Now then, Master Marner, what’s this you’ve got to say—as you’ve been
robbed? Speak out.”
“He’d better not say again as it was me robbed him,” cried Jem Rodney,
hastily. “What could I ha’ done with his money? I could as easy steal
the parson’s surplice, and wear it.”
“Hold your tongue, Jem, and let’s hear what he’s got to say,” said the
landlord. “Now then, Master Marner.”
Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the mysterious
character of the robbery became evident.
This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe
neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and
feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise
of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his
passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness rarely
registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us:
there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the
smallest sign of the bud.
The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to him,
gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity of his distress:
it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner was telling
the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at once from the
nature of his statements to the absence of any motive for making them
falsely, but because, as Mr. Macey observed, “Folks as had the devil to
back ’em were not likely to be so mushed” as poor Silas was. Rather,
from the strange fact that the robber had left no traces, and had
happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by mortal
agents, when Silas would go away from home without locking his door,
the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that his disreputable
intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed, had been broken up, and
that, in consequence, this ill turn had been done to Marner by somebody
it was quite in vain to set the constable after. Why this preternatural
felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a
question which did not present itself.
“It isn’t Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner,” said the
landlord. “You mustn’t be a-casting your eye at poor Jem. There may be
a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a hare or so, if
anybody was bound to keep their eyes staring open, and niver to wink;
but Jem’s been a-sitting here drinking his can, like the decentest man
i’ the parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by your
own account.”
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey; “let’s have no accusing o’ the innicent.
That isn’t the law. There must be folks to swear again’ a man before he
can be ta’en up. Let’s have no accusing o’ the innicent, Master
Marner.”
Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be awakened
by these words. With a movement of compunction as new and strange to
him as everything else within the last hour, he started from his chair
and went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he wanted to assure
himself of the expression in his face.
“I was wrong,” he said—“yes, yes—I ought to have thought. There’s
nothing to witness against you, Jem. Only you’d been into my house
oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head. I don’t accuse
you—I won’t accuse anybody—only,” he added, lifting up his hands to his
head, and turning away with bewildered misery, “I try—I try to think
where my guineas can be.”
“Aye, aye, they’re gone where it’s hot enough to melt ’em, I doubt,”
said Mr. Macey.
“Tchuh!” said the farrier. And then he asked, with a cross-examining
air, “How much money might there be in the bags, Master Marner?”
“Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve and sixpence, last night
when I counted it,” said Silas, seating himself again, with a groan.
“Pooh! why, they’d be none so heavy to carry. Some tramp’s been in,
that’s all; and as for the no footmarks, and the bricks and the sand
being all right—why, your eyes are pretty much like a insect’s, Master
Marner; they’re obliged to look so close, you can’t see much at a time.
It’s my opinion as, if I’d been you, or you’d been me—for it comes to
the same thing—you wouldn’t have thought you’d found everything as you
left it. But what I vote is, as two of the sensiblest o’ the company
should go with you to Master Kench, the constable’s—he’s ill i’ bed, I
know that much—and get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for that’s
the law, and I don’t think anybody ’ull take upon him to contradick me
there. It isn’t much of a walk to Kench’s; and then, if it’s me as is
deppity, I’ll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your
premises; and if anybody’s got any fault to find with that, I’ll thank
him to stand up and say it out like a man.”
By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his
self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as
one of the superlatively sensible men.
“Let us see how the night is, though,” said the landlord, who also
considered himself personally concerned in this proposition. “Why, it
rains heavy still,” he said, returning from the door.
“Well, I’m not the man to be afraid o’ the rain,” said the farrier.
“For it’ll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us
had a information laid before ’em and took no steps.”
The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the
company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high
ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take on
himself the chill dignity of going to Kench’s. But to the farrier’s
strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his proposing
himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman,
claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his
father, that no doctor could be a constable.
“And you’re a doctor, I reckon, though you’re only a cow-doctor—for a
fly’s a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly,” concluded Mr. Macey,
wondering a little at his own “’cuteness”.
There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course
indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a
doctor could be a constable if he liked—the law meant, he needn’t be
one if he didn’t like. Mr. Macey thought this was nonsense, since the
law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other folks.
Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of other men not
to like being constables, how came Mr. Dowlas to be so eager to act in
that capacity?
“_I_ don’t want to act the constable,” said the farrier, driven into a
corner by this merciless reasoning; “and there’s no man can say it of
me, if he’d tell the truth. But if there’s to be any jealousy and
en_vy_ing about going to Kench’s in the rain, let them go as like
it—you won’t get me to go, I can tell you.”
By the landlord’s intervention, however, the dispute was accommodated.
Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a second person disinclined to act
officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with some old coverings,
turned out with his two companions into the rain again, thinking of the
long night-hours before him, not as those do who long to rest, but as
those who expect to “watch for the morning”.
CHAPTER VIII.
When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood’s party at midnight, he was
not much surprised to learn that Dunsey had not come home. Perhaps he
had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for another chance—perhaps, on
that foggy afternoon, he had preferred housing himself at the Red Lion
at Batherley for the night, if the run had kept him in that
neighbourhood; for he was not likely to feel much concern about leaving
his brother in suspense. Godfrey’s mind was too full of Nancy
Lammeter’s looks and behaviour, too full of the exasperation against
himself and his lot, which the sight of her always produced in him, for
him to give much thought to Wildfire, or to the probabilities of
Dunstan’s conduct.
The next morning the whole village was excited by the story of the
robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else, was occupied in gathering
and discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stone-pits. The rain
had washed away all possibility of distinguishing foot-marks, but a
close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the direction
opposite to the village, a tinder-box, with a flint and steel, half
sunk in the mud. It was not Silas’s tinder-box, for the only one he had
ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the inference generally
accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow connected
with the robbery. A small minority shook their heads, and intimated
their opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light thrown on it
by tinder-boxes, that Master Marner’s tale had a queer look with it,
and that such things had been known as a man’s doing himself a
mischief, and then setting the justice to look for the doer. But when
questioned closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and what
Master Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only shook
their heads as before, and observed that there was no knowing what some
folks counted gain; moreover, that everybody had a right to their own
opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody
knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, though he joined in the defence of
Marner against all suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the
tinder-box; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion,
tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands, and that
there was no power which could make away with the guineas without
moving the bricks. Nevertheless, he turned round rather sharply on Mr.
Tookey, when the zealous deputy, feeling that this was a view of the
case peculiarly suited to a parish-clerk, carried it still farther, and
doubted whether it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when the
circumstances were so mysterious.
“As if,” concluded Mr. Tookey—“as if there was nothing but what could
be made out by justices and constables.”
“Now, don’t you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey,” said Mr. Macey,
nodding his head aside admonishingly. “That’s what you’re allays at; if
I throw a stone and hit, you think there’s summat better than hitting,
and you try to throw a stone beyond. What I said was against the
tinder-box: I said nothing against justices and constables, for they’re
o’ King George’s making, and it ’ud be ill-becoming a man in a parish
office to fly out again’ King George.”
While these discussions were going on amongst the group outside the
Rainbow, a higher consultation was being carried on within, under the
presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector, assisted by Squire Cass and
other substantial parishioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell, the
landlord—he being, as he observed, a man accustomed to put two and two
together—to connect with the tinder-box, which, as deputy-constable, he
himself had had the honourable distinction of finding, certain
recollections of a pedlar who had called to drink at the house about a
month before, and had actually stated that he carried a tinder-box
about with him to light his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be
followed out. And as memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained
facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered
a vivid impression of the effect produced on him by the pedlar’s
countenance and conversation. He had a “look with his eye” which fell
unpleasantly on Mr. Snell’s sensitive organism. To be sure, he didn’t
say anything particular—no, except that about the tinder-box—but it
isn’t what a man says, it’s the way he says it. Moreover, he had a
swarthy foreignness of complexion which boded little honesty.
“Did he wear ear-rings?” Mr. Crackenthorp wished to know, having some
acquaintance with foreign customs.
“Well—stay—let me see,” said Mr. Snell, like a docile clairvoyante, who
would really not make a mistake if she could help it. After stretching
the corners of his mouth and contracting his eyes, as if he were trying
to see the ear-rings, he appeared to give up the effort, and said,
“Well, he’d got ear-rings in his box to sell, so it’s nat’ral to
suppose he might wear ’em. But he called at every house, a’most, in the
village; there’s somebody else, mayhap, saw ’em in his ears, though I
can’t take upon me rightly to say.”
Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else would remember
the pedlar’s ear-rings. For on the spread of inquiry among the
villagers it was stated with gathering emphasis, that the parson had
wanted to know whether the pedlar wore ear-rings in his ears, and an
impression was created that a great deal depended on the eliciting of
this fact. Of course, every one who heard the question, not having any
distinct image of the pedlar as _without_ ear-rings, immediately had an
image of him _with_ ear-rings, larger or smaller, as the case might be;
and the image was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so that the
glazier’s wife, a well-intentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose
house was among the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as
sure as ever she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas
that was ever coming, that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape of
the young moon, in the pedlar’s two ears; while Jinny Oates, the
cobbler’s daughter, being a more imaginative person, stated not only
that she had seen them too, but that they had made her blood creep, as
it did at that very moment while there she stood.
Also, by way of throwing further light on this clue of the tinder-box,
a collection was made of all the articles purchased from the pedlar at
various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be exhibited there. In
fact, there was a general feeling in the village, that for the
clearing-up of this robbery there must be a great deal done at the
Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife an excuse for going there
while it was the scene of severe public duties.
Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indignation also,
when it became known that Silas Marner, on being questioned by the
Squire and the parson, had retained no other recollection of the pedlar
than that he had called at his door, but had not entered his house,
having turned away at once when Silas, holding the door ajar, had said
that he wanted nothing. This had been Silas’s testimony, though he
clutched strongly at the idea of the pedlar’s being the culprit, if
only because it gave him a definite image of a whereabout for his gold
after it had been taken away from its hiding-place: he could see it now
in the pedlar’s box. But it was observed with some irritation in the
village, that anybody but a “blind creatur” like Marner would have seen
the man prowling about, for how came he to leave his tinder-box in the
ditch close by, if he hadn’t been lingering there? Doubtless, he had
made his observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might
know—and only look at him—that the weaver was a half-crazy miser. It
was a wonder the pedlar hadn’t murdered him; men of that sort, with
rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;
there had been one tried at the ’sizes, not so long ago but what there
were people living who remembered it.
Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell’s
frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it lightly,
stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the pedlar, and
thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all nonsense, he
said, about the man’s evil looks. But this was spoken of in the village
as the random talk of youth, “as if it was only Mr. Snell who had seen
something odd about the pedlar!” On the contrary, there were at least
half-a-dozen who were ready to go before Justice Malam, and give in
much more striking testimony than any the landlord could furnish. It
was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey would not go to Tarley and throw cold water
on what Mr. Snell said there, and so prevent the justice from drawing
up a warrant. He was suspected of intending this, when, after mid-day,
he was seen setting off on horseback in the direction of Tarley.
But by this time Godfrey’s interest in the robbery had faded before his
growing anxiety about Dunstan and Wildfire, and he was going, not to
Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in uncertainty about them any
longer. The possibility that Dunstan had played him the ugly trick of
riding away with Wildfire, to return at the end of a month, when he had
gambled away or otherwise squandered the price of the horse, was a fear
that urged itself upon him more, even, than the thought of an
accidental injury; and now that the dance at Mrs. Osgood’s was past, he
was irritated with himself that he had trusted his horse to Dunstan.
Instead of trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that
superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil
very strongly it is the less likely to come; and when he heard a horse
approaching at a trot, and saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond an
angle of the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeeded. But no
sooner did the horse come within sight, than his heart sank again. It
was not Wildfire; and in a few moments more he discerned that the rider
was not Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled up to speak, with a face that
implied something disagreeable.
“Well, Mr. Godfrey, that’s a lucky brother of yours, that Master
Dunsey, isn’t he?”
“What do you mean?” said Godfrey, hastily.
“Why, hasn’t he been home yet?” said Bryce.
“Home? no. What has happened? Be quick. What has he done with my
horse?”
“Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had parted with it
to him.”
“Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?” said Godfrey, flushed
with exasperation.
“Worse than that,” said Bryce. “You see, I’d made a bargain with him to
buy the horse for a hundred and twenty—a swinging price, but I always
liked the horse. And what does he do but go and stake him—fly at a
hedge with stakes in it, atop of a bank with a ditch before it. The
horse had been dead a pretty good while when he was found. So he hasn’t
been home since, has he?”
“Home? no,” said Godfrey, “and he’d better keep away. Confound me for a
fool! I might have known this would be the end of it.”
“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Bryce, “after I’d bargained for the
horse, it did come into my head that he might be riding and selling the
horse without your knowledge, for I didn’t believe it was his own. I
knew Master Dunsey was up to his tricks sometimes. But where can he be
gone? He’s never been seen at Batherley. He couldn’t have been hurt,
for he must have walked off.”
“Hurt?” said Godfrey, bitterly. “He’ll never be hurt—he’s made to hurt
other people.”
“And so you _did_ give him leave to sell the horse, eh?” said Bryce.
“Yes; I wanted to part with the horse—he was always a little too hard
in the mouth for me,” said Godfrey; his pride making him wince under
the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a matter of necessity. “I
was going to see after him—I thought some mischief had happened. I’ll
go back now,” he added, turning the horse’s head, and wishing he could
get rid of Bryce; for he felt that the long-dreaded crisis in his life
was close upon him. “You’re coming on to Raveloe, aren’t you?”
“Well, no, not now,” said Bryce. “I _was_ coming round there, for I had
to go to Flitton, and I thought I might as well take you in my way, and
just let you know all I knew myself about the horse. I suppose Master
Dunsey didn’t like to show himself till the ill news had blown over a
bit. He’s perhaps gone to pay a visit at the Three Crowns, by
Whitbridge—I know he’s fond of the house.”
“Perhaps he is,” said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing himself,
he said, with an effort at carelessness, “We shall hear of him soon
enough, I’ll be bound.”
“Well, here’s my turning,” said Bryce, not surprised to perceive that
Godfrey was rather “down”; “so I’ll bid you good-day, and wish I may
bring you better news another time.”
Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of
confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no
longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the very
next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be sure to
come back shortly, and, finding that he must bear the brunt of his
father’s anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even though he
had nothing to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by which he
might still win Dunstan’s silence and put off the evil day: he might
tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to him by
Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an offence before, the
affair would blow over after a little storming. But Godfrey could not
bend himself to this. He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money,
he had already been guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable
than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet
there was a distinction between the two acts which made him feel that
the one was so much more blackening than the other as to be intolerable
to him.
“I don’t pretend to be a good fellow,” he said to himself; “but I’m not
a scoundrel—at least, I’ll stop short somewhere. I’ll bear the
consequences of what I _have_ done sooner than make believe I’ve done
what I never would have done. I’d never have spent the money for my own
pleasure—I was tortured into it.”
Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional
fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a complete avowal
to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire’s loss till the
next morning, that it might serve him as an introduction to heavier
matter. The old Squire was accustomed to his son’s frequent absence
from home, and thought neither Dunstan’s nor Wildfire’s non-appearance
a matter calling for remark. Godfrey said to himself again and again,
that if he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he might never
have another; the revelation might be made even in a more odious way
than by Dunstan’s malignity: _she_ might come as she had threatened to
do. And then he tried to make the scene easier to himself by rehearsal:
he made up his mind how he would pass from the admission of his
weakness in letting Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan had
a hold on him which he had been unable to shake off, and how he would
work up his father to expect something very bad before he told him the
fact. The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in
violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had
subsided—as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many
violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of
his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating
force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became
unrelentingly hard. This was his system with his tenants: he allowed
them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their stock,
sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,—and then, when he
became short of money in consequence of this indulgence, he took the
hardest measures and would listen to no appeal. Godfrey knew all this,
and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered
annoyance from witnessing his father’s sudden fits of unrelentingness,
for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.
(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these
fits; _that_ seemed to him natural enough.) Still there was just the
chance, Godfrey thought, that his father’s pride might see this
marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up, rather than
turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for ten
miles round.
This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him
pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he had
done with inward debating. But when he awoke in the still morning
darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it
was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further
work. Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the
presence of nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of
disgrace came back—the old shrinking from the thought of raising a
hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy—the old disposition to rely
on chances which might be favourable to him, and save him from
betrayal. Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by his own
act? He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday. He had been in
a rage with Dunstan, and had thought of nothing but a thorough break-up
of their mutual understanding; but what it would be really wisest for
him to do, was to try and soften his father’s anger against Dunsey, and
keep things as nearly as possible in their old condition. If Dunsey did
not come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the
rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away still
longer), everything might blow over.
CHAPTER IX.
Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but
lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had
finished their meal and gone out, awaiting his father, who always took
a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one breakfasted at
a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was always the
latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before
he tried it. The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly
two hours before he presented himself—a tall, stout man of sixty, with
a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed
contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His person showed marks of
habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something
in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the
ordinary farmers in the parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined
as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness
of being in the vicinity of their “betters,” wanted that
self-possession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which
belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with
whom he had personally little more to do than with America or the
stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to
the presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that
was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with any
gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by
comparison.
He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, “What, sir!
haven’t _you_ had your breakfast yet?” but there was no pleasant
morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but
because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as
the Red House.
“Yes, sir,” said Godfrey, “I’ve had my breakfast, but I was waiting to
speak to you.”
“Ah! well,” said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his
chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in
Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of
beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him.
“Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters’ business is your
own pleasure, mostly. There’s no hurry about it for anybody but
yourselves.”
The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons,’ but it was a fiction
kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was
exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was
constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey
waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the
door closed—an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had
consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man’s holiday dinner.
“There’s been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire,” he began;
“happened the day before yesterday.”
“What! broke his knees?” said the Squire, after taking a draught of
ale. “I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never
threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha’ whistled for
another, for _my_ father wasn’t quite so ready to unstring as some
other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new leaf—_they_
must. What with mortgages and arrears, I’m as short o’ cash as a
roadside pauper. And that fool Kimble says the newspaper’s talking
about peace. Why, the country wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Prices
’ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I
sold all the fellows up. And there’s that damned Fowler, I won’t put up
with him any longer; I’ve told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The
lying scoundrel told me he’d be sure to pay me a hundred last month. He
takes advantage because he’s on that outlying farm, and thinks I shall
forget him.”
The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted
manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext
for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward off
any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire,
and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of
cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the
utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, now he
had begun.
“It’s worse than breaking the horse’s knees—he’s been staked and
killed,” he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun to
cut his meat. “But I wasn’t thinking of asking you to buy me another
horse; I was only thinking I’d lost the means of paying you with the
price of Wildfire, as I’d meant to do. Dunsey took him to the hunt to
sell him for me the other day, and after he’d made a bargain for a
hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some
fool’s leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it hadn’t been
for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds this morning.”
The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son
in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable
guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the
paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him
a hundred pounds.
“The truth is, sir—I’m very sorry—I was quite to blame,” said Godfrey.
“Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He paid it to me, when I was over
there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered me for the money, and I
let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before
this.”
The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and
found utterance difficult. “You let Dunsey have it, sir? And how long
have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must _collogue_ with him to
embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won’t have
it. I’ll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together, and
marry again. I’d have you to remember, sir, my property’s got no entail
on it;—since my grandfather’s time the Casses can do as they like with
their land. Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the money! Why should
you let Dunsey have the money? There’s some lie at the bottom of it.”
“There’s no lie, sir,” said Godfrey. “I wouldn’t have spent the money
myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him have it.
But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That’s the whole story. I
never meant to embezzle money, and I’m not the man to do it. You never
knew me do a dishonest trick, sir.”
“Where’s Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and
fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted
the money for, and what he’s done with it. He shall repent it. I’ll
turn him out. I said I would, and I’ll do it. He shan’t brave me. Go
and fetch him.”
“Dunsey isn’t come back, sir.”
“What! did he break his own neck, then?” said the Squire, with some
disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.
“No, he wasn’t hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and
Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again
by-and-by. I don’t know where he is.”
“And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that,”
said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within
reach.
“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a
feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being
sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without
the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented
motives.
“You don’t know? I tell you what it is, sir. You’ve been up to some
trick, and you’ve been bribing him not to tell,” said the Squire, with
a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat
violently at the nearness of his father’s guess. The sudden alarm
pushed him on to take the next step—a very slight impulse suffices for
that on a downward road.
“Why, sir,” he said, trying to speak with careless ease, “it was a
little affair between me and Dunsey; it’s no matter to anybody else.
It’s hardly worth while to pry into young men’s fooleries: it wouldn’t
have made any difference to you, sir, if I’d not had the bad luck to
lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money.”
“Fooleries! Pshaw! it’s time you’d done with fooleries. And I’d have
you know, sir, you _must_ ha’ done with ’em,” said the Squire, frowning
and casting an angry glance at his son. “Your goings-on are not what I
shall find money for any longer. There’s my grandfather had his stables
full o’ horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what
I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn’t four good-for-nothing
fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I’ve been too good a father
to you all—that’s what it is. But I shall pull up, sir.”
Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his
judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father’s indulgence
had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline
that would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better
will. The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught of
ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.
“It’ll be all the worse for you, you know—you’d need try and help me
keep things together.”
“Well, sir, I’ve often offered to take the management of things, but
you know you’ve taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted to
push you out of your place.”
“I know nothing o’ your offering or o’ my taking it ill,” said the
Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified
by detail; “but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o’
marrying, and I didn’t offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some
fathers would. I’d as lieve you married Lammeter’s daughter as anybody.
I suppose, if I’d said you nay, you’d ha’ kept on with it; but, for
want o’ contradiction, you’ve changed your mind. You’re a shilly-shally
fellow: you take after your poor mother. She never had a will of her
own; a woman has no call for one, if she’s got a proper man for her
husband. But _your_ wife had need have one, for you hardly know your
own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. The lass hasn’t
said downright she won’t have you, has she?”
“No,” said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; “but I don’t
think she will.”
“Think! why haven’t you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to it, you
want to have _her_—that’s the thing?”
“There’s no other woman I want to marry,” said Godfrey, evasively.
“Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that’s all, if you haven’t
the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn’t likely to be loath for his
daughter to marry into _my_ family, I should think. And as for the
pretty lass, she wouldn’t have her cousin—and there’s nobody else, as I
see, could ha’ stood in your way.”
“I’d rather let it be, please sir, at present,” said Godfrey, in alarm.
“I think she’s a little offended with me just now, and I should like to
speak for myself. A man must manage these things for himself.”
“Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can’t turn over a new
leaf. That’s what a man must do when he thinks o’ marrying.”
“I don’t see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn’t like
to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don’t think she’d
come to live in this house with all my brothers. It’s a different sort
of life to what she’s been used to.”
“Not come to live in this house? Don’t tell me. You ask her, that’s
all,” said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh.
“I’d rather let the thing be, at present, sir,” said Godfrey. “I hope
you won’t try to hurry it on by saying anything.”
“I shall do what I choose,” said the Squire, “and I shall let you know
I’m master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop into
somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox’s, but wait
for me. And tell ’em to get my horse saddled. And stop: look out and
get that hack o’ Dunsey’s sold, and hand me the money, will you? He’ll
keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he’s sneaking—I
daresay you do—you may tell him to spare himself the journey o’ coming
back home. Let him turn ostler, and keep himself. He shan’t hang on me
any more.”
“I don’t know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn’t my place to tell
him to keep away,” said Godfrey, moving towards the door.
“Confound it, sir, don’t stay arguing, but go and order my horse,” said
the Squire, taking up a pipe.
Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved by
the sense that the interview was ended without having made any change
in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself still
further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about his
proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some after-dinner
words of his father’s to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the
embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she
seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual refuge, that of
hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance
which would save him from unpleasant consequences—perhaps even justify
his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this point of
trusting to some throw of fortune’s dice, Godfrey can hardly be called
specially old-fashioned. Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all
men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe
in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is
ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues
that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let
him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that
brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible
benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his
interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet
forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he
will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone
may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his
friend’s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity
called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never
know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities
of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will
infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in
as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that
religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop
after its kind.
CHAPTER X.
Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man of
capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions
without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were not
on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect
the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot concerning a
pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a foreign complexion,
carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and wearing large rings in his
ears. But either because inquiry was too slow-footed to overtake him,
or because the description applied to so many pedlars that inquiry did
not know how to choose among them, weeks passed away, and there was no
other result concerning the robbery than a gradual cessation of the
excitement it had caused in Raveloe. Dunstan Cass’s absence was hardly
a subject of remark: he had once before had a quarrel with his father,
and had gone off, nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six
weeks, take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His
own family, who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference
that the Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old
quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr.
Osgood noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and
committed some offence against his father, was enough to prevent
surprise. To connect the fact of Dunsey’s disappearance with that of
the robbery occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of
every one’s thought—even Godfrey’s, who had better reason than any one
else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no mention
of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago, when it
was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his imagination
constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him continually in
some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on leaving
Wildfire—saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating a
return home to the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even
if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts together, I doubt
whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive respectability
of a family with a mural monument and venerable tankards, would not
have been suppressed as of unsound tendency. But Christmas puddings,
brawn, and abundance of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental
originality into the channel of nightmare, are great preservatives
against a dangerous spontaneity of waking thought.
When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good
company, the balance continued to waver between the rational
explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an
impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of the
tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a muddle-headed
and credulous set, who, because they themselves were wall-eyed,
supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook; and the
adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their antagonists
were animals inclined to crow before they had found any corn—mere
skimming-dishes in point of depth—whose clear-sightedness consisted in
supposing there was nothing behind a barn-door because they couldn’t
see through it; so that, though their controversy did not serve to
elicit the fact concerning the robbery, it elicited some true opinions
of collateral importance.
But while poor Silas’s loss served thus to brush the slow current of
Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering
desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were arguing
at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he lost his gold,
it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a life as his could
hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction
but such as would put an end to it altogether. But in reality it had
been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which fenced him in
from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and
though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted
thing, it satisfied the need for clinging. But now the fence was broken
down—the support was snatched away. Marner’s thoughts could no longer
move in their old round, and were baffled by a blank like that which
meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on its homeward
path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern in
the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet was gone;
the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening had no
phantasm of delight to still the poor soul’s craving. The thought of
the money he would get by his actual work could bring no joy, for its
meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and hope was too
heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination to dwell on the
growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.
He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and
then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his thoughts
had come round again to the sudden chasm—to the empty evening-time. And
all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he
leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his head with his hands,
and moaned very low—not as one who seeks to be heard.
And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by
the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a man
who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what was
worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a neighbourly
way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to keep his
own. He was generally spoken of as a “poor mushed creatur”; and that
avoidance of his neighbours, which had before been referred to his
ill-will and to a probable addiction to worse company, was now
considered mere craziness.
This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The odour
of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when
superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in
well-to-do families; and Silas’s misfortune had brought him uppermost
in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too,
while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from
him because he thought too much of it and never came to church,
enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs’ pettitoes, well calculated
to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character.
Neighbours who had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a
disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his misfortune at some
length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the
trouble of calling at his cottage and getting him to repeat all the
details on the very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by
saying, “Well, Master Marner, you’re no worse off nor other poor folks,
after all; and if you was to be crippled, the parish ’ud give you a
’lowance.”
I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours
with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of
ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and
pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language
is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was a
fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and
bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and
hypocritical.
Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas know
that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed
lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs—
“Come, Master Marner, why, you’ve no call to sit a-moaning. You’re a
deal better off to ha’ lost your money, nor to ha’ kep it by foul
means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as you
were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than what you
are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced creatur, partly
like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there’s no knowing: it isn’t
every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry’s had the making of—I mean,
speaking o’ toads and such; for they’re often harmless, like, and
useful against varmin. And it’s pretty much the same wi’ you, as fur as
I can see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing, if
you brought that sort o’ knowledge from distant parts, you might ha’
been a bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn’t well come by, why,
you might ha’ made up for it by coming to church reg’lar; for, as for
the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I’ve been at the christening of
’em again and again, and they took the water just as well. And that’s
reasonable; for if Old Harry’s a mind to do a bit o’ kindness for a
holiday, like, who’s got anything against it? That’s my thinking; and
I’ve been clerk o’ this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there’s no cussing o’ folks
as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he
will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying—for there’s windings i’
things as they may carry you to the fur end o’ the prayer-book afore
you get back to ’em—my advice is, as you keep up your sperrits; for as
for thinking you’re a deep un, and ha’ got more inside you nor ’ull
bear daylight, I’m not o’ that opinion at all, and so I tell the
neighbours. For, says I, you talk o’ Master Marner making out a
tale—why, it’s nonsense, that is: it ’ud take a ’cute man to make a
tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a rabbit.”
During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his
previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his
hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been
listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply, but
Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant to be
good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine
falls on the wretched—he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was
very far off him.
“Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?” said Mr.
Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.
“Oh,” said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, “I thank
you—thank you—kindly.”
“Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would,” said Mr. Macey; “and my
advice is—have you got a Sunday suit?”
“No,” said Marner.
“I doubted it was so,” said Mr. Macey. “Now, let me advise you to get a
Sunday suit: there’s Tookey, he’s a poor creatur, but he’s got my
tailoring business, and some o’ my money in it, and he shall make a
suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can come to
church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you’ve never heared me say
‘Amen’ since you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no
time, for it’ll be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself, for I
mayn’t be equil to stand i’ the desk at all, come another winter.” Here
Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his hearer;
but not observing any, he went on. “And as for the money for the suit
o’ clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound a-week at your weaving,
Master Marner, and you’re a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed.
Why, you couldn’t ha’ been five-and-twenty when you come into these
parts, eh?”
Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, “I don’t know; I can’t rightly say—it’s a long while
since.”
After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr.
Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner’s
head was “all of a muddle,” and that it was to be doubted if he ever
knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many
a dog.
Another of Silas’s comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright’s wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in
the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in
the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with
Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours—a wish to be
better than the “common run,” that would have implied a reflection on
those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and
had an equal right to the burying-service. At the same time, it was
understood to be requisite for all who were not household servants, or
young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire
Cass himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
“good livers” went to church with greater, though still with moderate,
frequency.
Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw
a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which
it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the
vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition
of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was
to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and
pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always first thought of
in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when leeches
were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly
nurse. She was a “comfortable woman”—good-looking, fresh-complexioned,
having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a
sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never
whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and
inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a
funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben
Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with
Dolly; but she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as
everything else, considering that “men _would_ be so,” and viewing the
stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make
naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn
strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a
sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with
her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small
lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron,
an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which
looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous
curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed
weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much
increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the
mysterious sound of the loom.
“Ah, it is as I thought,” said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.
They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come
to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have done, at a
visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his heart had
been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket
was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his
prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and
half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from
without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of
his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.
He opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning
her greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that
she was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed
the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest
way—
“I’d a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out
better nor common, and I’d ha’ asked you to accept some, if you’d
thought well. I don’t eat such things myself, for a bit o’ bread’s what
I like from one year’s end to the other; but men’s stomichs are made so
comical, they want a change—they do, I know, God help ’em.”
Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her
kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to
look so at everything he took into his hand—eyed all the while by the
wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of
his mother’s chair, and was peeping round from behind it.
“There’s letters pricked on ’em,” said Dolly. “I can’t read ’em myself,
and there’s nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they
mean; but they’ve a good meaning, for they’re the same as is on the
pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?”
Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.
“Oh, go, that’s naughty,” said his mother, mildly. “Well, whativer the
letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and it’s a stamp as has been in
our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used
to put it on the cakes, and I’ve allays put it on too; for if there’s
any good, we’ve need of it i’ this world.”
“It’s I. H. S.,” said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped
round the chair again.
“Well, to be sure, you can read ’em off,” said Dolly. “Ben’s read ’em
to me many and many a time, but they slip out o’ my mind again; the
more’s the pity, for they’re good letters, else they wouldn’t be in the
church; and so I prick ’em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though
sometimes they won’t hold, because o’ the rising—for, as I said, if
there’s any good to be got we’ve need of it i’ this world—that we have;
and I hope they’ll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it’s wi’ that
will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held better
nor common.”
Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no
possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made
itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than
before—“Thank you—thank you kindly.” But he laid down the cakes and
seated himself absently—drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit
towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly’s kindness,
could tend for him.
“Ah, if there’s good anywhere, we’ve need of it,” repeated Dolly, who
did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at Silas
pityingly as she went on. “But you didn’t hear the church-bells this
morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn’t know it was Sunday. Living
so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and then, when your loom
makes a noise, you can’t hear the bells, more partic’lar now the frost
kills the sound.”
“Yes, I did; I heard ’em,” said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere
accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had been no
bells in Lantern Yard.
“Dear heart!” said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. “But what a
pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself—if you
_didn’t_ go to church; for if you’d a roasting bit, it might be as you
couldn’t leave it, being a lone man. But there’s the bakehus, if you
could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and
then,—not every week, in course—I shouldn’t like to do that myself,—you
might carry your bit o’ dinner there, for it’s nothing but right to
have a bit o’ summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can’t
know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo’ Christmas-day, this
blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to
the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear
the anthim, and then take the sacramen,’ you’d be a deal the better,
and you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i’
Them as knows better nor we do, seein’ you’d ha’ done what it lies on
us all to do.”
Dolly’s exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for
her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would
have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of
gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before been closely
urged on the point of his absence from church, which had only been
thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct
and simple to evade Dolly’s appeal.
“Nay, nay,” he said, “I know nothing o’ church. I’ve never been to
church.”
“No!” said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking herself
of Silas’s advent from an unknown country, she said, “Could it ha’ been
as they’d no church where you was born?”
“Oh, yes,” said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of
leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. “There was churches—a
many—it was a big town. But I knew nothing of ’em—I went to chapel.”
Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of
inquiring further, lest “chapel” might mean some haunt of wickedness.
After a little thought, she said—
“Well, Master Marner, it’s niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and
if you’ve niver had no church, there’s no telling the good it’ll do
you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I’ve been
and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o’ God,
as Mr. Macey gives out—and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more
partic’lar on Sacramen’ Day; and if a bit o’ trouble comes, I feel as I
can put up wi’ it, for I’ve looked for help i’ the right quarter, and
gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last;
and if we’n done our part, it isn’t to be believed as Them as are above
us ’ull be worse nor we are, and come short o’ Their’n.”
Poor Dolly’s exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather
unmeaningly on Silas’s ears, for there was no word in it that could
rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension
was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of
Dolly’s, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He
remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly’s
speech which he fully understood—her recommendation that he should go
to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief
questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple
business, that words did not easily come to him without the urgency of
a distinct purpose.
But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver’s awful
presence, had advanced to his mother’s side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly’s signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a
little, and rubbed his head against his mother’s shoulder, but still
thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for
it.
“Oh, for shame, Aaron,” said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; “why, you don’t want cake again yet awhile. He’s wonderful
hearty,” she went on, with a little sigh—“that he is, God knows. He’s
my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must
allays hev him in our sight—that we must.”
She stroked Aaron’s brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a “pictur of a child”. But Marner, on the other side
of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round,
with two dark spots in it.
“And he’s got a voice like a bird—you wouldn’t think,” Dolly went on;
“he can sing a Christmas carril as his father’s taught him; and I take
it for a token as he’ll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so
quick. Come, Aaron, stan’ up and sing the carril to Master Marner,
come.”
Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother’s shoulder.
“Oh, that’s naughty,” said Dolly, gently. “Stan’ up, when mother tells
you, and let me hold the cake till you’ve done.”
Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under
protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness,
consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and
then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious
for the “carril,” he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted,
and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as
far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head
untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody
that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer:
“God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas-day.”
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.
“That’s Christmas music,” she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. “There’s no other music equil to the
Christmas music—‘Hark the erol angils sing.’ And you may judge what it
is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you
can’t help thinking you’ve got to a better place a’ready—for I wouldn’t
speak ill o’ this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows best—but
what wi’ the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the
hard dying, as I’ve seen times and times, one’s thankful to hear of a
better. The boy sings pretty, don’t he, Master Marner?”
“Yes,” said Silas, absently, “very pretty.”
The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of the
effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was
grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a
bit more cake.
“Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner,” said Dolly, holding down Aaron’s
willing hands. “We must be going home now. And so I wish you good-bye,
Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in your inside, as you
can’t fend for yourself, I’ll come and clean up for you, and get you a
bit o’ victual, and willing. But I beg and pray of you to leave off
weaving of a Sunday, for it’s bad for soul and body—and the money as
comes i’ that way ’ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, if it
doesn’t fly away, nobody knows where, like the white frost. And you’ll
excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I wish you
well—I do. Make your bow, Aaron.”
Silas said “Good-bye, and thank you kindly,” as he opened the door for
Dolly, but he couldn’t help feeling relieved when she was gone—relieved
that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her simple view of life
and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a
report of unknown objects, which his imagination could not fashion. The
fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been
unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken rivulet, with only this
difference, that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it
wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.
And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and Dolly
Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating his meat
in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a neighbourly
present. In the morning he looked out on the black frost that seemed to
press cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half-icy red pool
shivered under the bitter wind; but towards evening the snow began to
fall, and curtained from him even that dreary outlook, shutting him
close up with his narrow grief. And he sat in his robbed home through
the livelong evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock his
door, pressing his head between his hands and moaning, till the cold
grasped him and told him that his fire was grey.
Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas Marner
who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted in an
unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.
But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was
fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among the
abundant dark-green boughs—faces prepared for a longer service than
usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those green boughs, the
hymn and anthem never heard but at Christmas—even the Athanasian Creed,
which was discriminated from the others only as being longer and of
exceptional virtue, since it was only read on rare occasions—brought a
vague exulting sense, for which the grown men could as little have
found words as the children, that something great and mysterious had
been done for them in heaven above and in earth below, which they were
appropriating by their presence. And then the red faces made their way
through the black biting frost to their own homes, feeling themselves
free for the rest of the day to eat, drink, and be merry, and using
that Christian freedom without diffidence.
At Squire Cass’s family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan—nobody
was sorry for his absence, or feared it would be too long. The doctor
and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the annual
Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions, rising to the
climax of Mr. Kimble’s experience when he walked the London hospitals
thirty years back, together with striking professional anecdotes then
gathered. Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble’s annual failure
to follow suit, and uncle Kimble’s irascibility concerning the odd
trick which was rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his side,
without a general visitation of tricks to see that they were formed on
sound principles: the whole being accompanied by a strong steaming
odour of spirits-and-water.
But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly family party, was not
the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the season at the Red House.
It was the great dance on New Year’s Eve that made the glory of Squire
Cass’s hospitality, as of his forefathers,’ time out of mind. This was
the occasion when all the society of Raveloe and Tarley, whether old
acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled
acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves,
or acquaintances founded on intermittent condescension, counted on
meeting and on comporting themselves with mutual appropriateness. This
was the occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions sent their
bandboxes before them, supplied with more than their evening costume;
for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town
entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table
at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for
a siege; and as for the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on floors,
they were as plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that
had killed its own geese for many generations.
Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year’s Eve with a foolish
reckless longing, that made him half deaf to his importunate companion,
Anxiety.
“Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blow-up, and
how will you bribe his spite to silence?” said Anxiety.
“Oh, he won’t come home before New Year’s Eve, perhaps,” said Godfrey;
“and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with her, and get a kind look
from her in spite of herself.”
“But money is wanted in another quarter,” said Anxiety, in a louder
voice, “and how will you get it without selling your mother’s diamond
pin? And if you don’t get it...?”
“Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any rate,
there’s one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy is coming.”
“Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that will
oblige you to decline marrying her—and to give your reasons?”
“Hold your tongue, and don’t worry me. I can see Nancy’s eyes, just as
they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already.”
But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to be
utterly quieted even by much drinking.
CHAPTER XI.
Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a pillion,
and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with a crown
resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a coachman’s
greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of
miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal deficiencies of
contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow cheeks into lively
contrast. It was all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy Lammeter’s
beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in that costume, as,
seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one arm
round him, and looked down, with open-eyed anxiety, at the treacherous
snow-covered pools and puddles, which sent up formidable splashings of
mud under the stamp of Dobbin’s foot. A painter would, perhaps, have
preferred her in those moments when she was free from
self-consciousness; but certainly the bloom on her cheeks was at its
highest point of contrast with the surrounding drab when she arrived at
the door of the Red House, and saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift her
from the pillion. She wished her sister Priscilla had come up at the
same time behind the servant, for then she would have contrived that
Mr. Godfrey should have lifted off Priscilla first, and, in the
meantime, she would have persuaded her father to go round to the
horse-block instead of alighting at the door-steps. It was very
painful, when you had made it quite clear to a young man that you were
determined not to marry him, however much he might wish it, that he
would still continue to pay you marked attentions; besides, why didn’t
he always show the same attentions, if he meant them sincerely, instead
of being so strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if
he didn’t want to speak to her, and taking no notice of her for weeks
and weeks, and then, all on a sudden, almost making love again?
Moreover, it was quite plain he had no real love for her, else he would
not let people have _that_ to say of him which they did say. Did he
suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire or no
squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had been used to see
in her own father, who was the soberest and best man in that
country-side, only a little hot and hasty now and then, if things were
not done to the minute.
All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy’s mind, in their habitual
succession, in the moments between her first sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass
standing at the door and her own arrival there. Happily, the Squire
came out too and gave a loud greeting to her father, so that, somehow,
under cover of this noise she seemed to find concealment for her
confusion and neglect of any suitably formal behaviour, while she was
being lifted from the pillion by strong arms which seemed to find her
ridiculously small and light. And there was the best reason for
hastening into the house at once, since the snow was beginning to fall
again, threatening an unpleasant journey for such guests as were still
on the road. These were a small minority; for already the afternoon was
beginning to decline, and there would not be too much time for the
ladies who came from a distance to attire themselves in readiness for
the early tea which was to inspirit them for the dance.
There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered,
mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but the
Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so
much that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble,
who did the honours at the Red House on these great occasions, came
forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her up-stairs. Mrs.
Kimble was the Squire’s sister, as well as the doctor’s wife—a double
dignity, with which her diameter was in direct proportion; so that, a
journey up-stairs being rather fatiguing to her, she did not oppose
Miss Nancy’s request to be allowed to find her way alone to the Blue
Room, where the Miss Lammeters’ bandboxes had been deposited on their
arrival in the morning.
There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine compliments were
not passing and feminine toilettes going forward, in various stages, in
space made scanty by extra beds spread upon the floor; and Miss Nancy,
as she entered the Blue Room, had to make her little formal curtsy to a
group of six. On the one hand, there were ladies no less important than
the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant’s daughters from Lytherly,
dressed in the height of fashion, with the tightest skirts and the
shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures)
with a shyness not unsustained by inward criticism. Partly, Miss
Ladbrook felt that her own skirt must be regarded as unduly lax by the
Miss Gunns, and partly, that it was a pity the Miss Gunns did not show
that judgment which she herself would show if she were in their place,
by stopping a little on this side of the fashion. On the other hand,
Mrs. Ladbrook was standing in skull-cap and front, with her turban in
her hand, curtsying and smiling blandly and saying, “After you, ma’am,”
to another lady in similar circumstances, who had politely offered the
precedence at the looking-glass.
But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her curtsy than an elderly lady came
forward, whose full white muslin kerchief, and mob-cap round her curls
of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast with the puffed yellow
satins and top-knotted caps of her neighbours. She approached Miss
Nancy with much primness, and said, with a slow, treble suavity—
“Niece, I hope I see you well in health.” Miss Nancy kissed her aunt’s
cheek dutifully, and answered, with the same sort of amiable primness,
“Quite well, I thank you, aunt; and I hope I see you the same.”
“Thank you, niece; I keep my health for the present. And how is my
brother-in-law?”
These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it was
ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were all as well as usual, and
the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must certainly arrive
shortly, and that travelling on pillions in snowy weather was
unpleasant, though a joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy was
formally introduced to her aunt’s visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being
the daughters of a mother known to _their_ mother, though now for the
first time induced to make a journey into these parts; and these ladies
were so taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and figure in
an out-of-the-way country place, that they began to feel some curiosity
about the dress she would put on when she took off her joseph. Miss
Nancy, whose thoughts were always conducted with the propriety and
moderation conspicuous in her manners, remarked to herself that the
Miss Gunns were rather hard-featured than otherwise, and that such very
low dresses as they wore might have been attributed to vanity if their
shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they were, it was not
reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks from a love of
display, but rather from some obligation not inconsistent with sense
and modesty. She felt convinced, as she opened her box, that this must
be her aunt Osgood’s opinion, for Miss Nancy’s mind resembled her
aunt’s to a degree that everybody said was surprising, considering the
kinship was on Mr. Osgood’s side; and though you might not have
supposed it from the formality of their greeting, there was a devoted
attachment and mutual admiration between aunt and niece. Even Miss
Nancy’s refusal of her cousin Gilbert Osgood (on the ground solely that
he was her cousin), though it had grieved her aunt greatly, had not in
the least cooled the preference which had determined her to leave Nancy
several of her hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert’s future wife be whom
she might.
Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the Miss Gunns were quite
content that Mrs. Osgood’s inclination to remain with her niece gave
them also a reason for staying to see the rustic beauty’s toilette. And
it was really a pleasure—from the first opening of the bandbox, where
everything smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, to the clasping of the
small coral necklace that fitted closely round her little white neck.
Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and
nattiness: not a crease was where it had no business to be, not a bit
of her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; the
very pins on her pincushion were stuck in after a pattern from which
she was careful to allow no aberration; and as for her own person, it
gave the same idea of perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a
little bird. It is true that her light-brown hair was cropped behind
like a boy’s, and was dressed in front in a number of flat rings, that
lay quite away from her face; but there was no sort of coiffure that
could make Miss Nancy’s cheek and neck look otherwise than pretty; and
when at last she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her lace
tucker, her coral necklace, and coral ear-drops, the Miss Gunns could
see nothing to criticise except her hands, which bore the traces of
butter-making, cheese-crushing, and even still coarser work. But Miss
Nancy was not ashamed of that, for even while she was dressing she
narrated to her aunt how she and Priscilla had packed their boxes
yesterday, because this morning was baking morning, and since they were
leaving home, it was desirable to make a good supply of meat-pies for
the kitchen; and as she concluded this judicious remark, she turned to
the Miss Gunns that she might not commit the rudeness of not including
them in the conversation. The Miss Gunns smiled stiffly, and thought
what a pity it was that these rich country people, who could afford to
buy such good clothes (really Miss Nancy’s lace and silk were very
costly), should be brought up in utter ignorance and vulgarity. She
actually said “mate” for “meat,” “’appen” for “perhaps,” and “oss” for
“horse,” which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly society, who
habitually said ’orse, even in domestic privacy, and only said ’appen
on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed,
had never been to any school higher than Dame Tedman’s: her
acquaintance with profane literature hardly went beyond the rhymes she
had worked in her large sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess; and
in order to balance an account, she was obliged to effect her
subtraction by removing visible metallic shillings and sixpences from a
visible metallic total. There is hardly a servant-maid in these days
who is not better informed than Miss Nancy; yet she had the essential
attributes of a lady—high veracity, delicate honour in her dealings,
deference to others, and refined personal habits,—and lest these should
not suffice to convince grammatical fair ones that her feelings can at
all resemble theirs, I will add that she was slightly proud and
exacting, and as constant in her affection towards a baseless opinion
as towards an erring lover.