Silas Marner
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