Silas Marner
any ordinary means by which it could have entered or been brought into
his house. Under the prompting of this new idea, and without waiting to
form conjectures, he raised the child in his arms, and went to the
door. As soon as he had opened it, there was the cry of “mammy” again,
which Silas had not heard since the child’s first hungry waking.
Bending forward, he could just discern the marks made by the little
feet on the virgin snow, and he followed their track to the furze
bushes. “Mammy!” the little one cried again and again, stretching
itself forward so as almost to escape from Silas’s arms, before he
himself was aware that there was something more than the bush before
him—that there was a human body, with the head sunk low in the furze,
and half-covered with the shaken snow.
CHAPTER XIII.
It was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and the
entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself had passed into
easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual accomplishments,
could at length be prevailed on to dance a hornpipe, and when the
Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering snuff, and patting his
visitors’ backs, to sitting longer at the whist-table—a choice
exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being always volatile in sober
business hours, became intense and bitter over cards and brandy,
shuffled before his adversary’s deal with a glare of suspicion, and
turned up a mean trump-card with an air of inexpressible disgust, as if
in a world where such things could happen one might as well enter on a
course of reckless profligacy. When the evening had advanced to this
pitch of freedom and enjoyment, it was usual for the servants, the
heavy duties of supper being well over, to get their share of amusement
by coming to look on at the dancing; so that the back regions of the
house were left in solitude.
There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from the
hall, and they were both standing open for the sake of air; but the
lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only the
upper doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe, and
his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he repeatedly declared
to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that implied this
to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the centre of a
group who had placed themselves opposite the performer, not far from
the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, not to admire
his brother’s dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who was seated in
the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because he wished to avoid
suggesting himself as a subject for the Squire’s fatherly jokes in
connection with matrimony and Miss Nancy Lammeter’s beauty, which were
likely to become more and more explicit. But he had the prospect of
dancing with her again when the hornpipe was concluded, and in the
meanwhile it was very pleasant to get long glances at her quite
unobserved.
But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those long glances,
they encountered an object as startling to him at that moment as if it
had been an apparition from the dead. It _was_ an apparition from that
hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street, behind the goodly
ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable
admirers. It was his own child, carried in Silas Marner’s arms. That
was his instantaneous impression, unaccompanied by doubt, though he had
not seen the child for months past; and when the hope was rising that
he might possibly be mistaken, Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Lammeter had
already advanced to Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent.
Godfrey joined them immediately, unable to rest without hearing every
word—trying to control himself, but conscious that if any one noticed
him, they must see that he was white-lipped and trembling.
But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas Marner; the
Squire himself had risen, and asked angrily, “How’s this?—what’s
this?—what do you do coming in here in this way?”
“I’m come for the doctor—I want the doctor,” Silas had said, in the
first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp.
“Why, what’s the matter, Marner?” said the rector. “The doctor’s here;
but say quietly what you want him for.”
“It’s a woman,” said Silas, speaking low, and half-breathlessly, just
as Godfrey came up. “She’s dead, I think—dead in the snow at the
Stone-pits—not far from my door.”
Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that
moment: it was, that the woman might _not_ be dead. That was an evil
terror—an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in Godfrey’s
kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes
to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.
“Hush, hush!” said Mr. Crackenthorp. “Go out into the hall there. I’ll
fetch the doctor to you. Found a woman in the snow—and thinks she’s
dead,” he added, speaking low to the Squire. “Better say as little
about it as possible: it will shock the ladies. Just tell them a poor
woman is ill from cold and hunger. I’ll go and fetch Kimble.”
By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, curious to know
what could have brought the solitary linen-weaver there under such
strange circumstances, and interested in the pretty child, who, half
alarmed and half attracted by the brightness and the numerous company,
now frowned and hid her face, now lifted up her head again and looked
round placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought back the frown,
and made her bury her face with new determination.
“What child is it?” said several ladies at once, and, among the rest,
Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey.
“I don’t know—some poor woman’s who has been found in the snow, I
believe,” was the answer Godfrey wrung from himself with a terrible
effort. (“After all, _am_ I certain?” he hastened to add, silently, in
anticipation of his own conscience.)
“Why, you’d better leave the child here, then, Master Marner,” said
good-natured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating, however, to take those dingy
clothes into contact with her own ornamented satin bodice. “I’ll tell
one o’ the girls to fetch it.”
“No—no—I can’t part with it, I can’t let it go,” said Silas, abruptly.
“It’s come to me—I’ve a right to keep it.”
The proposition to take the child from him had come to Silas quite
unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered under a strong sudden impulse,
was almost like a revelation to himself: a minute before, he had no
distinct intention about the child.
“Did you ever hear the like?” said Mrs. Kimble, in mild surprise, to
her neighbour.
“Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside,” said Mr. Kimble,
coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the interruption, but
drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to
unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly sober.
“It’s a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?” said the Squire.
“He might ha’ gone for your young fellow—the ’prentice, there—what’s
his name?”
“Might? aye—what’s the use of talking about might?” growled uncle
Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and followed by Mr. Crackenthorp and
Godfrey. “Get me a pair of thick boots, Godfrey, will you? And stay,
let somebody run to Winthrop’s and fetch Dolly—she’s the best woman to
get. Ben was here himself before supper; is he gone?”
“Yes, sir, I met him,” said Marner; “but I couldn’t stop to tell him
anything, only I said I was going for the doctor, and he said the
doctor was at the Squire’s. And I made haste and ran, and there was
nobody to be seen at the back o’ the house, and so I went in to where
the company was.”
The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the smiling
women’s faces, began to cry and call for “mammy,” though always
clinging to Marner, who had apparently won her thorough confidence.
Godfrey had come back with the boots, and felt the cry as if some fibre
were drawn tight within him.
“I’ll go,” he said, hastily, eager for some movement; “I’ll go and
fetch the woman—Mrs. Winthrop.”
“Oh, pooh—send somebody else,” said uncle Kimble, hurrying away with
Marner.
“You’ll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble,” said Mr.
Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of hearing.
Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his hat and coat,
having just reflection enough to remember that he must not look like a
madman; but he rushed out of the house into the snow without heeding
his thin shoes.
In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits by the side
of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely in her place in
encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much concerned at
a young gentleman’s getting his feet wet under a like impulse.
“You’d a deal better go back, sir,” said Dolly, with respectful
compassion. “You’ve no call to catch cold; and I’d ask you if you’d be
so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back—he’s at the
Rainbow, I doubt—if you found him anyway sober enough to be o’ use. Or
else, there’s Mrs. Snell ’ud happen send the boy up to fetch and carry,
for there may be things wanted from the doctor’s.”
“No, I’ll stay, now I’m once out—I’ll stay outside here,” said Godfrey,
when they came opposite Marner’s cottage. “You can come and tell me if
I can do anything.”
“Well, sir, you’re very good: you’ve a tender heart,” said Dolly, going
to the door.
Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of self-reproach
at this undeserved praise. He walked up and down, unconscious that he
was plunging ankle-deep in snow, unconscious of everything but
trembling suspense about what was going on in the cottage, and the
effect of each alternative on his future lot. No, not quite unconscious
of everything else. Deeper down, and half-smothered by passionate
desire and dread, there was the sense that he ought not to be waiting
on these alternatives; that he ought to accept the consequences of his
deeds, own the miserable wife, and fulfil the claims of the helpless
child. But he had not moral courage enough to contemplate that active
renunciation of Nancy as possible for him: he had only conscience and
heart enough to make him for ever uneasy under the weakness that
forbade the renunciation. And at this moment his mind leaped away from
all restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from his long
bondage.
“Is she dead?” said the voice that predominated over every other within
him. “If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then I shall be a good fellow
in future, and have no secrets, and the child—shall be taken care of
somehow.” But across that vision came the other possibility—“She may
live, and then it’s all up with me.”
Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage
opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward to meet his uncle,
prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he was
to hear.
“I waited for you, as I’d come so far,” he said, speaking first.
“Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn’t you send one of
the men? There’s nothing to be done. She’s dead—has been dead for
hours, I should say.”
“What sort of woman is she?” said Godfrey, feeling the blood rush to
his face.
“A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some vagrant—quite
in rags. She’s got a wedding-ring on, however. They must fetch her away
to the workhouse to-morrow. Come, come along.”
“I want to look at her,” said Godfrey. “I think I saw such a woman
yesterday. I’ll overtake you in a minute or two.”
Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast
only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had
smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his
unhappy hated wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every line