Silas Marner
in the worn face was present to him when he told the full story of this
night.
He turned immediately towards the hearth, where Silas Marner sat
lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep—only
soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which
makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain
awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some
quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky—before a steady glowing
planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a
silent pathway. The wide-open blue eyes looked up at Godfrey’s without
any uneasiness or sign of recognition: the child could make no visible
audible claim on its father; and the father felt a strange mixture of
feelings, a conflict of regret and joy, that the pulse of that little
heart had no response for the half-jealous yearning in his own, when
the blue eyes turned away from him slowly, and fixed themselves on the
weaver’s queer face, which was bent low down to look at them, while the
small hand began to pull Marner’s withered cheek with loving
disfiguration.
“You’ll take the child to the parish to-morrow?” asked Godfrey,
speaking as indifferently as he could.
“Who says so?” said Marner, sharply. “Will they make me take her?”
“Why, you wouldn’t like to keep her, should you—an old bachelor like
you?”
“Till anybody shows they’ve a right to take her away from me,” said
Marner. “The mother’s dead, and I reckon it’s got no father: it’s a
lone thing—and I’m a lone thing. My money’s gone, I don’t know
where—and this is come from I don’t know where. I know nothing—I’m
partly mazed.”
“Poor little thing!” said Godfrey. “Let me give something towards
finding it clothes.”
He had put his hand in his pocket and found half-a-guinea, and,
thrusting it into Silas’s hand, he hurried out of the cottage to
overtake Mr. Kimble.
“Ah, I see it’s not the same woman I saw,” he said, as he came up.
“It’s a pretty little child: the old fellow seems to want to keep it;
that’s strange for a miser like him. But I gave him a trifle to help
him out: the parish isn’t likely to quarrel with him for the right to
keep the child.”
“No; but I’ve seen the time when I might have quarrelled with him for
it myself. It’s too late now, though. If the child ran into the fire,
your aunt’s too fat to overtake it: she could only sit and grunt like
an alarmed sow. But what a fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your
dancing shoes and stockings in this way—and you one of the beaux of the
evening, and at your own house! What do you mean by such freaks, young
fellow? Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do you want to spite her by
spoiling your pumps?”
“Oh, everything has been disagreeable to-night. I was tired to death of
jigging and gallanting, and that bother about the hornpipes. And I’d
got to dance with the other Miss Gunn,” said Godfrey, glad of the
subterfuge his uncle had suggested to him.
The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself
ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false
touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere
trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.
Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since the
truth must be told, with a sense of relief and gladness that was too
strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could he not venture
now, whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest things to Nancy
Lammeter—to promise her and himself that he would always be just what
she would desire to see him? There was no danger that his dead wife
would be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry and wide
report; and as for the registry of their marriage, that was a long way
off, buried in unturned pages, away from every one’s interest but his
own. Dunsey might betray him if he came back; but Dunsey might be won
to silence.
And when events turn out so much better for a man than he has had
reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has been less
foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When we
are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not
altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat
ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. Where, after all,
would be the use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and
throwing away his happiness?—nay, hers? for he felt some confidence
that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that it was cared
for: he would never forsake it; he would do everything but own it.
Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being owned by its
father, seeing that nobody could tell how things would turn out, and
that—is there any other reason wanted?—well, then, that the father
would be much happier without owning the child.
CHAPTER XIV.
There was a pauper’s burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at
Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair child,
who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was all
the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men.
But the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial as
the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to certain
human lives that we know of, shaping their joys and sorrows even to the
end.
Silas Marner’s determination to keep the “tramp’s child” was matter of
hardly less surprise and iterated talk in the village than the robbery
of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which dated from
his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather
contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was now accompanied with a
more active sympathy, especially amongst the women. Notable mothers,
who knew what it was to keep children “whole and sweet”; lazy mothers,
who knew what it was to be interrupted in folding their arms and
scratching their elbows by the mischievous propensities of children
just firm on their legs, were equally interested in conjecturing how a
lone man would manage with a two-year-old child on his hands, and were
equally ready with their suggestions: the notable chiefly telling him
what he had better do, and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling him
what he would never be able to do.
Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one whose neighbourly
offices were the most acceptable to Marner, for they were rendered
without any show of bustling instruction. Silas had shown her the
half-guinea given to him by Godfrey, and had asked her what he should
do about getting some clothes for the child.
“Eh, Master Marner,” said Dolly, “there’s no call to buy, no more nor a
pair o’ shoes; for I’ve got the little petticoats as Aaron wore five
years ago, and it’s ill spending the money on them baby-clothes, for
the child ’ull grow like grass i’ May, bless it—that it will.”
And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed to Marner, one
by one, the tiny garments in their due order of succession, most of
them patched and darned, but clean and neat as fresh-sprung herbs. This
was the introduction to a great ceremony with soap and water, from
which Baby came out in new beauty, and sat on Dolly’s knee, handling
her toes and chuckling and patting her palms together with an air of
having made several discoveries about herself, which she communicated
by alternate sounds of “gug-gug-gug,” and “mammy”. The “mammy” was not
a cry of need or uneasiness: Baby had been used to utter it without
expecting either tender sound or touch to follow.
“Anybody ’ud think the angils in heaven couldn’t be prettier,” said
Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing them. “And to think of its
being covered wi’ them dirty rags—and the poor mother—froze to death;
but there’s Them as took care of it, and brought it to your door,
Master Marner. The door was open, and it walked in over the snow, like
as if it had been a little starved robin. Didn’t you say the door was
open?”
“Yes,” said Silas, meditatively. “Yes—the door was open. The money’s
gone I don’t know where, and this is come from I don’t know where.”
He had not mentioned to any one his unconsciousness of the child’s
entrance, shrinking from questions which might lead to the fact he
himself suspected—namely, that he had been in one of his trances.
“Ah,” said Dolly, with soothing gravity, “it’s like the night and the
morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the
harvest—one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor
where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it’s little we can do
arter all—the big things come and go wi’ no striving o’ our’n—they do,
that they do; and I think you’re in the right on it to keep the little
un, Master Marner, seeing as it’s been sent to you, though there’s
folks as thinks different. You’ll happen be a bit moithered with it
while it’s so little; but I’ll come, and welcome, and see to it for
you: I’ve a bit o’ time to spare most days, for when one gets up
betimes i’ the morning, the clock seems to stan’ still tow’rt ten,
afore it’s time to go about the victual. So, as I say, I’ll come and
see to the child for you, and welcome.”
“Thank you ... kindly,” said Silas, hesitating a little. “I’ll be glad
if you’ll tell me things. But,” he added, uneasily, leaning forward to
look at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting her head backward
against Dolly’s arm, and eyeing him contentedly from a distance—“But I
want to do things for it myself, else it may get fond o’ somebody else,
and not fond o’ me. I’ve been used to fending for myself in the house—I
can learn, I can learn.”
“Eh, to be sure,” said Dolly, gently. “I’ve seen men as are wonderful
handy wi’ children. The men are awk’ard and contrairy mostly, God help
’em—but when the drink’s out of ’em, they aren’t unsensible, though
they’re bad for leeching and bandaging—so fiery and unpatient. You see
this goes first, next the skin,” proceeded Dolly, taking up the little
shirt, and putting it on.
“Yes,” said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes very close, that they
might be initiated in the mysteries; whereupon Baby seized his head
with both her small arms, and put her lips against his face with
purring noises.
“See there,” said Dolly, with a woman’s tender tact, “she’s fondest o’
you. She wants to go o’ your lap, I’ll be bound. Go, then: take her,
Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then you can say as
you’ve done for her from the first of her coming to you.”
Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to
himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling
were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give them
utterance, he could only have said that the child was come instead of
the gold—that the gold had turned into the child. He took the garments
from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching; interrupted, of course,
by Baby’s gymnastics.
“There, then! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Marner,” said
Dolly; “but what shall you do when you’re forced to sit in your loom?
For she’ll get busier and mischievouser every day—she will, bless her.
It’s lucky as you’ve got that high hearth i’stead of a grate, for that
keeps the fire more out of her reach: but if you’ve got anything as can
be spilt or broke, or as is fit to cut her fingers off, she’ll be at
it—and it is but right you should know.”
Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. “I’ll tie her to the
leg o’ the loom,” he said at last—“tie her with a good long strip o’
something.”
“Well, mayhap that’ll do, as it’s a little gell, for they’re easier
persuaded to sit i’ one place nor the lads. I know what the lads are;
for I’ve had four—four I’ve had, God knows—and if you was to take and