Silas Marner
parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for
church-going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the more
important members of the congregation to depart first, while their
humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads or
dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned to notice
them.
Foremost among these advancing groups of well-clad people, there are
some whom we shall recognize, in spite of Time, who has laid his hand
on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed in feature
from the Godfrey Cass of six-and-twenty: he is only fuller in flesh,
and has only lost the indefinable look of youth—a loss which is marked
even when the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not yet come.
Perhaps the pretty woman, not much younger than he, who is leaning on
his arm, is more changed than her husband: the lovely bloom that used
to be always on her cheek now comes but fitfully, with the fresh
morning air or with some strong surprise; yet to all who love human
faces best for what they tell of human experience, Nancy’s beauty has a
heightened interest. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness
while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never
divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the years have not been so
cruel to Nancy. The firm yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance
of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature that has been tested and has
kept its highest qualities; and even the costume, with its dainty
neatness and purity, has more significance now the coquetries of youth
can have nothing to do with it.
Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away from Raveloe
lips since the old Squire was gathered to his fathers and his
inheritance was divided) have turned round to look for the tall aged
man and the plainly dressed woman who are a little behind—Nancy having
observed that they must wait for “father and Priscilla”—and now they
all turn into a narrower path leading across the churchyard to a small
gate opposite the Red House. We will not follow them now; for may there
not be some others in this departing congregation whom we should like
to see again—some of those who are not likely to be handsomely clad,
and whom we may not recognize so easily as the master and mistress of
the Red House?
But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes seem
to have gathered a longer vision, as is the way with eyes that have
been short-sighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a more
answering gaze; but in everything else one sees signs of a frame much
enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The weaver’s bent
shoulders and white hair give him almost the look of advanced age,
though he is not more than five-and-fifty; but there is the freshest
blossom of youth close by his side—a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen,
who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness
under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet
under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the
restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown.
Eppie cannot help being rather vexed about her hair, for there is no
other girl in Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair
ought to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy even in small
things: you see how neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted
handkerchief.
That good-looking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who walks behind
her, is not quite sure upon the question of hair in the abstract, when
Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that perhaps straight hair is the best
in general, but he doesn’t want Eppie’s hair to be different. She
surely divines that there is some one behind her who is thinking about
her very particularly, and mustering courage to come to her side as
soon as they are out in the lane, else why should she look rather shy,
and take care not to turn away her head from her father Silas, to whom
she keeps murmuring little sentences as to who was at church and who
was not at church, and how pretty the red mountain-ash is over the
Rectory wall?
“I wish _we_ had a little garden, father, with double daisies in, like
Mrs. Winthrop’s,” said Eppie, when they were out in the lane; “only
they say it ’ud take a deal of digging and bringing fresh soil—and you
couldn’t do that, could you, father? Anyhow, I shouldn’t like you to do
it, for it ’ud be too hard work for you.”
“Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o’ garden: these long
evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o’ the waste, just
enough for a root or two o’ flowers for you; and again, i’ the morning,
I could have a turn wi’ the spade before I sat down to the loom. Why
didn’t you tell me before as you wanted a bit o’ garden?”
“_I_ can dig it for you, Master Marner,” said the young man in fustian,
who was now by Eppie’s side, entering into the conversation without the
trouble of formalities. “It’ll be play to me after I’ve done my day’s
work, or any odd bits o’ time when the work’s slack. And I’ll bring you
some soil from Mr. Cass’s garden—he’ll let me, and willing.”
“Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?” said Silas; “I wasn’t aware of you;
for when Eppie’s talking o’ things, I see nothing but what she’s
a-saying. Well, if you could help me with the digging, we might get her
a bit o’ garden all the sooner.”
“Then, if you think well and good,” said Aaron, “I’ll come to the
Stone-pits this afternoon, and we’ll settle what land’s to be taken in,
and I’ll get up an hour earlier i’ the morning, and begin on it.”
“But not if you don’t promise me not to work at the hard digging,
father,” said Eppie. “For I shouldn’t ha’ said anything about it,” she
added, half-bashfully, half-roguishly, “only Mrs. Winthrop said as
Aaron ’ud be so good, and—”
“And you might ha’ known it without mother telling you,” said Aaron.
“And Master Marner knows too, I hope, as I’m able and willing to do a
turn o’ work for him, and he won’t do me the unkindness to anyways take
it out o’ my hands.”
“There, now, father, you won’t work in it till it’s all easy,” said
Eppie, “and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes and plant
the roots. It’ll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits when we’ve got
some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what
we’re talking about. And I’ll have a bit o’ rosemary, and bergamot, and
thyme, because they’re so sweet-smelling; but there’s no lavender only
in the gentlefolks’ gardens, I think.”
“That’s no reason why you shouldn’t have some,” said Aaron, “for I can
bring you slips of anything; I’m forced to cut no end of ’em when I’m
gardening, and throw ’em away mostly. There’s a big bed o’ lavender at
the Red House: the missis is very fond of it.”
“Well,” said Silas, gravely, “so as you don’t make free for us, or ask
for anything as is worth much at the Red House: for Mr. Cass’s been so
good to us, and built us up the new end o’ the cottage, and given us
beds and things, as I couldn’t abide to be imposin’ for garden-stuff or
anything else.”
“No, no, there’s no imposin,’” said Aaron; “there’s never a garden in
all the parish but what there’s endless waste in it for want o’
somebody as could use everything up. It’s what I think to myself
sometimes, as there need nobody run short o’ victuals if the land was
made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its
way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o’ that—gardening does. But I must
go back now, else mother ’ull be in trouble as I aren’t there.”
“Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron,” said Eppie; “I shouldn’t
like to fix about the garden, and her not know everything from the
first—should _you_, father?”
“Aye, bring her if you can, Aaron,” said Silas; “she’s sure to have a
word to say as’ll help us to set things on their right end.”
Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up the
lonely sheltered lane.
“O daddy!” she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and squeezing
Silas’s arm, and skipping round to give him an energetic kiss. “My
little old daddy! I’m so glad. I don’t think I shall want anything else
when we’ve got a little garden; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us,”
she went on with roguish triumph—“I knew that very well.”
“You’re a deep little puss, you are,” said Silas, with the mild passive
happiness of love-crowned age in his face; “but you’ll make yourself
fine and beholden to Aaron.”
“Oh, no, I shan’t,” said Eppie, laughing and frisking; “he likes it.”
“Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you’ll be dropping it,
jumping i’ that way.”
Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it
was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log
fastened to his foot—a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human
trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting
his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her
usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his
following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.
But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door,
modified the donkey’s views, and he limped away again without bidding.
The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting
them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in
a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell
kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as
much as to say, “I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you
perceive”; while the lady-mother of the kitten sat sunning her white
bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting
caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them.
The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which
had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now
in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with decent
furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop’s eye.
The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was
likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds
and other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every
one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; and it was
nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who
could afford it, when he had brought up an orphan child, and been
father and mother to her—and had lost his money too, so as he had
nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was
going down too—for there was less and less flax spun—and Master Marner
was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he was
regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help
were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any superstition that remained
concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a
very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his
chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of
opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan
child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or
leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it—for, as Mr.
Macey observed of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever.
Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she
spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly
in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a
slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would
not consent to have a grate and oven added to his conveniences: he
loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown pot—and was it not