Silas Marner
the bright turf that contrasted pleasantly with the dark cones and
arches and wall-like hedges of yew, Priscilla said—
“I’m as glad as anything at your husband’s making that exchange o’ land
with cousin Osgood, and beginning the dairying. It’s a thousand pities
you didn’t do it before; for it’ll give you something to fill your
mind. There’s nothing like a dairy if folks want a bit o’ worrit to
make the days pass. For as for rubbing furniture, when you can once see
your face in a table there’s nothing else to look for; but there’s
always something fresh with the dairy; for even in the depths o’ winter
there’s some pleasure in conquering the butter, and making it come
whether or no. My dear,” added Priscilla, pressing her sister’s hand
affectionately as they walked side by side, “you’ll never be low when
you’ve got a dairy.”
“Ah, Priscilla,” said Nancy, returning the pressure with a grateful
glance of her clear eyes, “but it won’t make up to Godfrey: a dairy’s
not so much to a man. And it’s only what he cares for that ever makes
me low. I’m contented with the blessings we have, if he could be
contented.”
“It drives me past patience,” said Priscilla, impetuously, “that way o’
the men—always wanting and wanting, and never easy with what they’ve
got: they can’t sit comfortable in their chairs when they’ve neither
ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to
make ’em better than well, or else they must be swallowing something
strong, though they’re forced to make haste before the next meal comes
in. But joyful be it spoken, our father was never that sort o’ man. And
if it had pleased God to make you ugly, like me, so as the men wouldn’t
ha’ run after you, we might have kept to our own family, and had
nothing to do with folks as have got uneasy blood in their veins.”
“Oh, don’t say so, Priscilla,” said Nancy, repenting that she had
called forth this outburst; “nobody has any occasion to find fault with
Godfrey. It’s natural he should be disappointed at not having any
children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for,
and he always counted so on making a fuss with ’em when they were
little. There’s many another man ’ud hanker more than he does. He’s the
best of husbands.”
“Oh, I know,” said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, “I know the way o’
wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they turn
round on one and praise ’em as if they wanted to sell ’em. But
father’ll be waiting for me; we must turn now.”
The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and Mr.
Lammeter was already on the stone steps, passing the time in recalling
to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his master used to
ride him.
“I always _would_ have a good horse, you know,” said the old gentleman,
not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced from the memory of
his juniors.
“Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week’s out, Mr. Cass,”
was Priscilla’s parting injunction, as she took the reins, and shook
them gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.
“I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, Nancy,
and look at the draining,” said Godfrey.
“You’ll be in again by tea-time, dear?”
“Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour.”
It was Godfrey’s custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little
contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied
him; for the women of her generation—unless, like Priscilla, they took
to outdoor management—were not given to much walking beyond their own
house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So,
when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant’s Bible
before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little
while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her thoughts had
already insisted on wandering.
But Nancy’s Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the
devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before
her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very
clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she
opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life; but the spirit
of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her
conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy’s character, had
made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions
with self-questioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a great
variety of subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living inwardly,
again and again, through all her remembered experience, especially
through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her life and
its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small details, the
words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had opened a new
epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight into the relations and
trials of life, or which had called on her for some little effort of
forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or real duty—asking
herself continually whether she had been in any respect blamable. This
excessive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps a morbid habit
inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out from its
due share of outward activity and of practical claims on its
affections—inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless woman, when her lot
is narrow. “I can do so little—have I done it all well?” is the
perpetually recurring thought; and there are no voices calling her away
from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to divert energy from vain
regret or superfluous scruple.
There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy’s married
life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the
oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in
the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent
direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her
thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow
with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the
defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla’s implied
blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection
can find for its wounds:—“A man must have so much on his mind,” is the
belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough
answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy’s deepest wounds had all come
from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was
dwelt on in her husband’s mind as a privation to which he could not
reconcile himself.
Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the
denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all the
varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial,
which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to become a
mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of her hands,
all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen
years ago—just, but for one little dress, which had been made the
burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy was so
firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit
of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be cherishing a
longing for what was not given.
Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she
held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from applying
her own standard to her husband. “It is very different—it is much worse
for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman can always be
satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man wants
something that will make him look forward more—and sitting by the fire
is so much duller to him than to a woman.” And always, when Nancy
reached this point in her meditations—trying, with predetermined
sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it—there came a renewal of
self-questioning. _Had_ she done everything in her power to lighten
Godfrey’s privation? Had she really been right in the resistance which
had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago—the
resistance to her husband’s wish that they should adopt a child?
Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that time than of
our own; still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her
mind to have an opinion on all topics, not exclusively masculine, that
had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place
for every article of her personal property: and her opinions were
always principles to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not
because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity
inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties
of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangements of the evening
toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was three-and-twenty,
had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits
in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided
judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted
themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago,
we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because “it was right
for sisters to dress alike,” and because “she would do what was right
if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring”. That was a trivial but
typical instance of the mode in which Nancy’s life was regulated.
It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling,
which had been the ground of Nancy’s difficult resistance to her
husband’s wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had been
denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence: the
adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and would
be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what it
was clear that, for some high reason, they were better without. When
you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it was a bounden duty
to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the wisest
of men could scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her
principle. But the conditions under which she held it apparent that a
thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of
thinking. She would have given up making a purchase at a particular
place if, on three successive times, rain, or some other cause of
Heaven’s sending, had formed an obstacle; and she would have
anticipated a broken limb or other heavy misfortune to any one who
persisted in spite of such indications.
“But why should you think the child would turn out ill?” said Godfrey,
in his remonstrances. “She has thriven as well as child can do with the
weaver; and _he_ adopted her. There isn’t such a pretty little girl
anywhere else in the parish, or one fitter for the station we could
give her. Where can be the likelihood of her being a curse to anybody?”
“Yes, my dear Godfrey,” said Nancy, who was sitting with her hands
tightly clasped together, and with yearning, regretful affection in her
eyes. “The child may not turn out ill with the weaver. But, then, he
didn’t go to seek her, as we should be doing. It will be wrong: I feel
sure it will. Don’t you remember what that lady we met at the Royston
Baths told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only
adopting I ever heard of: and the child was transported when it was
twenty-three. Dear Godfrey, don’t ask me to do what I know is wrong: I
should never be happy again. I know it’s very hard for _you_—it’s
easier for me—but it’s the will of Providence.”
It might seem singular that Nancy—with her religious theory pieced
together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine
imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small