Silas Marner
Eppie’s heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in
distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when
one struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every other in
Silas, and he said, faintly—
“Eppie, my child, speak. I won’t stand in your way. Thank Mr. and Mrs.
Cass.”
Eppie took her hand from her father’s head, and came forward a step.
Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the sense that
her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of
self-consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass and
then to Mr. Cass, and said—
“Thank you, ma’am—thank you, sir. But I can’t leave my father, nor own
anybody nearer than him. And I don’t want to be a lady—thank you all
the same” (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). “I couldn’t give up the
folks I’ve been used to.”
Eppie’s lips began to tremble a little at the last words. She retreated
to her father’s chair again, and held him round the neck: while Silas,
with a subdued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers.
The tears were in Nancy’s eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was,
naturally, divided with distress on her husband’s account. She dared
not speak, wondering what was going on in her husband’s mind.
Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we
encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had been full of his own penitence
and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time was left to
him; he was possessed with all-important feelings, that were to lead to
a predetermined course of action which he had fixed on as the right,
and he was not prepared to enter with lively appreciation into other
people’s feelings counteracting his virtuous resolves. The agitation
with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed with anger.
“But I’ve a claim on you, Eppie—the strongest of all claims. It’s my
duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child, and provide for her. She is my
own child—her mother was my wife. I’ve a natural claim on her that must
stand before every other.”
Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. Silas, on the
contrary, who had been relieved, by Eppie’s answer, from the dread lest
his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit of resistance
in him set free, not without a touch of parental fierceness. “Then,
sir,” he answered, with an accent of bitterness that had been silent in
him since the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished—“then,
sir, why didn’t you say so sixteen year ago, and claim her before I’d
come to love her, i’stead o’ coming to take her from me now, when you
might as well take the heart out o’ my body? God gave her to me because
you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you’ve no
right to her! When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to
them as take it in.”
“I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I’ve repented of my conduct in that
matter,” said Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of Silas’s
words.
“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” said Marner, with gathering excitement;
“but repentance doesn’t alter what’s been going on for sixteen year.
Your coming now and saying ‘I’m her father’ doesn’t alter the feelings
inside us. It’s me she’s been calling her father ever since she could
say the word.”
“But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, Marner,” said
Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the weaver’s direct truth-speaking. “It
isn’t as if she was to be taken quite away from you, so that you’d
never see her again. She’ll be very near you, and come to see you very
often. She’ll feel just the same towards you.”
“Just the same?” said Marner, more bitterly than ever. “How’ll she feel
just the same for me as she does now, when we eat o’ the same bit, and
drink o’ the same cup, and think o’ the same things from one day’s end
to another? Just the same? that’s idle talk. You’d cut us i’ two.”
Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy of Marner’s
simple words, felt rather angry again. It seemed to him that the weaver
was very selfish (a judgment readily passed by those who have never
tested their own power of sacrifice) to oppose what was undoubtedly for
Eppie’s welfare; and he felt himself called upon, for her sake, to
assert his authority.
“I should have thought, Marner,” he said, severely—“I should have
thought your affection for Eppie would make you rejoice in what was for
her good, even if it did call upon you to give up something. You ought
to remember your own life’s uncertain, and she’s at an age now when her
lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in
her father’s home: she may marry some low working-man, and then,
whatever I might do for her, I couldn’t make her well-off. You’re
putting yourself in the way of her welfare; and though I’m sorry to
hurt you after what you’ve done, and what I’ve left undone, I feel now
it’s my duty to insist on taking care of my own daughter. I want to do
my duty.”
It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was
more deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey’s. Thought had been
very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old
long-loved father and this new unfamiliar father who had suddenly come
to fill the place of that black featureless shadow which had held the
ring and placed it on her mother’s finger. Her imagination had darted
backward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this
revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in Godfrey’s last
speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite. Not
that these thoughts, either of past or future, determined her
resolution—_that_ was determined by the feelings which vibrated to
every word Silas had uttered; but they raised, even apart from these
feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and the newly-revealed
father.
Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and alarmed
lest Godfrey’s accusation should be true—lest he should be raising his
own will as an obstacle to Eppie’s good. For many moments he was mute,
struggling for the self-conquest necessary to the uttering of the
difficult words. They came out tremulously.
“I’ll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child. I’ll
hinder nothing.”
Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections,
shared her husband’s view, that Marner was not justifiable in his wish
to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She felt
that it was a very hard trial for the poor weaver, but her code allowed
no question that a father by blood must have a claim above that of any
foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous
circumstances and the privileges of “respectability,” could not enter
into the pleasures which early nurture and habit connect with all the
little aims and efforts of the poor who are born poor: to her mind,
Eppie, in being restored to her birthright, was entering on a too long
withheld but unquestionable good. Hence she heard Silas’s last words
with relief, and thought, as Godfrey did, that their wish was achieved.
“Eppie, my dear,” said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, not without
some embarrassment, under the sense that she was old enough to judge
him, “it’ll always be our wish that you should show your love and
gratitude to one who’s been a father to you so many years, and we shall
want to help you to make him comfortable in every way. But we hope
you’ll come to love us as well; and though I haven’t been what a father
should ha’ been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my
power for you for the rest of my life, and provide for you as my only
child. And you’ll have the best of mothers in my wife—that’ll be a
blessing you haven’t known since you were old enough to know it.”
“My dear, you’ll be a treasure to me,” said Nancy, in her gentle voice.
“We shall want for nothing when we have our daughter.”
Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she had done before. She held
Silas’s hand in hers, and grasped it firmly—it was a weaver’s hand,
with a palm and finger-tips that were sensitive to such pressure—while
she spoke with colder decision than before.
“Thank you, ma’am—thank you, sir, for your offers—they’re very great,
and far above my wish. For I should have no delight i’ life any more if
I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at
home, a-thinking of me and feeling lone. We’ve been used to be happy
together every day, and I can’t think o’ no happiness without him. And
he says he’d nobody i’ the world till I was sent to him, and he’d have
nothing when I was gone. And he’s took care of me and loved me from the
first, and I’ll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall
ever come between him and me.”
“But you must make sure, Eppie,” said Silas, in a low voice—“you must
make sure as you won’t ever be sorry, because you’ve made your choice
to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes and things, when you
might ha’ had everything o’ the best.”
His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened to Eppie’s
words of faithful affection.
“I can never be sorry, father,” said Eppie. “I shouldn’t know what to
think on or to wish for with fine things about me, as I haven’t been
used to. And it ’ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in a
gig, and sit in a place at church, as ’ud make them as I’m fond of
think me unfitting company for ’em. What could _I_ care for then?”
Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. But his eyes
were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the end of his stick, as
if he were pondering on something absently. She thought there was a
word which might perhaps come better from her lips than from his.
“What you say is natural, my dear child—it’s natural you should cling
to those who’ve brought you up,” she said, mildly; “but there’s a duty
you owe to your lawful father. There’s perhaps something to be given up
on more sides than one. When your father opens his home to you, I think
it’s right you shouldn’t turn your back on it.”
“I can’t feel as I’ve got any father but one,” said Eppie, impetuously,
while the tears gathered. “I’ve always thought of a little home where
he’d sit i’ the corner, and I should fend and do everything for him: I
can’t think o’ no other home. I wasn’t brought up to be a lady, and I
can’t turn my mind to it. I like the working-folks, and their victuals,
and their ways. And,” she ended passionately, while the tears fell,
“I’m promised to marry a working-man, as’ll live with father, and help
me to take care of him.”
Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and smarting dilated
eyes. This frustration of a purpose towards which he had set out under
the exalted consciousness that he was about to compensate in some
degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air of
the room stifling.
“Let us go,” he said, in an under-tone.
“We won’t talk of this any longer now,” said Nancy, rising. “We’re your
well-wishers, my dear—and yours too, Marner. We shall come and see you
again. It’s getting late now.”
In this way she covered her husband’s abrupt departure, for Godfrey had
gone straight to the door, unable to say more.
CHAPTER XX.
Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in silence. When they
entered the oaken parlour, Godfrey threw himself into his chair, while
Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the hearth near her
husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes, and yet fearing
to utter any word lest it might jar on his feeling. At last Godfrey
turned his head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling in that
meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual gaze of