CHAPTER X

Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man
of capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions
without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were
not on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to
neglect the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot
concerning a pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a
foreign complexion, carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and
wearing large rings in his ears. But either because inquiry was too
slow-footed to overtake him, or because the description applied to
so many pedlars that inquiry did not know how to choose among them,
weeks passed away, and there was no other result concerning the
robbery than a gradual cessation of the excitement it had caused in
Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly a subject of remark: he
had once before had a quarrel with his father, and had gone off,
nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six weeks, take up his
old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His own family, who
equally expected this issue, with the sole difference that the
Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old quarters,
never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood
noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed
some offence against his father, was enough to prevent surprise. To
connect the fact of Dunsey's disappearance with that of the robbery
occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of every
one's thought--even Godfrey's, who had better reason than any one
else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no
mention of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago,
when it was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his
imagination constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him
continually in some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on
leaving Wildfire--saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and
meditating a return home to the old amusement of tormenting his
elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two
facts together, I doubt whether a combination so injurious to the
prescriptive respectability of a family with a mural monument and
venerable tankards, would not have been suppressed as of unsound
tendency. But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance of
spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality into the channel
of nightmare, are great preservatives against a dangerous
spontaneity of waking thought.

When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good
company, the balance continued to waver between the rational
explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an
impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of
the tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a
muddle-headed and credulous set, who, because they themselves were
wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook;
and the adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their
antagonists were animals inclined to crow before they had found any
corn--mere skimming-dishes in point of depth--whose
clear-sightedness consisted in supposing there was nothing behind a
barn-door because they couldn't see through it; so that, though
their controversy did not serve to elicit the fact concerning the
robbery, it elicited some true opinions of collateral importance.

But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush the slow current of
Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering
desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were
arguing at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he
lost his gold, it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a
life as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly
endure any subtraction but such as would put an end to it
altogether. But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with
immediate purpose which fenced him in from the wide, cheerless
unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round
which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied
the need for clinging. But now the fence was broken down--the
support was snatched away. Marner's thoughts could no longer move
in their old round, and were baffled by a blank like that which
meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on its homeward
path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern
in the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet was
gone; the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening
had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul's craving. The
thought of the money he would get by his actual work could bring no
joy, for its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and
hope was too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination
to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.

He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now
and then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his
thoughts had come round again to the sudden chasm--to the empty
evening-time. And all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by
his dull fire, he leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his
head with his hands, and moaned very low--not as one who seeks to
be heard.

And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by
the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a
man who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what
was worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a
neighbourly way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning
enough to keep his own. He was generally spoken of as a "poor
mushed creatur"; and that avoidance of his neighbours, which had
before been referred to his ill-will and to a probable addiction to
worse company, was now considered mere craziness.

This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The
odour of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when
superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in
well-to-do families; and Silas's misfortune had brought him
uppermost in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood.
Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas that his money had
probably been taken from him because he thought too much of it and
never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs'
pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against
the clerical character. Neighbours who had nothing but verbal
consolation to give showed a disposition not only to greet Silas and
discuss his misfortune at some length when they encountered him in
the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at his cottage
and getting him to repeat all the details on the very spot; and then
they would try to cheer him by saying, "Well, Master Marner, you're
no worse off nor other poor folks, after all; and if you was to be
crippled, the parish 'ud give you a 'lowance."

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our
neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in
spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black
puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own
egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a
mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe;
but it was often of a beery and bungling sort, and took the shape
least allied to the complimentary and hypocritical.

Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas
know that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed
lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs--

"Come, Master Marner, why, you've no call to sit a-moaning. You're
a deal better off to ha' lost your money, nor to ha' kep it by foul
means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as
you were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than
what you are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced
creatur, partly like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there's
no knowing: it isn't every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry's had
the making of--I mean, speaking o' toads and such; for they're
often harmless, like, and useful against varmin. And it's pretty
much the same wi' you, as fur as I can see. Though as to the yarbs
and stuff to cure the breathing, if you brought that sort o'
knowledge from distant parts, you might ha' been a bit freer of it.
And if the knowledge wasn't well come by, why, you might ha' made up
for it by coming to church reg'lar; for, as for the children as the
Wise Woman charmed, I've been at the christening of 'em again and
again, and they took the water just as well. And that's reasonable;
for if Old Harry's a mind to do a bit o' kindness for a holiday,
like, who's got anything against it? That's my thinking; and I've
been clerk o' this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there's no cussing o'
folks as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say
what he will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying--for there's
windings i' things as they may carry you to the fur end o' the
prayer-book afore you get back to 'em--my advice is, as you keep
up your sperrits; for as for thinking you're a deep un, and ha' got
more inside you nor 'ull bear daylight, I'm not o' that opinion at
all, and so I tell the neighbours. For, says I, you talk o' Master
Marner making out a tale--why, it's nonsense, that is: it 'ud take
a 'cute man to make a tale like that; and, says I, he looked as
scared as a rabbit."

During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his
previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his
hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been
listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply,
but Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant
to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as
sunshine falls on the wretched--he had no heart to taste it, and
felt that it was very far off him.

"Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?" said
Mr. Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.

"Oh," said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, "I
thank you--thank you--kindly."

"Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would," said Mr. Macey; "and
my advice is--have you got a Sunday suit?"

"No," said Marner.

"I doubted it was so," said Mr. Macey. "Now, let me advise you
to get a Sunday suit: there's Tookey, he's a poor creatur, but he's
got my tailoring business, and some o' my money in it, and he shall
make a suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can
come to church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you've never heared
me say "Amen" since you come into these parts, and I recommend you
to lose no time, for it'll be poor work when Tookey has it all to
himself, for I mayn't be equil to stand i' the desk at all, come
another winter." Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some
sign of emotion in his hearer; but not observing any, he went on.
"And as for the money for the suit o' clothes, why, you get a
matter of a pound a-week at your weaving, Master Marner, and you're
a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed. Why, you couldn't ha'
been five-and-twenty when you come into these parts, eh?"

Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, "I don't know; I can't rightly say--it's a long
while since."

After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that
Mr. Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that
Marner's head was "all of a muddle", and that it was to be doubted
if he ever knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse
heathen than many a dog.

Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright's wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person
in the parish who would not have held that to go to church every
Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand
well with Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours--
a wish to be better than the "common run", that would have
implied a reflection on those who had had godfathers and godmothers
as well as themselves, and had an equal right to the
burying-service. At the same time, it was understood to be
requisite for all who were not household servants, or young men, to
take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire Cass
himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
"good livers" went to church with greater, though still with
moderate, frequency.

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this
threw a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the
morning, which it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet
she had not the vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a
necessary condition of such habits: she was a very mild, patient
woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more
serious elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them. She was
the person always first thought of in Raveloe when there was illness
or death in a family, when leeches were to be applied, or there was
a sudden disappointment in a monthly nurse. She was a "comfortable
woman"--good-looking, fresh-complexioned, having her lips always
slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the
doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never whimpering; no
one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to
shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal
mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben
Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well
with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes and joviality as
patiently as everything else, considering that "men _would_ be
so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it
had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and
turkey-cocks.

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn
strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of
a sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron
with her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small
lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe.
Aaron, an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched
frill which looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his
adventurous curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that
the big-eyed weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety
was much increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard
the mysterious sound of the loom.

"Ah, it is as I thought," said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did
come to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have
done, at a visit that had been unasked for and unexpected.
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure
inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left
groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had
inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if
any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a
slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a
faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. He opened the
door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning her
greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that she
was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed
the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest
way--

"I'd a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned
out better nor common, and I'd ha' asked you to accept some, if
you'd thought well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o'
bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's
stomichs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know,
God help 'em."

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked
her kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed
to look so at everything he took into his hand--eyed all the while
by the wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an
outwork of his mother's chair, and was peeping round from behind it.

"There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em
myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows
what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as
is on the pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?"

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.

"Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly. "Well,
whativer the letters are, they've a good meaning; and it's a stamp
as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un,
and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and I've allays put it
on too; for if there's any good, we've need of it i' this world."

"It's I. H. S.," said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron
peeped round the chair again.

"Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off," said Dolly. "Ben's
read 'em to me many and many a time, but they slip out o' my mind
again; the more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they
wouldn't be in the church; and so I prick 'em on all the loaves and
all the cakes, though sometimes they won't hold, because o' the
rising--for, as I said, if there's any good to be got we've need
of it i' this world--that we have; and I hope they'll bring good
to you, Master Marner, for it's wi' that will I brought you the
cakes; and you see the letters have held better nor common."

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was
no possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that
made itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling
than before--"Thank you--thank you kindly." But he laid down
the cakes and seated himself absently--drearily unconscious of any
distinct benefit towards which the cakes and the letters, or even
Dolly's kindness, could tend for him.

"Ah, if there's good anywhere, we've need of it," repeated Dolly,
who did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at
Silas pityingly as she went on. "But you didn't hear the
church-bells this morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn't know
it was Sunday. Living so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay;
and then, when your loom makes a noise, you can't hear the bells,
more partic'lar now the frost kills the sound."

"Yes, I did; I heard 'em," said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a
mere accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had
been no bells in Lantern Yard.

"Dear heart!" said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. "But
what a pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean
yourself--if you _didn't_ go to church; for if you'd a roasting
bit, it might be as you couldn't leave it, being a lone man. But
there's the bakehus, if you could make up your mind to spend a
twopence on the oven now and then,--not every week, in course--I
shouldn't like to do that myself,--you might carry your bit o'
dinner there, for it's nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot
of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can't know your dinner from
Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day, this blessed Christmas as is
ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go
to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and
then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the better, and you'd know
which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i' Them as
knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all
to do."

Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech
for her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she
would have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a
basin of gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before
been closely urged on the point of his absence from church, which
had only been thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he
was too direct and simple to evade Dolly's appeal.

"Nay, nay," he said, "I know nothing o' church. I've never been
to church."

"No!" said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking
herself of Silas's advent from an unknown country, she said, "Could
it ha' been as they'd no church where you was born?"

"Oh, yes," said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture
of leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. "There was
churches--a many--it was a big town. But I knew nothing of 'em--
I went to chapel."

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid
of inquiring further, lest "chapel" might mean some haunt of
wickedness. After a little thought, she said--

"Well, Master Marner, it's niver too late to turn over a new leaf,
and if you've niver had no church, there's no telling the good it'll
do you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when
I've been and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and
glory o' God, as Mr. Macey gives out--and Mr. Crackenthorp saying
good words, and more partic'lar on Sacramen' Day; and if a bit o'
trouble comes, I feel as I can put up wi' it, for I've looked for
help i' the right quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all
give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it
isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we
are, and come short o' Their'n."

Poor Dolly's exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather
unmeaningly on Silas's ears, for there was no word in it that could
rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his
comprehension was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no
heresy of Dolly's, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous
familiarity. He remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to
the part of Dolly's speech which he fully understood--her
recommendation that he should go to church. Indeed, Silas was so
unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief questions and answers
necessary for the transaction of his simple business, that words did
not easily come to him without the urgency of a distinct purpose.

But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver's awful
presence, had advanced to his mother's side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back
a little, and rubbed his head against his mother's shoulder, but
still thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand
out for it.

"Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; "why, you don't want cake again yet awhile. He's
wonderful hearty," she went on, with a little sigh--"that he is,
God knows. He's my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me
or the father must allays hev him in our sight--that we must."

She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a "pictur of a child". But Marner, on the other
side of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim
round, with two dark spots in it.

"And he's got a voice like a bird--you wouldn't think," Dolly
went on; "he can sing a Christmas carril as his father's taught
him; and I take it for a token as he'll come to good, as he can
learn the good tunes so quick. Come, Aaron, stan' up and sing the
carril to Master Marner, come."

Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother's shoulder.

"Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly, gently. "Stan' up, when mother
tells you, and let me hold the cake till you've done."

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre,
under protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of
coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over
his eyes, and then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if
he looked anxious for the "carril", he at length allowed his head
to be duly adjusted, and standing behind the table, which let him
appear above it only as far as his broad frill, so that he looked
like a cherubic head untroubled with a body, he began with a clear
chirp, and in a melody that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer



"God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas-day."


Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.

"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. "There's no other music equil to
the Christmas music--"Hark the erol angils sing." And you may
judge what it is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the
voices, as you can't help thinking you've got to a better place
a'ready--for I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them
put us in it as knows best--but what wi' the drink, and the
quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen
times and times, one's thankful to hear of a better. The boy sings
pretty, don't he, Master Marner?"

"Yes," said Silas, absently, "very pretty."

The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of
the effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he
was grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer
Aaron a bit more cake.

"Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner," said Dolly, holding down
Aaron's willing hands. "We must be going home now. And so I wish
you good-bye, Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in
your inside, as you can't fend for yourself, I'll come and clean up
for you, and get you a bit o' victual, and willing. But I beg and
pray of you to leave off weaving of a Sunday, for it's bad for soul
and body--and the money as comes i' that way 'ull be a bad bed to
lie down on at the last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody knows where,
like the white frost. And you'll excuse me being that free with
you, Master Marner, for I wish you well--I do. Make your bow,
Aaron."

Silas said "Good-bye, and thank you kindly," as he opened the door
for Dolly, but he couldn't help feeling relieved when she was gone--
relieved that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her
simple view of life and its comforts, by which she had tried to
cheer him, was only like a report of unknown objects, which his
imagination could not fashion. The fountains of human love and of
faith in a divine love had not yet been unlocked, and his soul was
still the shrunken rivulet, with only this difference, that its
little groove of sand was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly
against dark obstruction.

And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and
Dolly Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating
his meat in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a
neighbourly present. In the morning he looked out on the black
frost that seemed to press cruelly on every blade of grass, while
the half-icy red pool shivered under the bitter wind; but towards
evening the snow began to fall, and curtained from him even that
dreary outlook, shutting him close up with his narrow grief. And he
sat in his robbed home through the livelong evening, not caring to
close his shutters or lock his door, pressing his head between his
hands and moaning, till the cold grasped him and told him that his
fire was grey.

Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas
Marner who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted
in an unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had
become dim.

But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was
fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among
the abundant dark-green boughs--faces prepared for a longer
service than usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those
green boughs, the hymn and anthem never heard but at Christmas--
even the Athanasian Creed, which was discriminated from the others
only as being longer and of exceptional virtue, since it was only
read on rare occasions--brought a vague exulting sense, for which
the grown men could as little have found words as the children, that
something great and mysterious had been done for them in heaven
above and in earth below, which they were appropriating by their
presence. And then the red faces made their way through the black
biting frost to their own homes, feeling themselves free for the
rest of the day to eat, drink, and be merry, and using that
Christian freedom without diffidence.

At Squire Cass's family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan--
nobody was sorry for his absence, or feared it would be too long.
The doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the
annual Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions,
rising to the climax of Mr. Kimble's experience when he walked the
London hospitals thirty years back, together with striking
professional anecdotes then gathered. Whereupon cards followed,
with aunt Kimble's annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's
irascibility concerning the odd trick which was rarely explicable to
him, when it was not on his side, without a general visitation of
tricks to see that they were formed on sound principles: the whole
being accompanied by a strong steaming odour of spirits-and-water.

But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly family party, was
not the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the season at the Red
House. It was the great dance on New Year's Eve that made the glory
of Squire Cass's hospitality, as of his forefathers', time out of
mind. This was the occasion when all the society of Raveloe and
Tarley, whether old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances,
or cooled acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning
runaway calves, or acquaintances founded on intermittent
condescension, counted on meeting and on comporting themselves with
mutual appropriateness. This was the occasion on which fair dames
who came on pillions sent their bandboxes before them, supplied with
more than their evening costume; for the feast was not to end with a
single evening, like a paltry town entertainment, where the whole
supply of eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is
scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for a siege; and as for
the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on floors, they were as
plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that had killed
its own geese for many generations.

Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year's Eve with a
foolish reckless longing, that made him half deaf to his importunate
companion, Anxiety.

"Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blow-up,
and how will you bribe his spite to silence?" said Anxiety.

"Oh, he won't come home before New Year's Eve, perhaps," said
Godfrey; "and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with her, and
get a kind look from her in spite of herself."

"But money is wanted in another quarter," said Anxiety, in a
louder voice, "and how will you get it without selling your
mother's diamond pin? And if you don't get it...?"

"Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any
rate, there's one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy is coming."

"Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that
will oblige you to decline marrying her--and to give your
reasons?"

"Hold your tongue, and don't worry me. I can see Nancy's eyes,
just as they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already."

But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to
be utterly quieted even by much drinking.