CHAPTER XIII

It was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and the
entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself had passed
into easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual
accomplishments, could at length be prevailed on to dance a
hornpipe, and when the Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering
snuff, and patting his visitors' backs, to sitting longer at the
whist-table--a choice exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being
always volatile in sober business hours, became intense and bitter
over cards and brandy, shuffled before his adversary's deal with a
glare of suspicion, and turned up a mean trump-card with an air of
inexpressible disgust, as if in a world where such things could
happen one might as well enter on a course of reckless profligacy.
When the evening had advanced to this pitch of freedom and
enjoyment, it was usual for the servants, the heavy duties of supper
being well over, to get their share of amusement by coming to look
on at the dancing; so that the back regions of the house were left
in solitude.

There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from the
hall, and they were both standing open for the sake of air; but the
lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only the
upper doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe,
and his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he repeatedly
declared to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that
implied this to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the
centre of a group who had placed themselves opposite the performer,
not far from the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off,
not to admire his brother's dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who
was seated in the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because
he wished to avoid suggesting himself as a subject for the Squire's
fatherly jokes in connection with matrimony and Miss Nancy
Lammeter's beauty, which were likely to become more and more
explicit. But he had the prospect of dancing with her again when
the hornpipe was concluded, and in the meanwhile it was very
pleasant to get long glances at her quite unobserved.

But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those long
glances, they encountered an object as startling to him at that
moment as if it had been an apparition from the dead. It _was_ an
apparition from that hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street,
behind the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the
gaze of respectable admirers. It was his own child, carried in
Silas Marner's arms. That was his instantaneous impression,
unaccompanied by doubt, though he had not seen the child for months
past; and when the hope was rising that he might possibly be
mistaken, Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Lammeter had already advanced to
Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent. Godfrey joined them
immediately, unable to rest without hearing every word--trying to
control himself, but conscious that if any one noticed him, they
must see that he was white-lipped and trembling.

But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas Marner;
the Squire himself had risen, and asked angrily, "How's this?--
what's this?--what do you do coming in here in this way?"

"I'm come for the doctor--I want the doctor," Silas had said, in
the first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp.

"Why, what's the matter, Marner?" said the rector. "The
doctor's here; but say quietly what you want him for."

"It's a woman," said Silas, speaking low, and half-breathlessly,
just as Godfrey came up. "She's dead, I think--dead in the snow
at the Stone-pits--not far from my door."

Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that
moment: it was, that the woman might _not_ be dead. That was an
evil terror--an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in
Godfrey's kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from
evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.

"Hush, hush!" said Mr. Crackenthorp. "Go out into the hall
there. I'll fetch the doctor to you. Found a woman in the snow--
and thinks she's dead," he added, speaking low to the Squire.
"Better say as little about it as possible: it will shock the
ladies. Just tell them a poor woman is ill from cold and hunger.
I'll go and fetch Kimble."

By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, curious to
know what could have brought the solitary linen-weaver there under
such strange circumstances, and interested in the pretty child, who,
half alarmed and half attracted by the brightness and the numerous
company, now frowned and hid her face, now lifted up her head again
and looked round placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought
back the frown, and made her bury her face with new determination.

"What child is it?" said several ladies at once, and, among the
rest, Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey.

"I don't know--some poor woman's who has been found in the snow,
I believe," was the answer Godfrey wrung from himself with a
terrible effort. ("After all, _am_ I certain?" he hastened to
add, silently, in anticipation of his own conscience.)

"Why, you'd better leave the child here, then, Master Marner,"
said good-natured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating, however, to take those
dingy clothes into contact with her own ornamented satin bodice.
"I'll tell one o' the girls to fetch it."

"No--no--I can't part with it, I can't let it go," said Silas,
abruptly. "It's come to me--I've a right to keep it."

The proposition to take the child from him had come to Silas quite
unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered under a strong sudden impulse,
was almost like a revelation to himself: a minute before, he had no
distinct intention about the child.

"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, in mild surprise,
to her neighbour.

"Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside," said Mr. Kimble,
coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the interruption,
but drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to
unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly sober.

"It's a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?" said the
Squire. "He might ha' gone for your young fellow--the 'prentice,
there--what's his name?"

"Might? aye--what's the use of talking about might?" growled
uncle Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and followed by
Mr. Crackenthorp and Godfrey. "Get me a pair of thick boots,
Godfrey, will you? And stay, let somebody run to Winthrop's and
fetch Dolly--she's the best woman to get. Ben was here himself
before supper; is he gone?"

"Yes, sir, I met him," said Marner; "but I couldn't stop to tell
him anything, only I said I was going for the doctor, and he said
the doctor was at the Squire's. And I made haste and ran, and there
was nobody to be seen at the back o' the house, and so I went in to
where the company was."

The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the smiling
women's faces, began to cry and call for "mammy", though always
clinging to Marner, who had apparently won her thorough confidence.
Godfrey had come back with the boots, and felt the cry as if some
fibre were drawn tight within him.

"I'll go," he said, hastily, eager for some movement; "I'll go
and fetch the woman--Mrs. Winthrop."

"Oh, pooh--send somebody else," said uncle Kimble, hurrying away
with Marner.

"You'll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble," said
Mr. Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of hearing.

Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his hat and
coat, having just reflection enough to remember that he must not
look like a madman; but he rushed out of the house into the snow
without heeding his thin shoes.

In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits by the
side of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely in her
place in encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much
concerned at a young gentleman's getting his feet wet under a like
impulse.

"You'd a deal better go back, sir," said Dolly, with respectful
compassion. "You've no call to catch cold; and I'd ask you if
you'd be so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back--
he's at the Rainbow, I doubt--if you found him anyway sober enough
to be o' use. Or else, there's Mrs. Snell 'ud happen send the boy
up to fetch and carry, for there may be things wanted from the
doctor's."

"No, I'll stay, now I'm once out--I'll stay outside here," said
Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner's cottage. "You can come
and tell me if I can do anything."

"Well, sir, you're very good: you've a tender heart," said Dolly,
going to the door.

Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of
self-reproach at this undeserved praise. He walked up and down,
unconscious that he was plunging ankle-deep in snow, unconscious of
everything but trembling suspense about what was going on in the
cottage, and the effect of each alternative on his future lot. No,
not quite unconscious of everything else. Deeper down, and
half-smothered by passionate desire and dread, there was the sense
that he ought not to be waiting on these alternatives; that he ought
to accept the consequences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and
fulfil the claims of the helpless child. But he had not moral
courage enough to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as
possible for him: he had only conscience and heart enough to make
him for ever uneasy under the weakness that forbade the
renunciation. And at this moment his mind leaped away from all
restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from his long
bondage.

"Is she dead?" said the voice that predominated over every other
within him. "If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then I shall be a
good fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the child--shall
be taken care of somehow." But across that vision came the other
possibility--"She may live, and then it's all up with me."

Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage
opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward to meet his uncle,
prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he
was to hear.

"I waited for you, as I'd come so far," he said, speaking first.

"Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn't you send one
of the men? There's nothing to be done. She's dead--has been
dead for hours, I should say."

"What sort of woman is she?" said Godfrey, feeling the blood rush
to his face.

"A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some vagrant--
quite in rags. She's got a wedding-ring on, however. They must
fetch her away to the workhouse to-morrow. Come, come along."

"I want to look at her," said Godfrey. "I think I saw such a
woman yesterday. I'll overtake you in a minute or two."

Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast
only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had
smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his
unhappy hated wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every
line 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.