CHAPTER XVII

While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing in the
fleckered shade of the ash tree, Miss Priscilla Lammeter was
resisting her sister's arguments, that it would be better to take
tea at the Red House, and let her father have a long nap, than drive
home to the Warrens so soon after dinner. The family party (of four
only) were seated round the table in the dark wainscoted parlour,
with the Sunday dessert before them, of fresh filberts, apples, and
pears, duly ornamented with leaves by Nancy's own hand before the
bells had rung for church.

A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlour since we
saw it in Godfrey's bachelor days, and under the wifeless reign of
the old Squire. Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is
ever allowed to rest, from the yard's width of oaken boards round
the carpet, to the old Squire's gun and whips and walking-sticks,
ranged on the stag's antlers above the mantelpiece. All other signs
of sporting and outdoor occupation Nancy has removed to another
room; but she has brought into the Red House the habit of filial
reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of honour these relics
of her husband's departed father. The tankards are on the
side-table still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and
there are no dregs to send forth unpleasant suggestions: the only
prevailing scent is of the lavender and rose-leaves that fill the
vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this once
dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by a new
presiding spirit.

"Now, father," said Nancy, "_is_ there any call for you to go
home to tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with us?--such a
beautiful evening as it's likely to be."

The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing
poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue
between his daughters.

"My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm
voice, now become rather broken. "She manages me and the farm
too."

"And reason good as I should manage you, father," said Priscilla,
"else you'd be giving yourself your death with rheumatism. And as
for the farm, if anything turns out wrong, as it can't but do in
these times, there's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to
find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being
master, to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming
in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke, _I_ believe."

"Well, well, my dear," said her father, with a quiet laugh, "I
didn't say you don't manage for everybody's good."

"Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla," said Nancy,
putting her hand on her sister's arm affectionately. "Come now;
and we'll go round the garden while father has his nap."

"My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I shall
drive. And as for staying tea, I can't hear of it; for there's this
dairymaid, now she knows she's to be married, turned Michaelmas,
she'd as lief pour the new milk into the pig-trough as into the
pans. That's the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the
world 'ud be new-made because they're to be married. So come and
let me put my bonnet on, and there'll be time for us to walk round
the garden while the horse is being put in."

When the sisters were treading the neatly-swept garden-walks,
between 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
experience--should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so
nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in
the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge--singular,
if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural
growths, elude the barriers of system.

Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years
old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred
to him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie.
Surely the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so
much trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should
happen to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he
would be well provided for to the end of his life--provided for as
the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an
appropriate thing for people in a higher station to take a charge
off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently
appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to
himself; and by a common fallacy, he imagined the measure would be
easy because he had private motives for desiring it. This was
rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's relation to Eppie; but we
must remember that many of the impressions which Godfrey was likely
to gather concerning the labouring people around him would favour
the idea that deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms
and scant means; and he had not had the opportunity, even if he had
had the power, of entering intimately into all that was exceptional
in the weaver's experience. It was only the want of adequate
knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey deliberately
to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness had outlived
that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of him as a
husband was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion.

"I was right," she said to herself, when she had recalled all
their scenes of discussion--"I feel I was right to say him nay,
though it hurt me more than anything; but how good Godfrey has been
about it! Many men would have been very angry with me for standing
out against their wishes; and they might have thrown out that they'd
had ill-luck in marrying me; but Godfrey has never been the man to
say me an unkind word. It's only what he can't hide: everything
seems so blank to him, I know; and the land--what a difference it
'ud make to him, when he goes to see after things, if he'd children
growing up that he was doing it all for! But I won't murmur; and
perhaps if he'd married a woman who'd have had children, she'd have
vexed him in other ways."

This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort; and to give it greater
strength, she laboured to make it impossible that any other wife
should have had more perfect tenderness. She had been _forced_ to
vex him by that one denial. Godfrey was not insensible to her
loving effort, and did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her
obstinacy. It was impossible to have lived with her fifteen years
and not be aware that an unselfish clinging to the right, and a
sincerity clear as the flower-born dew, were her main
characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt this so strongly, that his own
more wavering nature, too averse to facing difficulty to be
unvaryingly simple and truthful, was kept in a certain awe of this
gentle wife who watched his looks with a yearning to obey them. It
seemed to him impossible that he should ever confess to her the
truth about Eppie: she would never recover from the repulsion the
story of his earlier marriage would create, told to her now, after
that long concealment. And the child, too, he thought, must become
an object of repulsion: the very sight of her would be painful. The
shock to Nancy's mingled pride and ignorance of the world's evil
might even be too much for her delicate frame. Since he had married
her with that secret on his heart, he must keep it there to the
last. Whatever else he did, he could not make an irreparable breach
between himself and this long-loved wife.

Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of
children from a hearth brightened by such a wife? Why did his mind
fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life
was not thoroughly joyous to him? I suppose it is the way with all
men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that
life never _can_ be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of
the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds
it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction seated
musingly on a childless hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose
return is greeted by young voices--seated at the meal where the
little heads rise one above another like nursery plants, it sees a
black care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the
impulses by which men abandon freedom, and seek for ties, are surely
nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey's case there were further
reasons why his thoughts should be continually solicited by this one
point in his lot: his conscience, never thoroughly easy about Eppie,
now gave his childless home the aspect of a retribution; and as the
time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to adopt her, any retrieval of
his error became more and more difficult.

On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since there had
been any allusion to the subject between them, and Nancy supposed
that it was for ever buried.

"I wonder if he'll mind it less or more as he gets older," she
thought; "I'm afraid more. Aged people feel the miss of children:
what would father do without Priscilla? And if I die, Godfrey will
be very lonely--not holding together with his brothers much. But
I won't be over-anxious, and trying to make things out beforehand: I
must do my best for the present."

With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her reverie, and
turned her eyes again towards the forsaken page. It had been
forsaken longer than she imagined, for she was presently surprised
by the appearance of the servant with the tea-things. It was, in
fact, a little before the usual time for tea; but Jane had her
reasons.

"Is your master come into the yard, Jane?"

"No 'm, he isn't," said Jane, with a slight emphasis, of which,
however, her mistress took no notice.

"I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm," continued Jane, after
a pause, "but there's folks making haste all one way, afore the
front window. I doubt something's happened. There's niver a man to
be seen i' the yard, else I'd send and see. I've been up into the
top attic, but there's no seeing anything for trees. I hope
nobody's hurt, that's all."

"Oh, no, I daresay there's nothing much the matter," said Nancy.
"It's perhaps Mr. Snell's bull got out again, as he did before."

"I wish he mayn't gore anybody then, that's all," said Jane, not
altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a few imaginary
calamities.

"That girl is always terrifying me," thought Nancy; "I wish
Godfrey would come in."

She went to the front window and looked as far as she could see
along the road, with an uneasiness which she felt to be childish,
for there were now no such signs of excitement as Jane had spoken
of, and Godfrey would not be likely to return by the village road,
but by the fields. She continued to stand, however, looking at the
placid churchyard with the long shadows of the gravestones across
the bright green hillocks, and at the glowing autumn colours of the
Rectory trees beyond. Before such calm external beauty the presence
of a vague fear is more distinctly felt--like a raven flapping its
slow wing across the sunny air. Nancy wished more and more that
Godfrey would come in.