CHAPTER XIX

Between eight and nine o'clock that evening, Eppie and Silas were
seated alone in the cottage. After the great excitement the weaver
had undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a
longing for this quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and
Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave
him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it
had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility
makes external stimulus intolerable--when there is no sense of
weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep
is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other
men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange
definiteness that comes over coarse features from that transient
influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual
voices had sent wonder-working vibrations through the heavy mortal
frame--as if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had passed into
the face of the listener.

Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in his
arm-chair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn her own chair towards
his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she
looked up at him. On the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the
recovered gold--the old long-loved gold, ranged in orderly heaps,
as Silas used to range it in the days when it was his only joy. He
had been telling her how he used to count it every night, and how
his soul was utterly desolate till she was sent to him.

"At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he
was saying in a subdued tone, "as if you might be changed into the
gold again; for sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I seemed
to see the gold; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it,
and find it was come back. But that didn't last long. After a bit,
I should have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you
from me, for I'd got to feel the need o' your looks and your voice
and the touch o' your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie,
when you were such a little un--you didn't know what your old
father Silas felt for you."

"But I know now, father," said Eppie. "If it hadn't been for
you, they'd have taken me to the workhouse, and there'd have been
nobody to love me."

"Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you hadn't been
sent to save me, I should ha' gone to the grave in my misery. The
money was taken away from me in time; and you see it's been kept--
kept till it was wanted for you. It's wonderful--our life is
wonderful."

Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. "It
takes no hold of me now," he said, ponderingly--"the money
doesn't. I wonder if it ever could again--I doubt it might, if I
lost you, Eppie. I might come to think I was forsaken again, and
lose the feeling that God was good to me."

At that moment there was a knocking at the door; and Eppie was
obliged to rise without answering Silas. Beautiful she looked, with
the tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes and a slight flush on
her cheeks, as she stepped to open the door. The flush deepened
when she saw Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her little rustic
curtsy, and held the door wide for them to enter.

"We're disturbing you very late, my dear," said Mrs. Cass, taking
Eppie's hand, and looking in her face with an expression of anxious
interest and admiration. Nancy herself was pale and tremulous.

Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to stand
against Silas, opposite to them.

"Well, Marner," said Godfrey, trying to speak with perfect
firmness, "it's a great comfort to me to see you with your money
again, that you've been deprived of so many years. It was one of my
family did you the wrong--the more grief to me--and I feel bound
to make up to you for it in every way. Whatever I can do for you
will be nothing but paying a debt, even if I looked no further than
the robbery. But there are other things I'm beholden--shall be
beholden to you for, Marner."

Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed between him and his
wife that the subject of his fatherhood should be approached very
carefully, and that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved
for the future, so that it might be made to Eppie gradually. Nancy
had urged this, because she felt strongly the painful light in which
Eppie must inevitably see the relation between her father and
mother.

Silas, always ill at ease when he was being spoken to by
"betters", such as Mr. Cass--tall, powerful, florid men, seen
chiefly on horseback--answered with some constraint--

"Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As for the robbery, I
count it no loss to me. And if I did, you couldn't help it: you
aren't answerable for it."

"You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can; and I
hope you'll let me act according to my own feeling of what's just.
I know you're easily contented: you've been a hard-working man all
your life."

"Yes, sir, yes," said Marner, meditatively. "I should ha' been
bad off without my work: it was what I held by when everything else
was gone from me."

"Ah," said Godfrey, applying Marner's words simply to his bodily
wants, "it was a good trade for you in this country, because
there's been a great deal of linen-weaving to be done. But you're
getting rather past such close work, Marner: it's time you laid by
and had some rest. You look a good deal pulled down, though you're
not an old man, _are_ you?"

"Fifty-five, as near as I can say, sir," said Silas.

"Oh, why, you may live thirty years longer--look at old Macey!
And that money on the table, after all, is but little. It won't go
far either way--whether it's put out to interest, or you were to
live on it as long as it would last: it wouldn't go far if you'd
nobody to keep but yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good
many years now."

"Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying,
"I'm in no fear o' want. We shall do very well--Eppie and me
'ull do well enough. There's few working-folks have got so much
laid by as that. I don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look
upon it as a deal--almost too much. And as for us, it's little we
want."

"Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the
moment after.

"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that
this turn in the point of view might help her husband. "We should
agree in that: I give a deal of time to the garden."

"Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey,
surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition
which had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a
good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great
comfort to you to see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks
blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't
look like a strapping girl come of working parents. You'd like to
see her taken care of by those who can leave her well off, and make
a lady of her; she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as
she might come to have in a few years' time."

A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a
passing gleam. Eppie was simply wondering Mr. Cass should talk so
about things that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but
Silas was hurt and uneasy.

"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at
command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard
Mr. Cass's words.

"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to
come to the point. "Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children--
nobody to benefit by our good home and everything else we have--
more than enough for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody
in the place of a daughter to us--we should like to have Eppie,
and treat her in every way as our own child. It 'ud be a great
comfort to you in your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made in
that way, after you've been at the trouble of bringing her up so
well. And it's right you should have every reward for that. And
Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and be grateful to you: she'd
come and see you very often, and we should all be on the look-out to
do everything we could towards making you comfortable."

A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment,
necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions,
and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings.
While he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind
Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt
him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when
Mr. Cass had ended--powerless under the conflict of emotions, all
alike painful. 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.