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Home -> George Eliot -> Silas Marner -> Chapter 3

Silas Marner - Chapter 3

1. Part I, Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Part II, Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Conclusion







CHAPTER III

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large
red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the
high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one
among several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with
the title of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was also
understood to be of timeless origin--the Raveloe imagination
having never ventured back to that fearful blank when there were no
Osgoods--still, he merely owned the farm he occupied; whereas
Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him
quite as if he had been a lord.

It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar
favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of
prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and
yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad
husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking
now in relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for
our old-fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all
life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and
breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of
heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and
crossing each other with incalculable results. Raveloe lay low
among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents
of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank
freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously
in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were
entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their
feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which were the heirlooms
of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams,
but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they
were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great
merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for
the poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and
the barrels of ale--they were on a large scale, and lasted a good
while, especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up
their best gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the
risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in
rainy or snowy weather, when there was no knowing how high the water
would rise, it was not to be supposed that they looked forward to a
brief pleasure. On this ground it was always contrived in the dark
seasons, when there was little work to be done, and the hours were
long, that several neighbours should keep open house in succession.
So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and
freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher
up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams
and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun
butter in all its freshness--everything, in fact, that appetites
at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not
in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was
without that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain
of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped
to account not only for there being more profusion than finished
excellence in the holiday provisions, but also for the frequency
with which the proud Squire condescended to preside in the parlour
of the Rainbow rather than under the shadow of his own dark
wainscot; perhaps, also, for the fact that his sons had turned out
rather ill. Raveloe was not a place where moral censure was severe,
but it was thought a weakness in the Squire that he had kept all his
sons at home in idleness; and though some licence was to be allowed
to young men whose fathers could afford it, people shook their heads
at the courses of the second son, Dunstan, commonly called Dunsey
Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting might turn out to be a
sowing of something worse than wild oats. To be sure, the
neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunsey--a
spiteful jeering fellow, who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when
other people went dry--always provided that his doings did not
bring trouble on a family like Squire Cass's, with a monument in the
church, and tankards older than King George. But it would be a
thousand pities if Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine open-faced
good-natured young man who was to come into the land some day,
should take to going along the same road with his brother, as he had
seemed to do of late. If he went on in that way, he would lose Miss
Nancy Lammeter; for it was well known that she had looked very shyly
on him ever since last Whitsuntide twelvemonth, when there was so
much talk about his being away from home days and days together.
There was something wrong, more than common--that was quite clear;
for Mr. Godfrey didn't look half so fresh-coloured and open as he
used to do. At one time everybody was saying, What a handsome
couple he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make! and if she could come
to be mistress at the Red House, there would be a fine change, for
the Lammeters had been brought up in that way, that they never
suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in their
household had of the best, according to his place. Such a
daughter-in-law would be a saving to the old Squire, if she never
brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be feared that,
notwithstanding his incomings, there were more holes in his pocket
than the one where he put his own hand in. But if Mr. Godfrey
didn't turn over a new leaf, he might say "Good-bye" to Miss Nancy
Lammeter.

It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with his hands in
his side-pockets and his back to the fire, in the dark wainscoted
parlour, one late November afternoon in that fifteenth year of Silas
Marner's life at Raveloe. The fading grey light fell dimly on the
walls decorated with guns, whips, and foxes' brushes, on coats and
hats flung on the chairs, on tankards sending forth a scent of flat
ale, and on a half-choked fire, with pipes propped up in the
chimney-corners: signs of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing
charm, with which the look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey's blond
face was in sad accordance. He seemed to be waiting and listening
for some one's approach, and presently the sound of a heavy step,
with an accompanying whistle, was heard across the large empty
entrance-hall.

The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking young man entered,
with the flushed face and the gratuitously elated bearing which mark
the first stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the sight of
him Godfrey's face parted with some of its gloom to take on the more
active expression of hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that lay on
the hearth retreated under the chair in the chimney-corner.

"Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?" said Dunsey, in
a mocking tone. "You're my elders and betters, you know; I was
obliged to come when you sent for me."

"Why, this is what I want--and just shake yourself sober and
listen, will you?" said Godfrey, savagely. He had himself been
drinking more than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom into
uncalculating anger. "I want to tell you, I must hand over that
rent of Fowler's to the Squire, or else tell him I gave it you; for
he's threatening to distrain for it, and it'll all be out soon,
whether I tell him or not. He said, just now, before he went out,
he should send word to Cox to distrain, if Fowler didn't come and
pay up his arrears this week. The Squire's short o' cash, and in no
humour to stand any nonsense; and you know what he threatened, if
ever he found you making away with his money again. So, see and get
the money, and pretty quickly, will you?"

"Oh!" said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his brother and
looking in his face. "Suppose, now, you get the money yourself,
and save me the trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it
over to me, you'll not refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me:
it was your brotherly love made you do it, you know."

Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. "Don't come near me
with that look, else I'll knock you down."

"Oh no, you won't," said Dunsey, turning away on his heel,
however. "Because I'm such a good-natured brother, you know.
I might get you turned out of house and home, and cut off with a
shilling any day. I might tell the Squire how his handsome son was
married to that nice young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy
because he couldn't live with his drunken wife, and I should slip
into your place as comfortable as could be. But you see, I don't do
it--I'm so easy and good-natured. You'll take any trouble for me.
You'll get the hundred pounds for me--I know you will."

"How can I get the money?" said Godfrey, quivering. "I haven't
a shilling to bless myself with. And it's a lie that you'd slip
into my place: you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all. For
if you begin telling tales, I'll follow. Bob's my father's
favourite--you know that very well. He'd only think himself well
rid of you."

"Never mind," said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as he looked
out of the window. "It 'ud be very pleasant to me to go in your
company--you're such a handsome brother, and we've always been so
fond of quarrelling with one another, I shouldn't know what to do
without you. But you'd like better for us both to stay at home
together; I know you would. So you'll manage to get that little sum
o' money, and I'll bid you good-bye, though I'm sorry to part."

Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and seized him
by the arm, saying, with an oath--

"I tell you, I have no money: I can get no money."

"Borrow of old Kimble."

"I tell you, he won't lend me any more, and I shan't ask him."

"Well, then, sell Wildfire."

"Yes, that's easy talking. I must have the money directly."

"Well, you've only got to ride him to the hunt to-morrow. There'll
be Bryce and Keating there, for sure. You'll get more bids than
one."

"I daresay, and get back home at eight o'clock, splashed up to the
chin. I'm going to Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance."

"Oho!" said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and trying to
speak in a small mincing treble. "And there's sweet Miss Nancy
coming; and we shall dance with her, and promise never to be naughty
again, and be taken into favour, and --"

"Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool," said Godfrey,
turning red, "else I'll throttle you."

"What for?" said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but taking
a whip from the table and beating the butt-end of it on his palm.
"You've a very good chance. I'd advise you to creep up her sleeve
again: it 'ud be saving time, if Molly should happen to take a drop
too much laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Miss Nancy
wouldn't mind being a second, if she didn't know it. And you've got
a good-natured brother, who'll keep your secret well, because you'll
be so very obliging to him."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Godfrey, quivering, and pale
again, "my patience is pretty near at an end. If you'd a little
more sharpness in you, you might know that you may urge a man a bit
too far, and make one leap as easy as another. I don't know but
what it is so now: I may as well tell the Squire everything myself--
I should get you off my back, if I got nothing else. And, after
all, he'll know some time. She's been threatening to come herself
and tell him. So, don't flatter yourself that your secrecy's worth
any price you choose to ask. You drain me of money till I have got
nothing to pacify _her_ with, and she'll do as she threatens some
day. It's all one. I'll tell my father everything myself, and you
may go to the devil."

Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that there was a
point at which even the hesitating Godfrey might be driven into
decision. But he said, with an air of unconcern--

"As you please; but I'll have a draught of ale first." And
ringing the bell, he threw himself across two chairs, and began to
rap the window-seat with the handle of his whip.

Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his
fingers among the contents of his side-pockets, and looking at the
floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal
courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved
were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. His
natural irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a
position in which dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on
all sides, and his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy
Dunstan and anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he
must bring on himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him
than the present evil. The results of confession were not
contingent, they were certain; whereas betrayal was not certain.
From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense and
vacillation with a sense of repose. The disinherited son of a small
squire, equally disinclined to dig and to beg, was almost as
helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by the favour of earth and sky,
has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot where it first shot upward.
Perhaps it would have been possible to think of digging with some
cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be won on those terms; but,
since he must irrevocably lose _her_ as well as the inheritance, and
must break every tie but the one that degraded him and left him
without motive for trying to recover his better self, he could
imagine no future for himself on the other side of confession but
that of "'listing for a soldier"--the most desperate step, short
of suicide, in the eyes of respectable families. No! he would
rather trust to casualties than to his own resolve--rather go on
sitting at the feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though with the
sword hanging over him and terror in his heart, than rush away into
the cold darkness where there was no pleasure left. The utmost
concession to Dunstan about the horse began to seem easy, compared
with the fulfilment of his own threat. But his pride would not let
him recommence the conversation otherwise than by continuing the
quarrel. Dunstan was waiting for this, and took his ale in shorter
draughts than usual.

"It's just like you," Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, "to
talk about my selling Wildfire in that cool way--the last thing
I've got to call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had
in my life. And if you'd got a spark of pride in you, you'd be
ashamed to see the stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it.
But it's my belief you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the
pleasure of making somebody feel he'd got a bad bargain."

"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, very placably, "you do me justice, I
see. You know I'm a jewel for 'ticing people into bargains. For
which reason I advise you to let _me_ sell Wildfire. I'd ride him
to the hunt to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I shouldn't look so
handsome as you in the saddle, but it's the horse they'll bid for,
and not the rider."

"Yes, I daresay--trust my horse to you!"

"As you please," said Dunstan, rapping the window-seat again with
an air of great unconcern. "It's _you_ have got to pay Fowler's
money; it's none of my business. You received the money from him
when you went to Bramcote, and _you_ told the Squire it wasn't paid.
I'd nothing to do with that; you chose to be so obliging as to give
it me, that was all. If you don't want to pay the money, let it
alone; it's all one to me. But I was willing to accommodate you by
undertaking to sell the horse, seeing it's not convenient to you to
go so far to-morrow."

Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have liked to spring
on Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, and flog him to within an
inch of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he
was mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings
stronger even than his resentment. When he spoke again, it was in a
half-conciliatory tone.

"Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You'll sell him
all fair, and hand over the money? If you don't, you know,
everything 'ull go to smash, for I've got nothing else to trust to.
And you'll have less pleasure in pulling the house over my head,
when your own skull's to be broken too."

"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, rising; "all right. I thought you'd
come round. I'm the fellow to bring old Bryce up to the scratch.
I'll get you a hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny."

"But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did
yesterday, and then you can't go," said Godfrey, hardly knowing
whether he wished for that obstacle or not.

"Not _it_," said Dunstan. "I'm always lucky in my weather. It
might rain if you wanted to go yourself. You never hold trumps, you
know--I always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got
the luck, so you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence;
you'll _ne_-ver get along without me."

"Confound you, hold your tongue!" said Godfrey, impetuously.
"And take care to keep sober to-morrow, else you'll get pitched on
your head coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it."

"Make your tender heart easy," said Dunstan, opening the door.
"You never knew me see double when I'd got a bargain to make; it
'ud spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm warranted to fall
on my legs."

With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to
that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now
unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting,
drinking, card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of
seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing
from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are
perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal
enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual
urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives
of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very prosaic
figures--men whose only work was to ride round their land, getting
heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who passed the rest of
their days in the half-listless gratification of senses dulled by
monotony--had a certain pathos in them nevertheless. Calamities
came to _them_ too, and their early errors carried hard
consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of
purity, order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the vision of a
life in which the days would not seem too long, even without
rioting; but the maiden was lost, and the vision passed away, and
then what was left to them, especially when they had become too
heavy for the hunt, or for carrying a gun over the furrows, but to
drink and get merry, or to drink and get angry, so that they might
be independent of variety, and say over again with eager emphasis
the things they had said already any time that twelvemonth?
Assuredly, among these flushed and dull-eyed men there were some
whom--thanks to their native human-kindness--even riot could
never drive into brutality; men who, when their cheeks were fresh,
had felt the keen point of sorrow or remorse, had been pierced by
the reeds they leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters
from which no struggle could loose them; and under these sad
circumstances, common to us all, their thoughts could find no
resting-place outside the ever-trodden round of their own petty
history.

That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this
six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction,
helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal
relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret
marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of
low passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to
be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's bitter memory. He had long
known that the delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by
Dunstan, who saw in his brother's degrading marriage the means of
gratifying at once his jealous hate and his cupidity. And if
Godfrey could have felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that
destiny had put into his mouth would have chafed him less
intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud when he was alone
had had no other object than Dunstan's diabolical cunning, he might
have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But he had
something else to curse--his own vicious folly, which now seemed
as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices
do when their promptings have long passed away. For four years he
had thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient
worship, as the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she
would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his
father's home had never been; and it would be easy, when she was
always near, to shake off those foolish habits that were no
pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling vacancy. Godfrey's
was an essentially domestic nature, bred up in a home where the
hearth had no smiles, and where the daily habits were not chastised
by the presence of household order. His easy disposition made him
fall in unresistingly with the family courses, but the need of some
tender permanent affection, the longing for some influence that
would make the good he preferred easy to pursue, caused the
neatness, purity, and liberal orderliness of the Lammeter household,
sunned by the smile of Nancy, to seem like those fresh bright hours
of the morning when temptations go to sleep and leave the ear open
to the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry, sobriety, and
peace. And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to
save him from a course which shut him out of it for ever. Instead
of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would
have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step
firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into mud and slime, in
which it was useless to struggle. He had made ties for himself
which robbed him of all wholesome motive, and were a constant
exasperation.

Still, there was one position worse than the present: it was the
position he would be in when the ugly secret was disclosed; and the
desire that continually triumphed over every other was that of
warding off the evil day, when he would have to bear the
consequences of his father's violent resentment for the wound
inflicted on his family pride--would have, perhaps, to turn his
back on that hereditary ease and dignity which, after all, was a
sort of reason for living, and would carry with him the certainty
that he was banished for ever from the sight and esteem of Nancy
Lammeter. The longer the interval, the more chance there was of
deliverance from some, at least, of the hateful consequences to
which he had sold himself; the more opportunities remained for him
to snatch the strange gratification of seeing Nancy, and gathering
some faint indications of her lingering regard. Towards this
gratification he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then, after
having passed weeks in which he had avoided her as the far-off
bright-winged prize that only made him spring forward and find his
chain all the more galling. One of those fits of yearning was on
him now, and it would have been strong enough to have persuaded him
to trust Wildfire to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning,
even if he had not had another reason for his disinclination towards
the morrow's hunt. That other reason was the fact that the
morning's meet was near Batherley, the market-town where the unhappy
woman lived, whose image became more odious to him every day; and to
his thought the whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a man
creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest
nature; and the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was
fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to
enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him
a ready-garnished home.

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well
go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting:
everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though,
for his own part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting.
Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him,
and had been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience
for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust her away without
looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the
unresenting Snuff--perhaps because she saw no other career open to
her.




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