Silas Marner by George Eliot (popular books to read .TXT) 📖

think the flowers can see us and know what we’re talking about. And I’ll have a bit o’

rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they’re so sweet-smelling; but there’s no lavender only in the gentlefolks’

gardens, I think.”

“That’s no reason why you shouldn’t have some,” said Aaron, “for I can bring you slips of anything; I’m forced to cut no end of ‘em when I’m gardening, and throw ‘em away mostly. There’s a big bed o’

lavender at the Red House: the missis is very fond of it.”

“Well,” said Silas, gravely, “so as you don’t make free for us, or ask for anything as is worth much at the Red House: for Mr. Cass’s been so good to us, and built us up the new end o’ the cottage, and given us beds and things, as I couldn’t abide to be imposin’ for garden-stuff or anything else.”

“No, no, there’s no imposin’,” said Aaron; “there’s never a garden in all the parish but what there’s endless waste in it for want o’ somebody as could use everything up. It’s what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o’ victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o’ that—

gardening does. But I must go back now, else mother ‘ull be in trouble as I aren’t there.”

“Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron,” said Eppie; “I shouldn’t like to fix about the garden, and her not know everything from the first—should you, father?”

“Aye, bring her if you can, Aaron,” said Silas; “she’s sure to have a word to say as’ll help us to set things on their right end.”

Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up the lonely sheltered lane.

“O daddy!” she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and squeezing Silas’s arm, and skipping round to give him an energetic kiss. “My little old daddy! I’m so glad. I don’t think I shall want anything else when we’ve got a little garden; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us,” she went on with roguish triumph—“I knew that very well.”

“You’re a deep little puss, you are,” said Silas, with the mild passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face; “but you’ll make yourself fine and beholden to Aaron.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t,” said Eppie, laughing and frisking; “he likes it.”

“Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you’ll be dropping it, jumping i’ that way.”

Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log fastened to his foot—a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.

But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door, modified the donkey’s views, and he limped away again without bidding. The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as much as to say, “I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you perceive”; while the lady-mother of the kitten sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them.

The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with decent furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop’s eye. The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds and other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; and it was nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who could afford it, when he had brought up an orphan child, and been father and mother to her—and had lost his money too, so as he had nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was going down too—for there was less and less flax spun—and Master Marner was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he was regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any superstition that remained concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it—for, as Mr. Macey observed of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever.

Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would not consent to have a grate and oven added to his conveniences: he loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown pot—and was it not there when he had found Eppie? The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots.

Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his knife and fork, and watching half-abstractedly Eppie’s play with Snap and the cat, by which her own dining was made rather a lengthy business. Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wandering thoughts: Eppie, with the rippling radiance of her hair and the whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-blue cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both—Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel between them.

But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and said, “O daddy, you’re wanting to go into the sunshine to smoke your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when godmother comes. I’ll make haste—I won’t be long.”

Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years, having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Raveloe, as a practice “good for the fits”; and this advice was sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well to try what could do no harm—a principle which was made to answer for a great deal of work in that gentleman’s medical practice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present.

The sense of presiding goodness and the human trust which come with all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression that there had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that dark shadow over the days of his best years; and as it grew more and more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually communicated to her all he could describe of his early life. The communication was necessarily a slow and difficult process, for Silas’s meagre power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward experience gave her no key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder that arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to revolve what she had heard till it acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas at last arrived at the climax of the sad story—the drawing of lots, and its false testimony concerning him; and this had to be repeated in several interviews, under new questions on her part as to the nature of this plan for detecting the guilty and clearing the innocent.

“And yourn’s the same Bible, you’re sure o’ that, Master Marner—

the Bible as you brought wi’ you from that country—it’s the same as what they’ve got at church, and what Eppie’s a-learning to read in?”

“Yes,” said Silas, “every bit the same; and there’s drawing o’

lots in the Bible, mind you,” he added in a lower tone.

“Oh, dear, dear,” said Dolly in a grieved voice, as if she were hearing an unfavourable report of a sick man’s case. She was silent for some minutes; at last she said—

“There’s wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the parson knows, I’ll be bound; but it takes big words to tell them things, and such as poor folks can’t make much out on. I can never rightly know the meaning o’ what I hear at church, only a bit here and there, but I know it’s good words—I do. But what lies upo’ your mind—it’s this, Master Marner: as, if Them above had done the right thing by you, They’d never ha’ let you be turned out for a wicked thief when you was innicent.”

“Ah!” said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly’s phraseology, “that was what fell on me like as if it had been red-hot iron; because, you see, there was nobody as cared for me or clave to me above nor below. And him as I’d gone out and in wi’ for ten year and more, since when we was lads and went halves—mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, had lifted up his heel again’

me, and worked to ruin me.”

“Eh, but he was a bad un—I can’t think as there’s another such,” said Dolly. “But I’m o’ercome, Master Marner; I’m like as if I’d waked and didn’t know whether it was night or morning.

I feel somehow as sure as I do when I’ve laid something