Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (143 page)

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem with her to remove.
 
Yet she had not the vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them.
 
She was the person always first thought of in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when leeches were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly nurse.
 
She was a “comfortable woman”--good-looking, fresh-complexioned, having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present.
 
But she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation.
 
It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that “men
would
be so”, and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron, an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the mysterious sound of the loom.

“Ah, it is as I thought,” said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have done, at a visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.
 
Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.
 
He opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning her greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that she was to sit down in it.
 
Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest way--

“I’d a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out better nor common, and I’d ha’ asked you to accept some, if you’d thought well.
 
I don’t eat such things myself, for a bit o’ bread’s what I like from one year’s end to the other; but men’s stomichs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know, God help ‘em.”

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to look so at everything he took into his hand--eyed all the while by the wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of his mother’s chair, and was peeping round from behind it.

“There’s letters pricked on ‘em,” said Dolly.
 
“I can’t read ‘em myself, and there’s nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they mean; but they’ve a good meaning, for they’re the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church.
 
What are they, Aaron, my dear?”

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.

“Oh, go, that’s naughty,” said his mother, mildly.
 
“Well, whativer the letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and it’s a stamp as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and I’ve allays put it on too; for if there’s any good, we’ve need of it i’ this world.”

“It’s I. H. S.,” said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped round the chair again.

“Well, to be sure, you can read ‘em off,” said Dolly.
 
“Ben’s read ‘em to me many and many a time, but they slip out o’ my mind again; the more’s the pity, for they’re good letters, else they wouldn’t be in the church; and so I prick ‘em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though sometimes they won’t hold, because o’ the rising--for, as I said, if there’s any good to be got we’ve need of it i’ this world--that we have; and I hope they’ll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it’s wi’ that will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held better nor common.”

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made itself heard in her quiet tones.
 
He said, with more feeling than before--”Thank you--thank you kindly.”
 
But he laid down the cakes and seated himself absently--drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly’s kindness, could tend for him.

“Ah, if there’s good anywhere, we’ve need of it,” repeated Dolly, who did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase.
 
She looked at Silas pityingly as she went on.
 
“But you didn’t hear the church-bells this morning, Master Marner?
 
I doubt you didn’t know it was Sunday.
 
Living so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and then, when your loom makes a noise, you can’t hear the bells, more partic’lar now the frost kills the sound.”

“Yes, I did; I heard ‘em,” said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness.
 
There had been no bells in Lantern Yard.

“Dear heart!”
 
said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again.
 
“But what a pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself--if you didn’t go to church; for if you’d a roasting bit, it might be as you couldn’t leave it, being a lone man.
 
But there’s the bakehus, if you could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and then,--not every week, in course--I shouldn’t like to do that myself,--you might carry your bit o’ dinner there, for it’s nothing but right to have a bit o’ summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can’t know your dinner from Saturday.
 
But now, upo’ Christmas-day, this blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen’, you’d be a deal the better, and you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i’ Them as knows better nor we do, seein’ you’d ha’ done what it lies on us all to do.”

Dolly’s exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of gruel for which he had no appetite.
 
Silas had never before been closely urged on the point of his absence from church, which had only been thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct and simple to evade Dolly’s appeal.

“Nay, nay,” he said, “I know nothing o’ church.
 
I’ve never been to church.”

“No!”
 
said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment.
 
Then bethinking herself of Silas’s advent from an unknown country, she said, “Could it ha’ been as they’d no church where you was born?”

“Oh, yes,” said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of leaning on his knees, and supporting his head.
 
“There was churches--a many--it was a big town.
 
But I knew nothing of ‘em-- I went to chapel.”

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of inquiring further, lest “chapel” might mean some haunt of wickedness.
 
After a little thought, she said--

“Well, Master Marner, it’s niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and if you’ve niver had no church, there’s no telling the good it’ll do you.
 
For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I’ve been and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o’ God, as Mr. Macey gives out--and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more partic’lar on Sacramen’ Day; and if a bit o’ trouble comes, I feel as I can put up wi’ it, for I’ve looked for help i’ the right quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last; and if we’n done our part, it isn’t to be believed as Them as are above us ‘ull be worse nor we are, and come short o’ Their’n.”

Poor Dolly’s exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather unmeaningly on Silas’s ears, for there was no word in it that could rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of Dolly’s, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity.
 
He remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly’s speech which he fully understood--her recommendation that he should go to church.
 
Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple business, that words did not easily come to him without the urgency of a distinct purpose.

But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver’s awful presence, had advanced to his mother’s side, and Silas, seeming to notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly’s signs of good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake.
 
Aaron shrank back a little, and rubbed his head against his mother’s shoulder, but still thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for it.

“Oh, for shame, Aaron,” said his mother, taking him on her lap, however; “why, you don’t want cake again yet awhile.
 
He’s wonderful hearty,” she went on, with a little sigh--”that he is, God knows.
 
He’s my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must allays hev him in our sight--that we must.”

She stroked Aaron’s brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner good to see such a “pictur of a child”.
 
But Marner, on the other side of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round, with two dark spots in it.

“And he’s got a voice like a bird--you wouldn’t think,” Dolly went on; “he can sing a Christmas carril as his father’s taught him; and I take it for a token as he’ll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so quick.
 
Come, Aaron, stan’ up and sing the carril to Master Marner, come.”

Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother’s shoulder.

“Oh, that’s naughty,” said Dolly, gently.
 
“Stan’ up, when mother tells you, and let me hold the cake till you’ve done.”

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious for the “carril”, he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted, and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer

“God rest you, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ our Savior Was born on Christmas-day.”

 
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.

“That’s Christmas music,” she said, when Aaron had ended, and had secured his piece of cake again.
 
“There’s no other music equil to the Christmas music--”Hark the erol angils sing.”
 
And you may judge what it is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you can’t help thinking you’ve got to a better place a’ready--for I wouldn’t speak ill o’ this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows best--but what wi’ the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I’ve seen times and times, one’s thankful to hear of a better.
 
The boy sings pretty, don’t he, Master Marner?”