Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (152 page)

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 up though I can’t justly put my hand on it, as there was a rights in what happened to you, if one could but make it out; and you’d no call to lose heart as you did.
 
But we’ll talk on it again; for sometimes things come into my head when I’m leeching or poulticing, or such, as I could never think on when I was sitting still.”

Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was not long before she recurred to the subject.

“Master Marner,” she said, one day that she came to bring home Eppie’s washing, “I’ve been sore puzzled for a good bit wi’ that trouble o’ yourn and the drawing o’ lots; and it got twisted back’ards and for’ards, as I didn’t know which end to lay hold on. But it come to me all clear like, that night when I was sitting up wi’ poor Bessy Fawkes, as is dead and left her children behind, God help ‘em--it come to me as clear as daylight; but whether I’ve got hold on it now, or can anyways bring it to my tongue’s end, that I don’t know.
 
For I’ve often a deal inside me as’ll never come out; and for what you talk o’ your folks in your old country niver saying prayers by heart nor saying ‘em out of a book, they must be wonderful cliver; for if I didn’t know “Our Father”, and little bits o’ good words as I can carry out o’ church wi’ me, I might down o’ my knees every night, but nothing could I say.”

“But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on, Mrs. Winthrop,” said Silas.

“Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can make nothing o’ the drawing o’ lots and the answer coming wrong; it ‘ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i’ big words.
 
But what come to me as clear as the daylight, it was when I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes into my head when I’m sorry for folks, and feel as I can’t do a power to help ‘em, not if I was to get up i’ the middle o’ the night-- it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I’ve got--for I can’t be anyways better nor Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it’s because there’s things I don’t know on; and for the matter o’ that, there may be plenty o’ things I don’t know on, for it’s little as I know--that it is. And so, while I was thinking o’ that, you come into my mind, Master Marner, and it all come pouring in:--if
I
felt i’ my inside what was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed and drawed the lots, all but that wicked un, if
they
’d ha’ done the right thing by you if they could, isn’t there Them as was at the making on us, and knows better and has a better will?
 
And that’s all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it.
 
For there was the fever come and took off them as were full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there’s the breaking o’ limbs; and them as ‘ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairy--eh, there’s trouble i’ this world, and there’s things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we’ve got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten.
 
For if us as knows so little can see a bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as there’s a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know--I feel it i’ my own inside as it must be so.
 
And if you could but ha’ gone on trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn’t ha’ run away from your fellow-creaturs and been so lone.”

“Ah, but that ‘ud ha’ been hard,” said Silas, in an under-tone; “it ‘ud ha’ been hard to trusten then.”

“And so it would,” said Dolly, almost with compunction; “them things are easier said nor done; and I’m partly ashamed o’ talking.”

“Nay, nay,” said Silas, “you’re i’ the right, Mrs. Winthrop-- you’re i’ the right.
 
There’s good i’ this world--I’ve a feeling o’ that now; and it makes a man feel as there’s a good more nor he can see, i’ spite o’ the trouble and the wickedness.
 
That drawing o’ the lots is dark; but the child was sent to me: there’s dealings with us--there’s dealings.”

This dialogue took place in Eppie’s earlier years, when Silas had to part with her for two hours every day, that she might learn to read at the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her in that first step to learning.
 
Now that she was grown up, Silas had often been led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which come to people who live together in perfect love, to talk with
her
too of the past, and how and why he had lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him.
 
For it would have been impossible for him to hide from Eppie that she was not his own child: even if the most delicate reticence on the point could have been expected from Raveloe gossips in her presence, her own questions about her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up, without that complete shrouding of the past which would have made a painful barrier between their minds. So Eppie had long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground, and how she herself had been found on the hearth by father Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas brought back to him.
 
The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity.
 
Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas’s hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling.
 
She was too childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about her unknown father; for a long while it did not even occur to her that she must have had a father; and the first time that the idea of her mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas showed her the wedding-ring which had been taken from the wasted finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a little lackered box shaped like a shoe.
 
He delivered this box into Eppie’s charge when she had grown up, and she often opened it to look at the ring: but still she thought hardly at all about the father of whom it was the symbol.
 
Had she not a father very close to her, who loved her better than any real fathers in the village seemed to love their daughters?
 
On the contrary, who her mother was, and how she came to die in that forlornness, were questions that often pressed on Eppie’s mind.
 
Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her nearest friend next to Silas, made her feel that a mother must be very precious; and she had again and again asked Silas to tell her how her mother looked, whom she was like, and how he had found her against the furze bush, led towards it by the little footsteps and the outstretched arms.
 
The furze bush was there still; and this afternoon, when Eppie came out with Silas into the sunshine, it was the first object that arrested her eyes and thoughts.

“Father,” she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which sometimes came like a sadder, slower cadence across her playfulness, “we shall take the furze bush into the garden; it’ll come into the corner, and just against it I’ll put snowdrops and crocuses, ‘cause Aaron says they won’t die out, but’ll always get more and more.”

“Ah, child,” said Silas, always ready to talk when he had his pipe in his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses more than the puffs, “it wouldn’t do to leave out the furze bush; and there’s nothing prettier, to my thinking, when it’s yallow with flowers.
 
But it’s just come into my head what we’re to do for a fence--mayhap Aaron can help us to a thought; but a fence we must have, else the donkeys and things ‘ull come and trample everything down.
 
And fencing’s hard to be got at, by what I can make out.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you, daddy,” said Eppie, clasping her hands suddenly, after a minute’s thought.
 
“There’s lots o’ loose stones about, some of ‘em not big, and we might lay ‘em atop of one another, and make a wall.
 
You and me could carry the smallest, and Aaron ‘ud carry the rest--I know he would.”

“Eh, my precious un,” said Silas, “there isn’t enough stones to go all round; and as for you carrying, why, wi’ your little arms you couldn’t carry a stone no bigger than a turnip.
 
You’re dillicate made, my dear,” he added, with a tender intonation--”that’s what Mrs. Winthrop says.”

“Oh, I’m stronger than you think, daddy,” said Eppie; “and if there wasn’t stones enough to go all round, why they’ll go part o’ the way, and then it’ll be easier to get sticks and things for the rest.
 
See here, round the big pit, what a many stones!”