Silas Marner, George Eliot [ebook reader for pc txt] 📗

the pressure with a grateful glance of her clear eyes, “but it won’t make up to Godfrey: a dairy’s not so much to a man. And it’s only what he cares for that ever makes me low. I’m contented with the blessings we have, if he could be contented.”

“It drives me past patience,” said Priscilla, impetuously, “that way o’ the men⁠—always wanting and wanting, and never easy with what they’ve got: they can’t sit comfortable in their chairs when they’ve neither ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to make ’em better than well, or else they must be swallowing something strong, though they’re forced to make haste before the next meal comes in. But joyful be it spoken, our father was never that sort o’ man. And if it had pleased God to make you ugly, like me, so as the men wouldn’t ha’ run after you, we might have kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks as have got uneasy blood in their veins.”

“Oh, don’t say so, Priscilla,” said Nancy, repenting that she had called forth this outburst; “nobody has any occasion to find fault with Godfrey. It’s natural he should be disappointed at not having any children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with ’em when they were little. There’s many another man ’ud hanker more than he does. He’s the best of husbands.”

“Oh, I know,” said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, “I know the way o’ wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they turn round on one and praise ’em as if they wanted to sell ’em. But father’ll be waiting for me; we must turn now.”

The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and Mr. Lammeter was already on the stone steps, passing the time in recalling to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his master used to ride him.

“I always would have a good horse, you know,” said the old gentleman, not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced from the memory of his juniors.

“Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week’s out, Mr. Cass,” was Priscilla’s parting injunction, as she took the reins, and shook them gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.

“I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, Nancy, and look at the draining,” said Godfrey.

“You’ll be in again by teatime, dear?”

“Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour.”

It was Godfrey’s custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied him; for the women of her generation⁠—unless, like Priscilla, they took to outdoor management⁠—were not given to much walking beyond their own house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So, when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant’s Bible before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her thoughts had already insisted on wandering.

But Nancy’s Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life; but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy’s character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions with self-questioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a great variety of subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and again, through all her remembered experience, especially through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her life and its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small details, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had opened a new epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight into the relations and trials of life, or which had called on her for some little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or real duty⁠—asking herself continually whether she had been in any respect blamable. This excessive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out from its due share of outward activity and of practical claims on its affections⁠—inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless woman, when her lot is narrow. “I can do so little⁠—have I done it all well?” is the perpetually recurring thought; and there are no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to divert energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple.

There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy’s married life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla’s implied blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection can find for its wounds:⁠—“A man must have so much on his mind,” is the belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy’s deepest wounds had all come from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was dwelt on in her husband’s mind as a privation to which he could not reconcile himself.

Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the denial of a blessing to which she