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

never know whether they got at the truth o’ the robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha’ given me any light about the drawing o’ the lots. It’s dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is; I doubt it’ll be dark to the last.”

“Well, yes, Master Marner,” said Dolly, who sat with a placid listening face, now bordered by grey hairs; “I doubt it may. It’s the will o’ Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there’s some things as I’ve never felt i’ the dark about, and they’re mostly what comes i’ the day’s work. You were hard done by that once, Master Marner, and it seems as you’ll never know the rights of it; but that doesn’t hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it’s dark to you and me.”

“No,” said Silas, “no; that doesn’t hinder. Since the time the child was sent to me and I’ve come to love her as myself, I’ve had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she’ll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.”

Conclusion

There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe to be especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great lilacs and laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk. People were not so busy then as they must become when the full cheese-making and the mowing had set in; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to advantage.

Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at once.

Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her husband’s arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father Silas.

“You won’t be giving me away, father,” she had said before they went to church; “you’ll only be taking Aaron to be a son to you.”

Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the little bridal procession.

There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Priscilla Lammeter was glad that she and her father had happened to drive up to the door of the Red House just in time to see this pretty sight. They had come to keep Nancy company today, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to Lytherley, for special reasons. That seemed to be a pity, for otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood certainly would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had ordered at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the weaver who had been wronged by one of his own family.

“I could ha’ wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like that and bring her up,” said Priscilla to her father, as they sat in the gig; “I should ha’ had something young to think of then, besides the lambs and the calves.”

“Yes, my dear, yes,” said Mr. Lammeter; “one feels that as one gets older. Things look dim to old folks: they’d need have some young eyes about ’em, to let ’em know the world’s the same as it used to be.”

Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister; and the wedding group had passed on beyond the Red House to the humbler part of the village.

Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. Macey, who had been set in his armchair outside his own door, would expect some special notice as they passed, since he was too old to be at the wedding-feast.

“Mr. Macey’s looking for a word from us,” said Dolly; “he’ll be hurt if we pass him and say nothing⁠—and him so racked with rheumatiz.”

So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. He had looked forward to the occasion, and had his premeditated speech.

“Well, Master Marner,” he said, in a voice that quavered a good deal, “I’ve lived to see my words come true. I was the first to say there was no harm in you, though your looks might be again’ you; and I was the first to say you’d get your money back. And it’s nothing but rightful as you should. And I’d ha’ said the ‘Amens,’ and willing, at the holy matrimony; but Tookey’s done it a good while now, and I hope you’ll have none the worse luck.”

In the open yard before the Rainbow the party of guests were already assembled, though it was still nearly an hour before the appointed feast time. But by this means they could not only enjoy the slow advent of their pleasure; they had also ample leisure to talk of Silas Marner’s strange history, and arrive by due degrees at the conclusion that he had brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a lone motherless child. Even the farrier did not negative this sentiment: on the contrary, he took it up as peculiarly his own, and invited any hardy person present to contradict him. But he met with no contradiction; and all differences among the company were merged in a general agreement with Mr. Snell’s sentiment, that when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.

As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised in