Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot") was born Nov. 22, 1819, at
South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, England, where her father was agent on
the Newdigate estate. In her youth, she was adept at butter-making and
similar rural work, but she found time to master Italian and German. Her
first important literary work was the translation of Strauss's "Life of
Jesus" in 1844, and shortly after her father's death in 1849 she was
writing in the "Westminster Review." It was not until 1856 that George
Eliot settled down to the writing of novels. "Scenes from Clerical Life"
first appeared serially in "Blackwood's Magazine" during 1857 and 1858;
"Adam Bede," the first and most popular of her long stories, in 1859. In
May, 1880, eighteen months after the death of her friend George Henry Lewes
(see PHILOSOPHY, Vol. XIV), George Eliot married Mr. J. W. Cross. She died
on December 22 in the same year. With all her sense of humour there is a
note of sadness in George Eliot's novels. She deals with ordinary, everyday
people, and describes their joys and sorrows. In "Adam Bede," as in most of
her work, the novelist drew from the ample stores of her early life in the
Midlands, while the plot is unfolded with singular simplicity, purity, and
power.
In the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in
the village of Hayslope, on the eighteenth of June, 1799, five workmen were
busy upon doors and window-frames.
The tallest of the five was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet
high. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to
win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its
broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall
stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name. The face was
large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as
belongs to an expression of good-humoured, honest intelligence.
It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam's brother. He is
nearly as tall; he has the same type of features. But Seth's broad
shoulders have a slight stoop, and his glance, instead of being keen, is
confiding and benignant.
The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they
scarcely ever spoke to Adam.
At six o'clock the men stopped working, and went out. Seth lingered, and
looked wistfully at Adam, as if he expected him to say something.
"Shalt go home before thee go'st to the preaching?" Adam asked.
"Nay, I shan't be home before going for ten. I'll happen see Dinah
Morris safe home, if she's willing. There's nobody comes with her from
Poyser's, thee know'st."
Adam set off home, and at a quarter to seven Seth was on the village
green where the Methodists were preaching. The people drew nearer when
Dinah Morris mounted the cart which served as a pulpit. There was a total
absence of self-consciousness in her demeanour; she walked to the cart as
simply as if she were going to market. There was no keenness in the eyes;
they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations. When Dinah
spoke it was with a clear but not loud voice, and her sincere,
unpremeditated eloquence held the attention of her audience without
interruption.
When the service was over, Seth Bede walked by Dinah's side along the
hedgerow path that skirted the pastures and corn-fields which lay between
the village and the Hall Farm.
Seth could see an expression of unconscious placid gravity on her
face--an expression that is most discouraging to a lover. He was timidly
revolving something he wanted to say, and it was only when they were close
to the yard-gates of the Hall Farm he had the courage to speak.
"It may happen you'll think me overbold to speak to you again after what
you told me o' your thoughts. But it seems to me there's more texts for
your marrying than ever you can find against it. St. Paul says, 'Two are
better than one,' and that holds good with marriage as well as with other
things. For we should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. I'd never be
the husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the
work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out, to
give you more liberty--more than you can have now; for you've got to get
your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both."
When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly. His voice trembled at the last sentence.
They had reached one of those narrow passes between two tall stones,
which performed the office of a stile in Loamshire. And Dinah paused, and
said, in her tender but calm notes, "Seth Bede, I thank you for your love
towards me, and if I could think of any man as more than a Christian
brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not free to marry, or to
think of making a home for myself in this world. God has called me to speak
His word, and He has greatly owned my work."
They said farewell at the yard-gate, for Seth wouldn't enter the
farmhouse, choosing rather to turn back along the fields through which he
and Dinah had already passed. It was ten o'clock when he reached home, and
he heard the sound of tools as he lifted the latch.
"Why, mother," said Seth, "how is it as father's working so late?"
"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'; it's thy brother as does
iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'."
Lisbeth Bede was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth--who
had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother--and usually poured
into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by the awe which
mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam.
But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop, and said,
"Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?"
"Ay, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up.
"Why, what's the matter with thee--thee'st in trouble?"
Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
mild face.
"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Let me
take my turn now, and do thee go to bed."
"No, lad; I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. The coffin's promised to
be ready at Brox'on by seven o'clock to-morrow morning. I'll call thee up
at sunrise, to help me to carry it when it's done. Go and eat thy supper
and shut the door, so as I mayn't hear mother's talk."
Adam worked throughout the night, thinking of his childhood and its
happy days, and then of the days of sadness that came later when his father
began to loiter at public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home. He
remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father
quite wild and foolish.
The two brothers set off in the early sunlight, carrying the long coffin
on their shoulders. By six o'clock they had reached Broxton, and were on
their way home.
When they were coming across the valley, and had entered the pasture
through which the brook ran, Seth said suddenly, beginning to walk faster,
"Why, what's that sticking against the willow?"
They both ran forward, and dragged the tall, heavy body out of the
water; and then looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes--forgetting
everything but that their father lay dead before them.
Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
Only a few hours ago, and the gray-haired father, of whom he had been
thinking with a sort of hardness as certain to live to be a thorn in his
side, was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death!
It is a very fine old place of red brick, the Hall Farm--once the
residence of a country squire, and the Hall.
Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day, too, for
it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser's handsome eight-day clock.
Mrs. Poyser, a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of
fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken
up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris. Another
motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen,
was busy in the adjoining dairy.
"You look the image o' your aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing,"
said Mrs. Poyser. "I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound
weight any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And it made no
difference in her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists; only
she talked a bit different, and wore a different sort o' cap. If you'd only
come and live i' this country you might get married to some decent man, and
there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave off that
preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith ever did.
And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor, wool-gathering Methodist,
and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your uncle 'ud help you
with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been good-natur'd to my
kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to the house; and 'ud do
for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do for Hetty, though she's his
own niece."
The arrival of Mr. Irwine, the rector of Hayslope, and Captain
Donnithorne, Squire Donnithorne's grandson and heir, interrupted Mrs.
Poyser's flow of talk.
"I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching on the
Green, Dinah. It's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said enough
a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's family. I
wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own niece. Folks must put up
wi' their own kin as they put up wi' their own noses; it's their own flesh
and blood."
Mr. Irwine, however, was the last man to feel any annoyance at the
Methodist preaching, and young Arthur Donnithorne's visit was merely an
excuse for exchanging a few words with Hetty Sorrel.
The rector mentioned before he left that Thias Bede had been found
drowned in the Willow Brook; and Dinah Morris at once decided that she
might be of some comfort to the widow, and set out for the village.
As for Hetty Sorrel, she was thinking more of the looks Captain
Donnithorne had cast at her than of Adam and his troubles. Bright, admiring
glances from a handsome young gentleman--those were the warm rays that set
poor Hetty's heart vibrating.
Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her.
She was aware that Mr. Craig, the gardener at Squire Donnithorne's, was
over head-and-ears in love with her. She knew still better that Adam
Bede--tall, upright, clever, brave Adam Bede--who carried such authority
with all the people round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to
see of an evening, saying that "Adam knew a fine sight more o' the natur o'
things than those as thought themselves his betters"--she knew that this
Adam, who was often rather stern to other people, and not much given to run
after the lassies, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a
look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't
help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to
say about things; knew, with only looking at it, the value of a
chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and
what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you
could read, and could do figures in his head--a degree of accomplishment
totally unknown among the richest farmers of that country-side.
Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Adam, and
would be pleased for her to marry him. For the last three years--ever since
he had superintended the building of the new barn--Adam had always been
made welcome at the Hall Farm, and for the last two years at least Hetty
had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say, "Adam Bede may be working
for a wage now, but he'll be a master-man some day, as sure as I sit in
this chair. Master Burge is in the right on't to want him to go partners
and marry his daughter, if it's true what they say. The woman as marries
him 'ull have a good take, be't Lady Day or Michaelmas," a remark which
Mrs. Poyser always followed up with her cordial assent.
"Ah," she would say, "it's all very fine having a ready-made rich man,
but may happen he'll be a ready-made fool; and it's no use filling your
pocket full of money if you've got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no
good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own if you've got a soft to drive you;
he'll soon turn you over into the ditch."
But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement. She liked to
feel that this strong, keen-eyed man was in her power; but as to marrying
Adam, that was a very different affair.
Hetty's dreams were all of luxuries. She thought if Adam had been rich,
and could have given the things of her dreams--large, beautiful earrings
and Nottingham lace and a carpeted parlour--she loved him well enough to
marry him.
The last few weeks a new influence had come over Hetty; she had become
aware that Mr. Arthur Donnithorne would take a good deal of trouble for the
chance of seeing her. And Dinah Morris was away, preaching and working in a
manufacturing town.
Adam Bede, like many other men, thought the signs of love for another
were signs of love towards himself. The time had come to him that summer,
as he helped Hetty pick currants in the orchard of the Hall Farm, that a
man can least forget in after-life--the time when he believes that the
first woman he has ever loved is, at least, beginning to love him in
return.
He was not wrong in thinking that a change had come over Hetty; the
anxieties and fears of a first passion with which she was trembling had
become stronger than vanity, and while Adam drew near to her she was
absorbed in thinking and wondering about Arthur Donnithorne's possible
return.
For the first time Hetty felt that there was something soothing to her
in Adam's timid yet manly tenderness; she wanted to be treated lovingly.
And Arthur was away from home; and, oh, it was very hard to bear the blank
of absence. She was not afraid that Adam would tease her with love-making
and flattering speeches; he had always been so reserved to her. She could
enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong, brave man loved her and
was near her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pitiable, too,
that Adam, too, must suffer one day.
It was from Adam that she found out that Captain Donnithorne would be
back in a day or two, and this knowledge made her the more kindly disposed
towards him. But for all the world Adam would not have spoken of his love
to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown
into unmistakable love. He did no more than pluck a rose for her, and walk
back to the farm with her arm in his.
When Adam, after stopping a while to chat with the Poysers, had said
good-night, Mr. Poyser remarked, "If you can catch Adam for a husband,
Hetty, you'll ride i' your own spring-cart some day, I'll be your
warrant."
Her uncle did not see the little toss of the head with which Hetty
answered him. To ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed
to her now.
It was on August 18, when Adam, going home from some work he had been
doing at one of the farms, passed through a grove of beeches, and saw, at
the end of the avenue, about twenty yards before him, two figures. They
were standing opposite to each other with clasped hands, and they separated
with a start at a sharp bark from Adam Bede's dog. One hurried away through
a gate out of the grove; the other, Arthur Donnithorne, looking flushed and
excited, sauntered towards Adam. The young squire had been home for some
weeks celebrating his twenty-first birthday, and he was leaving on the
morrow to rejoin his regiment.
Hitherto there had been a cordial and sincere liking and a mutual esteem
between the two young men; but now Adam stood as if petrified, and his
amazement turned quickly to fierceness.
Arthur tried to pass the matter off lightly, as if it had been a chance
meeting with Hetty; but Adam, who felt that he had been robbed
treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted, would not so easily let
him off. It came to blows, and Arthur sank under a well-planted blow of
Adam's, as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar.
Before they separated, Arthur promised that he would write and tell
Hetty there could be no further communication between them. And this
promise he kept. Adam rested content with the assurance that nothing but an
innocent flirtation had been stopped. As the days went by he found that the
calm patience with which he had waited for Hetty's love had forsaken him
since that night in the beech-grove. The agitations of jealousy had given a
new restlessness to his passion.
Hetty, for her part, after the first misery caused by Arthur's letter,
had turned into a mood of dull despair, and sought only for change. Why
should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did so that it made
some change in her life.
So, in November, when Mr. Burge offered Adam a share in his business,
Adam not only accepted it, but decided that the time had come to ask Hetty
to marry him.
Hetty did not speak when Adam got out the question, but his face was
very close to hers, and she put up her round cheek against his, like a
kitten. She wanted to be caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were
with her again.
Adam only said after that, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't I,
Hetty?" And she said "Yes."
The red firelight on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces
that evening when Adam took the opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
that he saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented
to have him.
There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away about the
possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.
"Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything
to-night. You canna think o' getting married afore Easter. I'm not for long
courtships, but there must be a bit o' time to make things
comfortable."
This was in November.
Then in February came the full tragedy of Hetty Sorrel's life. She left
home, and in a strange village, a child--Arthur Donnithorne's child--was
born. Hetty left the baby in a wood, and returned to find it dead. Arrest
and trial followed, and only at the last moment was the capital sentence
commuted to transportation.
She died a few years later on her way home.
It was the autumn of 1801, and Dinah Morris was once more at the Hall
Farm, only to leave it again for her work in the town. Mrs. Poyser noticed
that Dinah, who never used to change colour, flushed when Adam said, "Why,
I hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the
notion o' going back to her old country."
"Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser; "and so would anybody else ha' thought
as had got their right ends up'ards. But I suppose you must be a Methodist
to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's all guessing what the bats are
flying after."
"Why, what have we done to you, Dinah, as you must go away from us?"
said Mr. Poyser. "It's like breaking your word; for your aunt never had no
thought but you'd make this your home."
"Nay, uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came I
said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my
aunt."
"Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said
Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha'
come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it."
Dinah set off with Adam, for Lisbeth was ailing and wanted Dinah to sit
with her a bit. On the way he reverted to her leaving the Hall Farm. "You
know best, Dinah, but if it had been ordered so that you could ha' been my
sister, and lived wi' us all our lives, I should ha' counted it the
greatest blessing as could happen to us now."
Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence, until presently,
crossing the stone stile, Adam saw her face, flushed, and with a look of
suppressed agitation.
It struck him with surprise, and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or
displeased you by what I've said, Dinah; perhaps I was making too free.
I've no wish different from what you see to be best; and I'm satisfied for
you to live thirty miles off if you think it right."
Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder.
Lisbeth opened his eyes on the Sunday morning when Adam sat at home and
read from his large pictured Bible.
For a long time his mother talked on about Dinah, and about how they
were losing her when they might keep her, and Adam at last told her she
must make up her mind that she would have to do without Dinah.
"Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an'
nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her and send her here o'
purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her being a Methody? It 'ud
happen wear out on her wi' marryin'."
Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He
understood now what her talk had been aiming at, and tried to chase away
the notion from her mind.
He was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Dinah's love had
taken possession of him with an overmastering power that made all other
feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was
true. He spoke to Seth, who said quite simply that he had long given up all
thoughts of Dinah ever being his wife, and would rejoice in his brother's
joy. But he could not tell whether Dinah was for marrying.
"Thee might'st ask her," Seth said presently. "She took no offence at
me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had."
When Adam did ask, Dinah answered that her heart was strongly drawn
towards him, but that she must wait for divine guidance. So she left the
Hall Farm and went back to the town, and Adam waited,--and then went after
her to get his answer.
"Adam," she said when they had met and walked some distance together,
"it is the divine will. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a
divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and
I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love, I have a fullness of
strength to bear and do our Heavenly Father's will that I had lost
before."
Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.
"Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us."
And they kissed each other with deep joy.
"Felix Holt, the Radical," was published in 1866. It has never
been one of George Eliot's very popular books. There is less in it of her
own life and experience than in most of her novels, less of the homely wit
of agricultural England. The real value of the book is the picture it gives
of the social and political life, and for this reason, it will always be
read by those who want to know what English political methods and customs
were like at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. The
character of Mr. Rufus Lyon, the independent minister, is an admirable
study of the non-conformist of that period. Esther's renunciation of a
brilliant fortune for a humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was
quite in accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life. The
scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the action, covering about
nine months, begins in 1832.
The Rev. Rufus Lyon, Minister of the Independent Chapel, in the
old-fashioned market town of Treby Magna, in the County of Loumshire, lived
in a small house, adjoining the entry which led to the Chapel Yard.
He sat this morning, as usual, in a low upstairs room, called his study,
which served also as a sleeping-room, and from time to time got up to walk
about between the piles of old books which lay around him on the floor. His
face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that fell from his bald
crown and hung about his neck retained much of its original auburn tint,
and his large, brown short-sighted eyes were still clear and bright. At the
first glance, everyone thought him a very odd-looking, rusty old man, and
the free-school boys often hooted after him, and called him "Revelations."
But he was too short-sighted and too absent from the world of small facts
and petty impulses to notice those who tittered at him.
He was meditating on the text for his Sunday morning sermon, when old
Lyddy, the minister's servant, opened the door to tell him that Mrs. Holt
was wanting to see him. "She says she comes out of season, but she's in
trouble."
The minister bade her send Mistress Holt up, and a tall elderly woman
dressed in black entered.
Mrs. Holt, Mr. Lyon said to himself, is a woman who darkens counsel by
words without knowledge, and angers the reason of the natural man; and he
prayed for patience while his visitor rambled on concerning her late
husband and her son Felix.
The minister made out that Felix objected to the sale of his father's
quack medicines, Holt's Elixir and Cancer Cure, and wanted Mr. Lyon to talk
to him.
"For after we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of
most: he said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan--he
uses dreadful language, Mr. Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill, for all
that; he calls most folks' religion rottenness."
Mrs. Holt departed, and in the evening, when Mr. Lyon was in the
sitting-room, Felix Holt knocked at the door.
The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of provincial townsmen,
felt a slight shock, when his spectacles made clear to him the
shaggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed person of this questionable young
man, without waistcoat or cravat.
Felix spoke loudly and brusquely when the minister mentioned the subject
of Mrs. Holt's visit.
"As to those absurd medicines and gulling advertisements that my mother
has been talking of to you, I've no more doubt about them than I
have about pocket-picking. If I allowed the sale of those medicines to go
on, and my mother to live out of the proceeds when I can keep her by the
honest labour of hands, I've not the least doubt that I should be a
rascal."
"I would fain inquire more particularly into your objection to these
medicines," said Mr. Lyon gravely.
"My father was ignorant," said Felix, bluntly. "I know something about
these things. I was 'prentice for five miserable years to a stupid brute of
a country apothecary--my poor father left money for that--he thought
nothing could be finer for me. No matter: I know that the Cathartic Pills
may be as bad as poison to half the people who swallow them, and that the
cancer cure might as well be bottled ditch-water. I can keep my mother, as
well, nay, better, than she keeps herself. With my watch and clock
cleaning, and teaching one or two little chaps that I've got to come to me,
I can earn enough."
Mr. Lyon's suggestion that some situation might be obtained as clerk or
assistant was brushed aside.
"Why should I want to get into the middle class because I have some
learning? The most of the middle class are as ignorant as the working
people about everything that doesn't belong to their own Brummagem
life."
The entrance of Lyddy with the tea tray disturbed the conversation, but
the minister, interested in his visitor, asked Felix to stay for a dish of
tea, and Felix accepted.
"My daughter, who has been detained in giving a lesson in the French
tongue, has doubtless returned now," said the minister. On the entrance of
the young lady, Felix was conscious she was not the sort of person he had
expected the minister's daughter to be, and the incongruity repelled him.
There were things about her, her walk, the long neck and high crown of
shining brown hair, that suggested a fine lady to him. A fine lady was
always a sort of spun glass affair; but a fine lady as the daughter of this
rusty old Puritan was especially offensive.
The discovery that Miss Lyon read Byron set Felix off on a tirade
against the poet, and his works, and throughout the meal no agreement on
any topic seemed possible between Esther and the guest.
Felix noted that Mr. Lyon was devoted to his daughter and stood in some
fear of her.
"That is a singular young man, Esther," said the minister, when Felix
had gone. "I discern in him a love for whatever things are honest and true,
and I feel a great enlargement in his presence."
"I think he is very coarse and rude," said Esther, with a touch of
temper. "But he speaks better English than most of our visitors. What is
his occupation?"
"Watch and clock making, my dear."
Esther was disappointed, she thought he was something higher than
that.
Felix on his side wondered how the queer old minister had a daughter so
little in his own likeness. He decided that nothing should make him
marry.
The return of Mr. Harold Transome, to Transome Court, after fifteen
years' absence, and his adoption as Radical Candidate for the county
created no little stir and excitement in Treby. It also assisted the
growing intimacy between Mr. Lyon and Felix Holt, for though neither
possessed votes in that memorable year 1832, they shared the same liberal
sympathies. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which
there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking;
and the advent of the public-spirited, contradictory, yet affectionate
Felix, into Treby life had made a welcome epoch to the minister.
Esther had not seen so much of their new acquaintance as her father had.
But she had begun to find him amusing, though he always opposed and
criticised her, and looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about
her person. It seemed to Esther that he thought slightly of her. "But, rude
and queer as he is, I cannot say there is anything vulgar about him," she
said to herself.
One Sunday afternoon Felix Holt rapped at the door of Mr. Lyon's house,
although he could hear the voice of the minister in the chapel.
Esther was in the kitchen alone, reading a French romance, and she
opened the door and invited him in.
He scoffed at her book, and as the talk went on, upbraided her for her
vanity. Finally he told her that he wanted her to change. "Of course, I am
a brute to say so," he added. "I ought to say you are perfect. Another man
would, perhaps; I can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women
who spoil men's lives."
Mortification and anger filled Esther's mind, and when Felix got up to
say he was going, she returned his "good-bye" without even looking at
him.
Only, when the door closed she burst into tears. She revolted against
his assumption of superiority.... Did he love her one little bit, and was
that the reason why he wanted her to change? But Esther was quite sure she
could never love anyone who was so much of a pedagogue and a master.
Yet, a few weeks later, and Esther accepted willingly when Felix
proposed a walk for the first time together. That same afternoon he told
her that she was very beautiful, and that he would never be rich: he
intended going away to some manufacturing town to lead the people to better
things and this meant a life of poverty.
Something Esther said made Felix ask suddenly, "Can you imagine yourself
choosing hardship as the better lot?"
"Yes, I can," she answered, flushing over neck and brow. They walked
home very silently after that. Felix struggling as a firm man struggles
with a temptation, Esther struggling as a woman struggles with the yearning
for some expression of love.
On the day of the election a mob of miners, primed with liquor by an
unscrupulous agent of Transome's, came into the town to hoot the Tory
voters; and as the disturbance increased, Felix knowing that Mr. Lyon was
away preaching went round to the minister's house to reassure Esther.
"I am so thankful to see you," she said eagerly. He mentioned that the
magistrates and constables were coming and that the town would be quieter.
His only fear was that drinking might inflame the mob again.
Again Felix told her of his renunciation of the ordinary hopes and
ambitions of men, and at the same time tried to prove that he thought very
highly of her. He wanted her to know that her love was dear to him, and he
felt that they must not marry--to do so would be to ruin each other's
lives.
When Felix went out into the streets in the afternoon, the crowd was
larger and more mischievous. The constables were quite unable to cope with
the mob, the polling booth was closed for the day, and the magistrates had
sent to the neighbouring town of Duffield for the military.
There were proofs that the predominant will of the crowd was in favour
of Transome for several shops were attacked and they were all of them "Tory
shops."
Felix was soon hotly occupied trying to save a wretched publican named
Spratt from the fury of the crowd. The man had been dragged out into the
streets, and Felix had got as near him as he could when a young constable
armed with a sabre rushed upon him. It was a choice of two evils, and quick
as lightning Felix frustrated him, the constable fell undermost and Felix
got his weapon. Tucker did not rise immediately, but Felix did not imagine
that he was much hurt, and bidding the crowd follow him tried to lead them
away from the town. He hoped that the soldiers would soon arrive, and felt
confident that there would be no resistance to a military force.
Suddenly a cry was raised, "Let us go to Treby Manor," the residence of
Sir Maximus Debarry, whose son was the Tory candidate.
From that moment Felix was powerless, and was carried along with the
rush. All he could hope to do was to get to the front terrace of the house,
and assure the inmates that the soldiers would arrive quickly. Just as he
approached a large window he heard the horses of the troopers, and then
came the words, "Halt! Fire!" Before he had time to move a bullet whizzed,
and passed through Felix Holt's shoulder--the shoulder of the arm that bore
the sabre.
Felix fell. The rioters ran confusedly, like terrified sheep.
It was a weary night for Felix, and the next day his wound was declared
trivial, and he was lodged in Loumford Jail. There were three charges
against him; that he had assaulted a constable, that he had committed
manslaughter (Tucker was dead from spinal concussion), and that he had led
a riotous onslaught on a dwelling house.
Four other men were arrested, one for theft, and three others for riot
and assault.
A great change took place in the fortunes of Esther in the interval
between the riot and the opening of the assizes. It was found that she, and
not Harold Transome, was the rightful owner of the Transome estates. For
Esther's real name was Bycliffe and not Lyon, and she was the step-daughter
only of the minister. Mr. Lyon had found Esther's mother, a French woman of
great beauty, in destitution--her husband, an Englishman, lying in some
unknown prison. This Englishman was a Bycliffe--and heir to the Transome
property, and on the proof of his death Mr. Lyon, knowing nothing of
Bycliffe's family, married his widow, who, however, died while Esther was
still a tiny child. Not till the time of the election did Esther learn that
her real father was dead.
Mr. Transome's lawyer--Jermyn--was fully aware of the claim of the
Bycliffes, but knew they were powerless without money to enforce the claim,
and that Esther and her step-father alike were ignorant of all the facts.
It was only when Harold Transome, on his return, quarrelled with Jermyn on
the management of the estates, and, after the Election (which Transome
lost) threatened him with a law-suit, that Jermyn turned round and told
Harold the truth. At the same time, another lawyer, formerly in Jermyn's
confidence, thought the more profitable course could be found in throwing
Jermyn over, and wrote to Esther informing her of her inheritance.
Harold Transome decided to act openly. With his mother, he drove to the
minister's house and Mrs. Transome persuaded Esther to come and stay at
Transome Court. Both mother and son found Esther to their liking, and it
appeared to Harold that marriage with Esther would be a happy conclusion to
the divided claim to the property. He was rich, and the Transome (or
Bycliffe) property was heavily encumbered.
The Transomes, Esther and Mr. Lyon all agreed that no law-suit over the
property should take place.
But while Esther stayed at Transome Court she never forgot her friend in
prison. Mr. Lyon had visited Felix, and Esther herself obtained an
interview with him just before the assizes began.
She had grown conscious that Harold Transome was making love to her,
that Mrs. Transome really desired her for a daughter-in-law, and it seemed
to her as she waited with the minister in the cheerless prison room, that
she stood at the first and last parting of the ways.
Soon the door opened, and Felix Holt entered.
"Miss Lyon--Esther!" and her hand was in his grasp. He was just the
same--no, something inexpressibly better, because of the distance and
separation, which made him like the return of morning.
"Take no heed of me, children," said Mr. Lyon. "I have some notes to
make." And the old man sat down at a window with his back to them, writing
with his head bent close to the paper.
Felix had heard of Esther's change of fortune and felt sure she would
marry Harold Transome. It was only when the time for parting came that he
could bring himself to say:
"I had a horrible struggle, Esther. But you see I was right. There was a
fitting lot in reserve for you." Esther felt too miserable for tears to
come. She looked helplessly at Felix for a moment, then took her hands from
his, and turning away mutely, said, "Father, I am ready--there is no more
to say."
"Esther."
She heard Felix say the word, with an entreating cry, and went towards
him swiftly. He clasped her, and they kissed each other.
When the trial came on Esther went under Mrs. Transome's protection to
the court.
The case against Felix looked very black when the prosecution closed.
Various respectable witnesses swore to the prisoner's leadership of the
mob, to his fatal assault on Tucker, and to his attitude in front of the
drawing-room window at the Manor.
Felix then gave a concise narrative of his motives and conduct on the
day of the riot, and explained that in throwing the constable down he had
not foreseen the possibility of death ensuing. It was a good,
straightforward speech, not without a touch of defiant independence, which
did the prisoner little good with judge or jury.
Mr. Lyon and Harold Transome both gave evidence in favour of Felix,
stating that the prisoner had often expressed his hatred of rioting, and
had protested with indignation against the treating that went on during the
election by some of the Radical agents.
One or two witnesses were called who swore that Felix had tried to lead
the mob in the opposite direction to Treby Manor, and it was understood
that the case for the defence was closed.
Then it came to Esther that she must speak if Felix was to be saved.
There had been no witness to tell what had been his behaviour just before
the riot. There was time, but not too much time.
Before Harold Transome was aware of Esther's intention she was on her
way to the witness-box.
A sort of gleam shot across the face of Felix Holt, and anyone close to
the prisoner would have seen that his hand trembled, for the first time, at
Esther's beautiful aspect. There was no blush on her face: she stood,
divested of all personal consideration whether of vanity or shyness, and
gave her story as if she had been making a confession of faith.
She knew Felix Holt well, she said. He came to see her on the day of the
election, and told her he feared the men might collect again after
drinking. "It was the last thing he would have done to join in riot or to
hurt any man, if he could have helped it. He could never have had any
intention that was not brave and good."
When she was back in her place Felix could not help looking towards her,
and their eyes met in one solemn glance.
Esther stayed in court till the end. She heard the verdict, "Guilty of
Manslaughter," followed by the judge's sentence, "Imprisonment for four
years." But so great was the impression made by Esther's speech that a
petition to the Home Secretary was at once set on foot by the leading men
of the county.
One April day, when the sun shone on the lingering raindrops, Lyddy was
gone out, and Esther chose to sit in the kitchen. She was not reading, but
stitching, and as her fingers moved nimbly, something played about her lips
like a ray.
A loud rap came at the door.
"Mr. Lyon at home?" said Felix in his firm tones. "No, sir," said
Esther: "but Miss Lyon is, if you'll please to walk in."
"Esther!" exclaimed Felix, amazed.
They held each other by both hands, and looked into each other's faces
with delight.
"You are out of prison?"
"Yes, till I do something bad again. But you--how is it all? Are you
come back to live here then?"
"Yes."
"You are not going to be married to Harold Transome, or to be rich?"
"No."
"Why?" said Felix in rather a low tone, leaning his elbow on the table,
and resting his head on his hand while he looked at her.
"I did not wish to marry him, or to be rich."
"You have given it all up?" said Felix, leaning forward a little and
speaking in a still lower tone. "Could you share the life of a poor man,
then, Esther?"
"If I thought well enough of him," she said, with a smile, and a pretty
movement of her head.
"Have you considered well what it would be?--that it would be a very
bare and simple life? and the people I shall live among, Esther? They have
not just the same follies and vices as the rich, but they have their own
forms of folly and vice. It is very serious, Esther."
"I know it is serious," said Esther, looking up at him. "Since I have
been at Transome Court I have seen many things very seriously. If I had
not, I should not have left what I did leave. I made a deliberate
choice."
She could not tell him that at Transome Court, all that finally seemed
balanced against her love for him, was the offer of a silken bondage that
arrested all motive, and was nothing better than a well-cushioned despair.
A vision of being restless amidst ease, of being languid among all
appliances had quickened her resignation of the Transome estates.
Esther explained, however, that she thought of retaining a little of the
wealth.
"How?" said Felix, anxiously. "What do you mean?"
"I think even of two pounds a week: one needn't live up to the splendour
of all that, you know: we might live as simply as you liked. And then I
think of a little income for your mother, and a little income for my
father, to save him from being dependent when he is no longer able to
preach!"
Felix put his hand on her shoulder, said, lifting up his eyes with a
smile:
"Why, I shall be able to set up a great library, and lend the
books!"
They laughed merrily, each holding the other's arms, like girl and boy.
There was the ineffable sense of youth in common.
Then Felix leaned forward, that their lips might meet, and after that
his eyes roved tenderly over her face and curls.
"I'm a rough, severe fellow, Esther. Shall you never repent?--never be
inwardly reproaching me that I was not a man who could have shared your
wealth? Are you quite sure?"
The very next May, Felix and Esther were married. Everyone in those days
was married at the parish church; but Mr. Lyon was not satisfied without an
additional private solemnity, "so that he might have a more enlarged
utterance of joy and supplication."
It was a very simple wedding; but no wedding, even the gayest, ever
raised so much interest and debate in Treby Magna. Even the very great
people of the county went to the church to look at this bride, who had
renounced wealth, and chosen to be the wife of a man who said he would
always be poor.
Some few shook their heads; could not quite believe it; and thought
there was more behind. But the majority of honest Trebians were affected
somewhat in the same way as Mr. Wall, the brewer of the town, who observed
to his wife as they walked home, "I feel somehow as if I believed more in
everything that's good."
Felix and Esther did not take up their abode in Treby Magna; and after
awhile Mr. Lyon left the town too, and joined them where they dwelt.
As to the town in which Felix Holt now resides I will keep that a
secret.
I will only say that Esther has never repented. Felix, however, grumbles
a little that she has made his life too easy.
There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his
father, but not much more money.
"Romola" was George Eliot's fifth book, and followed "Silas
Marner," which was published in 1861. It is a story of Florence in the days
of Savonarola, and was largely the outcome of a visit the novelist paid to
Italy with her life-long friend, George Henry Lewes. With dim ideas for the
story in her mind, she made exhaustive researches in the Florentine
libraries, gathering historical and topographical details of the city and
its life as they were in the mediæval period which she was setting
herself to re-create. After much study there and at home, and after one
false start, she made a serious beginning in January, 1862. She was engaged
upon it for eighteen months, always in doubt and sometimes in despair of
her ability to accomplish the task, and by June of the following year she
had thankfully written the last words of what is regarded by some as her
greatest book. Meanwhile, the romance had begun to appear serially in the
"Cornhill" in July, 1862. The writing of "Romola" is said to have "ploughed
into her" more than any of her other books.
Under the Loggia de Cerchi, in the heart of old Florence, in the early
morning of April 9, 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other. One
was looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on
the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly
awakened dreamer.
"Young man," said the standing figure, pointing to a ring on the finger
of the other, "when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it you'll know
better than to take your nap in street corners with a ring like that on
your forefinger. By the holy 'vangels, if it had been anybody but me
standing over you--but Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal! Three
years ago, one San Giovanni, the saint, sent a dead body in my way--a blind
beggar, with his cap well lined with pieces. But how comes a young man like
you, with the face of Messer San Michele, to be sleeping on a stone bed?
Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel, young man. Anybody might say
the saints had sent you a dead body; but if you took the jewels, I hope you
buried him--and you can afford a mass or two for him into the bargain!"
Something like a painful thrill appeared to dart through the frame of
the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms. But he
immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Levantine
cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, and pushing back his
long, dark brown curls, said smiling, "The fact is, I'm a stranger in
Florence, and when I came in footsore last night, I preferred flinging
myself in the corner of this hospitable porch to hunting for a chance
hostelry, which might turn out to be a nest of bloodsuckers. Can you show
me the way to a more lively quarter, where I can get a meal and a
lodging?"
"That I can," said Bratti.
And, talking volubly as they went, Bratti led the way to the Mercato
Vecchio, or the Old Market, promising to conduct him to the prettiest
damsel in the Mercato for a cup of milk.
But as soon as they emerged from the narrow streets into the Old Market,
they found the place packed with excited groups of men and women humming
with gossip.
"Diavolo!" said Bratti. "The Mercato has gone as mad as if the Holy
Father had excommunicated us again! I must know what this is."
He pushed about among the crowd, inquiring and disputing, and was
presently absorbed in discussing the newest development of Florentine
politics, the death of Lorenzo de Medici, and whether or not this death was
the beginning of the time of tribulation that Savonarola had been seeing in
visions and foretelling in sermons.
Indifferent to this general agitation, the young stranger became tired
of waiting for Bratti's escort, and strolling on round the piazza, felt, on
a sudden thought, in the wallet that hung at his waist.
"Not an obolus, by Jupiter!" he murmured, in a language that was not
Tuscan or even Italian. "I must get my breakfast for love, then!"
In a corner, away from any group of talkers, two mules were standing.
One carried wooden milk vessels, the other a pair of panniers filled with
herbs and salads. Resting her elbow on the mule that carried the milk,
there leaned a young girl, apparently not more than sixteen, with a red
hood surrounding her face, which was all the more baby-like in its
prettiness from the entire concealment of her hair. The poor child was
weary, and it seemed to have gone to sleep in that half-standing,
half-leaning posture. Nevertheless, our stranger had no compunction in
awaking her. She opened her baby-blue eyes, and stared up with astonishment
and confusion.
"Forgive me, pretty one, for awaking you," he said. "I'm dying with
hunger, and the scent of milk makes breakfast seem more desirable than
ever."
She bestirred herself, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk
was held out to him; and by the time he set the cup down she had brought
bread from a bag which hung by the side of the mule, and shyly and mutely
insisted on his taking it, even though he told her he had nothing to pay
her with; and just as he was leaning down to kiss her he was harshly
interrupted by Monna Ghita, Tessa's mother, who had come upon them
unobserved.
The handsome presence of the stranger and his charm of manner were of no
avail with Monna Ghita; her noisy rating of him drew Bratti and the barber,
Nello, to the spot, and with these he was glad to make good his escape,
having waived a furtive adieu to the pretty Tessa.
It was not until after Bratti, having business at home, had handed the
young stranger over to Nello, and in the barber's shop he had been shaved
and trimmed, and made to look presentable, that Tito Melema became more
confidential, and explained that he was a Greek; that he was returning from
adventures abroad, had suffered shipwreck, and found himself in Florence
with nothing saved from the disaster but some few rare old gems for which
he was anxious to obtain a purchaser.
"Let us see, let us see," said Nello, walking up and down his shop.
"What you want is a man of wealth and influence and scholarly tastes; and
that man is Bartolommeo Scala, the Secretary of our Republic. He came to
Florence as a poor adventurer himself, a miller's son; and that may be a
reason why he may be the more ready to do a good turn to a strange scholar.
I could take you to a man who, if he has a mind, can help you to a chance
of a favourable interview with Scala--a man worth seeing for his own sake,
too, to say nothing of his collections, or of his daughter Romola, who is
as fair as the Florentine lily before it got quarrelsome and turned
red."
"But if the father of this beautiful Romola makes collections, why
should he not like to buy some of my gems himself?"
Nello shrugged his shoulders. "For two good reasons--want of sight to
look at the gems and want of money to pay for them."
He was a moneyless, blind old scholar, the Bardo de Bardi, to whom Nello
introduced Tito Melema; a man who came of a proud, energetic stock, whose
ancestors had loved to play the signor, had been merchants and usurers of
keen daring, and conspicuous among those who clutched the sword in the
earliest world-famous quarrels of Florentine with Florentine. The family
passions lived on in Bardo under altered conditions; he was a man with a
deep-veined hand cramped by much copying of manuscripts, who ate sparing
dinners, and wore threadbare clothes, at first from choice, and at last
from necessity; who sat among his books and manuscripts, and saw them only
by the light of those far-off younger days which still shone in his
memory.
And among his books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a
spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion
and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would
have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and
continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him;
Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the
passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce hatred towards this
recreant son of his, and none dared so much as to name him within his
hearing.
Maso, the old serving-man ushered in the two visitors he had announced a
few minutes previously, and Nello introduced Tito to Bardo and his daughter
as a scholar of considerable learning.
Romola's astonishment could hardly have been greater if the stranger had
worn a panther-skin and carried a thyrsus, for the cunning barber had said
nothing of the Greeks age or appearance, and among her father's scholarly
visitors she had hardly ever seen any but gray-headed men.
Nevertheless, she returned Tito's bow with the same pale, proud face as
ever; but as he approached the snow melted, and when he ventured to look
towards her again a pink flush overspread her face, to vanish again almost
immediately, as if her imperious will had recalled it. Tito's glance, on
the other hand, as he looked at this tall maiden of seventeen or eighteen,
as she stood at the reading-desk with one hand on the back of her father's
chair, had that gentle, beseeching admiration in it which is the most
propitiating of appeals to a proud, shy woman, and is perhaps the only
atonement a man can make for being too handsome.
"Messere, I give you welcome," said Bardo with some condescension;
"misfortune wedded to learning, and especially to Greek learning, is a
letter of credit that should win the ear of every instructed
Florentine."
He proceeded to question Tito as to what part of Greece he came from,
learned that he was a young man of unusual scholastic attainments, and that
he had a father who was himself a scholar.
"At least," said Tito, "a father by adoption. He was a Neapolitan, but,"
he added, after another slight pause, "he is lost to me--was lost on a
voyage he too rashly undertook to Delos."
Bardo forbore to speak further on so painful a topic; he discoursed
freely upon his own studies, his past hopes, and the one great ambition
that remained to him--that his library and his magnificent collection of
treasures should not be dissipated on his death, but should become the
property of the public, and be honourably housed in Florence for all time,
with his name over the door.
In his eagerness he made passing reference to his son, of how Romola had
been filling his place to the best of her power, and plainly hinted--and
Tito was not slow to profit by the opportunity--that if he could have the
young Greek scholar to work with him instead of her, he might yet look to
fulfill some of the notable designs he had abandoned when his blindness
came upon him.
"But," he resumed, in his original tone of condescension, "we are
departing from what I believe is your most important business. Nello
informed me that you had certain gems which you would fain dispose of."
"I have one or two intagli of much beauty," said Tito. "But they are now
in the keeping of Messer Domenico Cennini, who has a strong and safe place
for such things. He estimates them as worth at least five hundred
ducats."
"Ah, then, they are fine intagli!" said Bardo. "Five hundred ducats! Ah,
more than a man's ransom!"
Tito gave a slight, almost imperceptible start, and opened his long,
dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face, as if his
words--a mere phrase of common parlance at a time when men were often being
ransomed from slavery or imprisonment--had some special meaning for
him.
But Bardo had used the words in all innocence, and went on to talk of
superstitions that attached to certain gems, and to undertake that he would
use his influence with the Secretary of the Republic in Tito's behalf. Both
Romola and her father were attracted by the charm and freshness and
apparent simplicity of the young man; but just as he was making ready to
depart they were interrupted by the entrance of Bernardo del Nero, one of
the chief citizens of Florence, Bardo's oldest friend, and Romola's
godfather; and Bernardo felt an instant, instinctive distrust of the
handsome, ingratiating stranger, and did not hesitate to say so after Tito
had left them.
"Remember, Bardo," he said at length, "thou hast a rare gem of thy own;
take care no one gets it who is not like to pay a worthy price. That pretty
Greek has a sleekness about him that seems marvelously fitted for slipping
into any nest he fixes his mind on."
It was undeniable that Tito's coming had been the dawn of a new life for
both father and daughter, and he grew to care for Romola supremely--to wish
to have her for his beautiful and loving wife.
He took her place as Bardo's assistant, and served him with an easy
efficiency that had been beyond her; and she, happier in her father's
happiness, had given her love to Tito even before he ventured to offer her
his own. He was thus sailing under the fairest breeze, and besides
convincing fair judges that his talents squared with his good fortune, he
wore that fortune so unpretentiously that no one seemed to be offended by
it.
And that was not the whole of Tito's good fortune, for he had sold his
jewels, and was master of full five hundred gold florins. Yet the moment
when he first had this sum in his possession was the crisis of the first
serious struggle his facile, good-humoured nature had known.
"A man's ransom!" Who was it that had said five hundred florins was more
than a man's ransom? If, now, under this mid-day sun, on some hot coast far
away, a man somewhat stricken in years--a man not without high thoughts,
and with the most passionate heart--a man who long years ago had rescued a
little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong, and had reared
him tenderly, if that man were now, under this summer sun, toiling as a
slave, hewing wood and drawing water? If he were saying to himself, "Tito
will find me. He had but to carry our gems to Venice; he will have raised
money, and will never rest till he finds me out?" If that were certain,
could he--Tito--see the price of the gems lying before him, and say, "I
will stay at Florence, where I am fanned by soft airs of love and
prosperity; I will not risk myself for his sake?" No, surely not if it
were certain. But the galley had been taken by a Turkish vessel; that
was known by the report of the companion galley which had escaped; and
there had been resistance and probable bloodshed, a man had been seen
falling overboard.
He quieted his conscience with such reasonings as these, and when
definite tidings reached him that his father was still a prisoner, he
contrived to keep the knowledge to himself, and still did nothing. The
death of the exhausted, emaciated monk who had brought these tidings freed
him of one fear; but this monk was Romola's brother, Dino, and obeying his
summons she had been in secret to see him as he lay dying.
"Romola," her brother began to speak, "in the deep night, as I lay
awake, I saw my father's room, and I saw you ... And at the leggio
where I used to stand stood a man whose face I could not see. I saw him
move and take thee, Romola, by the hand, and then I saw thee take my father
by the hand, and you all three went down the stone steps into the streets,
the man, whose face was a blank to me, leading the way. And you stood at
the altar of Santa Croce, and the priest who married you had the face of
death; and the graves opened and the dead in their shrouds followed you
like a bridal train. And it seemed to me that at last you came to a stony
place where there was no water, and no trees or herbage; but instead of
water I saw written parchment unrolling itself everywhere, and instead of
trees and herbage I saw men of bronze and marble springing up and crowding
round you. And my father was faint, and fell to the ground; and the man
loosed thy hand and departed; and as he went I could see his face, and it
was the face of the Great Tempter.... Thrice have I had that vision,
Romola. I believe it is a revelation meant for thee--to warn thee against
marriage as a temptation of the enemy...."
The words died away.
"Frate," said the dying voice. "Give her----"
"The crucifix," said the voice of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was
standing in the shadows behind her.
"Dino!" said Romola, with a low but piercing cry.
"Take the crucifix, my daughter," said Fra Girolamo, after a few
minutes. "His eyes behold it no more."
But, heedless of the distrust and opposition of Messer Bernardo del
Nero, and with this vision of Dino's menacing his highest hope, Tito went
gaily on his triumphant way.
Also he had renewed acquaintance with the little Tessa. He came upon her
in the thronged streets during carnival time, and seeing her, a timorous,
tearful little contadin, terrified by the burlesque threats of a
boisterous conjurer, took her under his protection.
Thereafter, he met her again at intervals, finding her naive love and
humble adoration and obedience very pleasant; and, meeting her once at a
peasant's fair, he jestingly yielded to the burlesque solicitations of a
mountebank in a white mitre, paid a small fee, and went through an absurd
ceremony of mock-marriage with her.
Tessa herself believed the marriage to be real enough, and he would not
mar her delight by undeceiving her. Later, since she was wretched at home
with her scolding mother and a brutal step-father, and there were dangers
in allowing her to go on waylaying him in streets when too long a period
elapsed between his visits to her, he quietly took her away and established
her in a small house on the outskirts of the city, with the deaf, discreet
old Monna Lisa as her servant and companion.
Neither this nor the darker secret of his treachery to his adoptive
father cast any cloud over his habitual cheerfulness. His love for Romola
was a higher and deeper passion than anything he felt for the child-like,
submissive little Tessa, and when she told him frankly of her brother's
warning vision, he set himself to convince her it was the mere nightmare of
a diseased imagination, and the perfect love and trust she had for him made
the task easy.
For a while after their marriage she was ideally happy; she was not even
separated from her father, for Tito came to live with them, and was to
Bardo, in his scholastic labours, all that he had wished his own son to be.
Then came the first cloud.
On November 17, 1494, more than eighteen months after the marriage of
Tito and Romola, the King of France marched his army into Florence on his
way to take possession of Naples and impose peace on the warring little
states into which Italy was divided. There were those in Florence who were
prepared to welcome the invaders, but the majority, the common people in
particular, resented their coming.
With the soldiery came three wretched prisoners; they were led in ropes
by their captors, and with blows from knotted cords were stimulated to beg.
Two, as they passed, held out their hands, crying piteously, "For the love
of God and the Holy Madonna, give us something towards our ransom!"
But the third remained obstinately silent. He was old, white-haired,
emaciated, with a thick-set figure that seemed to express energy in spite
of age; yet there was something fitful in his eyes.
This sight was witnessed by the Florentines with growing exasperation,
and presently from jeering at the French soldiers and hustling them, they
became bent upon rescuing this third prisoner from his tormentors; one
venturesome youth suddenly dashed in, cut the old man's bonds and urged him
to run; and the next moment he had plunged into the crowd, which closed
behind him and hampered the pursuit.
With one soldier struggling desperately on his track, the fugitive sped
towards the Duomo, to seek refuge in that sanctuary, but in mounting the
steps his foot slipped, he was precipitated towards a group of signori who
stood there with their backs to him, and clutched one to save himself.
It was Tito Melema who felt the clutch. He turned, and saw the face of
his adoptive father, Baldassarre Calvo, close to his own. The two men
looked at each other silent as death; Tito with cheeks and lips all
bloodless, fascinated by terror. The next instant the grasp on his arm
relaxed, and Baldassarre disappeared within the church.
With Baldassarre lurking in Florence, Tito went in hourly fear. At any
moment the story of his baseness might be blown abroad; at any moment,
worse still, he might be struck down by the old man, in whose wild eyes he
had read only a fierce yearning for vengeance.
As a precaution, Tito took to wearing a coat of fine chain-mail under
his doublet, and the discovery of this alarmed Romola for his safety, and
shocked her with a suspicion that he was something of a coward.
But by now Tito was deeply involved in Florentine politics, and easily
persuaded her that it was against secret political intriguers that he thus
shielded himself. He went on to confess that his life was no longer safe in
Florence, and he was resolved to leave the city for good. But to this she
demurred; her father had died and left his library and his collection as a
sacred trust to her and Tito, and until they had carried out his wish and
made them over to the city authorities, she felt she could not go.
Tito made light of her scruples. Her father's wish, he said, had been a
mere foolish vanity; they had need of money, and he intended to sell both
the library and collection, and when, for the first time in her life, she
spoke bitterly, in scorn and anger of his faithlessness, he told her flatly
it was useless to bandy words for he had sold them already, and they were
to be removed that day.
Frantic with grief and resentment, she thought of desperate ways of
preventing the accomplishment of his heartless plans, even to borrowing of
her godfather and buying back the treasures, so that Tito might keep his
ill-gotten gain and her father's last wish still be fulfilled; but he
convinced her that all interference was too late, for the things had been
purchased by the Count di San Severino and the Seneschal de Beaucaire, who
were already on their way with the French king to Sienna.
Latterly, in many ways, Romola had been disappointed in her husband's
character; she had found that his handsome face and gay air masked a
cowardice, a cunning meanness, a sordid selfishness of disposition that
were all at variance with her high ideal of him; but that final unspeakable
treachery of the dead man who had trusted him so implicitly shattered her
love for Tito utterly.
As soon as her father's library was dismantled and his treasures taken
away, Romola went from the house with the old man-servant, Maso, and would
never have looked upon Tito's face again, but that Fra Girolamo intercepted
her.
"I have a command to call you back," he said. "My daughter, you must
return to your place. You are flying from your debts; the debt of a
Florentine woman to her fellow citizens; the debt of a wife. You are
turning your back on the lot that has been appointed for you--you are going
to choose another. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presence of God
into the wilderness. My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wife, you
must carry it as a wife. You may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you
cannot cease to be a wife."
There was hunger and misery in the streets, and he urged upon her that
if she had no other purpose in life she could stay, and help the poor of
her own city. Her pride was broken, and she yielded.
Meanwhile, Baldassarre, lurking about Florence, had armed himself with a
knife, and was ravenous for revenge. Being homeless, he called by chance at
Tessa's little house, and she, not knowing who he was, took pity on his age
and misery, gave him shelter in a shed, and food and drink.
Whilst he was there, Tito came, and, too frankly simple to keep anything
from him, Tessa confessed that she had disobeyed his injunctions against
holding converse with strangers, and was sheltering a strange, weary old
man in the shed without. Her description of this guest left Tito in no
doubt as to his identity, and, subduing his first perturbation, he
conceived that he might turn the situation to his own advantage. He went
out to the shed, and looking down upon Baldassarre in the moonlight, sought
to propitiate him with honeyed words, specious explanations, and a plea for
pardon. But the old man answered nothing, till his smouldering fury burst
into a flame, then he precipitated himself upon the intruder and struck
with all his force; but the blade of the knife broke off short against the
hidden coat of mail.
Tito insisted that he was welcome to remain there, and said what he
could to soothe him, but Baldassarre would stay no longer when he knew
whose roof covered him. Presently, he armed himself anew, and waited for
another opportunity. He learned all that was to be known of Tito's career
since his arrival in Florence; ascertained that he was married, and had
thoughts of winning his wife's sympathy and telling her of Tessa. Then one
night he contrived to get into the Rucellai Gardens, where Tito was at
supper with a gathering of Florentine notabilities, and, seized in time and
held back from assassinating him, he passionately denounced him before the
company as a scoundrel, a liar, and a robber.
There were those present who had been on the church steps that day when
Baldassarre had clutched Tito by the arm, and Tito had then explained away
his momentary panic. Questioned now by one of these, he declared that
though when first he encountered his accuser he did not recognise him, he
now saw that he was the servant who years ago accompanied him and his
adoptive father to Greece, and was dismissed on account of misdemeanours,
and that the story of his being rescued from beggary was the vision of a
disordered brain.
Baldassarre was given a chance to prove that he was not the servant, but
the great scholar to whom Tito was indebted for his learning.
"The ring I possess," said Rucellai, "is a fine sard that I myself
purchased from Messer Tito. It is engraved with a subject from Homer. Will
you turn to the passage in Homer from which that subject was taken?"
But sitting to look over the book, Baldassarre realised that the
sufferings through which he had passed had unhinged his mind and his
memory; the words he stared at had no meaning for him, and he lifted his
hands to his head in despair.
The consequence of this fresh failure was that Baldassarre was cast into
prison, and Tito was at liberty to pursue his political ambitions unhaunted
by that dogging shadow that was to him as the shadow of death. He managed
his affairs so cleverly that whichever party came uppermost he was secure
of favour and money.
But by-and-by the tide began to turn against him. Baldassarre was at
large again, and met Romola and told her not only of his own wrongs, but of
Tessa. She saw Tessa and her two children, and befriended them, and was so
far from blaming that innocent little creature that she did not even
disclose the truth to her; but she was importunate with Tito that he should
make atonement to the man who had been a father to him. Then came a day
when Tito's treacheries were discovered by the party he was supposed to
serve, and he had to flee for his life through Florence. Scattering jewels
and gold to delay his pursuers, he leaped from the bridge into the river,
and swam in the darkness, leaving the bellowing mob to think he was
drowned.
But far down the stream there were certain eyes that saw him from the
banks of the river, and when he landed and fell, faint and helpless,
Baldassarre's hands closed on his throat; and next evening a passer-by
found the two dead bodies there.
"Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe," begun about November,
1860, and published early in 1861, is in many respects the most admirable
of all George Eliot's works. It is not a long story, but it is a most
carefully finished novel--"a perfect gem, a pure work of art," Mr. Oscar
Browning describes it. Mr. Blackwood, the publisher, found it rather
sombre, and George Eliot replied to him, "I hope you will not find it at
all a sad story as a whole, since it sets--or is intended to set--in a
strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human relations. I
have felt all through as if the story would have lent itself best to
metrical rather than to prose fiction, especially in all that relates to
the psychology of Silas; except that, under that treatment, there could not
be an equal play of humour." No novel of George Eliot's has received more
praise from men of letters than "Silas Marner."
In the early years of the nineteenth century a linen-weaver named Silas
Marner worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty
hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a
deserted stone-pit.
It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he
was then simply a pallid young man with prominent, short-sighted brown
eyes. To the villagers among whom he had come to settle he seemed to have
mysterious peculiarities, chiefly owing to his advent from an unknown
region called "North'ard." He invited no comer to step across his
door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the
Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheel-wrights'; he sought no man or woman,
save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with
necessaries.
At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things
about Silas Marner as at the beginning. There was only one important
addition which the years had brought; it was that Master Marner had laid by
a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men than
himself."
But while his daily habits presented scarcely any visible change,
Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis as that of
every fervid nature must be when it has been condemned to solitude. His
life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the close fellowship
of a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman had the chance of
distinguishing himself by gifts of speech; and Marner was highly thought of
in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in
Lantern Yard. He was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and
ardent faith, and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he
had fallen at a prayer-meeting into a trance or cataleptic fit, which
lasted for an hour.
Among the members of his church there was one young man, named William
Dane, with whom he lived in close friendship; and it seemed to the
unsuspecting Silas that the friendship suffered no chill, even after he had
formed a closer attachment, and had become engaged to a young
servant-woman.
At this time the senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and Silas and
William, with others of the brethren, took turns at night-watching. On the
night the old man died, Silas fell into one of his trances, and when he
awoke at four o'clock in the morning death had come, and, further, a little
bag of money had been stolen from the deacon's bureau, and Silas's
pocket-knife was found inside the bureau. For some time Silas was mute with
astonishment, then he said, "God will clear me; I know nothing about the
knife being there, or the money being gone. Search me and my dwelling."
The search was made, and it ended in William Dane finding the deacon's
bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas's chamber.
According to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard prosecution
was forbidden to Christians. But the members were bound to take other
measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and
drawing lots; there was nothing unusual about such proceedings a hundred
years ago. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on his own innocence
being certified by immediate Divine interference. The lots declared that
Silas Marner was guilty. He was solemnly suspended from
church-membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money; only on
confession and repentance could he be received once more within the fold of
the church. Marner listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to
depart, he went towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by
agitation, "The last time I remember using my knife was when I took it out
to cut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket again.
You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my
door. But you may prosper for all that; there is no just God, but a God of
lies, that bears witness against the innocent!"
There was a general shudder at this blasphemy. Poor Marner went out with
that despair in his soul--that shaken trust in God and man which is little
short of madness to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded
spirit, he said to himself, "She will cast me off, too!" and for a
whole day he sat alone, stunned by despair.
The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief by getting into
his loom and working away as usual, and, before many hours were past, the
minister and one of the deacons came to him with a message from Sarah, the
young woman to whom he had been engaged, that she held her engagement at an
end. In little more than a month from that time Sarah was married to
William Dane, and not long afterwards it was known to the brethren in
Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town.
When Silas Marner first came to Raveloe he seemed to weave like a
spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Then there were the calls of
hunger, and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast,
dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well, and put his own
kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped to reduce his
life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the
thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and
fellowship towards the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was
all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.
It was then, when all purpose of life was gone, that Silas got into the
habit of looking towards the money he received for his weaving, and
grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort. Gradually, the guineas, the
crowns, and the half-crowns, grew to a heap, and Marner drew less and less
for his own wants, trying to solve the problem of keeping himself strong
enough to work sixteen hours a day on as small an outlay as possible. He
handled his coins, he counted them, till their form and colour were like
the satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his
work was done, that he drew them out, to enjoy their companionship. He had
taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he had made
a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver
coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them.
So, year after year, Silas Marner lived in this solitude, his guineas
rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more
and more as it became reduced to the functions of weaving and hoarding.
This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he
came to Raveloe. Then, about the Christmas of that year, a second great
change came over his life.
It was a raw, foggy night, with rain, and Silas was returning from the
village, plodding along, with a sack thrown round his shoulders, and with a
horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease
with the sense of security that springs from habit. Supper was his
favourite meal, because it was his time of revelry, when his heart warmed
over his gold.
He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done; he
opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he had left
it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat.
As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to
wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would be
pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his food.
He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his loom,
swept away the sand, without noticing any change, and removed the bricks.
The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but the belief
that his gold was gone could not come at once--only terror, and the eager
effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his trembling hand all about
the hole, then he held the candle and examined it curiously, trembling more
and more. He searched in every corner, he turned his bed over, and shook
it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven; and when there was no
other place to be searched, he felt once more all round the hole.
He could see every object in his cottage, and his gold was not there. He
put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild, ringing scream--the
cry of desolation. Then the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he
entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to restore
the gold. The robber must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal
authority were confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss;
and the great people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, and
Squire Cass--would make the thief deliver up the stolen money.
It was to the village inn Silas Marner went, where the parish clerk and
a select company were assembled, and told the story of his loss--£272
12s. 6d. in all. The machinery of the law was set in motion, but no thief
was ever captured, nor could grounds be found for suspicion against any
persons.
What had really happened was that Dunsey Cass, Squire Cass's second
son--a mean, boastful rascal--on his way home on foot from hunting, saw the
light in the weaver's cottage, and knocked, hoping to borrow a lantern, for
the lane was unpleasantly slippery, and the night dark. But all was silence
in the cottage, for the weaver at that moment had not yet reached home. For
a minute Dunsey thought that old Marner might be dead, fallen over into the
stone pits. And from that came the decision that he must be dead. If so,
the question arose, what would become of the money that everybody said the
old miser had put by?
Dunstan Cass was in difficulties for want of money, and he had killed
his brother's horse that day on the hunting-field. Who would know, if
Marner was dead, that anybody had come to take his hoard of money away?
There were only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers'
hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes
travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been
more carefully spread.
Dunstan found the hole and the money, now hidden in two leathern bags.
From their weight he judged they must be filled with guineas. Quickly he
hastened out into the darkness with the bags, and Dunstan Cass was seen no
more alive.
At the very moment when he turned his back on the cottage Silas Marner
was not more than a hundred yards away.
It was New Year's Eve, and Squire Cass was giving a dance to the
neighbouring gentry of Raveloe. There had been snow in the afternoon, but
at seven o'clock it had ceased, and a freezing wind had sprung up.
A woman, shabbily dressed, with a child in her arms, was making her way
towards Raveloe, seeking the Red House, where Squire Cass lived. It was not
the squire she wanted, but his eldest son, Godfrey, to whom she was
secretly married. The marriage--the result of rash impulse--had been an
unhappy one from the first, for Godfrey's wife was the slave of opium. The
squire had long desired that his son should marry Miss Nancy Lammeter, and
would have turned him out of house and home had he known of the unfortunate
marriage already contracted. Cold and weariness drove the woman, even while
she walked, to the only comfort she knew. She raised the black remnant to
her lips, and then flung the empty phial away. Now she walked, always more
and more drowsily, and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping
child at her bosom. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme longing to lie down
and sleep; and so sank down against a straggling furze-bush, an easy pillow
enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. The cold was no longer felt,
but her arms did not at once relax their instinctive clutch, and the little
one slumbered on.
The complete torpor came at last; the fingers lost their tension, the
arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue
eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a
little peevish cry of "Mammy," as the child rolled downward; and then,
suddenly, its eyes were caught by a bright gleaming light on the white
ground, and with the ready transition of infancy it decided the light must
be caught.
In an instant the child had slipped on all fours, and, after making out
that the cunning gleam came from a very bright place, the little one,
rising on its legs, toddled through the snow--toddled on to the open door
of Silas Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where was a
bright fire.
The little one, accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without
notice, squatted down on the old sack spread out before the fire, in
perfect contentment. Presently the little golden head sank down, and the
blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-transparent lids.
But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to his
hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child. Since he had
lost his money he had contracted the habit of opening his door, and looking
out from time to time, as if he thought that his money might, somehow, be
coming back to him.
That morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was New
Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung out, and the
new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money back
again. Perhaps this friendly Raveloe way of jesting had helped to throw
Silas into a more than usually excited state. Certainly he opened his door
again and again that night, and the last time, just as he put out his hand
to close it, the invisible wand of catalepsy arrested him, and there he
stood like a graven image, powerless to resist either the good or evil that
might enter.
When Marner's sensibility returned he was unaware of the break in his
consciousness, and only noticed that he was chilled and faint.
Turning towards the hearth it seemed to his blurred vision as if there
was a heap of gold on the floor; but instead of hard coin his fingers
encountered soft, warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees
to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child, a round, fair thing, with
soft, yellow rings all over its head. Could this be the little sister come
back to him in a dream--his little sister whom he had carried about in his
arms for a year before she died? That was the first thought. Was it
a dream? It was very much like his little sister. How and when had the
child come in without his knowledge?
But there was a cry on the hearth; the child had awakened, and Marner
stooped to lift it on to his knee. He had plenty to do through the next
hour. The porridge, sweetened with some dry brown sugar, stopped the cries
of the little one for "mammy." Then it occurred to Silas's dull bachelor
mind that the child wanted its wet boots off, and this having been done,
the wet boots suggested that the child had been walking on the snow.
He made out the marks of the little feet in the snow, and, holding the
child in his arms, followed their track to the furze-bush. Then he became
aware that there was something more than the bush before him--that there
was a human body, half covered with the shifting snow.
With the child in his arms, Silas at once went for the doctor, who was
spending the evening at the Red House. And Godfrey Cass recognised that it
was his own child he saw in Marner's arms.
The woman was dead--had been dead for some hours, the doctor said; and
Godfrey, who had accompanied him to Marner's cottage, understood that he
was free to marry Nancy Lammeter.
"You'll take the child to the parish to-morrow?" Godfrey asked, speaking
as indifferently as he could.
"Who says so?" said Marner sharply. "Will they make me take her? I shall
keep her till anybody shows they've a right to take her away from me. The
mother's dead, and I reckon it's got no father. It's a lone thing, and I'm
a lone thing. My money's gone--I don't know where, and this is come from I
don't know where."
Godfrey returned to the Red House with a sense of relief and gladness,
and Silas kept the child. There had been a softening of feeling to him in
the village since the day of his robbery, and now an active sympathy was
aroused amongst the women. The child was christened Hephzibah, after
Marner's mother, and was called Eppie for short.
Eppie had come to link Silas Marner once more with the whole world. The
disposition to hoard had utterly gone, and there was no longer any
repulsion around to him.
As the child grew up, one person watched with keener, though more
hidden, interest than any other the prosperous growth of Eppie under the
weaver's care. The squire was dead, and Godfrey Cass was married to Nancy
Lammeter. He had no child of his own save the one that knew him not. No
Dunsey had ever turned up, and people had ceased to think of him.
Sixteen years had passed, and now Aaron Winthrop, a well-behaved young
gardener, is wanting to marry Eppie, and Eppie is willing to have him "some
time."
"'Everybody's married some time,' Aaron says," said Eppie. "But I told
him that wasn't true, for I said look at father--he's never been
married."
"No, child," said Silas, "your father was a lone man till you was sent
to him."
"But you'll never be lone again, father," said Eppie tenderly. "That was
what Aaron said--'I could never think o' taking you away from Master
Marner, Eppie.' And I said, 'It 'ud be no use if you did, Aaron.' And he
wants us all to live together, so as you needn't work a bit, father, only
what's for your own pleasure, and he'd be as good as a son to you--that was
what he said."
The proposal to separate Eppie from her foster-father came from Godfrey
Cass.
When the old stone-pit by Marner's cottage went dry, owing to drainage
operations, the skeleton of Dunstan Cass was found, wedged between two
great stones. The watch and seals were recognised, and all the weaver's
money was at the bottom of the pit. The shock of this discovery moved
Godfrey to tell Nancy the secret of his earlier marriage.
"Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later," he said. "That
woman Marner found dead in the snow--Eppie's mother--was my wife. Eppie is
my child. I oughtn't to have left the child unowned. I oughtn't to have
kept it from you."
"It's but little wrong to me, Godfrey," Nancy answered sadly. "You've
made it up to me--you've been good to me for fifteen years. It'll be a
different coming to us, now she's grown up."
They were childless, and it hadn't occurred to them as they approached
Silas Marner's cottage that Godfrey's offer might be declined. At first
Godfrey explained that he and his wife wanted to adopt Eppie in place of a
daughter.
"Eppie, my child, speak," said old Marner faintly. "I won't stand in
your way. Thank Mr. and Mrs. Cass."
"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir," said Eppie dropping a curtsy; "but I
can't leave my father, nor own anybody nearer than him."
Godfrey Cass was irritated at this obstacle.
"But I've a claim on you, Eppie," he returned. "It's my duty, Marner, to
own Eppie as my child, and provide for her. She's my own child. Her mother
was my wife. I've a natural claim on her."
"Then, sir, why didn't you say so sixteen years ago, and claim her
before I'd come to love her, i'stead o' coming to take her from me now,
when you might as well take the heart out o' my body? When a man turns a
blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in. But let it be as
you will. Speak to the child. I'll hinder nothing."
"Eppie, my dear," said Godfrey, looking at his daughter not without some
embarrassment, "it'll always be our wish that you should show your love and
gratitude to one who's been a father to you so many years; but we hope
you'll come to love us as well, and though I haven't been what a father
should ha' been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my power
for you now, and provide for you as my only child. And you'll have the best
of mothers in my wife."
Eppie did not come forward and curtsy as she had done before, but she
held Silas's hand in hers and grasped it firmly.
"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir, for your offers--they're very great
and far above my wish. For I should have no delight in life any more if I
was forced to go away from my father."
In vain Nancy expostulated mildly.
"I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie. "I've always
thought of a little home where he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend
and do everything for him. I can't think o' no other home. I wasn't brought
up to be a lady, and," she ended passionately, "I'm promised to marry a
working man, as'll live with father and help me to take care of him."
Godfrey Cass and his wife went out.
A year later Eppie was married, and Mrs. Godfrey Cass provided the
wedding dress, and Mr. Cass made some necessary alterations to suit Silas's
larger family.
"Oh, father," said Eppie, when the bridal party returned from the
church, "what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than
we are!"
In "The Mill on the Floss," published in 1860, George Eliot
went to her own early life for the chief characters in the story, and in
the relations of Tom and Maggie Tulliver we get a picture of the youth of
Mary Ann Evans and her brother Isaac. Lord Lytton objected that Maggie was
too passive in the scene at Red Deeps, and that the tragedy of the flood
was not adequately prepared. To this criticism George Eliot answered, "Now
that the defect is suggested to me, if the book were still in manuscript I
should alter, or rather expand, that scene at Red Deeps." She also admitted
that there was "a want of proportionate fulness" in the conclusion. But,
with all its faults, "The Mill on the Floss" deserves the reputation it has
won. The reception of the story at first was disappointing, and we find the
authoress telling her publisher that "she does not want to see any
newspaper articles." But the book made its way, and prepared an
ever-growing public for "Silas Marner."
"What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver, "what I want is to give Tom
a good eddication--an eddication as'll be a bread to him. I mean to put him
to a downright good school at midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud
ha' done well enough if I'd meant to make a miller and farmer of him, but I
should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these
lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer
o' the lad--I should be sorry for him to be a raskill--but a sort of
engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one
o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a
big watch-chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're
not far off being even wi' the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem
i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. He's none frightened
at him."
Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde, comely woman, nearly
forty years old.
"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best. I've no objections. But if
Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him
and mend him, else he might as well have calico as linen. And then, when
the box is goin' backwards and forwards, I could send the lad a cake, or a
pork-pie, or an apple."
"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if
other things fit in," said Mr. Tulliver. "Riley's as likely a man as any to
know o' some school; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all
sorts o' places--arbitratin' and vallyin', and that."
So a day or two later Mr. Riley, the auctioneer, came to Dorlcote Mill,
and stayed the night, the better that Mr. Tulliver, who was slow at coming
to a point, might consult him on the all-important subject of his boy.
"You see, I want to put him to a new school at midsummer," said Mr.
Tulliver, when the topic had been reached. "I want to send him to a
downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him. I don't mean
Tom to be a miller an' farmer. I see no fun i' that. I shall give Tom an
eddication and put him to a business as he may make a nest for himself, an'
not want to push me out o' mine."
At the sound of her brother's name, Maggie, the second and only other
child of the Tullivers, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire,
with a large book open on her lap, looked up eagerly. Tom, it appeared, was
supposed capable of turning his father out of doors. This was not to be
borne, and Maggie jumped up from her stool, and going up between her
father's knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice, "Father, Tom
wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't."
Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched.
"What! They mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" he said, looking at Maggie
with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, "She
understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear
her read--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. But it's
bad--it's bad. A woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to
trouble, I doubt. It's a pity, but what she'd been the lad--she'd ha' been
a match for the lawyers, she would."
Mr. Riley took a pinch of snuff before he said, "But your lad's not
stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last, busy making fishing-tackle;
he seemed quite up to it."
"Well, he isn't not to say stupid; he's got a notion o' things out o'
door, an' a sort o' commonsense, as he'd lay hold o' things by the right
handle. But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and reads but poorly, and
can't abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an' as shy as
can be wi' strangers. Now, what I want is to send him to a school where
they'll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen, to make a smart
chap of him. I want my son to be even wi' these fellows as have got the
start o' me with schooling."
The talk ended in Mr. Riley recommending a country parson named Stelling
as a suitable tutor for Tom, and Mr. Tulliver decided that his son should
go to Mr. Stelling at King's Lorton, fifteen miles from Dorlcote Mill.
Tom Tulliver's sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's
Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were
rather severe. It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to
the idea that his school-time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to
be brought up to his father's business, which he had always thought
extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and
going to market.
Mr. Stelling was not a harsh-tempered or unkind man--quite the contrary,
but he thought Tom a stupid boy, and determined to develop his powers
through Latin grammar and Euclid to the best of his ability.
As for Tom, he had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as
Latin on this earth. It would have taken a long while to make it
conceivable to him that there ever existed a people who bought and sold
sheep and oxen, and transacted the everyday affairs of life through the
medium of this language, or why he should be called upon to learn it, when
its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. He was of a
very firm, not to say obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like
rebellion or recklessness in his nature; the human sensibilities
predominated, and he was anxious to acquire Mr. Stelling's approbation by
showing some quickness at his lessons, if he had known how to accomplish
it.
In his secret heart Tom yearned to have Maggie with him, and, before the
first dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs. Stelling had
given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her
brother; so when Mr. Tulliver drove over to King's Lorton late in October,
Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and
beginning to see the world.
"Well, my lad," Mr. Tulliver said, "you look rarely! School agrees with
you!"
"I don't think I am well, father," said Tom; "I wish you'd ask
Mr. Stelling not to let me do Euclid--it brings on the toothache, I
think."
"Euclid, my lad--why, what's that?" said Mr. Tulliver.
"Oh, I don't know! It's definitions and axioms and triangles and things.
It's a book I've got to learn in--there's no sense in it."
"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver reprovingly. "You mustn't say so. You must
learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for you to
learn."
In the second term Mr. Stelling had a second pupil--Philip, the son of
Lawyer Wakem, Mr. Tulliver's standing enemy.
Philip was a very old-looking boy, Tom thought. His spine had been
deformed through an accident in infancy, and to Tom he was simply a
humpback. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some
relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his
father talk with hot emphasis.
There was a natural antipathy of temperament between the two boys; for
Tom was an excellent bovine lad, and Philip was sensitive, and suffered
acute pain when the other blurted out offensive things.
Maggie, on her second visit to King's Lorton, pronounced Philip to be "a
nice boy."
"He couldn't choose his father, you know," she said to Tom. "And I've
read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad
children."
"Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Tom curtly, "and he's as sulky as can be
with me because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell
him so, for it was true--and he began it with calling me names."
An accident to Tom's foot brought the two boys nearer again, and also
threw Philip and Maggie together.
"Maggie," said Philip one day, "if you had had a brother like me, do you
think you should have loved him as well as Tom?"
"Oh, yes, better," she answered immediately. "No, not better; because I
don't think I could love you better than Tom. But I should be so sorry--so
sorry for you."
Philip coloured. He had meant to imply, would she love him as well in
spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly he winced
under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake.
"But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play and sing," she
added quickly. "I wish you were my brother. I'm very fond of you."
"But you'll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie, and then you'll
forget all about me, and not care for me any more."
"Oh, no, I shan't forget you, I'm sure." And Maggie put her arm round
his neck, and kissed him quite earnestly.
When Tom had turned sixteen, and Maggie, three years younger, was at
boarding school, came the downfall of the Tullivers. A long and expensive
law-suit concerning rights of water, brought by Mr. Tulliver, ended in
defeat. Wakem was his opponent's lawyer.
Maggie broke the news to Tom. Not only would mill and lands and
everything be lost, and nothing left, but their father had fallen off his
horse, and knew nobody, and seemed to have lost his senses.
"They say Mr. Wakem has got a mortgage or something on the land, Tom,"
said Maggie, on their way home from King's Lorton. "It was the letter with
that news in it that made father ill, they think."
"I believe that scoundrel's been planning all along to ruin my father,"
said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion.
"I'll make him feel for it when I'm a man. Mind you never speak to Philip
again!"
For more than two months Mr. Tulliver lay ill in his room, oblivious to
all that was taking place around him. From time to time recognition came to
him of his wife and family, but there was no remembrance of recent
events.
The mill and land of the Tullivers were sold to Wakem the lawyer, and
the bulk of their household goods were disposed of by public auction; but
the Tullivers were not turned out of Dorlcote Mill. And, indeed, when Mr.
Tulliver, known to be a man of proud honesty, was once more able to be up
and about, it was proposed that he should remain and accept employment as
manager of the mill for Mr. Wakem.
It was with difficulty that poor Tulliver could bring himself to accept
the situation, but he saw the possibility, by much pinching, of saving
money out of the thirty shillings a week salary promised by Wakem, and
paying a second dividend to his creditors. The strongest influence of all
was the love of the old premises where he had run about when he was a boy,
just as Tom had done after him.
Tom, who had at once applied to his Uncle Deane, partner in a wealthy
merchant's business, for work, and was now earning a pound a week, had
protested against entertaining the proposition; he shouldn't like his
father to be under Wakem; he thought it would look nothing but mean
spirited.
But Mr. Tulliver had come to a decision. The first evening of his new
life downstairs, he called his family round him, and began to speak,
looking first at his wife.
"I've made up my mind, Bessy. I'll stop in the old place, and I'll serve
under Wakem, and I'll serve him like an honest man; there's no Tulliver but
what's honest, mind that, Tom. They'll have it to throw up against me as I
paid a dividend--but it wasn't my fault--it was because there's raskills in
the world. They've been too many for me, and I must give in. But I'll serve
him as honest as if he was no raskill. I'm an honest man, though I shall
never hold my head up no more! I'm a tree as is broke--a tree as is
broke."
He paused, and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he
said, in a louder yet deeper tone, "But I won't forgive him! I know what
they say--he never meant me any harm! I shouldn't ha' gone to law they say.
But who made it so as there was no arbitrating and no justice to be got? It
signifies nothing to him--I know that he's one o' them fine gentlemen as
get money by doing business for poorer folks, and when he's made beggars of
'em he'll give 'em charity. I won't forgive him! I wish he might be
punished with shame till his own son 'ud like to forget him. And you mind
this, Tom--you never forgive him, neither, if you mean to be my son. Now
write--write it i' the Bible!"
"Oh, father, what?" said Maggie. "It's wicked to curse and bear
malice."
"It isn't wicked, I tell you," said her father, fiercely. "It's wicked
as the raskills should prosper--it's the devil's doing. Do as I tell you,
Tom! Write."
The big Bible was open at the beginning, where many family entries were
put down.
"What am I to write, father?" said Tom, with gloomy submission.
"Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service under John Wakem,
the man as had helped to ruin him, because I'd promised my wife to make her
what amends I could, and because I wanted to die in th' old place where I
was born, and my father was born. Put that i' the right words--you know
how--and then write as I don't forgive Wakem for all that; and for all I'll
serve him honest, I wish evil may befall him. Write that."
There was a dead silence as Tom's pen moved along the paper.
"Now let me hear what you've wrote," said Mr. Tulliver; and Tom read
aloud, slowly.
"Now, write--write as you'll remember what Wakem's done to your father,
and you'll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And sign your
name--Thomas Tulliver!"
"Oh, no, father, dear father!" said Maggie, trembling like a leaf. "You
shouldn't make Tom write that!"
"Be quiet, Maggie!" said Tom, impatiently, "I shall write it!"
The Red Deeps was always a favourite place to Maggie to walk in. An old
stone quarry, so long exhausted that both mounds and hollows were now
clothed with brambles and trees, and with here and there a stretch of grass
which a few sheep kept close nibbled. This was the Red Deeps, and it was
here in June that Maggie once more met Philip Wakem, five years after their
first meeting at Mr. Stelling's. He told her that she was much more
beautiful than he had thought she would be, and assured her, in answer to
the difficulties she raised as to their meeting, that there was no enmity
in his father's mind.
And Maggie went home with an inward conflict already begun, and Philip
went home to do nothing but remember and hope.
In the following April they met again, after Philip had been abroad.
And now he took her hand, and asked her the simple question, "Do
you love me?"
"I think I could hardly love anyone better; there is nothing but what I
love you for," Maggie answered. But she pointed out how impossible even
their friendship was, if it were discovered.
Philip, on his side, refused to give up hope, and before they parted
that day she had kissed him.
Tom intervened before the next visit to the Red Deeps. He had heard that
Philip Wakem had been seen there with his sister, and Maggie admitted, on
his questioning her, that she had told Philip that she loved him.
"Now, then, Maggie," Tom said coldly, "there are but two courses for you
to take. Either you vow solemnly to me, with your hand on father's Bible,
that you will never have another meeting or speak another word in private
to Philip Wakem, or you refuse and I tell my father everything!"
In vain Maggie pleaded. Tom was obdurate, and she repeated the words of
renunciation.
But that was not enough for Tom Tulliver; he accompanied Maggie to Red
Deeps, and in a voice of harsh scorn told Philip that he had been taking a
mean, unmanly advantage.
"It was for my father's sake, Philip," said Maggie, imploringly. "Tom
threatens to tell my father--and he couldn't bear it. I have promised, I
have vowed solemnly, that we will not have any intercourse without my
brother's knowledge."
"It is enough, Maggie. I shall not change, but I wish you to hold
yourself entirely free. But trust me--remember that I can never seek for
anything but good to what belongs to you."
Tom only replied with angry contempt, and led Maggie away. All his
sister's remonstrances he answered with cold obstinacy.
For his character in its strength was hard. Tom had laboured to one end
in these years: to pay off his father's creditors, and regain Dorlcote
Mill. By his industry, and by some successful private ventures in trade,
the day came when the first of the objects was realised, and Mr. Tulliver
lived to see himself free of debt.
But Mr. Tulliver's satisfaction was short-lived. Excited by the dinner
given to celebrate the payment of his creditors, he met Mr. Wakem near the
mill. From angry words it came to blows, and Tulliver fell on the lawyer
furiously, only ceasing from attack when Maggie and Mrs. Tulliver appeared.
Wakem went off without serious injury, but Tulliver only lived through the
night; the excitement had killed him.
"You must take care of her, Tom," said the dying man, turning to his
daughter. "You'll manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother
and me can lie together? This world's...too many...honest man..."
At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted
soul had ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this world.
Tom and Maggie went downstairs together, and Maggie spoke. "Tom, forgive
me; let us always love each other"--and they clung and wept together.
But they were not to be always united.
Tom lived in lodgings in the town, and was anxious to provide for his
sister, but Maggie preferred to take up teaching in her old
boarding-school. She met Philip Wakem again, and though Tom released her
from her old promise, he could not regard Philip with any feelings of
friendship.
It was when Tom had, by years of steady work, fulfilled his father's
wishes and become once more master of Dorlcote Mill that Maggie
returned--to be no more separated from her brother. She was staying in the
town near the river on the night when the flood came, and the river rose
beyond its banks. Her first thought, as the water entered the lower part of
the house, was of the mill, where Tom was. There was no time to get
assistance; she must go herself, and alone. Hastily she procured a boat,
and at last reached the mill. The water was up to the first story, but
still the mill stood firm.
"Tom, where are you? Here is Maggie!" she called out, in a loud,
piercing voice. Tom opened the middle window, and got into the boat. Tom
rowed with vigour, but a new danger was before them in the river.
"Get out of the current!" was shouted at them, but it could not be done
at once. Huge fragments of machinery, swept off one of the wharves, blocked
the stream in one wide mass, and the current swept the boat swiftly on to
its doom.
"It is coming, Maggie!" Tom said, in a deep, hoarse voice, loosing the
oars and clasping her.
The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water, and brother
and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through
again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little
hands in love.
"In their death they were not divided."