And that money on the table, after all, is but little.It won't go far either way--whether it's put out to interest, or you were to live on it as long as it would last: it wouldn't go far if you'd nobody to keep but yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good many years now.""Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying, "I'm in no fear o' want.We shall do very well--Eppie and me 'ull do well enough.There's few working-folks have got so much laid by as that.I don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a deal--almost too much.And as for us, it's little we want.""Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the moment after.
"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that this turn in the point of view might help her husband."We should agree in that: I give a deal of time to the garden.""Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey, surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition which had seemed so easy to him in the distance."You've done a good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years.It 'ud be a great comfort to you to see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't look like a strapping girl come of working parents.You'd like to see her taken care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady of her; she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she might come to have in a few years' time."A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a passing gleam.Eppie was simply wondering Mr.Cass should talk so about things that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but Silas was hurt and uneasy.
"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard Mr.Cass's words.
"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to come to the point."Mrs.Cass and I, you know, have no children--nobody to benefit by our good home and everything else we have--more than enough for ourselves.And we should like to have somebody in the place of a daughter to us--we should like to have Eppie, and treat her in every way as our own child.It 'ud be a great comfort to you in your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made in that way, after you've been at the trouble of bringing her up so well.And it's right you should have every reward for that.And Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and be grateful to you: she'd come and see you very often, and we should all be on the look-out to do everything we could towards making you comfortable."A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings.
While he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt him trembling violently.He was silent for some moments when Mr.Cass had ended--powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike painful.Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly--"Eppie, my child, speak.I won't stand in your way.Thank Mr.and Mrs.Cass."Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step.
Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the sense that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of self-consciousness.She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs.Cass and then to Mr.Cass, and said--"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir.But I can't leave my father, nor own anybody nearer than him.And I don't want to be a lady--thank you all the same" (here Eppie dropped another curtsy)."Icouldn't give up the folks I've been used to."Eppie's lips began to tremble a little at the last words.She retreated to her father's chair again, and held him round the neck:
while Silas, with a subdued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers.
The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was, naturally, divided with distress on her husband's account.She dared not speak, wondering what was going on in her husband's mind.
Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we encounter an unexpected obstacle.He had been full of his own penitence and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time was left to him; he was possessed with all-important feelings, that were to lead to a predetermined course of action which he had fixed on as the right, and he was not prepared to enter with lively appreciation into other people's feelings counteracting his virtuous resolves.The agitation with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed with anger.
"But I've a claim on you, Eppie--the strongest of all claims.
It's my duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child, and provide for her.
She is my own child--her mother was my wife.I've a natural claim on her that must stand before every other."Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale.Silas, on the contrary, who had been relieved, by Eppie's answer, from the dread lest his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit of resistance in him set free, not without a touch of parental fierceness."Then, sir," he answered, with an accent of bitterness that had been silent in him since the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished--"then, sir, why didn't you say so sixteen year 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? God gave her to me because you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you've no right to her! When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in.""I know that, Marner.I was wrong.I've repented of my conduct in that matter," said Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of Silas's words.
