Silas Marner by George Eliot (free children's online books .txt) 📕

Priscilla could come to her; for the sisters had already exchanged a short whisper and an open-eyed glance full of meaning. No reason less urgent than this could have prevailed on Nancy to give Godfrey this opportunity of sitting apart with her. As for Godfrey, he was feeling so happy and oblivious under the long charm of the country-dance with Nancy, that he got rather bold on the strength of her confusion, and was capable of leading her straight away, without leave asked, into the adjoining small parlour, where the card-tables were set.

“Oh no, thank you,” said Nancy, coldly, as soon as she perceived where he was going, “not in there. I’ll wait here till Priscilla’s ready to come to me. I’m sorry to bring you out of the dance and make myself troublesome.”

“Why, you’ll be more comfortable here by yourself,” said the artful Godfrey: “I’ll leave you here till your sister can come.” He spoke in an indifferent tone.

That was an agreeable proposition, and just what Nancy desired; why, then, was she a little hurt that Mr. Godfrey should make it? They entered, and she seated herself on a chair against one of the card-tables, as the stiffest and most unapproachable position she could choose.

“Thank you, sir,” she said immediately. “I needn’t give you any more trouble. I’m sorry you’ve had such an unlucky partner.”

“That’s very ill-natured of you,” said Godfrey, standing by her without any sign of intended departure, “to be sorry you’ve danced with me.”

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t mean to say what’s ill-natured at all,” said Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty. “When gentlemen have so many pleasures, one dance can matter but very little.”

“You know that isn’t true. You know one dance with you matters more to me than all the other pleasures in the world.”

It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything so direct as that, and Nancy was startled. But her instinctive dignity and repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and only throw a little more decision into her voice, as she said⁠—

“No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that’s not known to me, and I have very good reasons for thinking different. But if it’s true, I don’t wish to hear it.”

“Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy⁠—never think well of me, let what would happen⁠—would you never think the present made amends for the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up everything you didn’t like?”

Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking to Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by the possibility Godfrey’s words suggested, but this very pressure of emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for her roused all her power of self-command.

“I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey,” she answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone, “but it ’ud be better if no change was wanted.”

“You’re very hardhearted, Nancy,” said Godfrey, pettishly. “You might encourage me to be a better fellow. I’m very miserable⁠—but you’ve no feeling.”

“I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with,” said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself. Godfrey was delighted with that little flash, and would have liked to go on and make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so exasperatingly quiet and firm. But she was not indifferent to him yet, though⁠—

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, “Dear heart alive, child, let us look at this gown,” cut off Godfrey’s hopes of a quarrel.

“I suppose I must go now,” he said to Priscilla.

“It’s no matter to me whether you go or stay,” said that frank lady, searching for something in her pocket, with a preoccupied brow.

“Do you want me to go?” said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was now standing up by Priscilla’s order.

“As you like,” said Nancy, trying to recover all her former coldness, and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown.

“Then I like to stay,” said Godfrey, with a reckless determination to get as much of this joy as he could tonight, and think nothing of the morrow.

XII

While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the sweet presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of that hidden bond which at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle irritation with the very sunshine, Godfrey’s wife was walking with slow uncertain steps through the snow-covered Raveloe lanes, carrying her child in her arms.

This journey on New Year’s Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his wife. There would be a great party at the Red House on New Year’s Eve, she knew: her husband would be smiling and smiled upon, hiding her existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his pleasure: she would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as handsome as the best, with her little child that had its father’s hair and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire as his eldest son’s wife. It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable. Molly knew that the cause of her dingy rags was not her husband’s neglect, but the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved, body and soul, except in the lingering mother’s tenderness that refused to give him her hungry child. She knew this well; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed consciousness, the sense of her want and degradation transformed itself continually into bitterness towards Godfrey. He was well off; and if she had her rights she would be well off too. The belief that he repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only aggravated her