Nancy
and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in silence. When they entered the oaken parlour, Godfrey threw himself into his chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the hearth near her husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes, and yet fearing to utter any word lest it might jar on his feeling. At last Godfrey turned his head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling in that meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger—not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.
But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers within it, he drew her towards him, and said—
“That’s ended!”
She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his side, “Yes, I’m afraid we must give up the hope of having her for a daughter. It wouldn’t be right to want to force her to come to us against her will. We can’t alter her bringing up and what’s come of it.”
“No,” said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and unemphatic speech—“there’s debts we can’t pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I’ve been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing—it’s too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man’s turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy—I shall pass for childless now against my wish.”
Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while she asked—“You won’t make it known, then, about Eppie’s being your daughter?”
“No: where would be the good to anybody?—only harm. I must do what I can for her in the state of life she chooses. I must see who it is she’s thinking of marrying.”
“If it won’t do any good to make the thing known,” said Nancy, who thought she might now allow herself the relief of entertaining a feeling which she had tried to silence before, “I should be very thankful for father and Priscilla never to be troubled with knowing what was done in the past, more than about Dunsey: it can’t be helped, their knowing that.”
“I shall put it in my will—I think I shall put it in my will. I shouldn’t like to leave anything to be found out, like this of Dunsey,” said Godfrey, meditatively. “But I can’t see anything but difficulties that ’ud come from telling it now. I must do what I can to make her happy in her own way. I’ve a notion,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “it’s Aaron Winthrop she meant she was engaged to. I remember seeing him with her and Marner going away from church.”
“Well, he’s very sober and industrious,” said Nancy, trying to view the matter as cheerfully as possible.
Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he looked up at Nancy sorrowfully, and said—
“She’s a very pretty, nice girl, isn’t she, Nancy?”
“Yes, dear; and with just your hair and eyes: I wondered it had never struck me before.”
“I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her father: I could see a change in her manner after that.”
“She couldn’t bear to think of not looking on Marner as her father,” said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her husband’s painful impression.
“She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She thinks me worse than I am. But she must
think it: she can never know all. It’s part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to dislike me. I should never have got into that trouble if I’d been true to you—if I hadn’t been a fool. I’d no right to expect anything but evil could come of that marriage—and when I shirked doing a father’s part too.”
Nancy was silent: her spirit of rectitude would not let her try to soften the edge of what she felt to be a just compunction. He spoke again after a little while, but the tone was rather changed: there was tenderness mingled with the previous self-reproach.
“And I got you
, Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I’ve been grumbling and uneasy because I hadn’t something else—as if I deserved it.”
“You’ve never been wanting to me, Godfrey,” said Nancy, with quiet sincerity. “My only trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself to the lot that’s been given us.”
“Well, perhaps it isn’t too late to mend a bit there. Though it is
too late to mend some things, say what they will.”