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But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbours. The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church.
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.
Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently near Marner's standing-place; but he declined to give his services. "Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you've a mind," said Jem, rather sullenly. "He's been robbed, and murdered too, for what I know," he added, in a muttering tone. "Jem Rodney!" said Silas, turning and fixing his strange eyes on the suspected man.
"No, I'll stay, now I'm once out I'll stay outside here," said Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner's cottage. "You can come and tell me if I can do anything." "Well, sir, you're very good: you've a tender heart," said Dolly, going to the door. Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of self-reproach at this undeserved praise.
It was an apparition from that hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street, behind the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable admirers. It was his own child, carried in Silas Marner's arms.
The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass.
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. IV Eppie's Decision Eppie had come to link Silas Marner once more with the whole world.
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.
How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had often heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade the old fellow into lending the money on the excellent security of the young Squire's prospects?
There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain.
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