Where, after all,
would be the use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and
throwing away his happiness?- nay, hers? for he felt some confidence
that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that it was cared
for: he would never forsake it; he would do everything but own it.
Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being owned by its
father, seeing that nobody could tell how things would turn out, and
that- is there any other reason wanted?- well, then, that the father
would be much happier without owning the child.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THERE was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at
Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair child,
who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was
all the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of
men. But the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial
as the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to
certain human lives that we know of, shaping their joys and sorrows
even to the end.
Silas Marner's determination to keep the 'tramp's child' was matter
of hardly less surprising and iterated talk in the village than the
robbery of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which
dated from his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in
a rather contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was now
accompanied with a more active sympathy, especially amongst the women.
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