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Silas Marner

by George Eliot · English · Gutenberg #550 · 411,700 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Silas Marner

Author: George Eliot


        
Release date: June 1, 1996 [eBook #550]
                Most recently updated: October 27, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/550


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SILAS MARNER ***

cover




Silas Marner

The Weaver of Raveloe

by George Eliot

(Mary Anne Evans)

1861

“A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
—WORDSWORTH.

Contents

 PART ONE.
 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.

 PART TWO.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
 CHAPTER XIX.
 CHAPTER XX.
 CHAPTER XXI.
 CONCLUSION




PART I.




CHAPTER I.


In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the
farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had
their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in
districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills,
certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny
country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The
shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men
appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what
dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely
stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself,
though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but
flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that
thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable
though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the
Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every
person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and
occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder.
No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and
how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who
knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world
outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and
mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a
conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back
with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts,
hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would
have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on
his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had
any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All
cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the
tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself
suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly
not overwise or clever—at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing
the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and
dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they
partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that
those scattered linen-weavers—emigrants from the town into the
country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours,
and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of
loneliness.

In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas
Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the
nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge
of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas’s loom, so
unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the
simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the
Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds’-nesting
to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a
certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense
of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating
noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But
sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in
his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of
his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from
his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was
always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was it
possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas
Marner’s pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not
close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart
cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the
rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that
Silas Marner could cure folks’ rheumatism if he had a mind, and add,
still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough,
he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes
of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the
diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind
with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy
conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain
from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of
the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by
primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been
illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and
mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and
enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed
desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a
perpetual pasture to fear. “Is there anything you can fancy that you
would like to eat?” I once said to an old labouring man, who was in his
last illness, and who had refused all the food his wife had offered
him. “No,” he answered, “I’ve never been used to nothing but common
victual, and I can’t eat that.” Experience had bred no fancies in him
that could raise the phantasm of appetite.

And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered,
undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one of those barren parishes
lying on the outskirts of civilization—inhabited by meagre sheep and
thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central
plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England, and held farms
which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable
tithes. But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an
hour’s journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never
reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It
was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large
churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone
homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks,
standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the
rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the
churchyard:—a village which showed at once the summits of its social
life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park and
manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs in
Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money
from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a rollicking
fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he
was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent short-sighted brown
eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of
average culture and experience, but for the villagers near whom he had
come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with
the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an
unknown region called “North’ard”. So had his way of life:—he invited
no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the
village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the
wheelwright’s: he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his
calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was
soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them
to accept him against her will—quite as if he had heard them declare
that they would never marry a dead man come to life again. This view of
Marner’s personality was not without another ground than his pale face
and unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that one
evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner leaning
against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the
bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done; and that, on
coming up to him, he saw that Marner’s eyes were set like a dead man’s,
and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his
hands clutched the bag as if they’d been made of iron; but just as he
had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came all right again,
like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and said
“Good-night,” and walked off. All this Jem swore he had seen, more by
token that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on Squire
Cass’s land, down by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner must have been
in a “fit,” a word which seemed to explain things otherwise incredible;
but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook his head,
and asked if anybody was ever known to go off in a fit and not fall
down. A fit was a stroke, wasn’t it? and it was in the nature of a
stroke to partly take away the use of a man’s limbs and throw him on
the parish, if he’d got no children to look to. No, no; it was no
stroke that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horse between the
shafts, and then walk off as soon as you can say “Gee!” But there might
be such a thing as a man’s soul being loose from his body, and going
out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back; and that was how
folks got over-wise, for they went to school in this shell-less state
to those who could teach them more than their neighbours could learn
with their five senses and the parson. And where did Master Marner get
his knowledge of herbs from—and charms too, if he liked to give them
away? Jem Rodney’s story was no more than what might have been expected
by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates, and made her
sleep like a baby, when her heart had been beating enough to burst her
body, for two months and more, while she had been under the doctor’s
care. He might cure more folks if he would; but he was worth speaking
fair, if it was only to keep him from doing you a mischief.

It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for
protecting him from the persecution that his singularities might have
drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the old linen-weaver
in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his handicraft made
him a highly welcome settler to the richer housewives of the district,
and even to the more provident cottagers, who had their little stock of
yarn at the year’s end. Their sense of his usefulness would have
counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a
deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for them.
And the years had rolled on without producing any change in the
impressions of the neighbours concerning Marner, except the change from
novelty to habit. At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just
the same things about Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did not
say them quite so often, but they believed them much more strongly when
they did say them. There was only one important addition which the
years had brought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight
of money somewhere, and that he could buy up “bigger men” than himself.

But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and
his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner’s
inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every
fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude.
His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement,
the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in
this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow
religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of
distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least,
the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community. Marner
was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as
the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young
man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had
been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into
a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting
for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a
medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas
himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful
self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein.
Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and
though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the
absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward
trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was
seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he
might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the
form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a
creation; but Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many
honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his
sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of
inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some
acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation—a little store
of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest—but of late
years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer,
and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited
delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and
dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a
temptation.

Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older
than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that
it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and
Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too,
was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat
given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by
his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever
blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend’s mind he was
faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting
natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean
on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner’s
face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that
defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was
strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward
triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of
William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between
the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he
could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and
listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had
possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his
conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words “calling and election
sure” standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible. Such
colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose
unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering
forsaken in the twilight.

It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had
suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a
closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young
servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual
savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him
that Sarah did not object to William’s occasional presence in their
Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas’s
cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the
various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his
fellow-members, William’s suggestion alone jarred with the general
sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He
observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of
Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his friend to see
that he hid no accursed thing within his soul. Silas, feeling bound to
accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resentment,
but only pain, at his friend’s doubts concerning him; and to this was
soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah’s manner towards
him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an
increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking
and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement;
but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had
been recognized in the prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off
without strict investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that
would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the
senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless
widower, he was tended night and day by some of the younger brethren or
sisters. Silas frequently took his turn in the night-watching with
William, the one relieving the other at two in the morning. The old
man, contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery, when
one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual
audible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had to
lift it to see the patient’s face distinctly. Examination convinced him
that the deacon was dead—had been dead some time, for the limbs were
rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, and looked at the
clock: it was already four in the morning. How was it that William had
not come? In much anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there were
several friends assembled in the house, the minister among them, while
Silas went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to know
the reason of his non-appearance. But at six o’clock, as he was
thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the
minister. They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church
members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons
the only reply was, “You will hear.” Nothing further was said until
Silas was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes
of those who to him represented God’s people fixed solemnly upon him.
Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas, and
asked him if he knew where he had left that knife? Silas said, he did
not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket—but he was
trembling at this strange interrogation. He was then exhorted not to
hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife had been found in
the bureau by the departed deacon’s bedside—found in the place where
the little bag of church money had lain, which the minister himself had
seen the day before. Some hand had removed that bag; and whose hand
could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For
some time Silas was mute with astonishment: then he said, “God will
clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money
being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three
pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these
six months.” At this William groaned, but the minister said, “The proof
is heavy against you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night
last past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for
William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness
from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he
had not come; and, moreover, you neglected the dead body.”

“I must have slept,” said Silas. Then, after a pause, he added, “Or I
must have had another visitation like that which you have all seen me
under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the
body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search me and my dwelling,
for I have been nowhere else.”

The search was made, and it ended—in William Dane’s finding the
well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas’s
chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to
hide his sin any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach on him,
and said, “William, for nine years that we have gone in and out
together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear me.”

“Brother,” said William, “how do I know what you may have done in the
secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over you?”

Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over
his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed checked
again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made him
tremble. But at last he spoke feebly, looking at William.

“I remember now—the knife wasn’t in my pocket.”

William said, “I know nothing of what you mean.” The other persons
present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to say that the
knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he only said, “I
am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear me.”

On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any
resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to
the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which
prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less
scandal to the community. But the members were bound to take other
measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and
drawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to those
who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which has gone on
in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on
his own innocence being certified by immediate divine interference, but
feeling that there was sorrow and mourning behind for him even
then—that his trust in man had been cruelly bruised. _The lots declared
that Silas Marner was guilty._ He was solemnly suspended from
church-membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money: only
on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once
more within the folds of the church. Marner listened in silence. At
last, when everyone rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and
said, in a voice shaken by agitation—

“The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to cut
a strap for you. I don’t remember putting it in my pocket again. _You_
stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door.
But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that governs
the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against
the innocent.”

There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.

William said meekly, “I leave our brethren to judge whether this is the
voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas.”

Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul—that shaken trust in
God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving nature. In
the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, “_She_ will
cast me off too.” And he reflected that, if she did not believe the
testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset as his was. To
people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious
feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that
simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have
never been severed by an act of reflection. We are apt to think it
inevitable that a man in Marner’s position should have begun to
question the validity of an appeal to the divine judgment by drawing
lots; but to him this would have been an effort of independent thought
such as he had never known; and he must have made the effort at a
moment when all his energies were turned into the anguish of
disappointed faith. If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men
as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that
spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.

Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair,
without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in his
innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief, by
getting into his loom and working away as usual; and before many hours
were past, the minister and one of the deacons came to him with the
message from Sarah, that she held her engagement to him at an end.
Silas received the message mutely, and then turned away from the
messengers to work at his loom again. In little more than a month from
that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; and not long afterwards
it was known to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had
departed from the town.




CHAPTER II.


Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes
find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on
their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys
and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported
to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their
history, and share none of their ideas—where their mother earth shows
another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their
souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old
faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in
which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished,
and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.
But even _their_ experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to
imagine what was the effect on a simple weaver like Silas Marner, when
he left his own country and people and came to settle in Raveloe.
Nothing could be more unlike his native town, set within sight of the
widespread hillsides, than this low, wooded region, where he felt
hidden even from the heavens by the screening trees and hedgerows.
There was nothing here, when he rose in the deep morning quiet and
looked out on the dewy brambles and rank tufted grass, that seemed to
have any relation with that life centring in Lantern Yard, which had
once been to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The whitewashed
walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a subdued
rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then another,
pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult
and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where the
minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and
handled the book in a long accustomed manner; the very pauses between
the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the recurrent swell
of voices in song: these things had been the channel of divine
influences to Marner—they were the fostering home of his religious
emotions—they were Christianity and God’s kingdom upon earth. A weaver
who finds hard words in his hymn-book knows nothing of abstractions; as
the little child knows nothing of parental love, but only knows one
face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and
nurture.

And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world in
Raveloe?—orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church
in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own doors
in service-time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or
turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men supped heavily and
slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women seemed to be
laying up a stock of linen for the life to come. 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. In the early ages of the world, we
know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by
its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and
be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to
the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from
his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike
the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in
sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him
that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the
prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken
refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing
nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness.
The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that
frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the
blackness of night.

His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he
went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he was
come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of
Mrs. Osgood’s table-linen sooner than she expected—without
contemplating beforehand the money she would put into his hand for the
work. He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without
reflection. Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to
become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of
his life. Silas’s hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and
his eye with seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves
under his effort. Then there were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in
his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to
fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire;
and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the weaving, to
reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He
hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his
love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the
future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.
Thought was arrested by utter bewilderment, now its old narrow pathway
was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the bruise that had
fallen on its keenest nerves.

But at last Mrs. Osgood’s table-linen was finished, and Silas was paid
in gold. His earnings in his native town, where he worked for a
wholesale dealer, had been after a lower rate; he had been paid weekly,
and of his weekly earnings a large proportion had gone to objects of
piety and charity. Now, for the first time in his life, he had five
bright guineas put into his hand; no man expected a share of them, and
he loved no man that he should offer him a share. But what were the
guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless days of weaving? It
was needless for him to ask that, for it was pleasant to him to feel
them in his palm, and look at their bright faces, which were all his
own: it was another element of life, like the weaving and the
satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from the life of belief
and love from which he had been cut off. The weaver’s hand had known
the touch of hard-won money even before the palm had grown to its full
breadth; for twenty years, mysterious money had stood to him as the
symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed
to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for
him; for he loved the _purpose_ then. But now, when all purpose was
gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a
sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the
seeds of desire; and as Silas walked homeward across the fields in the
twilight, he drew out the money and thought it was brighter in the
gathering gloom.

About this time an incident happened which seemed to open a possibility
of some fellowship with his neighbours. One day, taking a pair of shoes
to be mended, he saw the cobbler’s wife seated by the fire, suffering
from the terrible symptoms of heart-disease and dropsy, which he had
witnessed as the precursors of his mother’s death. He felt a rush of
pity at the mingled sight and remembrance, and, recalling the relief
his mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove, he promised
Sally Oates to bring her something that would ease her, since the
doctor did her no good. In this office of charity, Silas felt, for the
first time since he had come to Raveloe, a sense of unity between his
past and present life, which might have been the beginning of his
rescue from the insect-like existence into which his nature had shrunk.
But Sally Oates’s disease had raised her into a personage of much
interest and importance among the neighbours, and the fact of her
having found relief from drinking Silas Marner’s “stuff” became a
matter of general discourse. When Doctor Kimble gave physic, it was
natural that it should have an effect; but when a weaver, who came from
nobody knew where, worked wonders with a bottle of brown waters, the
occult character of the process was evident. Such a sort of thing had
not been known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had charms
as well as “stuff”: everybody went to her when their children had fits.
Silas Marner must be a person of the same sort, for how did he know
what would bring back Sally Oates’s breath, if he didn’t know a fine
sight more than that? The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to
herself, so that you couldn’t hear what they were, and if she tied a
bit of red thread round the child’s toe the while, it would keep off
the water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that present
time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman’s little bags round their
necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann
Coulter had. Silas Marner could very likely do as much, and more; and
now it was all clear how he should have come from unknown parts, and be
so “comical-looking”. But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the
doctor, for he would be sure to set his face against Marner: he was
always angry about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten those who went
to her that they should have none of his help any more.

Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by mothers who
wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough, or bring back the milk,
and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the knots in the
hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the applicants
brought silver in their palms. Silas might have driven a profitable
trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on
this condition was no temptation to him: he had never known an impulse
towards falsity, and he drove one after another away with growing
irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had spread even to
Tarley, and it was long before people ceased to take long walks for the
sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was at length
changed into dread, for no one believed him when he said he knew no
charms and could work no cures, and every man and woman who had an
accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfortune down
to Master Marner’s ill-will and irritated glances. Thus it came to pass
that his movement of pity towards Sally Oates, which had given him a
transient sense of brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him
and his neighbours, and made his isolation more complete.

Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns grew to a heap,
and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to solve the
problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours a-day on
as small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary
imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight
strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of
straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering
purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by
repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred
a want, which is incipient habit? That will help us to understand how
the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose
imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no
purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a
square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it
was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world,
made a hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense
nature, have sat weaving, weaving—looking towards the end of his
pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and
everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had come to
mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only grew, but it
remained with him. He began to think it was conscious of him, as his
loom was, and he would on no account have exchanged those coins, which
had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He
handled them, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the
satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his
work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He
had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he
had made a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas
and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced
them. Not that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or
strongly to his mind: hoarding was common in country districts in those
days; there were old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known
to have their savings by them, probably inside their flock-beds; but
their rustic neighbours, though not all of them as honest as their
ancestors in the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough
to lay a plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in their
own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to “run
away”—a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his
guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening
itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction
that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to
the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an
end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has
perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from
faith and love—only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have
had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit
theory. Strangely Marner’s face and figure shrank and bent themselves
into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that
he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube,
which has no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to
look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to see
only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which
they hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow, that, though
he was not yet forty, the children always called him “Old Master
Marner”.

Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which
showed that the sap of affection was not all gone. It was one of his
daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple of fields off, and
for this purpose, ever since he came to Raveloe, he had had a brown
earthenware pot, which he held as his most precious utensil among the
very few conveniences he had granted himself. It had been his companion
for twelve years, always standing on the same spot, always lending its
handle to him in the early morning, so that its form had an expression
for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle on his
palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that of having the fresh clear
water. One day as he was returning from the well, he stumbled against
the step of the stile, and his brown pot, falling with force against
the stones that overarched the ditch below him, was broken in three
pieces. Silas picked up the pieces and carried them home with grief in
his heart. The brown pot could never be of use to him any more, but he
stuck the bits together and propped the ruin in its old place for a
memorial.

This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after he
came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled
with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of
sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even
repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the
holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at night he
closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold.
Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to
hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which
wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to
every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the
dark leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to
the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work
were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied
his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to
spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he would not change
the silver—the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings,
begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps
and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in
regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and
fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned
by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children—thought of
the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through
all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by
countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts were still with his
loom and his money when he made his journeys through the fields and the
lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never
wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the once
familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had
shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy
fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a
groove for itself in the barren sand.

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.




CHAPTER III.


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. He was only one among
several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title
of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood’s family was also understood to be of
timeless origin—the Raveloe imagination having never ventured back to
that fearful blank when there were no Osgoods—still, he merely owned
the farm he occupied; whereas Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who
complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord.

It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar
favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of
prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen
down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry
were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking now in relation
to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for our old-fashioned
country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it
is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by
multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of
men, which are for ever moving and crossing each other with
incalculable results. Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the
rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan
earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy
as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor
thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly
life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which
were the heirlooms of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire
Cass’s hams, but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in
which they were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great
merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for the
poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and the
barrels of ale—they were on a large scale, and lasted a good while,
especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up their best
gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the risk of fording
streams on pillions with the precious burden in rainy or snowy weather,
when there was no knowing how high the water would rise, it was not to
be supposed that they looked forward to a brief pleasure. On this
ground it was always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was
little work to be done, and the hours were long, that several
neighbours should keep open house in succession. So soon as Squire
Cass’s standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests
had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr.
Osgood’s, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut,
pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its
freshness—everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire,
in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at
Squire Cass’s.

For the Squire’s wife had died long ago, and the Red House was without
that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain of wholesome
love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped to account not
only for there being more profusion than finished excellence in the
holiday provisions, but also for the frequency with which the proud
Squire condescended to preside in the parlour of the Rainbow rather
than under the shadow of his own dark wainscot; perhaps, also, for the
fact that his sons had turned out rather ill. Raveloe was not a place
where moral censure was severe, but it was thought a weakness in the
Squire that he had kept all his sons at home in idleness; and though
some licence was to be allowed to young men whose fathers could afford
it, people shook their heads at the courses of the second son, Dunstan,
commonly called Dunsey Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting might
turn out to be a sowing of something worse than wild oats. To be sure,
the neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunsey—a spiteful
jeering fellow, who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when other
people went dry—always provided that his doings did not bring trouble
on a family like Squire Cass’s, with a monument in the church, and
tankards older than King George. But it would be a thousand pities if
Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine open-faced good-natured young man who
was to come into the land some day, should take to going along the same
road with his brother, as he had seemed to do of late. If he went on in
that way, he would lose Miss Nancy Lammeter; for it was well known that
she had looked very shyly on him ever since last Whitsuntide
twelvemonth, when there was so much talk about his being away from home
days and days together. There was something wrong, more than
common—that was quite clear; for Mr. Godfrey didn’t look half so
fresh-coloured and open as he used to do. At one time everybody was
saying, What a handsome couple he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make!
and if she could come to be mistress at the Red House, there would be a
fine change, for the Lammeters had been brought up in that way, that
they never suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in
their household had of the best, according to his place. Such a
daughter-in-law would be a saving to the old Squire, if she never
brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be feared that,
notwithstanding his incomings, there were more holes in his pocket than
the one where he put his own hand in. But if Mr. Godfrey didn’t turn
over a new leaf, he might say “Good-bye” to Miss Nancy Lammeter.

It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with his hands in his
side-pockets and his back to the fire, in the dark wainscoted parlour,
one late November afternoon in that fifteenth year of Silas Marner’s
life at Raveloe. The fading grey light fell dimly on the walls
decorated with guns, whips, and foxes’ brushes, on coats and hats flung
on the chairs, on tankards sending forth a scent of flat ale, and on a
half-choked fire, with pipes propped up in the chimney-corners: signs
of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing charm, with which the
look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey’s blond face was in sad accordance.
He seemed to be waiting and listening for some one’s approach, and
presently the sound of a heavy step, with an accompanying whistle, was
heard across the large empty entrance-hall.

The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking young man entered, with
the flushed face and the gratuitously elated bearing which mark the
first stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the sight of him
Godfrey’s face parted with some of its gloom to take on the more active
expression of hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that lay on the hearth
retreated under the chair in the chimney-corner.

“Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?” said Dunsey, in a
mocking tone. “You’re my elders and betters, you know; I was obliged to
come when you sent for me.”

“Why, this is what I want—and just shake yourself sober and listen,
will you?” said Godfrey, savagely. He had himself been drinking more
than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom into uncalculating
anger. “I want to tell you, I must hand over that rent of Fowler’s to
the Squire, or else tell him I gave it you; for he’s threatening to
distrain for it, and it’ll all be out soon, whether I tell him or not.
He said, just now, before he went out, he should send word to Cox to
distrain, if Fowler didn’t come and pay up his arrears this week. The
Squire’s short o’ cash, and in no humour to stand any nonsense; and you
know what he threatened, if ever he found you making away with his
money again. So, see and get the money, and pretty quickly, will you?”

“Oh!” said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his brother and looking
in his face. “Suppose, now, you get the money yourself, and save me the
trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it over to me, you’ll not
refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me: it was your brotherly
love made you do it, you know.”

Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. “Don’t come near me with
that look, else I’ll knock you down.”

“Oh no, you won’t,” said Dunsey, turning away on his heel, however.
“Because I’m such a good-natured brother, you know. I might get you
turned out of house and home, and cut off with a shilling any day. I
might tell the Squire how his handsome son was married to that nice
young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy because he couldn’t
live with his drunken wife, and I should slip into your place as
comfortable as could be. But you see, I don’t do it—I’m so easy and
good-natured. You’ll take any trouble for me. You’ll get the hundred
pounds for me—I know you will.”

“How can I get the money?” said Godfrey, quivering. “I haven’t a
shilling to bless myself with. And it’s a lie that you’d slip into my
place: you’d get yourself turned out too, that’s all. For if you begin
telling tales, I’ll follow. Bob’s my father’s favourite—you know that
very well. He’d only think himself well rid of you.”

“Never mind,” said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as he looked out
of the window. “It ’ud be very pleasant to me to go in your
company—you’re such a handsome brother, and we’ve always been so fond
of quarrelling with one another, I shouldn’t know what to do without
you. But you’d like better for us both to stay at home together; I know
you would. So you’ll manage to get that little sum o’ money, and I’ll
bid you good-bye, though I’m sorry to part.”

Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and seized him by
the arm, saying, with an oath—

“I tell you, I have no money: I can get no money.”

“Borrow of old Kimble.”

“I tell you, he won’t lend me any more, and I shan’t ask him.”

“Well, then, sell Wildfire.”

“Yes, that’s easy talking. I must have the money directly.”

“Well, you’ve only got to ride him to the hunt to-morrow. There’ll be
Bryce and Keating there, for sure. You’ll get more bids than one.”

“I daresay, and get back home at eight o’clock, splashed up to the
chin. I’m going to Mrs. Osgood’s birthday dance.”

“Oho!” said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and trying to speak
in a small mincing treble. “And there’s sweet Miss Nancy coming; and we
shall dance with her, and promise never to be naughty again, and be
taken into favour, and—”

“Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool,” said Godfrey, turning
red, “else I’ll throttle you.”

“What for?” said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but taking a whip
from the table and beating the butt-end of it on his palm. “You’ve a
very good chance. I’d advise you to creep up her sleeve again: it ’ud
be saving time, if Molly should happen to take a drop too much laudanum
some day, and make a widower of you. Miss Nancy wouldn’t mind being a
second, if she didn’t know it. And you’ve got a good-natured brother,
who’ll keep your secret well, because you’ll be so very obliging to
him.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Godfrey, quivering, and pale again,
“my patience is pretty near at an end. If you’d a little more sharpness
in you, you might know that you may urge a man a bit too far, and make
one leap as easy as another. I don’t know but what it is so now: I may
as well tell the Squire everything myself—I should get you off my back,
if I got nothing else. And, after all, he’ll know some time. She’s been
threatening to come herself and tell him. So, don’t flatter yourself
that your secrecy’s worth any price you choose to ask. You drain me of
money till I have got nothing to pacify _her_ with, and she’ll do as
she threatens some day. It’s all one. I’ll tell my father everything
myself, and you may go to the devil.”

Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that there was a
point at which even the hesitating Godfrey might be driven into
decision. But he said, with an air of unconcern—

“As you please; but I’ll have a draught of ale first.” And ringing the
bell, he threw himself across two chairs, and began to rap the
window-seat with the handle of his whip.

Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his
fingers among the contents of his side-pockets, and looking at the
floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage,
but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such
as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. His natural
irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a position in
which dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on all sides, and
his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy Dunstan and
anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he must bring on
himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him than the present
evil. The results of confession were not contingent, they were certain;
whereas betrayal was not certain. From the near vision of that
certainty he fell back on suspense and vacillation with a sense of
repose. The disinherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined to
dig and to beg, was almost as helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by
the favour of earth and sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot
where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would have been possible to
think of digging with some cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be
won on those terms; but, since he must irrevocably lose _her_ as well
as the inheritance, and must break every tie but the one that degraded
him and left him without motive for trying to recover his better self,
he could imagine no future for himself on the other side of confession
but that of “’listing for a soldier”—the most desperate step, short of
suicide, in the eyes of respectable families. No! he would rather trust
to casualties than to his own resolve—rather go on sitting at the
feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though with the sword hanging
over him and terror in his heart, than rush away into the cold darkness
where there was no pleasure left. The utmost concession to Dunstan
about the horse began to seem easy, compared with the fulfilment of his
own threat. But his pride would not let him recommence the conversation
otherwise than by continuing the quarrel. Dunstan was waiting for this,
and took his ale in shorter draughts than usual.

“It’s just like you,” Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, “to talk
about my selling Wildfire in that cool way—the last thing I’ve got to
call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had in my life. And
if you’d got a spark of pride in you, you’d be ashamed to see the
stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it. But it’s my belief
you’d sell yourself, if it was only for the pleasure of making somebody
feel he’d got a bad bargain.”

“Aye, aye,” said Dunstan, very placably, “you do me justice, I see. You
know I’m a jewel for ’ticing people into bargains. For which reason I
advise you to let _me_ sell Wildfire. I’d ride him to the hunt
to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I shouldn’t look so handsome as you
in the saddle, but it’s the horse they’ll bid for, and not the rider.”

“Yes, I daresay—trust my horse to you!”

“As you please,” said Dunstan, rapping the window-seat again with an
air of great unconcern. “It’s _you_ have got to pay Fowler’s money;
it’s none of my business. You received the money from him when you went
to Bramcote, and _you_ told the Squire it wasn’t paid. I’d nothing to
do with that; you chose to be so obliging as to give it me, that was
all. If you don’t want to pay the money, let it alone; it’s all one to
me. But I was willing to accommodate you by undertaking to sell the
horse, seeing it’s not convenient to you to go so far to-morrow.”

Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have liked to spring on
Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, and flog him to within an inch
of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he was
mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger
even than his resentment. When he spoke again, it was in a
half-conciliatory tone.

“Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You’ll sell him all
fair, and hand over the money? If you don’t, you know, everything ’ull
go to smash, for I’ve got nothing else to trust to. And you’ll have
less pleasure in pulling the house over my head, when your own skull’s
to be broken too.”

“Aye, aye,” said Dunstan, rising; “all right. I thought you’d come
round. I’m the fellow to bring old Bryce up to the scratch. I’ll get
you a hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny.”

“But it’ll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did yesterday,
and then you can’t go,” said Godfrey, hardly knowing whether he wished
for that obstacle or not.

“Not _it_,” said Dunstan. “I’m always lucky in my weather. It might
rain if you wanted to go yourself. You never hold trumps, you know—I
always do. You’ve got the beauty, you see, and I’ve got the luck, so
you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence; you’ll _ne_-ver get
along without me.”

“Confound you, hold your tongue!” said Godfrey, impetuously. “And take
care to keep sober to-morrow, else you’ll get pitched on your head
coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it.”

“Make your tender heart easy,” said Dunstan, opening the door. “You
never knew me see double when I’d got a bargain to make; it ’ud spoil
the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I’m warranted to fall on my legs.”

With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to
that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now
unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting, drinking,
card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss
Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher
sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable
than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which
leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own
griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom we
are apt to think very prosaic figures—men whose only work was to ride
round their land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who
passed the rest of their days in the half-listless gratification of
senses dulled by monotony—had a certain pathos in them nevertheless.
Calamities came to _them_ too, and their early errors carried hard
consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of
purity, order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the vision of a life
in which the days would not seem too long, even without rioting; but
the maiden was lost, and the vision passed away, and then what was left
to them, especially when they had become too heavy for the hunt, or for
carrying a gun over the furrows, but to drink and get merry, or to
drink and get angry, so that they might be independent of variety, and
say over again with eager emphasis the things they had said already any
time that twelvemonth? Assuredly, among these flushed and dull-eyed men
there were some whom—thanks to their native human-kindness—even riot
could never drive into brutality; men who, when their cheeks were
fresh, had felt the keen point of sorrow or remorse, had been pierced
by the reeds they leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters
from which no struggle could loose them; and under these sad
circumstances, common to us all, their thoughts could find no
resting-place outside the ever-trodden round of their own petty
history.

That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this
six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction, helped
by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation
exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which
was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of low passion,
delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to be dragged from
the privacy of Godfrey’s bitter memory. He had long known that the
delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan, who saw in
his brother’s degrading marriage the means of gratifying at once his
jealous hate and his cupidity. And if Godfrey could have felt himself
simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put into his mouth would
have chafed him less intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud
when he was alone had had no other object than Dunstan’s diabolical
cunning, he might have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But
he had something else to curse—his own vicious folly, which now seemed
as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices do
when their promptings have long passed away. For four years he had
thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient worship, as
the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she would be his
wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his father’s home had never
been; and it would be easy, when she was always near, to shake off
those foolish habits that were no pleasures, but only a feverish way of
annulling vacancy. Godfrey’s was an essentially domestic nature, bred
up in a home where the hearth had no smiles, and where the daily habits
were not chastised by the presence of household order. His easy
disposition made him fall in unresistingly with the family courses, but
the need of some tender permanent affection, the longing for some
influence that would make the good he preferred easy to pursue, caused
the neatness, purity, and liberal orderliness of the Lammeter
household, sunned by the smile of Nancy, to seem like those fresh
bright hours of the morning when temptations go to sleep and leave the
ear open to the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry,
sobriety, and peace. And yet the hope of this paradise had not been
enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it for ever.
Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy
would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step
firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into mud and slime, in which
it was useless to struggle. He had made ties for himself which robbed
him of all wholesome motive, and were a constant exasperation.

Still, there was one position worse than the present: it was the
position he would be in when the ugly secret was disclosed; and the
desire that continually triumphed over every other was that of warding
off the evil day, when he would have to bear the consequences of his
father’s violent resentment for the wound inflicted on his family
pride—would have, perhaps, to turn his back on that hereditary ease and
dignity which, after all, was a sort of reason for living, and would
carry with him the certainty that he was banished for ever from the
sight and esteem of Nancy Lammeter. The longer the interval, the more
chance there was of deliverance from some, at least, of the hateful
consequences to which he had sold himself; the more opportunities
remained for him to snatch the strange gratification of seeing Nancy,
and gathering some faint indications of her lingering regard. Towards
this gratification he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then, after
having passed weeks in which he had avoided her as the far-off
bright-winged prize that only made him spring forward and find his
chain all the more galling. One of those fits of yearning was on him
now, and it would have been strong enough to have persuaded him to
trust Wildfire to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning, even if
he had not had another reason for his disinclination towards the
morrow’s hunt. That other reason was the fact that the morning’s meet
was near Batherley, the market-town where the unhappy woman lived,
whose image became more odious to him every day; and to his thought the
whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a man creates for himself
by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the
good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a
bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart,
and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished
home.

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go to
the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting: everybody was
there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own part, he
did not care a button for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who
had placed herself in front of him, and had been watching him for some
time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey
thrust her away without looking at her, and left the room, followed
humbly by the unresenting Snuff—perhaps because she saw no other career
open to her.




CHAPTER IV.


Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously quiet
pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on his hunter, had to
take his way along the lane which, at its farther extremity, passed by
the piece of unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where stood the
cottage, once a stone-cutter’s shed, now for fifteen years inhabited by
Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this season, with the
moist trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy water high up in the
deserted quarry. That was Dunstan’s first thought as he approached it;
the second was, that the old fool of a weaver, whose loom he heard
rattling already, had a great deal of money hidden somewhere. 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? The resource
occurred to him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as Marner’s
hoard was likely to be large enough to leave Godfrey a handsome surplus
beyond his immediate needs, and enable him to accommodate his faithful
brother, that he had almost turned the horse’s head towards home again.
Godfrey would be ready enough to accept the suggestion: he would snatch
eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with Wildfire. But
when Dunstan’s meditation reached this point, the inclination to go on
grew strong and prevailed. He didn’t want to give Godfrey that
pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed. Moreover,
Dunstan enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having a horse to
sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain, swaggering, and
possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the satisfaction
attendant on selling his brother’s horse, and not the less have the
further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow Marner’s money. So he
rode on to cover.

Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would
be—he was such a lucky fellow.

“Heyday!” said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire, “you’re on
your brother’s horse to-day: how’s that?”

“Oh, I’ve swopped with him,” said Dunstan, whose delight in lying,
grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the
likelihood that his hearer would not believe him—“Wildfire’s mine now.”

“What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack of yours?” said
Bryce, quite aware that he should get another lie in answer.

“Oh, there was a little account between us,” said Dunsey, carelessly,
“and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by taking the horse,
though it was against my will, for I’d got an itch for a mare o’
Jortin’s—as rare a bit o’ blood as ever you threw your leg across. But
I shall keep Wildfire, now I’ve got him, though I’d a bid of a hundred
and fifty for him the other day, from a man over at Flitton—he’s buying
for Lord Cromleck—a fellow with a cast in his eye, and a green
waistcoat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire: I shan’t get a better at a
fence in a hurry. The mare’s got more blood, but she’s a bit too weak
in the hind-quarters.”

Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and
Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many
human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they both
considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied
ironically—

“I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never heard
of a man who didn’t want to sell his horse getting a bid of half as
much again as the horse was worth. You’ll be lucky if you get a
hundred.”

Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated. It
ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and twenty,
to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the
Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him
to give up the day’s hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and, having
waited for Bryce’s return, hire a horse to carry him home with the
money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by
confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his
pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to
overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences
to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too
many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own
ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without
injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his
flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short
time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had
muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him
in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this
exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have been
up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and hence
he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about
what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely
as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had
fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for immediate
annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs,
and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction
at the absence of witnesses to a position which no swaggering could
make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little
brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on
his right hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his
way to Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt.
His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith,
for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and along an ordinary
road, was as much out of the question to him as to other spirited young
men of his kind. He did not much mind about taking the bad news to
Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same time the resource of
Marner’s money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the notion
of making a fresh debt from which he himself got the smallest share of
advantage, why, he wouldn’t kick long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry
Godfrey into anything. 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. After all, according to the direction in which the run had
brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he was from
Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was
only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that there were
other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course of walking home. It
was now nearly four o’clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner he
got into the road the better. He remembered having crossed the road and
seen the finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down;
so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly
round the handle, and rapping the tops of his boots with a
self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was not at all
taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was undertaking a
remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow and at some time he
should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select
circle at the Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to
so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a
desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness
in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering
mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was Godfrey’s whip,
which he had chosen to take without leave because it had a gold handle;
of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name
_Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold handle—they could
only see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without fear
that he might meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a
pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people get close to each
other; but when he at last found himself in the well-known Raveloe
lanes without having met a soul, he silently remarked that that was
part of his usual good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening
darkness, was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts
into which his feet were liable to slip—hid everything, so that he had
to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance
of the hedgerow. He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening
at the Stone-pits: he should find it out by the break in the hedgerow.
He found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not
expected—namely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently guessed
to proceed from Silas Marner’s cottage. That cottage and the money
hidden within it had been in his mind continually during his walk, and
he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part
with the immediate possession of his money for the sake of receiving
interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added
to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear
enough to afford him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages of
interest; and as for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of
cheating a man by making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether,
the operation on the miser’s mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure
to hand over to his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made
up his mind to that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through
the chinks of Marner’s shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver
had become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a
natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be
several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had possibly got
a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still
nearly three-quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was becoming
unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up
the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right way, since
he was not certain whether the light were in front or on the side of
the cottage. But he felt the ground before him cautiously with his
whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly,
rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the
sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the
cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a
light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked
still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers
through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the
latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But,
to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he found
himself in front of a bright fire which lit up every corner of the
cottage—the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table—and showed
him that Marner was not there.

Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to Dunsey than the
bright fire on the brick hearth: he walked in and seated himself by it
at once. There was something in front of the fire, too, that would have
been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a different stage of
cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended from the kettle-hanger by
a string passed through a large door-key, in a way known to primitive
housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But the pork had been hung at the
farthest extremity of the hanger, apparently to prevent the roasting
from proceeding too rapidly during the owner’s absence. The old staring
simpleton had hot meat for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People
had always said he lived on mouldy bread, on purpose to check his
appetite. But where could he be at this time, and on such an evening,
leaving his supper in this stage of preparation, and his door
unfastened? Dunstan’s own recent difficulty in making his way suggested
to him that the weaver had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch in
fuel, or for some such brief purpose, and had slipped into the
Stone-pit. That was an interesting idea to Dunstan, carrying
consequences of entire novelty. If the weaver was dead, who had a right
to his money? Who would know where his money was hidden? _Who would
know that anybody had come to take it away?_ He went no farther into
the subtleties of evidence: the pressing question, “Where _is_ the
money?” now took such entire possession of him as to make him quite
forget that the weaver’s death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once
arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to
retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started
was purely problematic. And Dunstan’s mind was as dull as the mind of a
possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding-places where he
had ever heard of cottagers’ hoards being found: the thatch, the bed,
and a hole in the floor. Marner’s cottage had no thatch; and Dunstan’s
first act, after a train of thought made rapid by the stimulus of
cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he did so, his eyes
travelled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks, distinct in the
fire-light, were discernible under the sprinkling of sand. But not
everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only, which was quite
covered with sand, and sand showing the marks of fingers, which had
apparently been careful to spread it over a given space. It was near
the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan darted to that spot,
swept away the sand with his whip, and, inserting the thin end of the
hook between the bricks, found that they were loose. In haste he lifted
up two bricks, and saw what he had no doubt was the object of his
search; for what could there be but money in those two leathern bags?
And, from their weight, they must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt
round the hole, to be certain that it held no more; then hastily
replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over them. Hardly more than
five minutes had passed since he entered the cottage, but it seemed to
Dunstan like a long while; and though he was without any distinct
recognition of the possibility that Marner might be alive, and might
re-enter the cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying
hold on him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his hand. He would
hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what he should do with
the bags. He closed the door behind him immediately, that he might shut
in the stream of light: a few steps would be enough to carry him beyond
betrayal by the gleams from the shutter-chinks and the latch-hole. The
rain and darkness had got thicker, and he was glad of it; though it was
awkward walking with both hands filled, so that it was as much as he
could do to grasp his whip along with one of the bags. But when he had
gone a yard or two, he might take his time. So he stepped forward into
the darkness.




CHAPTER V.


When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner was not
more than a hundred yards away from it, plodding along from the village
with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, and with a horn
lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease,
free from the presentiment of change. The sense of security more
frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason
it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have
been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given
event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged
as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of
time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A
man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt
by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though
the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the
older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing
conception of his own death. This influence of habit was necessarily
strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner’s—who saw no new
people and heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of the
unexpected and the changeful; and it explains simply enough, why his
mind could be at ease, though he had left his house and his treasure
more defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with double complacency
of his supper: first, because it would be hot and savoury; and
secondly, because it would cost him nothing. For the little bit of pork
was a present from that excellent housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter,
to whom he had this day carried home a handsome piece of linen; and it
was only on occasion of a present like this, that Silas indulged
himself with roast-meat. Supper was his favourite meal, because it came
at his time of revelry, when his heart warmed over his gold; whenever
he had roast-meat, he always chose to have it for supper. But this
evening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast round his
bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule over his door-key,
passed it through the handle, and made it fast on the hanger, than he
remembered that a piece of very fine twine was indispensable to his
“setting up” a new piece of work in his loom early in the morning. It
had slipped his memory, because, in coming from Mr. Lammeter’s, he had
not had to pass through the village; but to lose time by going on
errands in the morning was out of the question. It was a nasty fog to
turn out into, but there were things Silas loved better than his own
comfort; so, drawing his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and
arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what,
in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes’ errand. He could
not have locked his door without undoing his well-knotted string and
retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that
sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a
night as this? and why should he come on this particular night, when he
had never come through all the fifteen years before? These questions
were not distinctly present in Silas’s mind; they merely serve to
represent the vaguely-felt foundation of his freedom from anxiety.

He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done: he
opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he had
left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat. He
trod about the floor while putting by his lantern and throwing aside
his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks of Dunstan’s feet on the
sand in the marks of his own nailed boots. Then he moved his pork
nearer to the fire, and sat down to the agreeable business of tending
the meat and warming himself at the same time.

Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale
face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have
understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with
which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men could
be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simple soul, not
even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice
directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put out, and
his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the force of his
nature to his work and his money; and like all objects to which a man
devotes himself, they had fashioned him into correspondence with
themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its
turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving
for its monotonous response. His gold, as he hung over it and saw it
grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like
its own.

As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to
wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would be
pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his unwonted
feast. For joy is the best of wine, and Silas’s guineas were a golden
wine of that sort.

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his
loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed the
bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but
the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once—only terror,
and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his
trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his
eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined
it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook so violently
that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying
to steady himself, that he might think. Had he put his gold somewhere
else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man
falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding
stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded
off the moment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his
bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven
where he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to be searched,
he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole. There was
no untried refuge left for a moment’s shelter from the terrible truth.

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration
of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of
impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still
distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the
external fact. Silas got up from his knees trembling, and looked round
at the table: didn’t the gold lie there after all? The table was bare.
Then he turned and looked behind him—looked all round his dwelling,
seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible appearance of the
bags where he had already sought them in vain. He could see every
object in his cottage—and his gold was not there.

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing
scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he stood
motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening
pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and
got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking this as the
strongest assurance of reality.

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock of
certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he
entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to
restore the gold. The thought brought some new strength with it, and he
started from his loom to the door. As he opened it the rain beat in
upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily. There were no
footsteps to be tracked on such a night—footsteps? When had the thief
come? During Silas’s absence in the daytime the door had been locked,
and there had been no marks of any inroad on his return by daylight.
And in the evening, too, he said to himself, everything was the same as
when he had left it. The sand and bricks looked as if they had not been
moved. _Was_ it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power
that no hands could reach, which had delighted in making him a second
time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind
with struggling effort on the robber with hands, who could be reached
by hands. His thoughts glanced at all the neighbours who had made any
remarks, or asked any questions which he might now regard as a ground
of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise
disreputable: he had often met Marner in his journeys across the
fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver’s money; nay,
he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when he called
to light his pipe, instead of going about his business. Jem Rodney was
the man—there was ease in the thought. Jem could be found and made to
restore the money: Marner did not want to punish him, but only to get
back his gold which had gone from him, and left his soul like a forlorn
traveller on an unknown desert. The robber must be laid hold of.
Marner’s ideas of legal authority were confused, but he felt that he
must go and proclaim his loss; and the great people in the village—the
clergyman, the constable, and Squire Cass—would make Jem Rodney, or
somebody else, deliver up the stolen money. He rushed out in the rain,
under the stimulus of this hope, forgetting to cover his head, not
caring to fasten his door; for he felt as if he had nothing left to
lose. He ran swiftly, till want of breath compelled him to slacken his
pace as he was entering the village at the turning close to the
Rainbow.

The Rainbow, in Marner’s view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich
and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of linen; it was
the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of
Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss public. He
lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or kitchen on the
right hand, where the less lofty customers of the house were in the
habit of assembling, the parlour on the left being reserved for the
more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the double
pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But the parlour was dark
to-night, the chief personages who ornamented its circle being all at
Mrs. Osgood’s birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was. And in consequence
of this, the party on the high-screened seats in the kitchen was more
numerous than usual; several personages, who would otherwise have been
admitted into the parlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and
condescension for their betters, being content this evening to vary
their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they could
themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.




CHAPTER VI.


The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas
approached the door of the Rainbow, had, as usual, been slow and
intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be
puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important
customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each
other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the
beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept
their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if
their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing
sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral
disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those
of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence, by
saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher—

“Some folks ’ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?”

The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to
answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat and replied, “And
they wouldn’t be fur wrong, John.”

After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as
before.

“Was it a red Durham?” said the farrier, taking up the thread of
discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.

The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the
butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.

“Red it was,” said the butcher, in his good-humoured husky treble—“and
a Durham it was.”

“Then you needn’t tell _me_ who you bought it of,” said the farrier,
looking round with some triumph; “I know who it is has got the red
Durhams o’ this country-side. And she’d a white star on her brow, I’ll
bet a penny?” The farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees as
he put this question, and his eyes twinkled knowingly.

“Well; yes—she might,” said the butcher, slowly, considering that he
was giving a decided affirmative. “I don’t say contrairy.”

“I knew that very well,” said the farrier, throwing himself backward
again, and speaking defiantly; “if _I_ don’t know Mr. Lammeter’s cows,
I should like to know who does—that’s all. And as for the cow you’ve
bought, bargain or no bargain, I’ve been at the drenching of
her—contradick me who will.”

The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher’s conversational spirit
was roused a little.

“I’m not for contradicking no man,” he said; “I’m for peace and
quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs—I’m for cutting ’em short
myself; but _I_ don’t quarrel with ’em. All I say is, it’s a lovely
carkiss—and anybody as was reasonable, it ’ud bring tears into their
eyes to look at it.”

“Well, it’s the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,” pursued the
farrier, angrily; “and it was Mr. Lammeter’s cow, else you told a lie
when you said it was a red Durham.”

“I tell no lies,” said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as
before, “and I contradick none—not if a man was to swear himself black:
he’s no meat o’ mine, nor none o’ my bargains. All I say is, it’s a
lovely carkiss. And what I say, I’ll stick to; but I’ll quarrel wi’ no
man.”

“No,” said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company
generally; “and p’rhaps you aren’t pig-headed; and p’rhaps you didn’t
say the cow was a red Durham; and p’rhaps you didn’t say she’d got a
star on her brow—stick to that, now you’re at it.”

“Come, come,” said the landlord; “let the cow alone. The truth lies
atween you: you’re both right and both wrong, as I allays say. And as
for the cow’s being Mr. Lammeter’s, I say nothing to that; but this I
say, as the Rainbow’s the Rainbow. And for the matter o’ that, if the
talk is to be o’ the Lammeters, _you_ know the most upo’ that head, eh,
Mr. Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father come into
these parts, and took the Warrens?”

Mr. Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter of which functions
rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-featured young
man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and twirled
his thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned with
criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord’s appeal, and
said—

“Aye, aye; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I’ve laid by
now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at
Tarley: they’ve learnt pernouncing; that’s come up since my day.”

“If you’re pointing at me, Mr. Macey,” said the deputy clerk, with an
air of anxious propriety, “I’m nowise a man to speak out of my place.
As the psalm says—

‘I know what’s right, nor only so,
But also practise what I know.’


“Well, then, I wish you’d keep hold o’ the tune, when it’s set for you;
if you’re for prac_tis_ing, I wish you’d prac_tise_ that,” said a large
jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity,
but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of
the company, who were known officially as the “bassoon” and the
“key-bugle,” in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the
musical profession in Raveloe.

Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to
deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation—“Mr.
Winthrop, if you’ll bring me any proof as I’m in the wrong, I’m not the
man to say I won’t alter. But there’s people set up their own ears for
a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow ’em. There may be two
opinions, I hope.”

“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with this
attack on youthful presumption; “you’re right there, Tookey: there’s
allays two ’pinions; there’s the ’pinion a man has of himsen, and
there’s the ’pinion other folks have on him. There’d be two ’pinions
about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself.”

“Well, Mr. Macey,” said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general
laughter, “I undertook to partially fill up the office of parish-clerk
by Mr. Crackenthorp’s desire, whenever your infirmities should make you
unfitting; and it’s one of the rights thereof to sing in the choir—else
why have you done the same yourself?”

“Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks,” said Ben Winthrop.
“The old gentleman’s got a gift. Why, the Squire used to invite him to
take a glass, only to hear him sing the ‘Red Rovier’; didn’t he, Mr.
Macey? It’s a nat’ral gift. There’s my little lad Aaron, he’s got a
gift—he can sing a tune off straight, like a throstle. But as for you,
Master Tookey, you’d better stick to your ‘Amens’: your voice is well
enough when you keep it up in your nose. It’s your inside as isn’t
right made for music: it’s no better nor a hollow stalk.”

This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke to
the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop’s insult was felt by
everybody to have capped Mr. Macey’s epigram.

“I see what it is plain enough,” said Mr. Tookey, unable to keep cool
any longer. “There’s a consperacy to turn me out o’ the choir, as I
shouldn’t share the Christmas money—that’s where it is. But I shall
speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I’ll not be put upon by no man.”

“Nay, nay, Tookey,” said Ben Winthrop. “We’ll pay you your share to
keep out of it—that’s what we’ll do. There’s things folks ’ud pay to be
rid on, besides varmin.”

“Come, come,” said the landlord, who felt that paying people for their
absence was a principle dangerous to society; “a joke’s a joke. We’re
all good friends here, I hope. We must give and take. You’re both right
and you’re both wrong, as I say. I agree wi’ Mr. Macey here, as there’s
two opinions; and if mine was asked, I should say they’re both right.
Tookey’s right and Winthrop’s right, and they’ve only got to split the
difference and make themselves even.”

The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt at
this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself, and never
went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely to be in
requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher, having music in his
soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey’s defeat and for
the preservation of the peace.

“To be sure,” he said, following up the landlord’s conciliatory view,
“we’re fond of our old clerk; it’s nat’ral, and him used to be such a
singer, and got a brother as is known for the first fiddler in this
country-side. Eh, it’s a pity but what Solomon lived in our village,
and could give us a tune when we liked; eh, Mr. Macey? I’d keep him in
liver and lights for nothing—that I would.”

“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency; “our family’s
been known for musicianers as far back as anybody can tell. But them
things are dying out, as I tell Solomon every time he comes round;
there’s no voices like what there used to be, and there’s nobody
remembers what we remember, if it isn’t the old crows.”

“Aye, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father come into these
parts, don’t you, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord.

“I should think I did,” said the old man, who had now gone through that
complimentary process necessary to bring him up to the point of
narration; “and a fine old gentleman he was—as fine, and finer nor the
Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from a bit north’ard, so far as I could
ever make out. But there’s nobody rightly knows about those parts: only
it couldn’t be far north’ard, nor much different from this country, for
he brought a fine breed o’ sheep with him, so there must be pastures
there, and everything reasonable. We heared tell as he’d sold his own
land to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as had
land of his own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place. But they
said it was along of his wife’s dying; though there’s reasons in things
as nobody knows on—that’s pretty much what I’ve made out; yet some
folks are so wise, they’ll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all
the while the real reason’s winking at ’em in the corner, and they
niver see’t. Howsomever, it was soon seen as we’d got a new parish’ner
as know’d the rights and customs o’ things, and kep a good house, and
was well looked on by everybody. And the young man—that’s the Mr.
Lammeter as now is, for he’d niver a sister—soon begun to court Miss
Osgood, that’s the sister o’ the Mr. Osgood as now is, and a fine
handsome lass she was—eh, you can’t think—they pretend this young lass
is like her, but that’s the way wi’ people as don’t know what come
before ’em. _I_ should know, for I helped the old rector, Mr. Drumlow
as was, I helped him marry ’em.”

Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in instalments,
expecting to be questioned according to precedent.

“Aye, and a partic’lar thing happened, didn’t it, Mr. Macey, so as you
were likely to remember that marriage?” said the landlord, in a
congratulatory tone.

“I should think there did—a _very_ partic’lar thing,” said Mr. Macey,
nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow—poor old gentleman, I was fond on
him, though he’d got a bit confused in his head, what wi’ age and wi’
taking a drop o’ summat warm when the service come of a cold morning.
And young Mr. Lammeter, he’d have no way but he must be married in
Janiwary, which, to be sure, ’s a unreasonable time to be married in,
for it isn’t like a christening or a burying, as you can’t help; and so
Mr. Drumlow—poor old gentleman, I was fond on him—but when he come to
put the questions, he put ’em by the rule o’ contrairy, like, and he
says, ‘Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded wife?’says he, and then
he says, ‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded husband?’ says he.
But the partic’larest thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it
but me, and they answered straight off ‘yes,’ like as if it had been me
saying ‘Amen’ i’ the right place, without listening to what went
before.”

“But _you_ knew what was going on well enough, didn’t you, Mr. Macey?
You were live enough, eh?” said the butcher.

“Lor bless you!” said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the
impotence of his hearer’s imagination—“why, I was all of a tremble: it
was as if I’d been a coat pulled by the two tails, like; for I couldn’t
stop the parson, I couldn’t take upon me to do that; and yet I said to
myself, I says, ‘Suppose they shouldn’t be fast married, ’cause the
words are contrairy?’ and my head went working like a mill, for I was
allays uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round ’em; and I
says to myself, ‘Is’t the meanin’ or the words as makes folks fast i’
wedlock?’ For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom
meant right. But then, when I come to think on it, meanin’ goes but a
little way i’ most things, for you may mean to stick things together
and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? And so I says to
mysen, ‘It isn’t the meanin,’ it’s the glue.’ And I was worreted as if
I’d got three bells to pull at once, when we went into the vestry, and
they begun to sign their names. But where’s the use o’ talking?—you
can’t think what goes on in a ’cute man’s inside.”

“But you held in for all that, didn’t you, Mr. Macey?” said the
landlord.

“Aye, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi’ Mr. Drumlow, and then I
out wi’ everything, but respectful, as I allays did. And he made light
on it, and he says, ‘Pooh, pooh, Macey, make yourself easy,’ he says;
‘it’s neither the meaning nor the words—it’s the re_ges_ter does
it—that’s the glue.’ So you see he settled it easy; for parsons and
doctors know everything by heart, like, so as they aren’t worreted wi’
thinking what’s the rights and wrongs o’ things, as I’n been many and
many’s the time. And sure enough the wedding turned out all right, on’y
poor Mrs. Lammeter—that’s Miss Osgood as was—died afore the lasses was
growed up; but for prosperity and everything respectable, there’s no
family more looked on.”

Every one of Mr. Macey’s audience had heard this story many times, but
it was listened to as if it had been a favourite tune, and at certain
points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily suspended, that the
listeners might give their whole minds to the expected words. But there
was more to come; and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading
question.

“Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn’t they say, when he
come into these parts?”

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Macey; “but I daresay it’s as much as this Mr.
Lammeter’s done to keep it whole. For there was allays a talk as nobody
could get rich on the Warrens: though he holds it cheap, for it’s what
they call Charity Land.”

“Aye, and there’s few folks know so well as you how it come to be
Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the butcher.

“How should they?” said the old clerk, with some contempt. “Why, my
grandfather made the grooms’ livery for that Mr. Cliff as came and
built the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they’re stables four times
as big as Squire Cass’s, for he thought o’ nothing but hosses and
hunting, Cliff didn’t—a Lunnon tailor, some folks said, as had gone mad
wi’ cheating. For he couldn’t ride; lor bless you! they said he’d got
no more grip o’ the hoss than if his legs had been cross-sticks: my
grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so many and many a time. But
ride he would, as if Old Harry had been a-driving him; and he’d a son,
a lad o’ sixteen; and nothing would his father have him do, but he must
ride and ride—though the lad was frighted, they said. And it was a
common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out o’ the lad,
and make a gentleman on him—not but what I’m a tailor myself, but in
respect as God made me such, I’m proud on it, for ‘Macey, tailor,’ ’s
been wrote up over our door since afore the Queen’s heads went out on
the shillings. But Cliff, he was ashamed o’ being called a tailor, and
he was sore vexed as his riding was laughed at, and nobody o’ the
gentlefolks hereabout could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got
sickly and died, and the father didn’t live long after him, for he got
queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i’ the dead o’ the
night, wi’ a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o’
lights burning, for he got as he couldn’t sleep; and there he’d stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a
mercy as the stables didn’t get burnt down wi’ the poor dumb creaturs
in ’em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he’d left all his
property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that’s how the
Warrens come to be Charity Land; though, as for the stables, Mr.
Lammeter never uses ’em—they’re out o’ all charicter—lor bless you! if
you was to set the doors a-banging in ’em, it ’ud sound like thunder
half o’er the parish.”

“Aye, but there’s more going on in the stables than what folks see by
daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord.

“Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that’s all,” said Mr. Macey,
winking mysteriously, “and then make believe, if you like, as you
didn’t see lights i’ the stables, nor hear the stamping o’ the hosses,
nor the cracking o’ the whips, and howling, too, if it’s tow’rt
daybreak. ‘Cliff’s Holiday’ has been the name of it ever sin’ I were a
boy; that’s to say, some said as it was the holiday Old Harry gev him
from roasting, like. That’s what my father told me, and he was a
reasonable man, though there’s folks nowadays know what happened afore
they were born better nor they know their own business.”

“What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?” said the landlord, turning to
the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his cue. “There’s a
nut for _you_ to crack.”

Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was proud of his
position.

“Say? I say what a man _should_ say as doesn’t shut his eyes to look at
a finger-post. I say, as I’m ready to wager any man ten pound, if he’ll
stand out wi’ me any dry night in the pasture before the Warren
stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn’t
the blowing of our own noses. That’s what I say, and I’ve said it many
a time; but there’s nobody ’ull ventur a ten-pun’ note on their ghos’es
as they make so sure of.”

“Why, Dowlas, that’s easy betting, that is,” said Ben Winthrop. “You
might as well bet a man as he wouldn’t catch the rheumatise if he stood
up to ’s neck in the pool of a frosty night. It ’ud be fine fun for a
man to win his bet as he’d catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in
Cliff’s Holiday aren’t agoing to ventur near it for a matter o’ ten
pound.”

“If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it,” said Mr. Macey, with
a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs together, “he’s no call to lay
any bet—let him go and stan’ by himself—there’s nobody ’ull hinder him;
and then he can let the parish’ners know if they’re wrong.”

“Thank you! I’m obliged to you,” said the farrier, with a snort of
scorn. “If folks are fools, it’s no business o’ mine. _I_ don’t want to
make out the truth about ghos’es: I know it a’ready. But I’m not
against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as
I shall see Cliff’s Holiday, and I’ll go and stand by myself. I want no
company. I’d as lief do it as I’d fill this pipe.”

“Ah, but who’s to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? That’s no fair
bet,” said the butcher.

“No fair bet?” replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. “I should like to hear any
man stand up and say I want to bet unfair. Come now, Master Lundy, I
should like to hear you say it.”

“Very like you would,” said the butcher. “But it’s no business o’ mine.
You’re none o’ my bargains, and I aren’t a-going to try and ’bate your
price. If anybody ’ll bid for you at your own vallying, let him. I’m
for peace and quietness, I am.”

“Yes, that’s what every yapping cur is, when you hold a stick up at
him,” said the farrier. “But I’m afraid o’ neither man nor ghost, and
I’m ready to lay a fair bet. _I_ aren’t a turn-tail cur.”

“Aye, but there’s this in it, Dowlas,” said the landlord, speaking in a
tone of much candour and tolerance. “There’s folks, i’ my opinion, they
can’t see ghos’es, not if they stood as plain as a pike-staff before
’em. And there’s reason i’ that. For there’s my wife, now, can’t smell,
not if she’d the strongest o’ cheese under her nose. I never see’d a
ghost myself; but then I says to myself, ‘Very like I haven’t got the
smell for ’em.’ I mean, putting a ghost for a smell, or else
contrairiways. And so, I’m for holding with both sides; for, as I say,
the truth lies between ’em. And if Dowlas was to go and stand, and say
he’d never seen a wink o’ Cliff’s Holiday all the night through, I’d
back him; and if anybody said as Cliff’s Holiday was certain sure, for
all that, I’d back _him_ too. For the smell’s what I go by.”

The landlord’s analogical argument was not well received by the
farrier—a man intensely opposed to compromise.

“Tut, tut,” he said, setting down his glass with refreshed irritation;
“what’s the smell got to do with it? Did ever a ghost give a man a
black eye? That’s what I should like to know. If ghos’es want me to
believe in ’em, let ’em leave off skulking i’ the dark and i’ lone
places—let ’em come where there’s company and candles.”

“As if ghos’es ’ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!” said
Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier’s crass incompetence to
apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.




CHAPTER VII.


Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had a
more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them; for
the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing in the
warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his
strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement,
like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not
excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw,
not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which
Silas had entered was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one had
noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost,
might be supposed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would
tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always
said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul
went loose from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on
the whole, he would have been as well contented without it. For a few
moments there was a dead silence, Marner’s want of breath and agitation
not allowing him to speak. The landlord, under the habitual sense that
he was bound to keep his house open to all company, and confident in
the protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took on himself the
task of adjuring the ghost.

“Master Marner,” he said, in a conciliatory tone, “what’s lacking to
you? What’s your business here?”

“Robbed!” said Silas, gaspingly. “I’ve been robbed! I want the
constable—and the Justice—and Squire Cass—and Mr. Crackenthorp.”

“Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney,” said the landlord, the idea of a ghost
subsiding; “he’s off his head, I doubt. He’s wet through.”

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.

“Aye, Master Marner, what do you want wi’ me?” said Jem, trembling a
little, and seizing his drinking-can as a defensive weapon.

“If it was you stole my money,” said Silas, clasping his hands
entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry, “give it me back—and I
won’t meddle with you. I won’t set the constable on you. Give it me
back, and I’ll let you—I’ll let you have a guinea.”

“Me stole your money!” said Jem, angrily. “I’ll pitch this can at your
eye if you talk o’ _my_ stealing your money.”

“Come, come, Master Marner,” said the landlord, now rising resolutely,
and seizing Marner by the shoulder, “if you’ve got any information to
lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you’re in your right mind, if
you expect anybody to listen to you. You’re as wet as a drownded rat.
Sit down and dry yourself, and speak straight forrard.”

“Ah, to be sure, man,” said the farrier, who began to feel that he had
not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion. “Let’s have no
more staring and screaming, else we’ll have you strapped for a madman.
That was why I didn’t speak at the first—thinks I, the man’s run mad.”

“Aye, aye, make him sit down,” said several voices at once, well
pleased that the reality of ghosts remained still an open question.

The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to sit down
on a chair aloof from every one else, in the centre of the circle and
in the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble to have any
distinct purpose beyond that of getting help to recover his money,
submitted unresistingly. The transient fears of the company were now
forgotten in their strong curiosity, and all faces were turned towards
Silas, when the landlord, having seated himself again, said—

“Now then, Master Marner, what’s this you’ve got to say—as you’ve been
robbed? Speak out.”

“He’d better not say again as it was me robbed him,” cried Jem Rodney,
hastily. “What could I ha’ done with his money? I could as easy steal
the parson’s surplice, and wear it.”

“Hold your tongue, Jem, and let’s hear what he’s got to say,” said the
landlord. “Now then, Master Marner.”

Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the mysterious
character of the robbery became evident.

This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe
neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and
feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise
of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his
passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness rarely
registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us:
there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the
smallest sign of the bud.

The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to him,
gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity of his distress:
it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner was telling
the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at once from the
nature of his statements to the absence of any motive for making them
falsely, but because, as Mr. Macey observed, “Folks as had the devil to
back ’em were not likely to be so mushed” as poor Silas was. Rather,
from the strange fact that the robber had left no traces, and had
happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by mortal
agents, when Silas would go away from home without locking his door,
the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that his disreputable
intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed, had been broken up, and
that, in consequence, this ill turn had been done to Marner by somebody
it was quite in vain to set the constable after. Why this preternatural
felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a
question which did not present itself.

“It isn’t Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner,” said the
landlord. “You mustn’t be a-casting your eye at poor Jem. There may be
a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a hare or so, if
anybody was bound to keep their eyes staring open, and niver to wink;
but Jem’s been a-sitting here drinking his can, like the decentest man
i’ the parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by your
own account.”

“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey; “let’s have no accusing o’ the innicent.
That isn’t the law. There must be folks to swear again’ a man before he
can be ta’en up. Let’s have no accusing o’ the innicent, Master
Marner.”

Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be awakened
by these words. With a movement of compunction as new and strange to
him as everything else within the last hour, he started from his chair
and went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he wanted to assure
himself of the expression in his face.

“I was wrong,” he said—“yes, yes—I ought to have thought. There’s
nothing to witness against you, Jem. Only you’d been into my house
oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head. I don’t accuse
you—I won’t accuse anybody—only,” he added, lifting up his hands to his
head, and turning away with bewildered misery, “I try—I try to think
where my guineas can be.”

“Aye, aye, they’re gone where it’s hot enough to melt ’em, I doubt,”
said Mr. Macey.

“Tchuh!” said the farrier. And then he asked, with a cross-examining
air, “How much money might there be in the bags, Master Marner?”

“Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve and sixpence, last night
when I counted it,” said Silas, seating himself again, with a groan.

“Pooh! why, they’d be none so heavy to carry. Some tramp’s been in,
that’s all; and as for the no footmarks, and the bricks and the sand
being all right—why, your eyes are pretty much like a insect’s, Master
Marner; they’re obliged to look so close, you can’t see much at a time.
It’s my opinion as, if I’d been you, or you’d been me—for it comes to
the same thing—you wouldn’t have thought you’d found everything as you
left it. But what I vote is, as two of the sensiblest o’ the company
should go with you to Master Kench, the constable’s—he’s ill i’ bed, I
know that much—and get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for that’s
the law, and I don’t think anybody ’ull take upon him to contradick me
there. It isn’t much of a walk to Kench’s; and then, if it’s me as is
deppity, I’ll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your
premises; and if anybody’s got any fault to find with that, I’ll thank
him to stand up and say it out like a man.”

By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his
self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as
one of the superlatively sensible men.

“Let us see how the night is, though,” said the landlord, who also
considered himself personally concerned in this proposition. “Why, it
rains heavy still,” he said, returning from the door.

“Well, I’m not the man to be afraid o’ the rain,” said the farrier.
“For it’ll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us
had a information laid before ’em and took no steps.”

The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the
company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high
ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take on
himself the chill dignity of going to Kench’s. But to the farrier’s
strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his proposing
himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman,
claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his
father, that no doctor could be a constable.

“And you’re a doctor, I reckon, though you’re only a cow-doctor—for a
fly’s a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly,” concluded Mr. Macey,
wondering a little at his own “’cuteness”.

There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course
indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a
doctor could be a constable if he liked—the law meant, he needn’t be
one if he didn’t like. Mr. Macey thought this was nonsense, since the
law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other folks.
Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of other men not
to like being constables, how came Mr. Dowlas to be so eager to act in
that capacity?

“_I_ don’t want to act the constable,” said the farrier, driven into a
corner by this merciless reasoning; “and there’s no man can say it of
me, if he’d tell the truth. But if there’s to be any jealousy and
en_vy_ing about going to Kench’s in the rain, let them go as like
it—you won’t get me to go, I can tell you.”

By the landlord’s intervention, however, the dispute was accommodated.
Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a second person disinclined to act
officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with some old coverings,
turned out with his two companions into the rain again, thinking of the
long night-hours before him, not as those do who long to rest, but as
those who expect to “watch for the morning”.




CHAPTER VIII.


When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood’s party at midnight, he was
not much surprised to learn that Dunsey had not come home. Perhaps he
had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for another chance—perhaps, on
that foggy afternoon, he had preferred housing himself at the Red Lion
at Batherley for the night, if the run had kept him in that
neighbourhood; for he was not likely to feel much concern about leaving
his brother in suspense. Godfrey’s mind was too full of Nancy
Lammeter’s looks and behaviour, too full of the exasperation against
himself and his lot, which the sight of her always produced in him, for
him to give much thought to Wildfire, or to the probabilities of
Dunstan’s conduct.

The next morning the whole village was excited by the story of the
robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else, was occupied in gathering
and discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stone-pits. The rain
had washed away all possibility of distinguishing foot-marks, but a
close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the direction
opposite to the village, a tinder-box, with a flint and steel, half
sunk in the mud. It was not Silas’s tinder-box, for the only one he had
ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the inference generally
accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow connected
with the robbery. A small minority shook their heads, and intimated
their opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light thrown on it
by tinder-boxes, that Master Marner’s tale had a queer look with it,
and that such things had been known as a man’s doing himself a
mischief, and then setting the justice to look for the doer. But when
questioned closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and what
Master Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only shook
their heads as before, and observed that there was no knowing what some
folks counted gain; moreover, that everybody had a right to their own
opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody
knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, though he joined in the defence of
Marner against all suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the
tinder-box; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion,
tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands, and that
there was no power which could make away with the guineas without
moving the bricks. Nevertheless, he turned round rather sharply on Mr.
Tookey, when the zealous deputy, feeling that this was a view of the
case peculiarly suited to a parish-clerk, carried it still farther, and
doubted whether it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when the
circumstances were so mysterious.

“As if,” concluded Mr. Tookey—“as if there was nothing but what could
be made out by justices and constables.”

“Now, don’t you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey,” said Mr. Macey,
nodding his head aside admonishingly. “That’s what you’re allays at; if
I throw a stone and hit, you think there’s summat better than hitting,
and you try to throw a stone beyond. What I said was against the
tinder-box: I said nothing against justices and constables, for they’re
o’ King George’s making, and it ’ud be ill-becoming a man in a parish
office to fly out again’ King George.”

While these discussions were going on amongst the group outside the
Rainbow, a higher consultation was being carried on within, under the
presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector, assisted by Squire Cass and
other substantial parishioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell, the
landlord—he being, as he observed, a man accustomed to put two and two
together—to connect with the tinder-box, which, as deputy-constable, he
himself had had the honourable distinction of finding, certain
recollections of a pedlar who had called to drink at the house about a
month before, and had actually stated that he carried a tinder-box
about with him to light his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be
followed out. And as memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained
facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered
a vivid impression of the effect produced on him by the pedlar’s
countenance and conversation. He had a “look with his eye” which fell
unpleasantly on Mr. Snell’s sensitive organism. To be sure, he didn’t
say anything particular—no, except that about the tinder-box—but it
isn’t what a man says, it’s the way he says it. Moreover, he had a
swarthy foreignness of complexion which boded little honesty.

“Did he wear ear-rings?” Mr. Crackenthorp wished to know, having some
acquaintance with foreign customs.

“Well—stay—let me see,” said Mr. Snell, like a docile clairvoyante, who
would really not make a mistake if she could help it. After stretching
the corners of his mouth and contracting his eyes, as if he were trying
to see the ear-rings, he appeared to give up the effort, and said,
“Well, he’d got ear-rings in his box to sell, so it’s nat’ral to
suppose he might wear ’em. But he called at every house, a’most, in the
village; there’s somebody else, mayhap, saw ’em in his ears, though I
can’t take upon me rightly to say.”

Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else would remember
the pedlar’s ear-rings. For on the spread of inquiry among the
villagers it was stated with gathering emphasis, that the parson had
wanted to know whether the pedlar wore ear-rings in his ears, and an
impression was created that a great deal depended on the eliciting of
this fact. Of course, every one who heard the question, not having any
distinct image of the pedlar as _without_ ear-rings, immediately had an
image of him _with_ ear-rings, larger or smaller, as the case might be;
and the image was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so that the
glazier’s wife, a well-intentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose
house was among the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as
sure as ever she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas
that was ever coming, that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape of
the young moon, in the pedlar’s two ears; while Jinny Oates, the
cobbler’s daughter, being a more imaginative person, stated not only
that she had seen them too, but that they had made her blood creep, as
it did at that very moment while there she stood.

Also, by way of throwing further light on this clue of the tinder-box,
a collection was made of all the articles purchased from the pedlar at
various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be exhibited there. In
fact, there was a general feeling in the village, that for the
clearing-up of this robbery there must be a great deal done at the
Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife an excuse for going there
while it was the scene of severe public duties.

Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indignation also,
when it became known that Silas Marner, on being questioned by the
Squire and the parson, had retained no other recollection of the pedlar
than that he had called at his door, but had not entered his house,
having turned away at once when Silas, holding the door ajar, had said
that he wanted nothing. This had been Silas’s testimony, though he
clutched strongly at the idea of the pedlar’s being the culprit, if
only because it gave him a definite image of a whereabout for his gold
after it had been taken away from its hiding-place: he could see it now
in the pedlar’s box. But it was observed with some irritation in the
village, that anybody but a “blind creatur” like Marner would have seen
the man prowling about, for how came he to leave his tinder-box in the
ditch close by, if he hadn’t been lingering there? Doubtless, he had
made his observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might
know—and only look at him—that the weaver was a half-crazy miser. It
was a wonder the pedlar hadn’t murdered him; men of that sort, with
rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;
there had been one tried at the ’sizes, not so long ago but what there
were people living who remembered it.

Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell’s
frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it lightly,
stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the pedlar, and
thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all nonsense, he
said, about the man’s evil looks. But this was spoken of in the village
as the random talk of youth, “as if it was only Mr. Snell who had seen
something odd about the pedlar!” On the contrary, there were at least
half-a-dozen who were ready to go before Justice Malam, and give in
much more striking testimony than any the landlord could furnish. It
was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey would not go to Tarley and throw cold water
on what Mr. Snell said there, and so prevent the justice from drawing
up a warrant. He was suspected of intending this, when, after mid-day,
he was seen setting off on horseback in the direction of Tarley.

But by this time Godfrey’s interest in the robbery had faded before his
growing anxiety about Dunstan and Wildfire, and he was going, not to
Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in uncertainty about them any
longer. The possibility that Dunstan had played him the ugly trick of
riding away with Wildfire, to return at the end of a month, when he had
gambled away or otherwise squandered the price of the horse, was a fear
that urged itself upon him more, even, than the thought of an
accidental injury; and now that the dance at Mrs. Osgood’s was past, he
was irritated with himself that he had trusted his horse to Dunstan.
Instead of trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that
superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil
very strongly it is the less likely to come; and when he heard a horse
approaching at a trot, and saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond an
angle of the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeeded. But no
sooner did the horse come within sight, than his heart sank again. It
was not Wildfire; and in a few moments more he discerned that the rider
was not Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled up to speak, with a face that
implied something disagreeable.

“Well, Mr. Godfrey, that’s a lucky brother of yours, that Master
Dunsey, isn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” said Godfrey, hastily.

“Why, hasn’t he been home yet?” said Bryce.

“Home? no. What has happened? Be quick. What has he done with my
horse?”

“Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had parted with it
to him.”

“Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?” said Godfrey, flushed
with exasperation.

“Worse than that,” said Bryce. “You see, I’d made a bargain with him to
buy the horse for a hundred and twenty—a swinging price, but I always
liked the horse. And what does he do but go and stake him—fly at a
hedge with stakes in it, atop of a bank with a ditch before it. The
horse had been dead a pretty good while when he was found. So he hasn’t
been home since, has he?”

“Home? no,” said Godfrey, “and he’d better keep away. Confound me for a
fool! I might have known this would be the end of it.”

“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Bryce, “after I’d bargained for the
horse, it did come into my head that he might be riding and selling the
horse without your knowledge, for I didn’t believe it was his own. I
knew Master Dunsey was up to his tricks sometimes. But where can he be
gone? He’s never been seen at Batherley. He couldn’t have been hurt,
for he must have walked off.”

“Hurt?” said Godfrey, bitterly. “He’ll never be hurt—he’s made to hurt
other people.”

“And so you _did_ give him leave to sell the horse, eh?” said Bryce.

“Yes; I wanted to part with the horse—he was always a little too hard
in the mouth for me,” said Godfrey; his pride making him wince under
the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a matter of necessity. “I
was going to see after him—I thought some mischief had happened. I’ll
go back now,” he added, turning the horse’s head, and wishing he could
get rid of Bryce; for he felt that the long-dreaded crisis in his life
was close upon him. “You’re coming on to Raveloe, aren’t you?”

“Well, no, not now,” said Bryce. “I _was_ coming round there, for I had
to go to Flitton, and I thought I might as well take you in my way, and
just let you know all I knew myself about the horse. I suppose Master
Dunsey didn’t like to show himself till the ill news had blown over a
bit. He’s perhaps gone to pay a visit at the Three Crowns, by
Whitbridge—I know he’s fond of the house.”

“Perhaps he is,” said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing himself,
he said, with an effort at carelessness, “We shall hear of him soon
enough, I’ll be bound.”

“Well, here’s my turning,” said Bryce, not surprised to perceive that
Godfrey was rather “down”; “so I’ll bid you good-day, and wish I may
bring you better news another time.”

Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of
confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no
longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the very
next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be sure to
come back shortly, and, finding that he must bear the brunt of his
father’s anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even though he
had nothing to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by which he
might still win Dunstan’s silence and put off the evil day: he might
tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to him by
Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an offence before, the
affair would blow over after a little storming. But Godfrey could not
bend himself to this. He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money,
he had already been guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable
than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet
there was a distinction between the two acts which made him feel that
the one was so much more blackening than the other as to be intolerable
to him.

“I don’t pretend to be a good fellow,” he said to himself; “but I’m not
a scoundrel—at least, I’ll stop short somewhere. I’ll bear the
consequences of what I _have_ done sooner than make believe I’ve done
what I never would have done. I’d never have spent the money for my own
pleasure—I was tortured into it.”

Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional
fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a complete avowal
to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire’s loss till the
next morning, that it might serve him as an introduction to heavier
matter. The old Squire was accustomed to his son’s frequent absence
from home, and thought neither Dunstan’s nor Wildfire’s non-appearance
a matter calling for remark. Godfrey said to himself again and again,
that if he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he might never
have another; the revelation might be made even in a more odious way
than by Dunstan’s malignity: _she_ might come as she had threatened to
do. And then he tried to make the scene easier to himself by rehearsal:
he made up his mind how he would pass from the admission of his
weakness in letting Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan had
a hold on him which he had been unable to shake off, and how he would
work up his father to expect something very bad before he told him the
fact. The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in
violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had
subsided—as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many
violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of
his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating
force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became
unrelentingly hard. This was his system with his tenants: he allowed
them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their stock,
sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,—and then, when he
became short of money in consequence of this indulgence, he took the
hardest measures and would listen to no appeal. Godfrey knew all this,
and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered
annoyance from witnessing his father’s sudden fits of unrelentingness,
for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.
(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these
fits; _that_ seemed to him natural enough.) Still there was just the
chance, Godfrey thought, that his father’s pride might see this
marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up, rather than
turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for ten
miles round.

This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him
pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he had
done with inward debating. But when he awoke in the still morning
darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it
was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further
work. Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the
presence of nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of
disgrace came back—the old shrinking from the thought of raising a
hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy—the old disposition to rely
on chances which might be favourable to him, and save him from
betrayal. Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by his own
act? He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday. He had been in
a rage with Dunstan, and had thought of nothing but a thorough break-up
of their mutual understanding; but what it would be really wisest for
him to do, was to try and soften his father’s anger against Dunsey, and
keep things as nearly as possible in their old condition. If Dunsey did
not come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the
rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away still
longer), everything might blow over.




CHAPTER IX.


Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but
lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had
finished their meal and gone out, awaiting his father, who always took
a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one breakfasted at
a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was always the
latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before
he tried it. The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly
two hours before he presented himself—a tall, stout man of sixty, with
a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed
contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His person showed marks of
habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something
in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the
ordinary farmers in the parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined
as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness
of being in the vicinity of their “betters,” wanted that
self-possession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which
belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with
whom he had personally little more to do than with America or the
stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to
the presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that
was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with any
gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by
comparison.

He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, “What, sir!
haven’t _you_ had your breakfast yet?” but there was no pleasant
morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but
because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as
the Red House.

“Yes, sir,” said Godfrey, “I’ve had my breakfast, but I was waiting to
speak to you.”

“Ah! well,” said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his
chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in
Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of
beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him.
“Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters’ business is your
own pleasure, mostly. There’s no hurry about it for anybody but
yourselves.”

The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons,’ but it was a fiction
kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was
exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was
constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey
waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the
door closed—an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had
consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man’s holiday dinner.

“There’s been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire,” he began;
“happened the day before yesterday.”

“What! broke his knees?” said the Squire, after taking a draught of
ale. “I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never
threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha’ whistled for
another, for _my_ father wasn’t quite so ready to unstring as some
other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new leaf—_they_
must. What with mortgages and arrears, I’m as short o’ cash as a
roadside pauper. And that fool Kimble says the newspaper’s talking
about peace. Why, the country wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Prices
’ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I
sold all the fellows up. And there’s that damned Fowler, I won’t put up
with him any longer; I’ve told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The
lying scoundrel told me he’d be sure to pay me a hundred last month. He
takes advantage because he’s on that outlying farm, and thinks I shall
forget him.”

The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted
manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext
for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward off
any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire,
and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of
cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the
utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, now he
had begun.

“It’s worse than breaking the horse’s knees—he’s been staked and
killed,” he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun to
cut his meat. “But I wasn’t thinking of asking you to buy me another
horse; I was only thinking I’d lost the means of paying you with the
price of Wildfire, as I’d meant to do. Dunsey took him to the hunt to
sell him for me the other day, and after he’d made a bargain for a
hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some
fool’s leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it hadn’t been
for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds this morning.”

The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son
in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable
guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the
paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him
a hundred pounds.

“The truth is, sir—I’m very sorry—I was quite to blame,” said Godfrey.
“Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He paid it to me, when I was over
there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered me for the money, and I
let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before
this.”

The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and
found utterance difficult. “You let Dunsey have it, sir? And how long
have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must _collogue_ with him to
embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won’t have
it. I’ll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together, and
marry again. I’d have you to remember, sir, my property’s got no entail
on it;—since my grandfather’s time the Casses can do as they like with
their land. Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the money! Why should
you let Dunsey have the money? There’s some lie at the bottom of it.”

“There’s no lie, sir,” said Godfrey. “I wouldn’t have spent the money
myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him have it.
But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That’s the whole story. I
never meant to embezzle money, and I’m not the man to do it. You never
knew me do a dishonest trick, sir.”

“Where’s Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and
fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted
the money for, and what he’s done with it. He shall repent it. I’ll
turn him out. I said I would, and I’ll do it. He shan’t brave me. Go
and fetch him.”

“Dunsey isn’t come back, sir.”

“What! did he break his own neck, then?” said the Squire, with some
disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.

“No, he wasn’t hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and
Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again
by-and-by. I don’t know where he is.”

“And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that,”
said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within
reach.

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a
feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being
sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without
the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented
motives.

“You don’t know? I tell you what it is, sir. You’ve been up to some
trick, and you’ve been bribing him not to tell,” said the Squire, with
a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat
violently at the nearness of his father’s guess. The sudden alarm
pushed him on to take the next step—a very slight impulse suffices for
that on a downward road.

“Why, sir,” he said, trying to speak with careless ease, “it was a
little affair between me and Dunsey; it’s no matter to anybody else.
It’s hardly worth while to pry into young men’s fooleries: it wouldn’t
have made any difference to you, sir, if I’d not had the bad luck to
lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money.”

“Fooleries! Pshaw! it’s time you’d done with fooleries. And I’d have
you know, sir, you _must_ ha’ done with ’em,” said the Squire, frowning
and casting an angry glance at his son. “Your goings-on are not what I
shall find money for any longer. There’s my grandfather had his stables
full o’ horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what
I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn’t four good-for-nothing
fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I’ve been too good a father
to you all—that’s what it is. But I shall pull up, sir.”

Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his
judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father’s indulgence
had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline
that would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better
will. The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught of
ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.

“It’ll be all the worse for you, you know—you’d need try and help me
keep things together.”

“Well, sir, I’ve often offered to take the management of things, but
you know you’ve taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted to
push you out of your place.”

“I know nothing o’ your offering or o’ my taking it ill,” said the
Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified
by detail; “but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o’
marrying, and I didn’t offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some
fathers would. I’d as lieve you married Lammeter’s daughter as anybody.
I suppose, if I’d said you nay, you’d ha’ kept on with it; but, for
want o’ contradiction, you’ve changed your mind. You’re a shilly-shally
fellow: you take after your poor mother. She never had a will of her
own; a woman has no call for one, if she’s got a proper man for her
husband. But _your_ wife had need have one, for you hardly know your
own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. The lass hasn’t
said downright she won’t have you, has she?”

“No,” said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; “but I don’t
think she will.”

“Think! why haven’t you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to it, you
want to have _her_—that’s the thing?”

“There’s no other woman I want to marry,” said Godfrey, evasively.

“Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that’s all, if you haven’t
the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn’t likely to be loath for his
daughter to marry into _my_ family, I should think. And as for the
pretty lass, she wouldn’t have her cousin—and there’s nobody else, as I
see, could ha’ stood in your way.”

“I’d rather let it be, please sir, at present,” said Godfrey, in alarm.
“I think she’s a little offended with me just now, and I should like to
speak for myself. A man must manage these things for himself.”

“Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can’t turn over a new
leaf. That’s what a man must do when he thinks o’ marrying.”

“I don’t see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn’t like
to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don’t think she’d
come to live in this house with all my brothers. It’s a different sort
of life to what she’s been used to.”

“Not come to live in this house? Don’t tell me. You ask her, that’s
all,” said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh.

“I’d rather let the thing be, at present, sir,” said Godfrey. “I hope
you won’t try to hurry it on by saying anything.”

“I shall do what I choose,” said the Squire, “and I shall let you know
I’m master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop into
somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox’s, but wait
for me. And tell ’em to get my horse saddled. And stop: look out and
get that hack o’ Dunsey’s sold, and hand me the money, will you? He’ll
keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he’s sneaking—I
daresay you do—you may tell him to spare himself the journey o’ coming
back home. Let him turn ostler, and keep himself. He shan’t hang on me
any more.”

“I don’t know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn’t my place to tell
him to keep away,” said Godfrey, moving towards the door.

“Confound it, sir, don’t stay arguing, but go and order my horse,” said
the Squire, taking up a pipe.

Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved by
the sense that the interview was ended without having made any change
in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself still
further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about his
proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some after-dinner
words of his father’s to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the
embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she
seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual refuge, that of
hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance
which would save him from unpleasant consequences—perhaps even justify
his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this point of
trusting to some throw of fortune’s dice, Godfrey can hardly be called
specially old-fashioned. Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all
men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe
in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is
ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues
that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let
him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that
brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible
benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his
interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet
forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he
will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone
may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his
friend’s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity
called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never
know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities
of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will
infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in
as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that
religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop
after its kind.




CHAPTER X.


Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man of
capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions
without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were not
on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect
the clue of the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot concerning a
pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a foreign complexion,
carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and wearing large rings in his
ears. But either because inquiry was too slow-footed to overtake him,
or because the description applied to so many pedlars that inquiry did
not know how to choose among them, weeks passed away, and there was no
other result concerning the robbery than a gradual cessation of the
excitement it had caused in Raveloe. Dunstan Cass’s absence was hardly
a subject of remark: he had once before had a quarrel with his father,
and had gone off, nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six
weeks, take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His
own family, who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference
that the Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old
quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr.
Osgood noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and
committed some offence against his father, was enough to prevent
surprise. To connect the fact of Dunsey’s disappearance with that of
the robbery occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of
every one’s thought—even Godfrey’s, who had better reason than any one
else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no mention
of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago, when it
was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his imagination
constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him continually in
some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on leaving
Wildfire—saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating a
return home to the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even
if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts together, I doubt
whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive respectability
of a family with a mural monument and venerable tankards, would not
have been suppressed as of unsound tendency. But Christmas puddings,
brawn, and abundance of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental
originality into the channel of nightmare, are great preservatives
against a dangerous spontaneity of waking thought.

When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good
company, the balance continued to waver between the rational
explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an
impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of the
tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a muddle-headed
and credulous set, who, because they themselves were wall-eyed,
supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook; and the
adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their antagonists
were animals inclined to crow before they had found any corn—mere
skimming-dishes in point of depth—whose clear-sightedness consisted in
supposing there was nothing behind a barn-door because they couldn’t
see through it; so that, though their controversy did not serve to
elicit the fact concerning the robbery, it elicited some true opinions
of collateral importance.

But while poor Silas’s loss served thus to brush the slow current of
Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering
desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were arguing
at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he lost his gold,
it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a life as his could
hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction
but such as would put an end to it altogether. But in reality it had
been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which fenced him in
from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and
though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted
thing, it satisfied the need for clinging. But now the fence was broken
down—the support was snatched away. Marner’s thoughts could no longer
move in their old round, and were baffled by a blank like that which
meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on its homeward
path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern in
the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet was gone;
the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening had no
phantasm of delight to still the poor soul’s craving. The thought of
the money he would get by his actual work could bring no joy, for its
meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and hope was too
heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination to dwell on the
growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.

He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and
then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his thoughts
had come round again to the sudden chasm—to the empty evening-time. And
all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he
leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his head with his hands,
and moaned very low—not as one who seeks to be heard.

And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by
the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a man
who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what was
worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a neighbourly
way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to keep his
own. He was generally spoken of as a “poor mushed creatur”; and that
avoidance of his neighbours, which had before been referred to his
ill-will and to a probable addiction to worse company, was now
considered mere craziness.

This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The odour
of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when
superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in
well-to-do families; and Silas’s misfortune had brought him uppermost
in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too,
while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from
him because he thought too much of it and never came to church,
enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs’ pettitoes, well calculated
to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character.
Neighbours who had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a
disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his misfortune at some
length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the
trouble of calling at his cottage and getting him to repeat all the
details on the very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by
saying, “Well, Master Marner, you’re no worse off nor other poor folks,
after all; and if you was to be crippled, the parish ’ud give you a
’lowance.”

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours
with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of
ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and
pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language
is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was a
fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and
bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and
hypocritical.

Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas know
that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed
lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs—

“Come, Master Marner, why, you’ve no call to sit a-moaning. You’re a
deal better off to ha’ lost your money, nor to ha’ kep it by foul
means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as you
were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than what you
are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced creatur, partly
like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there’s no knowing: it isn’t
every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry’s had the making of—I mean,
speaking o’ toads and such; for they’re often harmless, like, and
useful against varmin. And it’s pretty much the same wi’ you, as fur as
I can see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing, if
you brought that sort o’ knowledge from distant parts, you might ha’
been a bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn’t well come by, why,
you might ha’ made up for it by coming to church reg’lar; for, as for
the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I’ve been at the christening of
’em again and again, and they took the water just as well. And that’s
reasonable; for if Old Harry’s a mind to do a bit o’ kindness for a
holiday, like, who’s got anything against it? That’s my thinking; and
I’ve been clerk o’ this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there’s no cussing o’ folks
as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he
will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying—for there’s windings i’
things as they may carry you to the fur end o’ the prayer-book afore
you get back to ’em—my advice is, as you keep up your sperrits; for as
for thinking you’re a deep un, and ha’ got more inside you nor ’ull
bear daylight, I’m not o’ that opinion at all, and so I tell the
neighbours. For, says I, you talk o’ Master Marner making out a
tale—why, it’s nonsense, that is: it ’ud take a ’cute man to make a
tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a rabbit.”

During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his
previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his
hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been
listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply, but
Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant to be
good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine
falls on the wretched—he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was
very far off him.

“Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?” said Mr.
Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.

“Oh,” said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, “I thank
you—thank you—kindly.”

“Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would,” said Mr. Macey; “and my
advice is—have you got a Sunday suit?”

“No,” said Marner.

“I doubted it was so,” said Mr. Macey. “Now, let me advise you to get a
Sunday suit: there’s Tookey, he’s a poor creatur, but he’s got my
tailoring business, and some o’ my money in it, and he shall make a
suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can come to
church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you’ve never heared me say
‘Amen’ since you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no
time, for it’ll be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself, for I
mayn’t be equil to stand i’ the desk at all, come another winter.” Here
Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his hearer;
but not observing any, he went on. “And as for the money for the suit
o’ clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound a-week at your weaving,
Master Marner, and you’re a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed.
Why, you couldn’t ha’ been five-and-twenty when you come into these
parts, eh?”

Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, “I don’t know; I can’t rightly say—it’s a long while
since.”

After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr.
Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner’s
head was “all of a muddle,” and that it was to be doubted if he ever
knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many
a dog.

Another of Silas’s comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright’s wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in
the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in
the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with
Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours—a wish to be
better than the “common run,” that would have implied a reflection on
those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and
had an equal right to the burying-service. At the same time, it was
understood to be requisite for all who were not household servants, or
young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire
Cass himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
“good livers” went to church with greater, though still with moderate,
frequency.

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw
a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which
it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the
vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition
of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was
to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and
pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always first thought of
in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when leeches
were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly
nurse. She was a “comfortable woman”—good-looking, fresh-complexioned,
having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a
sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never
whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and
inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a
funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben
Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with
Dolly; but she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as
everything else, considering that “men _would_ be so,” and viewing the
stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make
naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn
strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a
sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with
her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small
lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron,
an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which
looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous
curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed
weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much
increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the
mysterious sound of the loom.

“Ah, it is as I thought,” said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come
to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have done, at a
visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his heart had
been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket
was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his
prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and
half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from
without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of
his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.
He opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning
her greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that
she was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed
the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest
way—

“I’d a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out
better nor common, and I’d ha’ asked you to accept some, if you’d
thought well. I don’t eat such things myself, for a bit o’ bread’s what
I like from one year’s end to the other; but men’s stomichs are made so
comical, they want a change—they do, I know, God help ’em.”

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her
kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to
look so at everything he took into his hand—eyed all the while by the
wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of
his mother’s chair, and was peeping round from behind it.

“There’s letters pricked on ’em,” said Dolly. “I can’t read ’em myself,
and there’s nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they
mean; but they’ve a good meaning, for they’re the same as is on the
pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?”

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.

“Oh, go, that’s naughty,” said his mother, mildly. “Well, whativer the
letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and it’s a stamp as has been in
our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used
to put it on the cakes, and I’ve allays put it on too; for if there’s
any good, we’ve need of it i’ this world.”

“It’s I. H. S.,” said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped
round the chair again.

“Well, to be sure, you can read ’em off,” said Dolly. “Ben’s read ’em
to me many and many a time, but they slip out o’ my mind again; the
more’s the pity, for they’re good letters, else they wouldn’t be in the
church; and so I prick ’em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though
sometimes they won’t hold, because o’ the rising—for, as I said, if
there’s any good to be got we’ve need of it i’ this world—that we have;
and I hope they’ll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it’s wi’ that
will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held better
nor common.”

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no
possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made
itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than
before—“Thank you—thank you kindly.” But he laid down the cakes and
seated himself absently—drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit
towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly’s kindness,
could tend for him.

“Ah, if there’s good anywhere, we’ve need of it,” repeated Dolly, who
did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at Silas
pityingly as she went on. “But you didn’t hear the church-bells this
morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn’t know it was Sunday. Living
so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and then, when your loom
makes a noise, you can’t hear the bells, more partic’lar now the frost
kills the sound.”

“Yes, I did; I heard ’em,” said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere
accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had been no
bells in Lantern Yard.

“Dear heart!” said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. “But what a
pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself—if you
_didn’t_ go to church; for if you’d a roasting bit, it might be as you
couldn’t leave it, being a lone man. But there’s the bakehus, if you
could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and
then,—not every week, in course—I shouldn’t like to do that myself,—you
might carry your bit o’ dinner there, for it’s nothing but right to
have a bit o’ summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can’t
know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo’ Christmas-day, this
blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to
the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear
the anthim, and then take the sacramen,’ you’d be a deal the better,
and you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i’
Them as knows better nor we do, seein’ you’d ha’ done what it lies on
us all to do.”

Dolly’s exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for
her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would
have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of
gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before been closely
urged on the point of his absence from church, which had only been
thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct
and simple to evade Dolly’s appeal.

“Nay, nay,” he said, “I know nothing o’ church. I’ve never been to
church.”

“No!” said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking herself
of Silas’s advent from an unknown country, she said, “Could it ha’ been
as they’d no church where you was born?”

“Oh, yes,” said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of
leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. “There was churches—a
many—it was a big town. But I knew nothing of ’em—I went to chapel.”

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of
inquiring further, lest “chapel” might mean some haunt of wickedness.
After a little thought, she said—

“Well, Master Marner, it’s niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and
if you’ve niver had no church, there’s no telling the good it’ll do
you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I’ve been
and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o’ God,
as Mr. Macey gives out—and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more
partic’lar on Sacramen’ Day; and if a bit o’ trouble comes, I feel as I
can put up wi’ it, for I’ve looked for help i’ the right quarter, and
gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last;
and if we’n done our part, it isn’t to be believed as Them as are above
us ’ull be worse nor we are, and come short o’ Their’n.”

Poor Dolly’s exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather
unmeaningly on Silas’s ears, for there was no word in it that could
rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension
was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of
Dolly’s, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He
remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly’s
speech which he fully understood—her recommendation that he should go
to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief
questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple
business, that words did not easily come to him without the urgency of
a distinct purpose.

But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver’s awful
presence, had advanced to his mother’s side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly’s signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a
little, and rubbed his head against his mother’s shoulder, but still
thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for
it.

“Oh, for shame, Aaron,” said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; “why, you don’t want cake again yet awhile. He’s wonderful
hearty,” she went on, with a little sigh—“that he is, God knows. He’s
my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must
allays hev him in our sight—that we must.”

She stroked Aaron’s brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a “pictur of a child”. But Marner, on the other side
of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round,
with two dark spots in it.

“And he’s got a voice like a bird—you wouldn’t think,” Dolly went on;
“he can sing a Christmas carril as his father’s taught him; and I take
it for a token as he’ll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so
quick. Come, Aaron, stan’ up and sing the carril to Master Marner,
come.”

Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother’s shoulder.

“Oh, that’s naughty,” said Dolly, gently. “Stan’ up, when mother tells
you, and let me hold the cake till you’ve done.”

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under
protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness,
consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and
then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious
for the “carril,” he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted,
and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as
far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head
untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody
that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer:

“God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas-day.”


Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.

“That’s Christmas music,” she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. “There’s no other music equil to the
Christmas music—‘Hark the erol angils sing.’ And you may judge what it
is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you
can’t help thinking you’ve got to a better place a’ready—for I wouldn’t
speak ill o’ this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows best—but
what wi’ the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the
hard dying, as I’ve seen times and times, one’s thankful to hear of a
better. The boy sings pretty, don’t he, Master Marner?”

“Yes,” said Silas, absently, “very pretty.”

The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of the
effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was
grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a
bit more cake.

“Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner,” said Dolly, holding down Aaron’s
willing hands. “We must be going home now. And so I wish you good-bye,
Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in your inside, as you
can’t fend for yourself, I’ll come and clean up for you, and get you a
bit o’ victual, and willing. But I beg and pray of you to leave off
weaving of a Sunday, for it’s bad for soul and body—and the money as
comes i’ that way ’ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, if it
doesn’t fly away, nobody knows where, like the white frost. And you’ll
excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I wish you
well—I do. Make your bow, Aaron.”

Silas said “Good-bye, and thank you kindly,” as he opened the door for
Dolly, but he couldn’t help feeling relieved when she was gone—relieved
that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her simple view of life
and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a
report of unknown objects, which his imagination could not fashion. The
fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been
unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken rivulet, with only this
difference, that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it
wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.

And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and Dolly
Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating his meat
in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a neighbourly
present. In the morning he looked out on the black frost that seemed to
press cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half-icy red pool
shivered under the bitter wind; but towards evening the snow began to
fall, and curtained from him even that dreary outlook, shutting him
close up with his narrow grief. And he sat in his robbed home through
the livelong evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock his
door, pressing his head between his hands and moaning, till the cold
grasped him and told him that his fire was grey.

Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas Marner
who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted in an
unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.

But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was
fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among the
abundant dark-green boughs—faces prepared for a longer service than
usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those green boughs, the
hymn and anthem never heard but at Christmas—even the Athanasian Creed,
which was discriminated from the others only as being longer and of
exceptional virtue, since it was only read on rare occasions—brought a
vague exulting sense, for which the grown men could as little have
found words as the children, that something great and mysterious had
been done for them in heaven above and in earth below, which they were
appropriating by their presence. And then the red faces made their way
through the black biting frost to their own homes, feeling themselves
free for the rest of the day to eat, drink, and be merry, and using
that Christian freedom without diffidence.

At Squire Cass’s family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan—nobody
was sorry for his absence, or feared it would be too long. The doctor
and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the annual
Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions, rising to the
climax of Mr. Kimble’s experience when he walked the London hospitals
thirty years back, together with striking professional anecdotes then
gathered. Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble’s annual failure
to follow suit, and uncle Kimble’s irascibility concerning the odd
trick which was rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his side,
without a general visitation of tricks to see that they were formed on
sound principles: the whole being accompanied by a strong steaming
odour of spirits-and-water.

But the party on Christmas-day, being a strictly family party, was not
the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the season at the Red House.
It was the great dance on New Year’s Eve that made the glory of Squire
Cass’s hospitality, as of his forefathers,’ time out of mind. This was
the occasion when all the society of Raveloe and Tarley, whether old
acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled
acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves,
or acquaintances founded on intermittent condescension, counted on
meeting and on comporting themselves with mutual appropriateness. This
was the occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions sent their
bandboxes before them, supplied with more than their evening costume;
for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town
entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table
at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for
a siege; and as for the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on floors,
they were as plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that
had killed its own geese for many generations.

Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year’s Eve with a foolish
reckless longing, that made him half deaf to his importunate companion,
Anxiety.

“Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blow-up, and
how will you bribe his spite to silence?” said Anxiety.

“Oh, he won’t come home before New Year’s Eve, perhaps,” said Godfrey;
“and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with her, and get a kind look
from her in spite of herself.”

“But money is wanted in another quarter,” said Anxiety, in a louder
voice, “and how will you get it without selling your mother’s diamond
pin? And if you don’t get it...?”

“Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any rate,
there’s one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy is coming.”

“Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that will
oblige you to decline marrying her—and to give your reasons?”

“Hold your tongue, and don’t worry me. I can see Nancy’s eyes, just as
they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already.”

But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to be
utterly quieted even by much drinking.




CHAPTER XI.


Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a pillion,
and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with a crown
resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a coachman’s
greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of
miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal deficiencies of
contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow cheeks into lively
contrast. It was all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy Lammeter’s
beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in that costume, as,
seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one arm
round him, and looked down, with open-eyed anxiety, at the treacherous
snow-covered pools and puddles, which sent up formidable splashings of
mud under the stamp of Dobbin’s foot. A painter would, perhaps, have
preferred her in those moments when she was free from
self-consciousness; but certainly the bloom on her cheeks was at its
highest point of contrast with the surrounding drab when she arrived at
the door of the Red House, and saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift her
from the pillion. She wished her sister Priscilla had come up at the
same time behind the servant, for then she would have contrived that
Mr. Godfrey should have lifted off Priscilla first, and, in the
meantime, she would have persuaded her father to go round to the
horse-block instead of alighting at the door-steps. It was very
painful, when you had made it quite clear to a young man that you were
determined not to marry him, however much he might wish it, that he
would still continue to pay you marked attentions; besides, why didn’t
he always show the same attentions, if he meant them sincerely, instead
of being so strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if
he didn’t want to speak to her, and taking no notice of her for weeks
and weeks, and then, all on a sudden, almost making love again?
Moreover, it was quite plain he had no real love for her, else he would
not let people have _that_ to say of him which they did say. Did he
suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire or no
squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had been used to see
in her own father, who was the soberest and best man in that
country-side, only a little hot and hasty now and then, if things were
not done to the minute.

All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy’s mind, in their habitual
succession, in the moments between her first sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass
standing at the door and her own arrival there. Happily, the Squire
came out too and gave a loud greeting to her father, so that, somehow,
under cover of this noise she seemed to find concealment for her
confusion and neglect of any suitably formal behaviour, while she was
being lifted from the pillion by strong arms which seemed to find her
ridiculously small and light. And there was the best reason for
hastening into the house at once, since the snow was beginning to fall
again, threatening an unpleasant journey for such guests as were still
on the road. These were a small minority; for already the afternoon was
beginning to decline, and there would not be too much time for the
ladies who came from a distance to attire themselves in readiness for
the early tea which was to inspirit them for the dance.

There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered,
mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but the
Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so
much that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble,
who did the honours at the Red House on these great occasions, came
forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her up-stairs. Mrs.
Kimble was the Squire’s sister, as well as the doctor’s wife—a double
dignity, with which her diameter was in direct proportion; so that, a
journey up-stairs being rather fatiguing to her, she did not oppose
Miss Nancy’s request to be allowed to find her way alone to the Blue
Room, where the Miss Lammeters’ bandboxes had been deposited on their
arrival in the morning.

There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine compliments were
not passing and feminine toilettes going forward, in various stages, in
space made scanty by extra beds spread upon the floor; and Miss Nancy,
as she entered the Blue Room, had to make her little formal curtsy to a
group of six. On the one hand, there were ladies no less important than
the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant’s daughters from Lytherly,
dressed in the height of fashion, with the tightest skirts and the
shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures)
with a shyness not unsustained by inward criticism. Partly, Miss
Ladbrook felt that her own skirt must be regarded as unduly lax by the
Miss Gunns, and partly, that it was a pity the Miss Gunns did not show
that judgment which she herself would show if she were in their place,
by stopping a little on this side of the fashion. On the other hand,
Mrs. Ladbrook was standing in skull-cap and front, with her turban in
her hand, curtsying and smiling blandly and saying, “After you, ma’am,”
to another lady in similar circumstances, who had politely offered the
precedence at the looking-glass.

But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her curtsy than an elderly lady came
forward, whose full white muslin kerchief, and mob-cap round her curls
of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast with the puffed yellow
satins and top-knotted caps of her neighbours. She approached Miss
Nancy with much primness, and said, with a slow, treble suavity—

“Niece, I hope I see you well in health.” Miss Nancy kissed her aunt’s
cheek dutifully, and answered, with the same sort of amiable primness,
“Quite well, I thank you, aunt; and I hope I see you the same.”

“Thank you, niece; I keep my health for the present. And how is my
brother-in-law?”

These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it was
ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were all as well as usual, and
the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must certainly arrive
shortly, and that travelling on pillions in snowy weather was
unpleasant, though a joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy was
formally introduced to her aunt’s visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being
the daughters of a mother known to _their_ mother, though now for the
first time induced to make a journey into these parts; and these ladies
were so taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and figure in
an out-of-the-way country place, that they began to feel some curiosity
about the dress she would put on when she took off her joseph. Miss
Nancy, whose thoughts were always conducted with the propriety and
moderation conspicuous in her manners, remarked to herself that the
Miss Gunns were rather hard-featured than otherwise, and that such very
low dresses as they wore might have been attributed to vanity if their
shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they were, it was not
reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks from a love of
display, but rather from some obligation not inconsistent with sense
and modesty. She felt convinced, as she opened her box, that this must
be her aunt Osgood’s opinion, for Miss Nancy’s mind r

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