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silas marner 1 silas marner the project gutenberg etext of silas marner by george eliot #3 in our series by george eliot mary anne evans copyright laws are changing all over the world be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files please take a look at the important information in this header we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk keeping an electronic path open for the next readers do not remove this welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts etexts readable by both humans and by computers since 1971 these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts and further information is included below we need your donations silas marner by george eliot june 1996 [etext #550 the project gutenberg etext of by silas marner by george eliot this file should be named smarn10.txt or smarn10.zip corrected editions of our etexts get a new number smarn11.txt versions based on separate sources get new letter smarn10a.txt we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates for time for better editing please note neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight central time of the last day of the stated month a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion comment and editing by those who wish to do so to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx please check file sizes in the first week of the next month since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed a look at the file size will have to do but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less information about project gutenberg one page

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chapter i 5 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

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chapter i 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 6 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

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chapter i 7 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.

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chapter i 8 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

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chapter i 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 9 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

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chapter ii 10 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

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chapter ii 11 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

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chapter ii 12 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,

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chapter iii 13 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

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chapter iii 14 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

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chapter iii whistle was heard across the large empty entrance-hall 15 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

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