Chapter I

by George Eliot

　　In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had theirtoy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen indistricts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of thehills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawnycountry-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. Theshepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking menappeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; forwhat dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these palemen rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. Theshepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bagheld nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of stronglinen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade ofweaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirelywithout the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstitionclung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted,or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of thepedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men hadtheir homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explainedunless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own directexperience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to theiruntravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim asthe winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; andeven a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased tobe viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented anysurprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part hadended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had anyreputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. Allcleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrumentthe tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was initself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner,were mostly not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such amatter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by whichrapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so whollyhidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this wayit came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants fromthe town into the country--were to the last regarded as aliens bytheir rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habitswhich belong to a state of loneliness.In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named SilasMarner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood amongthe nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far fromthe edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas'sloom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of thewinnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had ahalf-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leaveoff their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of thestone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysteriousaction of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority,drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with thebent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happenedthat Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, becameaware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, heliked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom,and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was alwaysenough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was itpossible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in SilasMarner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was notclose to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dartcramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be inthe rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hintthat Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, andadd, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fairenough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strangelingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now becaught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; forthe rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power andbenignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasioncan be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape mosteasily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men whohave always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom alife of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiasticreligious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider rangeof possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination isalmost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is allovergrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear."Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat?" Ionce said to an old labouring man, who was in his last illness, andwho had refused all the food his wife had offered him. "No," heanswered, "I've never been used to nothing but common victual, andI can't eat that." Experience had bred no fancies in him thatcould 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 barrenparishes lying on the outskirts of civilization--inhabited bymeagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it layin the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call MerryEngland, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point ofview, paid highly-desirable tithes. But it was nestled in a snugwell-wooded hollow, quite an hour's journey on horseback from anyturnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of thecoach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an important-lookingvillage, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart ofit, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, withwell-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing closeupon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory,which peeped from among the trees on the other side of thechurchyard:--a village which showed at once the summits of itssocial life, and told the practised eye that there was no great parkand manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefsin Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enoughmoney from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in arollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Eastertide.It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe;he was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent short-sightedbrown eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange forpeople of average culture and experience, but for the villagers nearwhom he had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities whichcorresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation, and hisadvent from an unknown region called "North'ard". So had his wayof life:--he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and henever strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, orto gossip at the wheelwright's: he sought no man or woman, save forthe purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself withnecessaries; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that hewould never urge one of them to accept him against her will--quiteas if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a deadman come to life again. This view of Marner's personality was notwithout another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes; forJem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that one evening as he wasreturning homeward, he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile witha heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile asa 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 spoketo him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his handsclutched the bag as if they'd been made of iron; but just as he hadmade 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 onSquire Cass's land, down by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner musthave been in a "fit", a word which seemed to explain thingsotherwise incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of theparish, shook his head, and asked if anybody was ever known to gooff in a fit and not fall down. A fit was a stroke, wasn't it? andit was in the nature of a stroke to partly take away the use of aman's limbs and throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children tolook to. No, no; it was no stroke that would let a man stand on hislegs, like a horse between the shafts, and then walk off as soon asyou can say "Gee!" But there might be such a thing as a man'ssoul being loose from his body, and going out and in, like a birdout of its nest and back; and that was how folks got over-wise, forthey went to school in this shell-less state to those who couldteach them more than their neighbours could learn with their fivesenses and the parson. And where did Master Marner get hisknowledge of herbs from--and charms too, if he liked to give themaway? Jem Rodney's story was no more than what might have beenexpected by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates,and made her sleep like a baby, when her heart had been beatingenough to burst her body, for two months and more, while she hadbeen 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 fromdoing you a mischief.It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted forprotecting him from the persecution that his singularities mighthave drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the oldlinen-weaver in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, hishandicraft made him a highly welcome settler to the richerhousewives of the district, and even to the more providentcottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the year's end.Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any repugnanceor suspicion which was not confirmed by a deficiency in the qualityor the tale of the cloth he wove for them. And the years had rolledon without producing any change in the impressions of the neighboursconcerning Marner, except the change from novelty to habit. At theend of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things aboutSilas Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite sooften, but they believed them much more strongly when they did saythem. There was only one important addition which the years hadbrought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight ofmoney somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men" thanhimself.But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, andhis daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner'sinward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of everyfervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, tosolitude. His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled withthe movement, the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which,in that day as in this, marked the life of an artisan earlyincorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest laymanhas the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, andhas, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in thegovernment of his community. Marner was highly thought of in thatlittle hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling inLantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary lifeand ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in himever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysteriousrigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an houror more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a medicalexplanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silashimself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilfulself-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lietherein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiardiscipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline wasdiscouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual visionduring his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and othersthat its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour.A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into thesubsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; aless sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas wasboth sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men,culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, andso it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry andknowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance withmedicinal herbs and their preparation--a little store of wisdomwhich she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of lateyears he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying thisknowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy withoutprayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that theinherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search offoxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him thecharacter of a temptation.Among the members of his church there was one young man, a littleolder than himself, with whom he had long lived in such closefriendship that it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren tocall them David and Jonathan. The real name of the friend wasWilliam Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining instance ofyouthful piety, though somewhat given to over-severity towardsweaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to holdhimself wiser than his teachers. But whatever blemishes othersmight discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; forMarner had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, atan inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean oncontradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner'sface, heightened by that absence of special observation, thatdefenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes,was strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inwardtriumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lipsof William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversationbetween the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessedthat he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled withfear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that hehad possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of hisconversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words "calling andelection sure" standing by themselves on a white page in the openBible. Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-facedweavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young winged things,fluttering forsaken in the twilight.It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship hadsuffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of acloser kind. For some months he had been engaged to a youngservant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutualsavings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight tohim that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence intheir Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history thatSilas's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; andamidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed tohim by his fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred withthe general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for specialdealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked more like avisitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted hisfriend 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 concerninghim; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the perception thatSarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuationbetween an effort at an increased manifestation of regard andinvoluntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked her if shewished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: theirengagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in theprayer-meetings; it could not be broken off without strictinvestigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would besanctioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the seniordeacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, hewas 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, whenone night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usualaudible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and hehad to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly. Examinationconvinced him that the deacon was dead--had been dead some time,for the limbs were rigid. Silas asked himself if he had beenasleep, 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 toseek for help, and soon there were several friends assembled in thehouse, the minister among them, while Silas went away to his work,wishing he could have met William to know the reason of hisnon-appearance. But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of going toseek his friend, William came, and with him the minister. They cameto summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; andto his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only replywas, "You will hear." Nothing further was said until Silas wasseated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes ofthose 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 thenexhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knifehad 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 hadremoved that bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the manto whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas was mute withastonishment: then he said, "God will clear me: I know nothingabout the knife being there, or the money being gone. Search me andmy dwelling; you will find nothing but three pound five of my ownsavings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months." Atthis William groaned, but the minister said, "The proof is heavyagainst you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night lastpast, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for WilliamDane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness fromgoing to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he hadnot 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 allseen me under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I wasnot in the body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search meand my dwelling, for I have been nowhere else."The search was made, and it ended--in William Dane's finding thewell-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas'schamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not tohide his sin any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach onhim, and said, "William, for nine years that we have gone in andout together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clearme.""Brother," said William, "how do I know what you may have done inthe secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage overyou?"Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush cameover his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemedchecked again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back andmade 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 otherpersons present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to saythat the knife was, but he would give no further explanation: heonly said, "I am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clearme."On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Anyresort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contraryto the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to whichprosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held lessscandal to the community. But the members were bound to take othermeasures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying anddrawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only tothose who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life whichhas gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with hisbrethren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediatedivine interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and mourningbehind for him even then--that his trust in man had been cruellybruised. The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty. He wassolemnly suspended from church-membership, and called upon to renderup 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 tocut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocketagain. You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay thesin at my door. But you may prosper, for all that: there is no justGod that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, thatbears witness against the innocent."There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.William said meekly, "I leave our brethren to judge whether this isthe 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 shakentrust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a lovingnature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said tohimself, "She will cast me off too." And he reflected that, ifshe did not believe the testimony against him, her whole faith mustbe upset as his was. To people accustomed to reason about the formsin which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it isdifficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in whichthe form and the feeling have never been severed by an act ofreflection. We are apt to think it inevitable that a man inMarner's position should have begun to question the validity of anappeal to the divine judgment by drawing lots; but to him this wouldhave been an effort of independent thought such as he had neverknown; and he must have made the effort at a moment when all hisenergies were turned into the anguish of disappointed faith. Ifthere is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as theirsins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that spring fromfalse 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 inhis innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbingunbelief, by getting into his loom and working away as usual; andbefore many hours were past, the minister and one of the deaconscame to him with the message from Sarah, that she held herengagement to him at an end. Silas received the message mutely, andthen turned away from the messengers to work at his loom again. Inlittle more than a month from that time, Sarah was married toWilliam Dane; and not long afterwards it was known to the brethrenin Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town.