Chapter V

by George Eliot

　　When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner wasnot more than a hundred yards away from it, plodding along from thevillage with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, andwith a horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mindwas at ease, free from the presentiment of change. The sense ofsecurity more frequently springs from habit than from conviction,and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in theconditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapseof time during which a given event has not happened, is, in thislogic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event shouldnever happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the addedcondition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you thathe has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as areason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof isbeginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the older a mangets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believingconception of his own death. This influence of habit wasnecessarily 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 inhim the idea of the unexpected and the changeful; and it explainssimply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left hishouse and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas wasthinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because itwould be hot and savoury; and secondly, because it would cost himnothing. For the little bit of pork was a present from thatexcellent housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to whom he had thisday carried home a handsome piece of linen; and it was only onoccasion of a present like this, that Silas indulged himself withroast-meat. Supper was his favourite meal, because it came at histime of revelry, when his heart warmed over his gold; whenever hehad roast-meat, he always chose to have it for supper. But thisevening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast roundhis bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule over hisdoor-key, passed it through the handle, and made it fast on thehanger, than he remembered that a piece of very fine twine wasindispensable to his "setting up" a new piece of work in his loomearly in the morning. It had slipped his memory, because, in comingfrom Mr. Lammeter's, he had not had to pass through the village; butto lose time by going on errands in the morning was out of thequestion. It was a nasty fog to turn out into, but there werethings Silas loved better than his own comfort; so, drawing his porkto the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lanternand his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, wouldhave been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked hisdoor without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding hissupper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. Whatthief 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 nevercome through all the fifteen years before? These questions were notdistinctly present in Silas's mind; they merely serve to representthe 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 ashe had left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase ofheat. He trod about the floor while putting by his lantern andthrowing aside his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks ofDunstan'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 theagreeable business of tending the meat and warming himself at thesame time.Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his paleface, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps haveunderstood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicionwith which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet fewmen could be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simplesoul, not even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget anyvice directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite putout, and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all theforce of his nature to his work and his money; and like all objectsto which a man devotes himself, they had fashioned him intocorrespondence with themselves. His loom, as he wrought in itwithout ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him, and confirmed moreand more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response. Hisgold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power ofloving together into a hard isolation like its own.As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while towait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it wouldbe pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate hisunwonted feast. For joy is the best of wine, and Silas's guineaswere a golden wine of that sort.He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near hisloom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removedthe bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leapviolently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come atonce--only terror, and the eager effort to put an end to theterror. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying tothink it possible that his eyes had deceived him; then he held thecandle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more andmore. At last he shook so violently that he let fall the candle,and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that hemight think. Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a suddenresolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man falling intodark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones; andSilas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off themoment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his bedover, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick ovenwhere he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to besearched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round thehole. There was no untried refuge left for a moment's shelter fromthe terrible truth.Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with theprostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was thatexpectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images,which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of beingdissipated by the external fact. Silas got up from his kneestrembling, and looked round at the table: didn't the gold lie thereafter all? The table was bare. Then he turned and looked behindhim--looked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his browneyes after some possible appearance of the bags where he had alreadysought 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 wildringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, hestood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the firstmaddening pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towardshis loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctivelyseeking this as the strongest assurance of reality.And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shockof certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself,and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught andmade to restore the gold. The thought brought some new strengthwith it, and he started from his loom to the door. As he opened itthe 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 thedoor had been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad onhis return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he said tohimself, everything was the same as when he had left it. The sandand bricks looked as if they had not been moved. Was it a thiefwho had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that no hands couldreach, which had delighted in making him a second time desolate? Heshrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind with strugglingeffort on the robber with hands, who could be reached by hands. Histhoughts glanced at all the neighbours who had made any remarks, orasked any questions which he might now regard as a ground ofsuspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwisedisreputable: he had often met Marner in his journeys across thefields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver's money;nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when hecalled to light his pipe, instead of going about his business. JemRodney was the man--there was ease in the thought. Jem could befound and made to restore the money: Marner did not want to punishhim, but only to get back his gold which had gone from him, and lefthis soul like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert. The robbermust be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal authority wereconfused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and thegreat people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, andSquire Cass--would make Jem Rodney, or somebody else, deliver upthe stolen money. He rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus ofthis hope, forgetting to cover his head, not caring to fasten hisdoor; for he felt as if he had nothing left to lose. He ranswiftly, till want of breath compelled him to slacken his pace as hewas entering the village at the turning close to the Rainbow.The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort forrich and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores oflinen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers anddignities of Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his losspublic. He lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar orkitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty customers of thehouse were in the habit of assembling, the parlour on the left beingreserved for the more select society in which Squire Cass frequentlyenjoyed the double pleasure of conviviality and condescension. Butthe parlour was dark to-night, the chief personages who ornamentedits circle being all at Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance, as GodfreyCass was. And in consequence of this, the party on thehigh-screened seats in the kitchen was more numerous than usual;several personages, who would otherwise have been admitted into theparlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and condescensionfor their betters, being content this evening to vary theirenjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they couldthemselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.