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.