Silas Marner
growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.
He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and
then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his thoughts
had come round again to the sudden chasm—to the empty evening-time. And
all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he
leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his head with his hands,
and moaned very low—not as one who seeks to be heard.
And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Marner had always created in his neighbours was partly dissipated by
the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a man
who had more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what was
worse, had not the inclination to use that cunning in a neighbourly
way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to keep his
own. He was generally spoken of as a “poor mushed creatur”; and that
avoidance of his neighbours, which had before been referred to his
ill-will and to a probable addiction to worse company, was now
considered mere craziness.
This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The odour
of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the season when
superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in
well-to-do families; and Silas’s misfortune had brought him uppermost
in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs. Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too,
while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from
him because he thought too much of it and never came to church,
enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs’ pettitoes, well calculated
to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character.
Neighbours who had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a
disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his misfortune at some
length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the
trouble of calling at his cottage and getting him to repeat all the
details on the very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by
saying, “Well, Master Marner, you’re no worse off nor other poor folks,
after all; and if you was to be crippled, the parish ’ud give you a
’lowance.”
I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours
with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of
ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and
pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language
is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was a
fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and
bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and
hypocritical.
Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas know
that recent events had given him the advantage of standing more
favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed
lightly, opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated
himself and adjusted his thumbs—
“Come, Master Marner, why, you’ve no call to sit a-moaning. You’re a
deal better off to ha’ lost your money, nor to ha’ kep it by foul
means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as you
were no better nor you should be; you were younger a deal than what you
are now; but you were allays a staring, white-faced creatur, partly
like a bald-faced calf, as I may say. But there’s no knowing: it isn’t
every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry’s had the making of—I mean,
speaking o’ toads and such; for they’re often harmless, like, and
useful against varmin. And it’s pretty much the same wi’ you, as fur as
I can see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing, if
you brought that sort o’ knowledge from distant parts, you might ha’
been a bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn’t well come by, why,
you might ha’ made up for it by coming to church reg’lar; for, as for
the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I’ve been at the christening of
’em again and again, and they took the water just as well. And that’s
reasonable; for if Old Harry’s a mind to do a bit o’ kindness for a
holiday, like, who’s got anything against it? That’s my thinking; and
I’ve been clerk o’ this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there’s no cussing o’ folks
as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he
will. And so, Master Marner, as I was saying—for there’s windings i’
things as they may carry you to the fur end o’ the prayer-book afore
you get back to ’em—my advice is, as you keep up your sperrits; for as
for thinking you’re a deep un, and ha’ got more inside you nor ’ull
bear daylight, I’m not o’ that opinion at all, and so I tell the
neighbours. For, says I, you talk o’ Master Marner making out a
tale—why, it’s nonsense, that is: it ’ud take a ’cute man to make a
tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a rabbit.”
During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his
previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, and pressing his
hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been
listened to, paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply, but
Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old man meant to be
good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine
falls on the wretched—he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was
very far off him.
“Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?” said Mr.
Macey at last, with a slight accent of impatience.
“Oh,” said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, “I thank
you—thank you—kindly.”
“Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would,” said Mr. Macey; “and my
advice is—have you got a Sunday suit?”
“No,” said Marner.
“I doubted it was so,” said Mr. Macey. “Now, let me advise you to get a
Sunday suit: there’s Tookey, he’s a poor creatur, but he’s got my
tailoring business, and some o’ my money in it, and he shall make a
suit at a low price, and give you trust, and then you can come to
church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you’ve never heared me say
‘Amen’ since you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no
time, for it’ll be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself, for I
mayn’t be equil to stand i’ the desk at all, come another winter.” Here
Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his hearer;
but not observing any, he went on. “And as for the money for the suit
o’ clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound a-week at your weaving,
Master Marner, and you’re a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed.
Why, you couldn’t ha’ been five-and-twenty when you come into these
parts, eh?”
Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, “I don’t know; I can’t rightly say—it’s a long while
since.”
After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr.
Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner’s
head was “all of a muddle,” and that it was to be doubted if he ever
knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many
a dog.
Another of Silas’s comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright’s wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in
the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in
the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with
Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours—a wish to be
better than the “common run,” that would have implied a reflection on
those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and
had an equal right to the burying-service. At the same time, it was
understood to be requisite for all who were not household servants, or
young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire
Cass himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
“good livers” went to church with greater, though still with moderate,
frequency.
Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw
a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which
it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the
vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition
of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was
to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and
pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always first thought of
in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when leeches
were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly
nurse. She was a “comfortable woman”—good-looking, fresh-complexioned,
having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a
sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never
whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and
inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a
funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben
Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with
Dolly; but she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as
everything else, considering that “men _would_ be so,” and viewing the
stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make
naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn
strongly towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a
sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with
her, and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small
lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron,
an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which
looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous
curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed
weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much
increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the
mysterious sound of the loom.
“Ah, it is as I thought,” said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly.
They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come
to the door he showed no impatience, as he would once have done, at a
visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his heart had
been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket
was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his
prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and
half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from
without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of
his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.
He opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning
her greeting than by moving the armchair a few inches as a sign that
she was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed
the white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her gravest
way—
“I’d a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out
better nor common, and I’d ha’ asked you to accept some, if you’d
thought well. I don’t eat such things myself, for a bit o’ bread’s what
I like from one year’s end to the other; but men’s stomichs are made so
comical, they want a change—they do, I know, God help ’em.”
Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her
kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to