Silas Marner
look so at everything he took into his hand—eyed all the while by the
wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of
his mother’s chair, and was peeping round from behind it.
“There’s letters pricked on ’em,” said Dolly. “I can’t read ’em myself,
and there’s nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they
mean; but they’ve a good meaning, for they’re the same as is on the
pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?”
Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.
“Oh, go, that’s naughty,” said his mother, mildly. “Well, whativer the
letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and it’s a stamp as has been in
our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used
to put it on the cakes, and I’ve allays put it on too; for if there’s
any good, we’ve need of it i’ this world.”
“It’s I. H. S.,” said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped
round the chair again.
“Well, to be sure, you can read ’em off,” said Dolly. “Ben’s read ’em
to me many and many a time, but they slip out o’ my mind again; the
more’s the pity, for they’re good letters, else they wouldn’t be in the
church; and so I prick ’em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though
sometimes they won’t hold, because o’ the rising—for, as I said, if
there’s any good to be got we’ve need of it i’ this world—that we have;
and I hope they’ll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it’s wi’ that
will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held better
nor common.”
Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no
possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made
itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than
before—“Thank you—thank you kindly.” But he laid down the cakes and
seated himself absently—drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit
towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly’s kindness,
could tend for him.
“Ah, if there’s good anywhere, we’ve need of it,” repeated Dolly, who
did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at Silas
pityingly as she went on. “But you didn’t hear the church-bells this
morning, Master Marner? I doubt you didn’t know it was Sunday. Living
so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and then, when your loom
makes a noise, you can’t hear the bells, more partic’lar now the frost
kills the sound.”
“Yes, I did; I heard ’em,” said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere
accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There had been no
bells in Lantern Yard.
“Dear heart!” said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. “But what a
pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself—if you
_didn’t_ go to church; for if you’d a roasting bit, it might be as you
couldn’t leave it, being a lone man. But there’s the bakehus, if you
could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and
then,—not every week, in course—I shouldn’t like to do that myself,—you
might carry your bit o’ dinner there, for it’s nothing but right to
have a bit o’ summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can’t
know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo’ Christmas-day, this
blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to
the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear
the anthim, and then take the sacramen,’ you’d be a deal the better,
and you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i’
Them as knows better nor we do, seein’ you’d ha’ done what it lies on
us all to do.”
Dolly’s exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for
her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would
have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of
gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before been closely
urged on the point of his absence from church, which had only been
thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct
and simple to evade Dolly’s appeal.
“Nay, nay,” he said, “I know nothing o’ church. I’ve never been to
church.”
“No!” said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking herself
of Silas’s advent from an unknown country, she said, “Could it ha’ been
as they’d no church where you was born?”
“Oh, yes,” said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of
leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. “There was churches—a
many—it was a big town. But I knew nothing of ’em—I went to chapel.”
Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of
inquiring further, lest “chapel” might mean some haunt of wickedness.
After a little thought, she said—
“Well, Master Marner, it’s niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and
if you’ve niver had no church, there’s no telling the good it’ll do
you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I’ve been
and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o’ God,
as Mr. Macey gives out—and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more
partic’lar on Sacramen’ Day; and if a bit o’ trouble comes, I feel as I
can put up wi’ it, for I’ve looked for help i’ the right quarter, and
gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last;
and if we’n done our part, it isn’t to be believed as Them as are above
us ’ull be worse nor we are, and come short o’ Their’n.”
Poor Dolly’s exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather
unmeaningly on Silas’s ears, for there was no word in it that could
rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension
was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of
Dolly’s, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He
remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly’s
speech which he fully understood—her recommendation that he should go
to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk beyond the brief
questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple
business, that words did not easily come to him without the urgency of
a distinct purpose.
But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver’s awful
presence, had advanced to his mother’s side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly’s signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a
little, and rubbed his head against his mother’s shoulder, but still
thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for
it.
“Oh, for shame, Aaron,” said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; “why, you don’t want cake again yet awhile. He’s wonderful
hearty,” she went on, with a little sigh—“that he is, God knows. He’s
my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must
allays hev him in our sight—that we must.”
She stroked Aaron’s brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a “pictur of a child”. But Marner, on the other side
of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round,
with two dark spots in it.
“And he’s got a voice like a bird—you wouldn’t think,” Dolly went on;
“he can sing a Christmas carril as his father’s taught him; and I take
it for a token as he’ll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so
quick. Come, Aaron, stan’ up and sing the carril to Master Marner,
come.”
Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother’s shoulder.
“Oh, that’s naughty,” said Dolly, gently. “Stan’ up, when mother tells
you, and let me hold the cake till you’ve done.”
Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under
protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness,
consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and
then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious
for the “carril,” he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted,
and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as
far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head
untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody
that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer:
“God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas-day.”
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.
“That’s Christmas music,” she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. “There’s no other music equil to the
Christmas music—‘Hark the erol angils sing.’ And you may judge what it
is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you
can’t help thinking you’ve got to a better place a’ready—for I wouldn’t
speak ill o’ this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows best—but
what wi’ the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the
hard dying, as I’ve seen times and times, one’s thankful to hear of a
better. The boy sings pretty, don’t he, Master Marner?”
“Yes,” said Silas, absently, “very pretty.”
The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of the
effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was
grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a
bit more cake.
“Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner,” said Dolly, holding down Aaron’s
willing hands. “We must be going home now. And so I wish you good-bye,
Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in your inside, as you
can’t fend for yourself, I’ll come and clean up for you, and get you a
bit o’ victual, and willing. But I beg and pray of you to leave off
weaving of a Sunday, for it’s bad for soul and body—and the money as
comes i’ that way ’ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, if it
doesn’t fly away, nobody knows where, like the white frost. And you’ll
excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I wish you
well—I do. Make your bow, Aaron.”
Silas said “Good-bye, and thank you kindly,” as he opened the door for
Dolly, but he couldn’t help feeling relieved when she was gone—relieved
that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her simple view of life
and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a
report of unknown objects, which his imagination could not fashion. The
fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been
unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken rivulet, with only this
difference, that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it
wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.
And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and Dolly
Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness, eating his meat
in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a neighbourly
present. In the morning he looked out on the black frost that seemed to
press cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half-icy red pool
shivered under the bitter wind; but towards evening the snow began to
fall, and curtained from him even that dreary outlook, shutting him
close up with his narrow grief. And he sat in his robbed home through
the livelong evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock his
door, pressing his head between his hands and moaning, till the cold
grasped him and told him that his fire was grey.
Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas Marner
who had once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted in an
unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.
But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was
fuller than all through the rest of the year, with red faces among the
abundant dark-green boughs—faces prepared for a longer service than
usual by an odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those green boughs, the