Silas Marner
of money somewhere, and that he could buy up “bigger men” than himself.
But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and
his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner’s
inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every
fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude.
His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement,
the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in
this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow
religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of
distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least,
the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community. Marner
was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as
the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young
man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had
been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into
a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting
for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a
medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas
himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful
self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein.
Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and
though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the
absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward
trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was
seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he
might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the
form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a
creation; but Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many
honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his
sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of
inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some
acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation—a little store
of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest—but of late
years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer,
and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited
delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and
dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a
temptation.
Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older
than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that
it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and
Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too,
was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat
given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by
his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever
blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend’s mind he was
faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting
natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean
on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner’s
face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that
defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was
strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward
triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of
William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between
the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he
could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and
listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had
possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his
conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words “calling and election
sure” standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible. Such
colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose
unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering
forsaken in the twilight.
It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had
suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a
closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young
servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual
savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him
that Sarah did not object to William’s occasional presence in their
Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas’s
cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the
various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his
fellow-members, William’s suggestion alone jarred with the general
sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He
observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of
Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his friend 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 concerning him; and to this was
soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah’s manner towards
him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an
increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking
and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement;
but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had
been recognized in the prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off
without strict investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that
would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the
senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless
widower, he was 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, when
one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual
audible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had to
lift it to see the patient’s face distinctly. Examination convinced him
that the deacon was dead—had been dead some time, for the limbs were
rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, 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 to seek for help, and soon there were
several friends assembled in the house, the minister among them, while
Silas went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to know
the reason of his non-appearance. But at six o’clock, as he was
thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the
minister. They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church
members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons
the only reply was, “You will hear.” Nothing further was said until
Silas was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes
of those 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 then exhorted not to
hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife had 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 had removed that bag; and whose hand
could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For
some time Silas was mute with astonishment: then he said, “God will
clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money
being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three
pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these
six months.” At this William groaned, but the minister said, “The proof
is heavy against you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night
last past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for
William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness
from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he
had not 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 all seen me
under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the
body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search me and my dwelling,
for I have been nowhere else.”
The search was made, and it ended—in William Dane’s finding the
well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas’s
chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to
hide his sin any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach on him,
and said, “William, for nine years that we have gone in and out
together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear me.”
“Brother,” said William, “how do I know what you may have done in the
secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over you?”
Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over
his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed checked
again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made 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 other persons
present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to say that the
knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he only said, “I
am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear me.”
On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any
resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to
the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which
prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less
scandal to the community. But the members were bound to take other
measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and
drawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to those
who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which has gone on
in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on
his own innocence being certified by immediate divine interference, but
feeling that there was sorrow and mourning behind for him even
then—that his trust in man had been cruelly bruised. _The lots declared
that Silas Marner was guilty._ He was solemnly suspended from
church-membership, and called upon to render up 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 to cut
a strap for you. I don’t remember putting it in my pocket again. _You_
stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door.
But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that governs
the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against
the innocent.”
There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.