CHAPTER I In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses -- and even great ladies , clothed in silk and thread-lace , had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak -- there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes , or deep in the bosom of the hills , certain pallid undersized men , who , by the side of the brawny country-folk , looked like the remnants of a disinherited race .
The shepherd 's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland , dark against the early winter sunset ; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag ?
-- and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden .
The shepherd himself , though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread , or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread , was not quite sure that this trade of weaving , indispensable though it was , could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One .
In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted , or even intermittent and occasional merely , like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder .
No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin ; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother ?
To the peasants of old times , the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery : to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring ; and even a settler , if he came from distant parts , hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust , which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime ; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge , or showed any skill in handicraft .
All cleverness , whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue , or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers , was in itself suspicious : honest folk , born and bred in a visible manner , were mostly not overwise or clever -- at least , not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather ; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden , that they partook of the nature of conjuring .
In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers -- emigrants from the town into the country -- were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours , and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness .
In the early years of this century , such a linen-weaver , named Silas Marner , worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe , and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit .
The questionable sound of Silas 's loom , so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine , or the simpler rhythm of the flail , had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys , who would often leave off their nutting or birds ' - nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage , counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom , by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority , drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises , along with the bent , tread-mill attitude of the weaver .
But sometimes it happened that Marner , pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread , became aware of the small scoundrels , and , though chary of his time , he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom , and , opening the door , would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror .
For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner 's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them , and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp , or rickets , or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear ?
They had , perhaps , heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks ' rheumatism if he had a mind , and add , still more darkly , that if you could only speak the devil fair enough , he might save you the cost of the doctor .
Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry ; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity .
A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm , is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants , and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith .
To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment : their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope , but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear .
" Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat ? "
I once said to an old labouring man , who was in his last illness , and who had refused all the food his wife had offered him .
" No , " he answered , " I 've never been used to nothing but common victual , and I ca n't eat that . "
Experience had bred no fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of appetite .
And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered , undrowned by new voices .
Not that it was one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization -- inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds : on the contrary , it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England , and held farms which , speaking from a spiritual point of view , paid highly-desirable tithes .
But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow , quite an hour 's journey on horseback from any turnpike , where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn , or of public opinion .
It was an important-looking village , with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it , and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads , with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks , standing close upon the road , and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory , which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard : -- a village which showed at once the summits of its social life , and told the practised eye that there was no great park and manor-house in the vicinity , but that there were several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease , drawing enough money from their bad farming , in those war times , to live in a rollicking fashion , and keep a jolly Christmas , Whitsun , and Easter tide .
It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe ; he was then simply a pallid young man , with prominent short-sighted brown eyes , whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of average culture and experience , but for the villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation , and his advent from an unknown region called " North ' ard " .
So had his way of life : -- he invited no comer to step across his door-sill , and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow , or to gossip at the wheelwright 's : he sought no man or woman , save for the purposes of his calling , or in order to supply himself with necessaries ; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him against her will -- quite as if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a dead man come to life again .
This view of Marner 's personality was not without another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes ; for Jem Rodney , the mole-catcher , averred that one evening as he was returning homeward , he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back , instead of resting the bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done ; and that , on coming up to him , he saw that Marner 's eyes were set like a dead man 's , and he spoke to him , and shook him , and his limbs were stiff , and his hands clutched the bag as if they 'd been made of iron ; but just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead , he came all right again , like , as you might say , in the winking of an eye , and said " Good-night " , and walked off .
All this Jem swore he had seen , more by token that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on Squire Cass 's land , down by the old saw-pit .
Some said Marner must have been in a " fit " , a word which seemed to explain things otherwise incredible ; but the argumentative Mr. Macey , clerk of the parish , shook his head , and asked if anybody was ever known to go off in a fit and not fall down .
A fit was a stroke , was n't it ?
and it was in the nature of a stroke to partly take away the use of a man 's limbs and throw him on the parish , if he 'd got no children to look to .
No , no ; it was no stroke that would let a man stand on his legs , like a horse between the shafts , and then walk off as soon as you can say " Gee ! "
But there might be such a thing as a man 's soul being loose from his body , and going out and in , like a bird out of its nest and back ; and that was how folks got over-wise , for they went to school in this shell-less state to those who could teach them more than their neighbours could learn with their five senses and the parson .
And where did Master Marner get his knowledge of herbs from -- and charms too , if he liked to give them away ?
Jem Rodney 's story was no more than what might have been expected by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates , and made her sleep like a baby , when her heart had been beating enough to burst her body , for two months and more , while she had been under the doctor 's care .
He might cure more folks if he would ; but he was worth speaking fair , if it was only to keep him from doing you a mischief .