Silas Marner | Page 5

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, wasn'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.
It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for protecting
him from the persecution that his singularities might have drawn upon
him, but still more to the fact that, the old linen-weaver in the
neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his handicraft made him a
highly welcome settler to the richer housewives of the district, and even
to the more provident cottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the
year's end. Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any
repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a deficiency in
the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for them. And the years had
rolled on without producing any change in the impressions of the
neighbours concerning Marner, except the change from novelty to habit.
At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things
about Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite so
often, but they believed them much more strongly when they did say
them. There was only one important addition which the years had
brought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight 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