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119 pages

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. "

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819927648
Langue	English

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SILAS MARNER
The Weaver of Raveloe
by
George Eliot
(Mary Anne Evans)
1861
"A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."
— WORDSWORTH.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
PART TWO
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CONCLUSION
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busilyin the farmhouses— and even great ladies, clothed in silk andthread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak— theremight be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in thebosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the sideof the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of adisinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one ofthese alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against theearly winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavybag? — and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without thatmysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reasonto believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else thelong rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quitesure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, couldbe carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In thatfar-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thingthat was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasionalmerely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No oneknew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and howwas a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody whoknew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the worldoutside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness andmystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was aconception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came backwith the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts,hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, whichwould have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensiveconduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime;especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed anyskill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use ofthat difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other artunfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk,born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise orclever— at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs ofthe weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of anykind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of thenature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that thosescattered linen-weavers— emigrants from the town into the country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, andusually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state ofloneliness.
In the early years of this century, such alinen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stonecottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village ofRaveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. Thequestionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerfultrotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of theflail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, whowould often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in atthe window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe atthe mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornfulsuperiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises,along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. Butsometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust anirregularity in his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels,and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill thathe would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix onthem a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legsin terror. For how was it possible to believe that those largebrown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really sawnothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not ratherthat their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wrymouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps,heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could curefolks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly,that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might saveyou the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of theold demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligentlistener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind withdifficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowyconception of power that by much persuasion can be induced torefrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by thesense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always beenpressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toilhas never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. Tothem pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilitiesthan gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren ofthe images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown byrecollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. “Is thereanything you can fancy that you would like to eat? ” I once said toan old labouring man, who was in his last illness, and who hadrefused all the food his wife had offered him. “No, ” he answered,“I've never been used to nothing but common victual, and I can'teat that. ” Experience had bred no fancies in him that could raisethe phantasm of appetite.
And Raveloe was a village where many of the oldechoes lingered, undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one ofthose barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization—inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on thecontrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleasedto call Merry England, and held farms which, speaking from aspiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable tithes. But it wasnestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour's journey onhorseback from any turnpike, where it was never reached by thevibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was animportant-looking village, with a fine old church and largechurchyard in the heart of it, and two or three largebrick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards andornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road, and liftingmore imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among thetrees on the other side of the churchyard:— a village which showedat once the summits of its social life, and told the practised eyethat there was no great park and manor-house in the vicinity, butthat there were several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badlyquite at their ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming,in those war times, to live in a rollicking fashion, and keep ajolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.
It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had firstcome to Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man, withprominent short-sighted brown eyes, whose appearance would have hadnothing strange for people of average culture and experience, butfor the villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysteriouspeculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of hisoccupation, and his advent from an unknown region called“North'ard”. So had his way of life:— he invited no comer to stepacross his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village todrink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheelwright's: hesought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or inorder to supply himself with necessaries; and it was soon clear tothe Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accepthim against her will— quite as if he had heard them declare thatthey would never marry a dead man come to life again. This view ofMarner's personality was not without another ground than his paleface and unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averredthat one evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marnerleaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead ofresting the bag on the stile as a man in his senses would havedone; and that, on coming up to him, he saw that Marner's eyes wereset like a dead man's, and he spoke to him, and shook him, and hislimbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they'd beenmade of iron; but just as he had made up his mind that the weaverwas dead, he came all right again, like, as you might say, in thewinking of an eye, and said “Good-night”, and walked off. All thisJem swore he had seen, more by token that it was the very day hehad been mole-catching on Squire Cass's land, down by the oldsaw-pit. Some said Marner must have been in a “fit”, a word whichseemed to explain things otherwise incredible; but theargumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook his head, andasked if anybody was ever known to go off in a fit and not falldown. A fit was a stroke, wasn't it? and it was in the nature of astroke to partly take away the use of a man's limbs and throw himon the parish, if he'd got no children to look to. No, no; it wasno stroke that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horsebetween 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 fromhis body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest andback; and that was how folks got over-wise, for they went to schoolin this shell-less state to those who could teach them more thantheir neighbours could learn with their five senses and the parson.And where did Master Marner get his knowledge of herbs