第19章

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed the bricks.The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once--only terror, and the eager effort to put an end to the terror.He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more and more.At last he shook so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that he might think.Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off the moment of despair.He searched in every corner, he turned his bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven where he laid his sticks.When there was no other place to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole.There was no untried refuge left for a moment's shelter from the terrible truth.

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the external fact.Silas got up from his knees trembling, and looked round at the table: didn't the gold lie there after all? The table was bare.Then he turned and looked behind him--looked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible appearance of the bags where he had already sought them in vain.He could see every object in his cottage--and his gold was not there.

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation.For a few moments after, he stood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening pressure of the truth.He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking this as the strongest assurance of reality.

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock of certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to restore the gold.The thought brought some new strength with it, and he started from his loom to the door.As he opened it the rain beat in upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily.

There were no footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps?

When had the thief come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the door had been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on his return by daylight.And in the evening, too, he said to himself, everything was the same as when he had left it.The sand and bricks looked as if they had not been moved._Was_ it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that no hands could reach, which had delighted in making him a second time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind with struggling effort on the robber with hands, who could be reached by hands.His thoughts glanced at all the neighbours who had made any remarks, or asked any questions which he might now regard as a ground of suspicion.There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise disreputable: he had often met Marner in his journeys across the fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver's money;nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when he called to light his pipe, instead of going about his business.Jem Rodney was the man--there was ease in the thought.Jem could be found and made to restore the money: Marner did not want to punish him, but only to get back his gold which had gone from him, and left his soul like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert.The robber must be laid hold of.Marner's ideas of legal authority were confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and the great people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, and Squire Cass--would make Jem Rodney, or somebody else, deliver up the stolen money.He rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus of this hope, forgetting to cover his head, not caring to fasten his door; for he felt as if he had nothing left to lose.He ran swiftly, till want of breath compelled him to slacken his pace as he was entering the village at the turning close to the Rainbow.

The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of linen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss public.He lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or kitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty customers of the house were in the habit of assembling, the parlour on the left being reserved for the more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the double pleasure of conviviality and condescension.But the parlour was dark to-night, the chief personages who ornamented its circle being all at Mrs.Osgood's birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was.And in consequence of this, the party on the high-screened seats in the kitchen was more numerous than usual;several personages, who would otherwise have been admitted into the parlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and condescension for their betters, being content this evening to vary their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they could themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.