Silas Marner - nouveau livre

SILAS MARNER - 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 palIid undersized men, who bp the side of the brawny country-folk looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherds 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 roh of strong line6 spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entkeIy 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 peddler or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin aqd 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 haveprevented 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 over-wise 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 ind 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-weaversemigrants from the town into the country-were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and SILAS MARNER. 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 Silass 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, treadmill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing toadjust 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...