1.4. Chapter 4
DUNSTAN CASS, setting off in the raw morning, at the
judiciously quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to
cover on his hunter, had to take his way along the lane
which, at its farther extremity, passed by the piece of
unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where stood the
cottage, once a stonecutter's shed, now for fifteen years
inhabited by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary
at this season, with the moist trodden clay about it, and
the red, muddy water high up in the deserted quarry.
That was Dunstan's first thought as he approached it; the
second was that the old fool of a weaver, whose loom he
heard rattling already, had a great deal of money hidden
somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had
often heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never thought
of suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade
the old fellow into lending the money on the excellent
security of the young Squire's prospects? The resource
occurred to him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as
Marner's hoard was likely to be large enough to leave
Godfrey a handsome surplus beyond his immediate needs,
and enable him to accommodate his faithful brother, that
he had almost turned the horse's head toward home again.
Godfrey would be ready enough to accept the suggestion:
he would snatch eagerly at a plan that might save him
from parting with Wildfire. But when Dunstan's meditation
reached this point, the inclination to go on grew
strong and prevailed. He didn't want to give Godfrey
that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be
vexed. Moreover, Dunstan enjoyed the self-important
consciousness of having a horse to sell, and the opportunity
of driving a bargain, swaggering, and possibly
taking somebody in. He might have all the satisfaction
attendant on selling his brother's horse, and not the less
have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow
Marner's money. So he rode on to cover.
Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite
sure they would be — he was such a lucky fellow.
"Heyday!" said Bryce, who had long had his eye on
Wildfire, "you're on your brother's horse to-day: how's
that?"
"Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose
delight in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not
to be diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would
not believe him — "Wildfire's mine now."
"What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned
hack of yours?" said Bryce, quite aware that he should
get another lie in answer.
"Oh, there was a little account between us," said
Dunsey, carelessly, "and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated
him by taking the horse, though it was against
my will, for I'd got an itch for a mare o' Jortin's — as rare
a bit o' blood as ever you threw your leg across. But I
shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him, though I'd a bid of
a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from a man
over at Flitton — he's buying for Lord Cromleck — a fellow
with a cast in his eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean
to stick to Wildfire: I shan't get a better at a fence in a
hurry. The mare's got more blood, but she's a bit too weak
in the hind-quarters."
Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the
horse, and Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing
is only one of many human transactions carried on in this
ingenious manner); and they both considered that the
bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied ironically —
"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him;
for I never heard of a man who didn't want to sell his
horse getting a bid of half as much again as the horse
was worth. You'll be lucky if you get a hundred."
Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more
complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by
Bryce for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery
of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables.
It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to
give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley,
and having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry
him home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination
for a run, encouraged by confidence in his luck,
and by a draught of brandy from his pocket-pistol at the
conclusion of the bargain was not easy to overcome, especially
with a horse under him that would take the fences to
the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one
fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favored person, which was quite
unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire,
unconscious of his price, turned on his flank and painfully
panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time
before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had
muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had
thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory,
and under this exasperation had taken the fences more
blindly. He would soon have been up with the hounds again,
when the fatal accident happened; and hence he was between
eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about
what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who
were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of
road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature
it was to care more for immediate annoyances than for
remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs and
saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction
at the absence of witnesses to a position which
no swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself,
after his shake, with a little brandy and much swearing,
he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his
right hand, through which it occurred to him that he
could make his way to Batherley without danger of
encountering any member of the hunt. His first intention
was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith,
for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand and
along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question
to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He
did not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey,
for he had to offer him at the same time the resource of
Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always
did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he
himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he
wouldn't kick long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry
Godfrey into anything. The idea of Marner's money kept
growing in vividness, now the want of it had become
immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance
with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and
to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood
unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at
Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual
visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating,
awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three
small coins his forefinger encountered there, were of too
pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment of
which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do
any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according
to the direction in which the run had brought him, he
was not so very much farther from home than he was from
Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness
of head, was only led to this conclusion by the gradual
perception that there were other reasons for choosing
the unprecedented course of walking home. It was now
nearly four o'clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner
he got into the road the better. He remembered having
crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a little while
before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat, twisting
the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the
handle, and rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was not at all
taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was
undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which
somehow and at some time he should be able to dress up
and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the
Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is
reduced to so exceptional mode of locomotion as walking,
a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a too
bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position;
and Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering
mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was
Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without
leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one
could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name
Godfrey
Cass was cut in deep letters on that gold handle —
they could only see that it was a very handsome whip.
Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some
acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure,
for mist is no screen when people get close to each other;
but when he at last found himself in the well-known
Raveloe lanes without having met a soul, he silently
remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But
now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more
of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which
his feet were liable to slip — hid everything, so that he had
to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low
bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he
thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he
should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He
found it out, however, by another circumstance which he
had not expected — namely, by certain gleams of light,
which he presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's
cottage. That cottage and the money hidden within it
had been in his mind continually during his walk, and he
had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting the
weaver to part with the immediate possession of his money
for the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if
there must be a little frightening added to the cajolery,
for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough
to afford him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages
of interest; and as for security, he regarded it
vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him
believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation
on the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be
sure to hand over to his more daring and cunning brother:
Dunstan had made up his mind to that; and by the time
he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of Marner's
shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had
become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as
quite a natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith.
There might be several conveniences attending this course:
the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and Dunstan was
tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly three-quarters
of a mile from home, and the lane was becoming unpleasantly
slippery, for the mist was passing into rain.
He turned up the bank, not without some fear lest he
might miss the right way, since he was not certain whether
the light were in front or on the side of the cottage. But
he felt the ground before him cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked
loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would
be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement
in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the
weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light?
That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan
knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a
reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending
to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and
down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to
his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and
he found himself in front of a bright fire which lit up
every corner of the cottage — the bed, the loom, the three
chairs, and the table — and showed him that Marner was
not there.
Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting
to Dunsey than the bright fire on the brick hearth: he
walked in and seated himself by it at once. There was
something in front of the fire, too, that would have
been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a different
stage of cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended
from the kettle-hanger by a string passed through
a large door-key, in a way known to primitive house-keepers unpossessed of jacks. But the pork had been
hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger, apparently
to prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly during
the owner's absence. The old staring simpleton had hot
meat for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People had
always said he lived on mouldy bread, on purpose to
check his appetite. But where could he be at this time,
and on such an evening, leaving his supper in this stage
of preparation, and his door unfastened? Dunstan's own
recent difficulty in making his way suggested to him that
the weaver had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch
in fuel, or for some such brief purpose, and had slipped
into the Stone-pit. That was an interesting idea to Dunstan,
carrying consequences of entire novelty. If the
weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? Who
would know where his money was hidden? Who would
know that anybody had come to take it away? He went no
farther into the subtleties of evidence: the pressing question,
"Where is the money?" now took such entire possession
of him as to make him quite forget that the
weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once
arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely
able to retain the impression that the notion from which
the inference started was purely problematic. And Dunstan's
mind was as dull as the mind of a possible felon
usually is. There were only three hiding-places where
he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the
thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage
had no thatch; and Dunstan's first act, after a train
of thought made rapid by the stimulus of cupidity,
was to go up to the bed; but while he did so, his eyes
traveled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks, distinct
in the fire-light, were discernible under the sprinkling
of sand. But not everywhere; for there was one spot,
and one only, which was quite covered with sand, and
sand showing the marks of fingers, which had apparently
been careful to spread it over a given space. It was
near the treadles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan
darted to that spot, swept away the sand with his whip,
and, inserting the thin end of the hook between the
bricks, found that they were loose. In haste he lifted
up two bricks, and saw what he had no doubt was the
object of his search; for what could there be but money
in those two leathern bags? And, from their weight,
they must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt round the
hole, to be certain that it held no more; then hastily replaced
the bricks, and spread the sand over them. Hardly
more than five minutes had passed since he entered the
cottage, but it seemed to Dunstan like a long while; and
though he was without any distinct recognition of the possibility
that Marner might be alive, and might re-enter the
cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying
hold on him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his
hand. He would hasten out into the darkness, and then
consider what he should do with the bags. He closed the
door behind him immediately, that he might shut in the
stream of light. A few steps would be enough to carry
him beyond betrayal by the gleams from the shutter-chinks and the latch-hole. The rain and darkness had got
thicker, and he was glad of it; though it was awkward
walking with both hands filled, so that it was as much as
he could do to grasp his whip along with one of the bags.
But when he had gone a yard or two, he might take his
time. So he stepped forward into the darkness.