The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to him, gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity of his distress: it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner was telling the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at once from the nature of his statements to the absence of any motive for making them falsely, but because, as Mr.Macey observed, "Folks as had the devil to back 'em were not likely to be so mushed" as poor Silas was.Rather, from the strange fact that the robber had left no traces, and had happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by mortal agents, when Silas would go away from home without locking his door, the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that his disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed, had been broken up, and that, in consequence, this ill turn had been done to Marner by somebody it was quite in vain to set the constable after.Why this preternatural felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a question which did not present itself.
"It isn't Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner," said the landlord."You mustn't be a-casting your eye at poor Jem.
There may be a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a hare or so, if anybody was bound to keep their eyes staring open, and niver to wink; but Jem's been a-sitting here drinking his can, like the decentest man i' the parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by your own account.""Aye, aye," said Mr.Macey; "let's have no accusing o' the innicent.That isn't the law.There must be folks to swear again'
a man before he can be ta'en up.Let's have no accusing o' the innicent, Master Marner."Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be awakened by these words.With a movement of compunction as new and strange to him as everything else within the last hour, he started from his chair and went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he wanted to assure himself of the expression in his face.
"I was wrong," he said--"yes, yes--I ought to have thought.
There's nothing to witness against you, Jem.Only you'd been into my house oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head.
I don't accuse you--I won't accuse anybody--only," he added, lifting up his hands to his head, and turning away with bewildered misery, "I try--I try to think where my guineas can be.""Aye, aye, they're gone where it's hot enough to melt 'em, Idoubt," said Mr.Macey.
"Tchuh!" said the farrier.And then he asked, with a cross-examining air, "How much money might there be in the bags, Master Marner?""Two hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve and sixpence, last night when I counted it," said Silas, seating himself again, with a groan.
"Pooh! why, they'd be none so heavy to carry.Some tramp's been in, that's all; and as for the no footmarks, and the bricks and the sand being all right--why, your eyes are pretty much like a insect's, Master Marner; they're obliged to look so close, you can't see much at a time.It's my opinion as, if I'd been you, or you'd been me--for it comes to the same thing--you wouldn't have thought you'd found everything as you left it.But what I vote is, as two of the sensiblest o' the company should go with you to Master Kench, the constable's--he's ill i' bed, I know that much--and get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for that's the law, and Idon't think anybody 'ull take upon him to contradick me there.It isn't much of a walk to Kench's; and then, if it's me as is deppity, I'll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your premises; and if anybody's got any fault to find with that, I'll thank him to stand up and say it out like a man."By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as one of the superlatively sensible men.
"Let us see how the night is, though," said the landlord, who also considered himself personally concerned in this proposition."Why, it rains heavy still," he said, returning from the door.
"Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain," said the farrier."For it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears as respectable men like us had a information laid before 'em and took no steps."The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take on himself the chill dignity of going to Kench's.But to the farrier's strong disgust, Mr.Macey now started an objection to his proposing himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his father, that no doctor could be a constable.
"And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cow-doctor--for a fly's a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly," concluded Mr.Macey, wondering a little at his own "'cuteness".
There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but contending that a doctor could be a constable if he liked--the law meant, he needn't be one if he didn't like.Mr.Macey thought this was nonsense, since the law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other folks.Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of other men not to like being constables, how came Mr.Dowlas to be so eager to act in that capacity?
"_I_ don't want to act the constable," said the farrier, driven into a corner by this merciless reasoning; "and there's no man can say it of me, if he'd tell the truth.But if there's to be any jealousy and en_vy_ing about going to Kench's in the rain, let them go as like it--you won't get me to go, I can tell you."By the landlord's intervention, however, the dispute was accommodated.Mr.Dowlas consented to go as a second person disinclined to act officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with some old coverings, turned out with his two companions into the rain again, thinking of the long night-hours before him, not as those do who long to rest, but as those who expect to "watch for the morning".
