How could they have spent the money in their own village
without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to 'run away'- a
course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.
So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his
guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening
itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and
satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had
reduced itself to the mere functions of weaving and hoarding,
without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions
tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser
men, when they have been cut off from faith and love- only, instead of
a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research,
some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's
face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant
mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced
the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has
no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to look
trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to see only
one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which they
hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow, that, though
he was not yet forty, the children always called him 'Old Master
Marner'.
Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened,
which showed that the sap of affection was not all gone.
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