Adam Bede
lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. “If I’d
known Vixen was a woman, I’d never have held the boys from drowning
her; but when I’d got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her.
And now you see what she’s brought me to—the sly, hypocritical
wench”—Bartle spoke these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and
looked at Vixen, who poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards
him with a keen sense of opprobrium—“and contrived to be brought to bed
on a Sunday at church-time. I’ve wished again and again I’d been a
bloody minded man, that I could have strangled the mother and the brats
with one cord.”
“I’m glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church,” said Adam. “I
was afraid you must be ill for the first time i’ your life. And I was
particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday.”
“Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why,” said Bartle kindly, going up to
Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
with his own head. “You’ve had a rough bit o’ road to get over since I
saw you—a rough bit o’ road. But I’m in hopes there are better times
coming for you. I’ve got some news to tell you. But I must get my
supper first, for I’m hungry, I’m hungry. Sit down, sit down.”
Bartle went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times to
eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the round
deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
chimney-corner, with Vixen’s hamper on one side of it and a
window-shelf with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table
was as clean as if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered
apron; so was the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table,
and chairs, which in these days would be bought at a high price in
aristocratic houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid
cupids, Bartle had got them for an old song, were as free from dust as
things could be at the end of a summer’s day.
“Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We’ll not talk about business
till we’ve had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
But,” said Bartle, rising from his chair again, “I must give Vixen her
supper too, confound her! Though she’ll do nothing with it but nourish
those unnecessary babbies. That’s the way with these women—they’ve got
no head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or
to brats.”
He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once
fixed her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the
utmost dispatch.
“I’ve had my supper, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, “so I’ll look on while you
eat yours. I’ve been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their
supper betimes, you know: they don’t keep your late hours.”
“I know little about their hours,” said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread
and not shrinking from the crust. “It’s a house I seldom go into,
though I’m fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser’s a good fellow. There’s
too many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women’s voices;
they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak—always either a-buzz or
a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o’ the talk like a fife; and as
for the young lasses, I’d as soon look at water-grubs. I know what
they’ll turn to—stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my
boy: it’s been drawn for you—it’s been drawn for you.”
“Nay, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, who took his old friend’s whim more
seriously than usual to-night, “don’t be so hard on the creaturs God
has made to be companions for us. A working-man ’ud be badly off
without a wife to see to th’ house and the victual, and make things
clean and comfortable.”
“Nonsense! It’s the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed,
to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It’s a story got up because
the women are there and something must be found for ’em to do. I tell
you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but
what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children,
and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha’ been left
to the men—it had better ha’ been left to the men. I tell you, a woman
’ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that
the hotter th’ oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman ’ull make
your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring
the proportion between the meal and the milk—a little more or less,
she’ll think, doesn’t signify. The porridge _will_ be awk’ard now and
then: if it’s wrong, it’s summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the
milk, or it’s summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and
there’s no difference between one batch and another from year’s end to
year’s end; but if I’d got any other woman besides Vixen in the house,
I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread
turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any
other house on the Common, though the half of ’em swarm with women.
Will Baker’s lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much
cleaning done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman ’ud get done in
three, and all the while be sending buckets o’ water after your ankles,
and let the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o’ the floor
half the day for you to break your shins against ’em. Don’t tell me
about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don’t
say but He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise—there
was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with
and make mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as
she’d an opportunity. But it’s an impious, unscriptural opinion to say
a woman’s a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and
wasps, and foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they’re only the
evils that belong to this state o’ probation, which it’s lawful for a
man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of
’em for ever in another—hoping to get quit of ’em for ever in another.”
Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective
that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the
purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the
raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that
Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark
vaguely.
“Quiet, Vixen!” snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. “You’re like
the rest o’ the women—always putting in _your_ word before you know
why.”
Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master
continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to
interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had
had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in
this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle’s past life as to
know whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On
that point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived
previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and
artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their
only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this
subject, Bartle always replied, “Oh, I’ve seen many places—I’ve been a
deal in the south,” and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of
asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in “the south.”
“Now then, my boy,” said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his
second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, “now then, we’ll have a little
talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?”
“No,” said Adam, “not as I remember.”
“Ah, they’ll keep it close, they’ll keep it close, I daresay. But I
found it out by chance; and it’s news that may concern you, Adam, else
I’m a man that don’t know a superficial square foot from a solid.”
Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly
the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion
of keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always
letting it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At
last he said, “Satchell’s got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from
the lad they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o’clock
this morning. He’s a good way beyond sixty, you know; it’s much if he
gets over it.”
“Well,” said Adam, “I daresay there’d be more rejoicing than sorrow in
the parish at his being laid up. He’s been a selfish, tale-bearing,
mischievous fellow; but, after all, there’s nobody he’s done so much
harm to as to th’ old squire. Though it’s the squire himself as is to
blame—making a stupid fellow like that a sort o’ man-of-all-work, just
to save th’ expense of having a proper steward to look after th’
estate. And he’s lost more by ill management o’ the woods, I’ll be
bound, than ’ud pay for two stewards. If he’s laid on the shelf, it’s
to be hoped he’ll make way for a better man, but I don’t see how it’s
like to make any difference to me.”
“But I see it, but I see it,” said Bartle, “and others besides me. The
captain’s coming of age now—you know that as well as I do—and it’s to
be expected he’ll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and
you know too, what ’ud be the captain’s wish about the woods, if there
was a fair opportunity for making a change. He’s said in plenty of
people’s hearing that he’d make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if
he’d the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine’s butler, heard him say so to
the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking
our pipes o’ Saturday night at Casson’s, and he told us about it; and
whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson’s ready to back
it, that I’ll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell
you, at Casson’s, and one and another had their fling at you; for if
donkeys set to work to sing, you’re pretty sure what the tune’ll be.”
“Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?” said Adam; “or wasn’t he
there o’ Saturday?”
“Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson—he’s always for
setting other folks right, you know—would have it Burge was the man to
have the management of the woods. ‘A substantial man,’ says he, ‘with
pretty near sixty years’ experience o’ timber: it ’ud be all very well
for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn’t to be supposed the squire
’ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there’s his elders and
betters at hand!’ But I said, ‘That’s a pretty notion o’ yours, Casson.
Why, Burge is the man to _buy_ timber; would you put the woods into his
hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don’t leave your
customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that’s
worth depends on the quality o’ the liquor. It’s pretty well known
who’s the backbone of Jonathan Burge’s business.’”
“I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey,” said Adam. “But, for all
that, Casson was partly i’ the right for once. There’s not much
likelihood that th’ old squire ’ud ever consent t’ employ me. I
offended him about two years ago, and he’s never forgiven me.”
“Why, how was that? You never told me about it,” said Bartle.
“Oh, it was a bit o’ nonsense. I’d made a frame for a screen for Miss
Lyddy—she’s allays making something with her worsted-work, you know—and
she’d given me particular orders about this screen, and there was as
much talking and measuring as if we’d been planning a house. However,