Adam Bede
He expected to see Dinah again this evening, and get leave to accompany
her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time
when he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope
that had been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he
had to do at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven
before he was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was
questionable whether, with his longest and quickest strides, he should
be there in time even for the roast beef, which came after the plum
pudding, for Mrs. Poyser’s supper would be punctual.
Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when
Adam entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this
accompaniment: the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of
expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be
performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to
say to each other—which they had not. And Mr. Poyser, at the head of
the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey’s
or Mr. Craig’s ready talk.
“Here, Adam,” said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see
that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, “here’s a place kept
for you between Mr. Massey and the boys. It’s a poor tale you couldn’t
come to see the pudding when it was whole.”
Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman’s figure, but Dinah was
not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his
attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that
Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on
the eve of her departure.
It was a goodly sight—that table, with Martin Poyser’s round
good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his
servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates
came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really
forgot to finish his own beef to-night—it was so pleasant to him to
look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed
their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year
except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift
manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden
bottles—with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the
zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds.
Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must
find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one
side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched
half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as “Tom Saft,” receiving his
second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom’s face as the
plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he
held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too
strong to continue smouldering in a grin—it burst out the next instant
in a long-drawn “haw, haw!” followed by a sudden collapse into utter
gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser’s
large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards
Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes
of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement.
“Tom Saft” was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part
of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his
success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail,
which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and
then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but
I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom’s wit should prove to be
like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day—rather of a
temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting
relations of things.
Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and
labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth
their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example
(Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and
was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the
close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face.
Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the “natur” of all
farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only
turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their
hand to. It is true Kester’s knees were much bent outward by this time,
and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most
reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the
object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed
some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks—for
if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching—and when
the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose
home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the
rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the
lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking
about to get each rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied
along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden
globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of
the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan
act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have
stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with
him every pay-night: not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one,
that had been tried many times before and had worn well. “Th’ young
measter’s a merry mon,” Kester frequently remarked; for having begun
his career by frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser
but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Martin a young
master. I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester. You and I are
indebted to the hard hands of such men—hands that have long ago mingled
with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they
could of the earth’s fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their
own wages.
Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick,
the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not
on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was
confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed
little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there
was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own
respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same
farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed,
was not by any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of
a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the
bull-dog expression—“Don’t you meddle with me, and I won’t meddle with
you.” But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather
than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as “close-fisted”
with his master’s property as if it had been his own—throwing very
small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large
handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion.
Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge
against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other,
and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes;
but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all
mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than
transient fits of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope,
you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning
sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists. The
mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer’s face,
and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh.
Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick. At this very
table, among Mr. Poyser’s men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very
powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his
master’s corn in his pockets—an action which, as Ben was not a
philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind. However, his
master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways
had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the
Poysers. And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse
because Ben had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of
depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have
enlarged them. As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene
sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed
for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in
thinking that Alick’s suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury
to his innocence.
But _now_ the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving
a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming
brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold.
_Now_, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin—the harvest-song,
in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be
singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was
obliged to be in triple time; the rest was _ad libitum_.
As to the origin of this song—whether it came in its actual state from
the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a
school or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of
unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former
hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity
may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a
condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness.
Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an
indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in
imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration.
Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an
original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be
insensible.
The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That is
perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our
forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly
_forte_, no can was filled.
“Here’s a health unto our master,
The founder of the feast;
Here’s a health unto our master
And to our mistress!
And may his doings prosper,
Whate’er he takes in hand,
For we are all his servants,
And are at his command.”
But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung
_fortissimo_, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of
cymbals and drum together, Alick’s can was filled, and he was bound to
empty it before the chorus ceased.
“Then drink, boys, drink!
And see ye do not spill,
For if ye do, ye shall drink two,
For ’tis our master’s will.”
When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed
manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand—and so on,
till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the
chorus. Tom Saft—the rogue—took care to spill a little by accident; but
Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the
exaction of the penalty.
To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of
obvious why the “Drink, boys, drink!” should have such an immediate and
often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all