Adam Bede
faces were at present sober, and most of them serious—it was the
regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do,
as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their
wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone
out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the
ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of
five minutes declared that “Drink, boys, drink!” was not likely to
begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys
and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious
thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father’s
knee, contributed with her small might and small fist.
When Bartle re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire
for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner
knew a song and was “allays singing like a lark i’ the stable,”
whereupon Mr. Poyser said encouragingly, “Come, Tim, lad, let’s hear
it.” Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn’t
sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master’s was echoed all
round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could
say, “Come, Tim,” except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of
unnecessary speech. At last, Tim’s next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began
to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather
savage, said, “Let me alooan, will ye? Else I’ll ma’ ye sing a toon ye
wonna like.” A good-tempered waggoner’s patience has limits, and Tim
was not to be urged further.
“Well, then, David, ye’re the lad to sing,” said Ben, willing to show
that he was not discomfited by this check. “Sing ‘My loove’s a roos
wi’out a thorn.’”
The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted
expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity
rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to
Ben’s invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over
his mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for
some time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire
to hear David’s song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in
the cellar at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just
yet.
Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a
political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally,
though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific
information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really
it was superfluous to know them.
“I’m no reader o’ the paper myself,” he observed to-night, as he filled
his pipe, “though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there’s
Miss Lyddy has ’em and ’s done with ’em i’ no time. But there’s Mills,
now, sits i’ the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from
morning to night, and when he’s got to th’ end on’t he’s more
addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He’s full o’ this peace now,
as they talk on; he’s been reading and reading, and thinks he’s got to
the bottom on’t. ‘Why, Lor’ bless you, Mills,’ says I, ‘you see no more
into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I’ll tell
you what it is: you think it’ll be a fine thing for the country. And
I’m not again’ it—mark my words—I’m not again’ it. But it’s my opinion
as there’s them at the head o’ this country as are worse enemies to us
nor Bony and all the mounseers he’s got at ’s back; for as for the
mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of ’em at once as if they war
frogs.’”
“Aye, aye,” said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much
intelligence and edification, “they ne’er ate a bit o’ beef i’ their
lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon.”
“And says I to Mills,” continued Mr. Craig, “‘Will _you_ try to make me
believe as furriners like them can do us half th’ harm them ministers
do with their bad government? If King George ’ud turn ’em all away and
govern by himself, he’d see everything righted. He might take on Billy
Pitt again if he liked; but I don’t see myself what we want wi’ anybody
besides King and Parliament. It’s that nest o’ ministers does the
mischief, I tell you.’”
“Ah, it’s fine talking,” observed Mrs. Poyser, who was now seated near
her husband, with Totty on her lap—“it’s fine talking. It’s hard work
to tell which is Old Harry when everybody’s got boots on.”
“As for this peace,” said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side in a
dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between
each sentence, “I don’t know. Th’ war’s a fine thing for the country,
an’ how’ll you keep up prices wi’out it? An’ them French are a wicked
sort o’ folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight
’em?”
“Ye’re partly right there, Poyser,” said Mr. Craig, “but I’m not again’
the peace—to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like,
an’ _I’m_ in no fear o’ Bony, for all they talk so much o’ his
cliverness. That’s what I says to Mills this morning. Lor’ bless you,
he sees no more through Bony!... why, I put him up to more in three
minutes than he gets from’s paper all the year round. Says I, ‘Am I a
gardener as knows his business, or arn’t I, Mills? Answer me that.’ ‘To
be sure y’ are, Craig,’ says he—he’s not a bad fellow, Mills isn’t, for
a butler, but weak i’ the head. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘you talk o’ Bony’s
cliverness; would it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I’d
got nought but a quagmire to work on?’ ‘No,’ says he. ‘Well,’ I says,
‘that’s just what it is wi’ Bony. I’ll not deny but he may be a bit
cliver—he’s no Frenchman born, as I understand—but what’s he got at’s
back but mounseers?’”
Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant
specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table
rather fiercely, “Why, it’s a sure thing—and there’s them ’ull bear
witness to’t—as i’ one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they
put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits
the walnut, and you couldn’t tell the monkey from the mounseers!”
“Ah! Think o’ that, now!” said Mr. Poyser, impressed at once with the
political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an
anecdote in natural history.
“Come, Craig,” said Adam, “that’s a little too strong. You don’t
believe that. It’s all nonsense about the French being such poor
sticks. Mr. Irwine’s seen ’em in their own country, and he says they’ve
plenty o’ fine fellows among ’em. And as for knowledge, and
contrivances, and manufactures, there’s a many things as we’re a fine
sight behind ’em in. It’s poor foolishness to run down your enemies.
Why, Nelson and the rest of ’em ’ud have no merit i’ beating ’em, if
they were such offal as folks pretend.”
Mr. Poyser looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition
of authorities. Mr. Irwine’s testimony was not to be disputed; but, on
the other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less
startling. Martin had never “heard tell” of the French being good for
much. Mr. Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a
long draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of
his own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when
Bartle Massey returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking
his first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust
his forefinger into the canister, “Why, Adam, how happened you not to
be at church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went
limping without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his
old age?”
“No, Mr. Massey,” said Adam. “Mr. and Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I
was. I was in no bad company.”
“She’s gone, Adam—gone to Snowfield,” said Mr. Poyser, reminded of
Dinah for the first time this evening. “I thought you’d ha’ persuaded
her better. Nought ’ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon.
The missis has hardly got over it. I thought she’d ha’ no sperrit for
th’ harvest supper.”
Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times since Adam had come in,
but she had had “no heart” to mention the bad news.
“What!” said Bartle, with an air of disgust. “Was there a woman
concerned? Then I give you up, Adam.”
“But it’s a woman you’n spoke well on, Bartle,” said Mr. Poyser. “Come
now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha’ been a bad
invention if they’d all been like Dinah.”
“I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, that was all,” said Bartle.
“I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears.
As for other things, I daresay she’s like the rest o’ the women—thinks
two and two ’ll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough
about it.”
“Aye, aye!” said Mrs. Poyser; “one ’ud think, an’ hear some folks talk,
as the men war ’cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’
only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, _they_ can.
Perhaps that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.”
Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter and winked at Adam, as much
as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now.
“Ah!” said Bartle sneeringly, “the women are quick enough—they’re quick
enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can
tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows ’em himself.”
“Like enough,” said Mrs. Poyser, “for the men are mostly so slow, their
thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can
count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready an’ when he
outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s
your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. Howiver, I’m not denyin’
the women are foolish: God Almighty made ’em to match the men.”
“Match!” said Bartle. “Aye, as vinegar matches one’s teeth. If a man
says a word, his wife ’ll match it with a contradiction; if he’s a mind
for hot meat, his wife ’ll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs,
she’ll match him with whimpering. She’s such a match as the horse-fly
is to th’ horse: she’s got the right venom to sting him with—the right
venom to sting him with.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, “I know what the men like—a poor soft, as ’ud
simper at ’em like the picture o’ the sun, whether they did right or
wrong, an’ say thank you for a kick, an’ pretend she didna know which
end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That’s what a man
wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o’ one fool as ’ull tell
him he’s wise. But there’s some men can do wi’out that—they think so
much o’ themselves a’ready. An’ that’s how it is there’s old
bachelors.”
“Come, Craig,” said Mr. Poyser jocosely, “you mun get married pretty
quick, else you’ll be set down for an old bachelor; an’ you see what
the women ’ull think on you.”
“Well,” said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Poyser and setting a
high value on his own compliments, “_I_ like a cleverish woman—a woman
o’ sperrit—a managing woman.”
“You’re out there, Craig,” said Bartle, dryly; “you’re out there. You
judge o’ your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the
things for what they can excel in—for what they can excel in. You don’t
value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers.
Now, that’s the way you should choose women. Their cleverness ’ll never
come to much—never come to much—but they make excellent simpletons,
ripe and strong-flavoured.”
“What dost say to that?” said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and
looking merrily at his wife.
“Say!” answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye.
“Why, I say as some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on
strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s