Middlemarch
there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for’ard; but
it’s to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run.”
“Why, they’re Lunnon chaps, I reckon,” said Hiram, who had a dim notion
of London as a centre of hostility to the country.
“Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I’ve heard
say, the folks fell on ’em when they were spying, and broke their
peep-holes as they carry, and drove ’em away, so as they knew better
than come again.”
“It war good foon, I’d be bound,” said Hiram, whose fun was much
restricted by circumstances.
“Well, I wouldn’t meddle with ’em myself,” said Solomon. “But some say
this country’s seen its best days, and the sign is, as it’s being
overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut
it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the
little, so as there shan’t be a team left on the land, nor a whip to
crack.”
“I’ll crack _my_ whip about their ear’n, afore they bring it to that,
though,” said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved
onward.
Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads
was discussed, not only at the “Weights and Scales,” but in the
hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for
talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.
One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and
Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,
it happened that her father had some business which took him to
Yoddrell’s farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value
an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb
expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be
confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms
from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell’s, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his
work, he encountered the party of the company’s agents, who were
adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,
observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going
to measure. It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which
become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the
hedgerows.
The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along
the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by
unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on
one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on
the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the
working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman
without capital and generally unskilled. It was the harder to Fred’s
disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer
rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this
pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds. Even when he had fixed on
what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father. But
it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the
more difficult task:—what secular avocation on earth was there for a
young man (whose friends could not get him an “appointment”) which was
at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special
knowledge? Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slackening
his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round by
Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges from one
field to another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and on the far
side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven men in
smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive approach
towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while Caleb Garth
and his assistant were hastening across the field to join the
threatened group. Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find the
gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in smock-frocks,
whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after
swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats before
them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth’s assistant, a lad of
seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb’s order, had
been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless. The coated men had
the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in
front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion. “What do you confounded fools mean?”
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right
and left with his whip. “I’ll swear to every one of you before the
magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I
know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you
don’t mind,” said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.
The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field,
and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a
safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he
did not know to be Homeric.
“Yo’re a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I’ll
have a round wi’ ye, I wull. Yo daredn’t come on wi’out your hoss an’
whip. I’d soon knock the breath out on ye, I would.”
“Wait a minute, and I’ll come back presently, and have a round with you
all in turn, if you like,” said Fred, who felt confidence in his power
of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren. But just now he wanted to
hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.
The lad’s ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he
was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might
ride to Yoddrell’s and be taken care of there.
“Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can
come back for their traps,” said Fred. “The ground is clear now.”
“No, no,” said Caleb, “here’s a breakage. They’ll have to give up for
to-day, and it will be as well. Here, take the things before you on the
horse, Tom. They’ll see you coming, and they’ll turn back.”
“I’m glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth,” said
Fred, as Tom rode away. “No knowing what might have happened if the
cavalry had not come up in time.”
“Ay, ay, it was lucky,” said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and
looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of
interruption. “But—deuce take it—this is what comes of men being
fools—I’m hindered of my day’s work. I can’t get along without somebody
to help me with the measuring-chain. However!” He was beginning to move
towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he had forgotten Fred’s
presence, but suddenly he turned round and said quickly, “What have you
got to do to-day, young fellow?”
“Nothing, Mr. Garth. I’ll help you with pleasure—can I?” said Fred,
with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her
father.
“Well, you mustn’t mind stooping and getting hot.”
“I don’t mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with
that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me. It would be a good lesson
for him. I shall not be five minutes.”
“Nonsense!” said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation. “I shall
go and speak to the men myself. It’s all ignorance. Somebody has been
telling them lies. The poor fools don’t know any better.”
“I shall go with you, then,” said Fred.
“No, no; stay where you are. I don’t want your young blood. I can take
care of myself.”
Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of
hurting others and the fear of having to speechify. But he felt it his
duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue. There was a
striking mixture in him—which came from his having always been a
hard-working man himself—of rigorous notions about workmen and
practical indulgence towards them. To do a good day’s work and to do it
well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part of
his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with them.
When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work again,
but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists in each
turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or three
yards. They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly with one
hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of his
waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.
“Why, my lads, how’s this?” he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,
which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying
under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to
peep above the water. “How came you to make such a mistake as this?
Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief.”
“Aw!” was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his
degree of unreadiness.
“Nonsense! No such thing! They’re looking out to see which way the
railroad is to take. Now, my lads, you can’t hinder the railroad: it
will be made whether you like it or not. And if you go fighting against
it, you’ll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives those men leave
to come here on the land. The owner has nothing to say against it, and
if you meddle with them you’ll have to do with the constable and
Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch jail. And you
might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you.”
Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have
chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.
“But come, you didn’t mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad was
a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, to
this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven. But the railway’s a
good thing.”
“Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on,” said old Timothy
Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been
gone on their spree;—“I’n seen lots o’ things turn up sin’ I war a
young un—the war an’ the peace, and the canells, an’ the oald King
George, an’ the Regen’, an’ the new King George, an’ the new un as has
got a new ne-ame—an’ it’s been all aloike to the poor mon. What’s the
canells been t’ him? They’n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor
wage to lay by, if he didn’t save it wi’ clemmin’ his own inside. Times
ha’ got wusser for him sin’ I war a young un. An’ so it’ll be wi’ the
railroads. They’ll on’y leave the poor mon furder behind. But them are
fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here. This is the big folks’s
world, this is. But yo’re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.”
Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times—who
had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was
not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal
spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally
unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man. Caleb was in
a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and
unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of
an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling,
and can let it fall like a giant’s club on your neatly carved argument
for a social benefit which they do not feel. Caleb had no cant at
command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been
accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing
his “business” faithfully. He answered—
“If you don’t think well of me, Tim, never mind; that’s neither here
nor there now. Things may be bad for the poor man—bad they are; but I