Middlemarch
complain or have nobody to complain for them. Dagley’s homestead never
before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did today, with his mind
thus sore about the fault-finding of the “Trumpet,” echoed by Sir
James.
It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine
arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque, might have been
delighted with this homestead called Freeman’s End: the old house had
dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked
with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and
half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which
the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall
with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled
subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on
interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen
door. The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors, the
pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished unloading a
wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the scanty dairy
of cows being tethered for milking and leaving one half of the shed in
brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to wander about
the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from feeding on a too
meagre quality of rinsings,—all these objects under the quiet light of
a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a sort of picture which
we have all paused over as a “charming bit,” touching other
sensibilities than those which are stirred by the depression of the
agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen
constantly in the newspapers of that time. But these troublesome
associations were just now strongly present to Mr. Brooke, and spoiled
the scene for him. Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the landscape,
carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat—a very old beaver
flattened in front. His coat and breeches were the best he had, and he
would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he had not
been to market and returned later than usual, having given himself the
rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull. How he came
to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of wonderment to
himself on the morrow; but before dinner something in the state of the
country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips were cut,
the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on the walls,
had seemed to warrant a little recklessness. It was a maxim about
Middlemarch, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should have
good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale well
followed up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in them
that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley seem merry: they
only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual. He had also taken
too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously
disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that
whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse. He was
flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he stood
still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached with his
easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other
swinging round a thin walking-stick.
“Dagley, my good fellow,” began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he was going
to be very friendly about the boy.
“Oh, ay, I’m a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye,” said
Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog stir
from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after
some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of
observation. “I’m glad to hear I’m a good feller.”
Mr. Brooke reflected that it was market-day, and that his worthy tenant
had probably been dining, but saw no reason why he should not go on,
since he could take the precaution of repeating what he had to say to
Mrs. Dagley.
“Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I
have told Johnson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two,
just to frighten him, you know. But he will be brought home by-and-by,
before night: and you’ll just look after him, will you, and give him a
reprimand, you know?”
“No, I woon’t: I’ll be dee’d if I’ll leather my boy to please you or
anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o’ one, and that a
bad un.”
Dagley’s words were loud enough to summon his wife to the back-kitchen
door—the only entrance ever used, and one always open except in bad
weather—and Mr. Brooke, saying soothingly, “Well, well, I’ll speak to
your wife—I didn’t mean beating, you know,” turned to walk to the
house. But Dagley, only the more inclined to “have his say” with a
gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag
slouching at his heels and sullenly evading some small and probably
charitable advances on the part of Monk.
“How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?” said Mr. Brooke, making some haste. “I
came to tell you about your boy: I don’t want you to give him the
stick, you know.” He was careful to speak quite plainly this time.
Overworked Mrs. Dagley—a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure had
so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which
could give her satisfaction in preparing for church—had already had a
misunderstanding with her husband since he had come home, and was in
low spirits, expecting the worst. But her husband was beforehand in
answering.
“No, nor he woon’t hev the stick, whether you want it or no,” pursued
Dagley, throwing out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard. “You’ve
got no call to come an’ talk about sticks o’ these primises, as you
woon’t give a stick tow’rt mending. Go to Middlemarch to ax for _your_
charrickter.”
“You’d far better hold your tongue, Dagley,” said the wife, “and not
kick your own trough over. When a man as is father of a family has been
an’ spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor, he’s
done enough mischief for one day. But I should like to know what my
boy’s done, sir.”
“Niver do you mind what he’s done,” said Dagley, more fiercely, “it’s
my business to speak, an’ not yourn. An’ I wull speak, too. I’ll hev my
say—supper or no. An’ what I say is, as I’ve lived upo’ your ground
from my father and grandfather afore me, an’ hev dropped our money
into’t, an’ me an’ my children might lie an’ rot on the ground for
top-dressin’ as we can’t find the money to buy, if the King wasn’t to
put a stop.”
“My good fellow, you’re drunk, you know,” said Mr. Brooke,
confidentially but not judiciously. “Another day, another day,” he
added, turning as if to go.
But Dagley immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low,
as his master’s voice grew louder and more insulting, while Monk also
drew close in silent dignified watch. The laborers on the wagon were
pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive than to
attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a bawling man.
“I’m no more drunk nor you are, nor so much,” said Dagley. “I can carry
my liquor, an’ I know what I meean. An’ I meean as the King ’ull put a
stop to ’t, for them say it as knows it, as there’s to be a Rinform,
and them landlords as never done the right thing by their tenants ’ull
be treated i’ that way as they’ll hev to scuttle off. An’ there’s them
i’ Middlemarch knows what the Rinform is—an’ as knows who’ll hev to
scuttle. Says they, ‘I know who _your_ landlord is.’ An’ says I, ‘I
hope you’re the better for knowin’ him, I arn’t.’ Says they, ‘He’s a
close-fisted un.’ ‘Ay ay,’ says I. ‘He’s a man for the Rinform,’ says
they. That’s what they says. An’ I made out what the Rinform were—an’
it were to send you an’ your likes a-scuttlin’ an’ wi’ pretty
strong-smellin’ things too. An’ you may do as you like now, for I’m
none afeard on you. An’ you’d better let my boy aloan, an’ look to
yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo’ your back. That’s what I’n got
to say,” concluded Mr. Dagley, striking his fork into the ground with a
firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it up again.
At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for
Mr. Brooke to escape. He walked out of the yard as quickly as he could,
in some amazement at the novelty of his situation. He had never been
insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard
himself as a general favorite (we are all apt to do so, when we think
of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want
of us). When he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth twelve years before he
had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the landlord’s taking
everything into his own hands.
Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the
midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times
than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite
somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to
the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than
the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine
art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only
three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals escape
knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of
London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would
have been if he had learned scant skill in “summing” from the
parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense
difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained
unmanageable after twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses
sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to
him than it had been before. Some things he knew thoroughly, namely,
the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock
and crops, at Freeman’s End—so called apparently by way of sarcasm, to
imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there was no
earthly “beyond” open to him.
CHAPTER XL.
Wise in his daily work was he:
To fruits of diligence,
And not to faiths or polity,
He plied his utmost sense.
These perfect in their little parts,
Whose work is all their prize—
Without them how could laws, or arts,
Or towered cities rise?
In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often
necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group
at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in
was set up. The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth’s
breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were:
father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home
waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was
getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his
father’s disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling
“business.”
The letters had come—nine costly letters, for which the postman had
been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and
toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other,
sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in
inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off a large red seal unbroken,
which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.
The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed
Caleb’s absorption except shaking the table when he was writing.
Two letters of the nine had been for Mary. After reading them, she had
passed them to her mother, and sat playing with her tea-spoon absently,
till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she
had kept on her lap during breakfast.