Silas Marner
more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the double
pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But the parlour was dark
to-night, the chief personages who ornamented its circle being all at
Mrs. Osgood’s birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was. And in consequence
of this, the party on the high-screened seats in the kitchen was more
numerous than usual; several personages, who would otherwise have been
admitted into the parlour and enlarged the opportunity of hectoring and
condescension for their betters, being content this evening to vary
their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and-water where they could
themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.
CHAPTER VI.
The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas
approached the door of the Rainbow, had, as usual, been slow and
intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be
puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important
customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each
other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the
beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept
their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if
their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing
sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral
disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those
of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence, by
saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher—
“Some folks ’ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?”
The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to
answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat and replied, “And
they wouldn’t be fur wrong, John.”
After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as
before.
“Was it a red Durham?” said the farrier, taking up the thread of
discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.
The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the
butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.
“Red it was,” said the butcher, in his good-humoured husky treble—“and
a Durham it was.”
“Then you needn’t tell _me_ who you bought it of,” said the farrier,
looking round with some triumph; “I know who it is has got the red
Durhams o’ this country-side. And she’d a white star on her brow, I’ll
bet a penny?” The farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees as
he put this question, and his eyes twinkled knowingly.
“Well; yes—she might,” said the butcher, slowly, considering that he
was giving a decided affirmative. “I don’t say contrairy.”
“I knew that very well,” said the farrier, throwing himself backward
again, and speaking defiantly; “if _I_ don’t know Mr. Lammeter’s cows,
I should like to know who does—that’s all. And as for the cow you’ve
bought, bargain or no bargain, I’ve been at the drenching of
her—contradick me who will.”
The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher’s conversational spirit
was roused a little.
“I’m not for contradicking no man,” he said; “I’m for peace and
quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs—I’m for cutting ’em short
myself; but _I_ don’t quarrel with ’em. All I say is, it’s a lovely
carkiss—and anybody as was reasonable, it ’ud bring tears into their
eyes to look at it.”
“Well, it’s the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,” pursued the
farrier, angrily; “and it was Mr. Lammeter’s cow, else you told a lie
when you said it was a red Durham.”
“I tell no lies,” said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as
before, “and I contradick none—not if a man was to swear himself black:
he’s no meat o’ mine, nor none o’ my bargains. All I say is, it’s a
lovely carkiss. And what I say, I’ll stick to; but I’ll quarrel wi’ no
man.”
“No,” said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company
generally; “and p’rhaps you aren’t pig-headed; and p’rhaps you didn’t
say the cow was a red Durham; and p’rhaps you didn’t say she’d got a
star on her brow—stick to that, now you’re at it.”
“Come, come,” said the landlord; “let the cow alone. The truth lies
atween you: you’re both right and both wrong, as I allays say. And as
for the cow’s being Mr. Lammeter’s, I say nothing to that; but this I
say, as the Rainbow’s the Rainbow. And for the matter o’ that, if the
talk is to be o’ the Lammeters, _you_ know the most upo’ that head, eh,
Mr. Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father come into
these parts, and took the Warrens?”
Mr. Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter of which functions
rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-featured young
man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and twirled
his thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned with
criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord’s appeal, and
said—
“Aye, aye; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I’ve laid by
now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at
Tarley: they’ve learnt pernouncing; that’s come up since my day.”
“If you’re pointing at me, Mr. Macey,” said the deputy clerk, with an
air of anxious propriety, “I’m nowise a man to speak out of my place.
As the psalm says—
‘I know what’s right, nor only so,
But also practise what I know.’
“Well, then, I wish you’d keep hold o’ the tune, when it’s set for you;
if you’re for prac_tis_ing, I wish you’d prac_tise_ that,” said a large
jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity,
but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of
the company, who were known officially as the “bassoon” and the
“key-bugle,” in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the
musical profession in Raveloe.
Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to
deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation—“Mr.
Winthrop, if you’ll bring me any proof as I’m in the wrong, I’m not the
man to say I won’t alter. But there’s people set up their own ears for
a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow ’em. There may be two
opinions, I hope.”
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with this
attack on youthful presumption; “you’re right there, Tookey: there’s
allays two ’pinions; there’s the ’pinion a man has of himsen, and
there’s the ’pinion other folks have on him. There’d be two ’pinions
about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself.”
“Well, Mr. Macey,” said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general
laughter, “I undertook to partially fill up the office of parish-clerk
by Mr. Crackenthorp’s desire, whenever your infirmities should make you
unfitting; and it’s one of the rights thereof to sing in the choir—else
why have you done the same yourself?”
“Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks,” said Ben Winthrop.
“The old gentleman’s got a gift. Why, the Squire used to invite him to
take a glass, only to hear him sing the ‘Red Rovier’; didn’t he, Mr.
Macey? It’s a nat’ral gift. There’s my little lad Aaron, he’s got a
gift—he can sing a tune off straight, like a throstle. But as for you,
Master Tookey, you’d better stick to your ‘Amens’: your voice is well
enough when you keep it up in your nose. It’s your inside as isn’t
right made for music: it’s no better nor a hollow stalk.”
This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke to
the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop’s insult was felt by
everybody to have capped Mr. Macey’s epigram.
“I see what it is plain enough,” said Mr. Tookey, unable to keep cool
any longer. “There’s a consperacy to turn me out o’ the choir, as I
shouldn’t share the Christmas money—that’s where it is. But I shall
speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I’ll not be put upon by no man.”
“Nay, nay, Tookey,” said Ben Winthrop. “We’ll pay you your share to
keep out of it—that’s what we’ll do. There’s things folks ’ud pay to be
rid on, besides varmin.”
“Come, come,” said the landlord, who felt that paying people for their
absence was a principle dangerous to society; “a joke’s a joke. We’re
all good friends here, I hope. We must give and take. You’re both right
and you’re both wrong, as I say. I agree wi’ Mr. Macey here, as there’s
two opinions; and if mine was asked, I should say they’re both right.
Tookey’s right and Winthrop’s right, and they’ve only got to split the
difference and make themselves even.”
The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt at
this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself, and never
went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely to be in
requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher, having music in his
soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey’s defeat and for
the preservation of the peace.
“To be sure,” he said, following up the landlord’s conciliatory view,
“we’re fond of our old clerk; it’s nat’ral, and him used to be such a
singer, and got a brother as is known for the first fiddler in this
country-side. Eh, it’s a pity but what Solomon lived in our village,
and could give us a tune when we liked; eh, Mr. Macey? I’d keep him in
liver and lights for nothing—that I would.”
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency; “our family’s
been known for musicianers as far back as anybody can tell. But them
things are dying out, as I tell Solomon every time he comes round;
there’s no voices like what there used to be, and there’s nobody
remembers what we remember, if it isn’t the old crows.”
“Aye, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father come into these
parts, don’t you, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord.
“I should think I did,” said the old man, who had now gone through that
complimentary process necessary to bring him up to the point of
narration; “and a fine old gentleman he was—as fine, and finer nor the
Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from a bit north’ard, so far as I could
ever make out. But there’s nobody rightly knows about those parts: only
it couldn’t be far north’ard, nor much different from this country, for
he brought a fine breed o’ sheep with him, so there must be pastures
there, and everything reasonable. We heared tell as he’d sold his own
land to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as had
land of his own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place. But they
said it was along of his wife’s dying; though there’s reasons in things
as nobody knows on—that’s pretty much what I’ve made out; yet some
folks are so wise, they’ll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all
the while the real reason’s winking at ’em in the corner, and they
niver see’t. Howsomever, it was soon seen as we’d got a new parish’ner
as know’d the rights and customs o’ things, and kep a good house, and
was well looked on by everybody. And the young man—that’s the Mr.
Lammeter as now is, for he’d niver a sister—soon begun to court Miss
Osgood, that’s the sister o’ the Mr. Osgood as now is, and a fine
handsome lass she was—eh, you can’t think—they pretend this young lass
is like her, but that’s the way wi’ people as don’t know what come
before ’em. _I_ should know, for I helped the old rector, Mr. Drumlow
as was, I helped him marry ’em.”
Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in instalments,
expecting to be questioned according to precedent.
“Aye, and a partic’lar thing happened, didn’t it, Mr. Macey, so as you
were likely to remember that marriage?” said the landlord, in a
congratulatory tone.
“I should think there did—a _very_ partic’lar thing,” said Mr. Macey,
nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow—poor old gentleman, I was fond on
him, though he’d got a bit confused in his head, what wi’ age and wi’