Middlemarch - 47

Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on. It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass are apt to change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never 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.