Middlemarch George Eliot (essential reading txt) 📖

“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 closefisted 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.

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 teaspoon absently, till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she had kept on her lap during breakfast.

“Oh, don’t sew, Mary!” said Ben, pulling her arm down. “Make me a peacock with this breadcrumb.” He had been kneading a small mass for the purpose.

“No, no, Mischief!” said Mary, good-humoredly, while she pricked his hand lightly with her needle. “Try and mould it yourself: you have seen me do it often enough. I must get this sewing done. It is for Rosamond Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can’t be married without this handkerchief.” Mary ended merrily, amused with the last notion.

“Why can’t she, Mary?” said Letty, seriously interested in this mystery, and pushing her head so close to her sister that Mary now turned the threatening needle towards Letty’s nose.

“Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven,” said Mary, with a grave air of explanation, so that Letty sank back with a sense of knowledge.

“Have you made up your mind, my dear?”