"That was very brutal, I think," said Dorothea
"Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist
preacher, you know. And Johnson said, 'You may judge what a
_hypocrite_ he is.' And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very
little like 'the highest style of man'--as somebody calls the
Christian--Young, the poet Young, I think--you know Young? Well, now,
Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord
had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it
down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was--I
assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of
it--or Scott, now--Scott might have worked it up. But really, when I
came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have
a bit of hare to say grace over. It's all a matter of
prejudice--prejudice with the law on its side, you know--about the
stick and the gaiters, and so on. However, it doesn't do to reason
about things; and law is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I
hushed the matter up. I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more
severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the
county. But here we are at Dagley's."
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.