"Well, it may be better to wait a bit. But as to my getting plenty of
work for two, I'm pretty sure of that. I've always had my hands full
with scattered things, and there's always something fresh turning up.
Why, only yesterday--bless me, I don't think I told you!--it was rather
odd that two men should have been at me on different sides to do the
same bit of valuing. And who do you think they were?" said Caleb,
taking a pinch of snuff and holding it up between his fingers, as if it
were a part of his exposition. He was fond of a pinch when it occurred
to him, but he usually forgot that this indulgence was at his command.
His wife held down her knitting and looked attentive.
"Why, that Rigg, or Rigg Featherstone, was one. But Bulstrode was
before him, so I'm going to do it for Bulstrode. Whether it's mortgage
or purchase they're going for, I can't tell yet."
"Can that man be going to sell the land just left him--which he has
taken the name for?" said Mrs. Garth.
"Deuce knows," said Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of
discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce. "But
Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his
fingers--that I know. And it's a difficult matter to get, in this part
of the country."
Caleb scattered his snuff carefully instead of taking it, and then
added, "The ins and outs of things are curious. Here is the land
they've been all along expecting for Fred, which it seems the old man
never meant to leave him a foot of, but left it to this side-slip of a
son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking there and
vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed 'em himself if he could
have kept alive. I say, it would be curious if it got into Bulstrode's
hands after all. The old man hated him, and never would bank with him."
"What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he
had nothing to do with?" said Mrs. Garth.
"Pooh! where's the use of asking for such fellows' reasons? The soul
of man," said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head
which always came when he used this phrase--"The soul of man, when it
gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools,
and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof."
It was one of Caleb's quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding
speech for his thought, he caught, as it were, snatches of diction
which he associated with various points of view or states of mind; and
whenever he had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense of Biblical
phraseology, though he could hardly have given a strict quotation.