The Rainbow, in Marner’s view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of linen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss public. He lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or kitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty customers of the house were in the habit of assembling, the parlour on the left being reserved for the 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.