But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both occupied land of their own, took a long time to arrive at this conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it would be to cut the Big Pasture in two, and turn it into three-cornered bits, which would be “nohow;” while accommodation-bridges and high payments were remote and incredible.
“The cows will all cast their calves, brother,” said Mrs. Waule, in a tone of deep melancholy, “if the railway comes across the Near Close; and I shouldn’t wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal. It’s a poor tale if a widow’s property is to be spaded away, and the law say nothing to it. What’s to hinder ’em from cutting right and left if they begin? It’s well known, I can’t fight.”
“The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send ’em away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,” said Solomon. “Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can understand. It’s all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their being forced to take one way. Let ’em go cutting in another parish. And I don’t believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of ruffians to trample your crops. Where’s a company’s pocket?”
“Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company,” said Mrs. Waule. “But that was for the manganese. That wasn’t for railways to blow you to pieces right and left.”
“Well, there’s this to be said, Jane,” Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering his voice in a cautious manner—“the more spokes we put in their wheel, the more they’ll pay us to let ’em go on, if they must come whether or not.”
This reasoning of Mr. Solomon’s was perhaps less thorough than he imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course of railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or catarrh of the solar system. But he set about acting on his views in a thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion. His side of Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the laboring people were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet called Frick, where a water-mill and some stone-pits made a little centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.
In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it. Even the rumor of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick, there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous grains to fatten Hiram Ford’s pig, or of a publican at the “Weights and Scales” who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter. And without distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every knowing person. The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in—a disposition observable in the weather.
Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the same order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and more entirely at leisure. Solomon was overseer of the roads at that time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move. After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly onward. The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr. Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow. He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them. One day, however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he himself contributed information. He wished to know whether Hiram had seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or what they meant to do. The least they pretended was that they were going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.
“Why, there’ll be no stirrin’ from one pla-ace to another,” said Hiram, thinking of his wagon and horses.
“Not a bit,” said Mr. Solomon. “And cutting up fine land such as this parish! Let ’em go into Tipton, say I. But there’s no knowing what there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for’ard; but it’s to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run.”
“Why, they’re Lunnon chaps, I reckon,” said Hiram, who had a dim notion of London as a centre of hostility to the country.
“Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I’ve heard say, the folks fell on ’em when they were spying, and broke their peep-holes as they carry, and drove ’em away, so as they knew better than come again.”
“It war good foon, I’d be bound,” said Hiram, whose fun was much restricted by circumstances.
“Well, I wouldn’t meddle with ’em myself,” said Solomon. “But some say this country’s seen its best days, and the sign is, as it’s being overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the little, so as there shan’t be a team left on the land, nor a whip to crack.”
“I’ll crack my whip about their ear’n, afore they bring it to that, though,” said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved onward.
Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the “Weights and Scales,” but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.
One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy, it happened that her father had some business which took him to Yoddrell’s farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell’s, and in walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his work, he encountered the party of the company’s agents, who were adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them, observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going to measure. It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows.
The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along the lanes
